House of the Red Fish (12 page)

“Wait,” I said, a thought beginning to form. “Both of you are right. It would take five hundred guys, and thinking of the Kaka’ako guys was brilliant, Rico, because you know what? You remember the second-base guy, Herbie Okubo? Guess what his pops is … a boatbuilder.”

Rico puffed up