Farewell to Manzanar (15 page)

They were sitting on the steps like that—^Mama hunched. Papa tending the blackening rings—one morning a few days before we left camp. Now that smell and those voices m the wind from the orchard brought with them the sign I was waiting for: the image of a rekindled wildness in Papa's eyes. Twenty-seven years earlier I had carried it with me out of camp only half understanding what it meant. Remembering now, I realized I had never forgotten his final outburst of defiance. But for the first time I saw it clearly, as clearly as the gathered desert stones, and when I left today for good I would carry that image with me again, as the rest of my inheritance.

It was the day Papa suddenly came back to life and decided to go into Lone Pine and buy a car. Mama had

been packing, and that brought the uncertainty of our future to such a sharp point, her back went into spasms. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to concentrate on the rings of heat. She let Papa rant a long time before she reacted.

"That's crazy, Ko,'' she said.

"Don't call me crazy! You think Tm gomg to ride that stinking bus all the way to Los Angeles?"

"It's cheaper than buying a car."

"Cheaper! What is it worth—^to be packed in there like cattle? You call that cheap?'*

"We don't have money to buy a car."

"I know how much money we have!'*

He jumped to his feet then, rushed into the house, came out with his hat on and a shirt half-buttoned, and his walking stick and his turtleneck sweater tied around his neck, and took ofi striding toward the main gate, leaving Mama with her back full of smokmg cork, which had done no good at all, since this new move of his merely bunched her muscles up worse than ever.

It was late afternoon when we heard the horn, still blocks away. Without looking out the door, Mama said, "Here he comes."

As the honks came closer we heard another sound, like a boxer working out a flabby punching bag. Mama moved to the doorway. We all did—Chizu, May, me— in time to see a blue Nash four-door come around the comer, with its two front tires flat and Papa sitting up straight and proud behind the wheel, his hat cocked, his free hand punching at the horn. Heads were appearing at doorways all up and down the street

He stopped in front, racing the engine and grinning, while he eyed Mama and fingered the shiny-knobbed dashboard gearshift. On the seat between his legs he held a half-empty quart bottle of whiskey. He yelled, "What do you think, Little Mama?'*

She didn't answer. He had not been drinking much at all for about six months. She stood there waiting to see what he was going to do. He laughed and made

the engine roar and demanded to know where all his boys were, he wanted to show those yogores what a real car looked Uke. Kiyo was the only son still in camp, and he had gone off to help someone else load fumitiure. So Papa announced that he would give all his women a ride. Mama protested, said he ought to get those tires fixed if we expected to take this car all the way into Los Angeles. Papa roared back at her, louder than the engine, and with such a terrible samurai's scowl that we all went leaping and piling into the car, Mama last, slamming the back door and climbing into the front seat next to him.

"You think it's a pretty good car?" he said, pleased by this show of power.

Mama said nothing. She sat very stiff, cool, enduring him.

Chizu was the placator now, leaning forward from the back to pat him on the shoulder. "It's a fine car, papa."

"You watch!"

He grabbed the gear lever and rammed it into low. The Nash leaped, and we were cloppeting down the street on those two flats and two good tires, with Papa laughing, sipping from the bottle. At the first comer he said, "You think I can't pick out cars?"

Softly Chizu said, "You did real good. Papa."

He stepped on the gas, hitting maybe thirty, swerving crazily. In the back seat we were all thrown around, flung from door to door like rag dolls, with mama boimcing in front of us and papa's hat crunching up against the ceiling.

May cried out, "Not so fast, Papa! You're going to wreck your car!"

'Think the car can't take it?" he yelled back at her. "You watch this!"

His gaiety turned ferocious again. He stomped the pedal, pushing the speedometer up to thirty-five. His right front tire had shredded and it flopped like a mangled arm. It lashed out, upending a garbage can. I started to cry, Chizu, her cahn shattered, was yelling

at him to slow down, Mama was too, and May was screaming. He wouldn't listen and told ns to hold on, while he swung into the street, careening past emptying barracks where suitcases and duffel bags sat stacked. As we passed people standing by the baggage, Papa swerved from one side to the other, waving. He laughed, growled, made faces. In front of us, a laden family was hiking out toward the main gate. Papa swung wide, honking, and waving.

"Hey! Hey!" he shouted.

They turned, too amazed to wave back.

"Don't miss that bus!" he yelled.

At the next corner he spun off into a deserted section of barracks. These already looked like the ones we'd j&rst moved into, sand piling up against foundation blocks, the clotheslines empty, aU signs and markers gone. It made no difference to Papa that no one was out there to witness his performance. He aimed for tumbleweeds lying in the roadbed and shouted with triumph each time he squashed one. Chizu and Mama and May had quit trying to control him. I'd stopped crying. We grabbed for handholds, covered our heads, hoping simply to survive until he hit something hard or ran out of gas.

We came to a firebreak and Papa plunged into it, began to cut a twisty path across its emptiness, shouting "Hyah! Hyah!," gouging ragged tracks through the dusty sand. The way this firebreak lay, there seemed to be nothing in front of us now but sagebrush and open country, rising in the distance south of camp to the range of round, buff-colored hills rumored to be full of rattlesnakes. The few times I'd wished I could walk in one direction for as long as I wanted, the threat of those rattlesnakes deterred me. And now, farther south, beyond that visible barrier, out in the world I scarcely remembered, there loomed the dark, threatening cloud I'd heard grown-ups talk about. The way we seemed to be heading, I should have been frightened into a coma. But for this once, I was not. Watching Papa boimce and weave and shout in front

of me, I was almost ready to laugh with him, with the first bubbly sense of liberation his defiant crazi* ness had brought along with it. I believed in him completely just then, beUeved in the fierceness flashing in his wild eyes. Somehow that would get us past whatever waited inside the fearful dark cloud, get us past the heat, and the rattlers, and a great deal more.

At the fence he had to turn, sending up a white billow of dust. Where the fence met the highway we cornered again, heading for the bus stop. A crowd waited there, standing idly, sitting around on scattered baggage. They all turned to watch when they heard us coming. Papa tooted the horn and yelled out, "No bus for us! No bus for us!''

The yoimg kids were mystified by this and stood open-eyed, watching. Some of the older folks smiled, waving as we hit a chuck hole and bounced. Papa swung left, and we clattered out onto the wide, empty boulevard that ran the length of the camp, back to where our own baggage waited and the final packing.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was bom in Inglewood, California, and has spent most of her hfe on the West Coast. She studied sociology and journalism at San Jose State College, where she and her husband first met. They were married in the Hawaiian Islands in 1957. A tour of duty with the USAF took them to Europe, where they remained for an extra year to travel and study at the Sorbonne. With their three children, they now live in Santa Cruz.

James D. Houston was bom in San Francisco. He has published three novels {Between Battles, Gig and A Native Son of the Golden West), a collection of short stories (The Adventures of Charlie Bates), plus two nonfiction works. His books have eamed a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship at Stanford and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction, in San Francisco. He currently divides his time between writing and teaching fiction writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz.