Garden of Stones (10 page)

“But it’s almost—” Lucy stopped herself. She was about to point out that it was nearly dinnertime, but that only meant that they’d have the creek to themselves. And being alone with Jessie was an appealing idea, even if it meant she missed dinner. “Never mind. Sure, I’ll go.”

On the walk through camp, cutting between the warehouses and garages and the security fence on a path that was becoming well-worn, they passed a few kids, stragglers racing to make it home before the dinner bell. By the time the tree-lined bank came into view, they were alone. Jessie was in the middle of a rambling recounting of a series of grueling drills his coach had recently instituted when he suddenly reached for Lucy’s hand. He didn’t miss a beat, but his fingers twined with Lucy’s and she felt her face flame with something that was both less and more than embarrassment, as she lost track of the conversation.

“Wait,” Jessie said, suddenly coming to a stop when they were halfway across the weedy clearing that fronted the creek. “Hear that?”

At first Lucy didn’t know what he was talking about, and then the faint sound of laughter reached her ears, coming from down in the creek bank. Deep voices—men, not other kids.

“I’ve seen them down here before,” Jessie said. He didn’t let go of her hand, but his face took on a calculating look.

“Are they from your block?”

“They aren’t from anyone’s block, Luce. They’re staff. WRA guys.”

“We should go, then,” Lucy said, unease prickling her skin. She kept as far away from the staff men as possible, other than Deputy Chief Griswold, who was unfailingly polite to her. The soldiers were larger and louder than Lucy’s father or most of the men from her old neighborhood, and the military police all looked alike—unsmiling and angry—in their caps and uniforms. Even the warehouse supervisors and the deliverymen seemed threatening, if only because they were constantly barking orders at the internees and yelling at any kids who got underfoot.

“No, wait.” Jessie’s sly expression bloomed into a grin. “Come watch this.”

And before Lucy could protest, he’d grasped her hand more tightly and pulled her along at a sprint toward a bank of trees with branches arching down toward the brackish creek. Lucy knew that she could wriggle out of his grip and escape if she wanted to, but it wasn’t only exertion that made her short of breath. Being with Jessie was exciting, never more than when he defied the rules.

When they reached the trees, he pulled her against him behind a leaning cypress, the tree blocking the view down to the creek bed.

“Take a look,” he whispered against her ear, his breath hot and tingly. “Don’t let them see you.”

Lucy leaned cautiously around the trunk, her face pressed against the rough bark and Jessie’s hand resting lightly at her waist. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she was sure he could feel it.

Five men sat leaning against rocks or cross-legged in the silt, smoking. While she watched, one threw a spent cigarette into the brown water that eddied lazily around a downed, dead tree. This late in the summer, the flow was reduced to a trickle, and the men had taken advantage of the tame current to cool a tub of beers that was anchored in place with a pile of flat rocks. The men were barefoot, the sleeves of their undershirts rolled up in the heat. Their uniform shirts and hats, along with caps and shoes and socks, were strewn along the dry bed. A small pile of personal effects included watches, wallets and cigarettes.

“—I told her the blonde was her
sister!
” one of the men exclaimed loudly, prompting a round of guffaws, the punch line of some drunken joke. The men slapped their knees and drank from their bottles and wiped their mouths with their arms, the conversation taken up by several of them at once.

Lucy ducked back around the tree and found Jessie watching her expectantly. He didn’t take his hand away from her waist.

“Who are they?”

“Staff. Fat cats.” Jessie grimaced. “The guys in charge. See that big guy? That’s Mr. Van Dorn. He’s a section supervisor, but all he does is take smoke breaks and order everyone around. And those other guys are almost as bad.”

Jessie’s contempt felt dangerous and strangely thrilling, but before Lucy could respond, he leaned close and said softly, “When you see me turn around, run like hell. I’ll catch up.”

“Jessie!”
Lucy whispered fiercely, grabbing the tails of his shirt tightly in her fist. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Just a prank.”

“Don’t—”

But then something so unexpected happened that Lucy stopped protesting.

Jessie kissed her.

It was brief—only a fraction of a second. His lips, brushing against hers, were warm and silky and slightly damp, and his eyelashes fluttered against her cheek, and Lucy was so startled that she lost her grip on his shirt, and before she could react, he bolted down the creek bank, whooping like an Indian. His sneakers skidded over the loose gravel and the men’s heads whipped around in surprise.

Lucy put her hand to her mouth, touching the place he’d kissed her, a strange heat keeping her immobilized in a kind of liquid trance until she saw Jessie leap over the men’s beer stash and land on a rock a few feet from the men’s abandoned clothes. The rock slipped under his feet and for a moment he teetered, and Lucy was sure he was going to fall. Two of the men scrambled to their feet and one of them swiped Jessie’s arm as he danced out of the way, regaining his balance just in time.

“Run!” he yelled, and Lucy obeyed, spinning around just after she saw him grab something off the ground and take off, the two men in hot pursuit behind him while their companions hollered encouragement.

Lucy ran as hard as she ever had, straight for the edge of Block Five. In seconds, Jessie had caught up with her. He grabbed her hand and they rounded the corner of the women’s latrine, nearly knocking over a mother and her little girl, and then they ran straight through a kitchen garden, Lucy trying to avoid stepping on the squash vines that wound between the rows.

She was laughing along with Jessie when they finally slowed.

“They won’t follow,” Jessie said. “They’re too drunk and slow.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged, never taking his eyes off her. “I’ve done it before.”

“Jessie!” Lucy was genuinely shocked. “What if they come after you?”

He snorted. “They’ll never know it was me. We all look alike to them.”

Lucy considered for a moment. “Well, what did you take?”

Jessie beamed as he dug in his pocket and pulled out a nearly full pack of cigarettes. Lucy gaped.

“All that—for
cigarettes?
”

Jessie flipped the pack and caught it before he shoved it back in his pocket.

“It’s all about getting away with it,” he said, grinning his splendid grin, and when he took her hand again, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

11

The opening of the junior and high schools had been rumored for weeks, but delays in the arrival of civilian teachers, as well as the completion of the buildings, had slowed things down. Lucy had mixed feelings. Mrs. Kadonada had already told her that she could continue several afternoons a week, as long as she kept up with her studies. But Jessie was quitting the courier job, since he’d have time only for school and baseball—and he was a grade ahead of her. Lucy would see him only at lunch and recess, if then.

Jessie came to the office near the end of his shift a few days later and announced that practice had been called off because one of the younger boys had fainted in the heat.

“I’m glad you stopped by, actually,” Mrs. Kadonada said. “There’s someone I’d like the two of you to meet.”

The door to the back offices opened and several people emerged with the director of education, himself a relative newcomer.

“Lucy, Jessie, meet our new first-grade teacher, Mrs. Purcell. And her daughter Irene—she’s in the same grade as you, Lucy.”

“How do you do,” Mrs. Purcell said tightly. She was a plain woman, short and squat in a brown shirtwaist dress, but her daughter was lovely, with hair as pale as milkweed silk and two rows of ruched grosgrain ribbon around the neckline of her dress.

“They’ve come all the way from Kansas City,” Deputy Chief Griswold said, rubbing his hands together, a gesture that Lucy had come to understand signaled his impatience; he was anxious to get back to work.

“We’ve been in Reno this week. We stayed in the Golden Annex and I got to go in the Bank Club,” the girl said proudly. “I had a Shirley Temple and they have these little cakes—”

“That’s quite enough, Irene,” Mrs. Purcell interrupted.

The girl merely shrugged, snapping the gum she was chewing. Lucy blinked in surprise—she was not allowed to chew gum, because Miyako considered it an appalling habit.

“Lucy, I was thinking, why don’t you show Irene around this afternoon?” Mrs. Kadonada said. “There’s really not much to deliver, and Jessie can take care of it in the morning.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Purcell said dismissively. “That’s very nice. Very much appreciated. Only, there is another member of the staff with a daughter Irene’s age—”

“Mrs. Swift.” Mr. Griswold supplied the name, avoiding meeting Mrs. Kadonada’s gaze.

“And her daughter. I just thought, the two of them, they might have...more in common.”

“Betty Swift is only eleven,” Mrs. Kadonada said. “Surely—”

“She and Irene will be going to school in Lone Pine together,” Mrs. Purcell said pointedly. “With all the other staff children. There’s to be a bus. Really, I think that maintaining some degree of...separation is for the best.”

She exchanged a cool glance with Deputy Chief Griswold, who cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Lucy felt sorry for Mrs. Kadonada, who looked as though she had been slapped. But it was Jessie who spoke.

“Nice meeting you, Mrs. Purcell, Irene. Come on, Lucy, we’re going to be late. Bye, Mom.”

He turned around and headed for the door without even saying goodbye to Griswold, and after a split second’s deliberation, Lucy followed him. Behind them the screen door slammed, and then they were out in the full force of the sun.

“Just what we need in this place,” Jessie said. “Another stuck-up white girl.”

Lucy had seen a few kids playing near the staff apartments, riding tricycles and playing in a sandbox that had been constructed for them inside the borders of the staff gardens. But she hadn’t noticed anyone near her age. “Why, are there others?”

“Yeah, Mom keeps trying to make me meet them when they come in to do their paperwork. Even though they don’t want anything to do with us—or at least their parents don’t.”

Lucy was silent for a minute, remembering the way Yvonne had treated her in the days leading up to evacuation. “You think it’ll be better when the war’s over?”

Jessie shrugged, his hands jammed in his pockets. “Guess it depends on whether people ever figure out we’re not the enemy. I wish they’d let us fight—I’d enlist.”

“You’re not old enough!”

“I
will
be,” Jessie said fiercely.

“Well, I wouldn’t. Why would I volunteer after they locked us up in here?”

“You better not let anyone hear you say that. They’ll send you to Japan and you’ll have to swear the emperor is a god.”

Lucy made a face. “I don’t speak any Japanese, so it doesn’t matter—I won’t know what they’re saying.”

They were walking down the wide firebreak road between blocks, the sun beating down on them. It was still half an hour before lunchtime, and already Lucy’s forehead was slick with perspiration and her cotton blouse clung to her skin. Being with Jessie always made her feel even warmer than she already was. Ever since he kissed her, she had replayed the moment over and over in her memory, but there hadn’t been another private walk, another chance for him to hold her hand. Maybe he wasn’t interested anymore. Maybe he’d found some other girl.

“So where are we going, anyway?” she asked, as casually as she could.

Jessie laughed. “I just said that to get us out of there—I didn’t want to get stuck with that girl.”

Lucy took a breath and tried not to sound nervous. “Want to have lunch in our block today?”

“Sure.”

He sounded happy enough with the idea, and Lucy congratulated herself as they walked toward Block Fourteen. But a surprise waited outside their barrack: Miyako was standing in the shade of the overhang, dressed in her best suit. Her peplumed jacket nipped in at her tiny waist; the skirt grazed her knees, not quite daringly. It was a shade of blue called
cerulean,
according to her mother, evoking June skies and the spray of waves. Miyako had released her hair from its careful paper twists, the curls blooming at her forehead and highlighting her fine features. Lucy couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother dressed up, and she looked both radiant and a little lost.

“Lucy!” she said when she spotted them. “Thank heavens. I was just coming to look for you. Hello,” she added, almost as an afterthought, nodding at Jessie.

“This is my friend Jessie Kadonada,” Lucy said uncertainly. “I invited him to have lunch in our mess hall.”

“Very nice to meet you,” Miyako said distractedly. “Lucy, where is my makeup box? I have an interview!”

Lucy blinked with surprise, then chagrin. She’d snuck her mother’s cosmetics box the day before, putting on a little lipstick and eyeliner before leaving for her shift, and when her mother stirred in her sleep, she’d stuck it under her bed and forgotten it. “Oh—I’ll get it for you.”

She raced into the building and pushed aside the curtain, then got on her knees and retrieved the small box. She had pulled her bedcovers up in the same haphazard way she usually did, and now she wished she had done as her mother nagged her to do, and made it up neatly, in case Jessie came inside. In fact, her entire half of the room was a mess, and there was no time to do anything about it.

Back outside, her mother was chatting amiably with Jessie.

“I was just telling your friend that Mrs. Narita has found something suitable for me. There is to be a dress factory, right here in the camp. They will need experienced seamstresses. Oh, thank goodness, you found it.” She took the box from Lucy and gave her a nervous smile. Then she surprised Lucy by saying, “Do I look all right,
suzume?
”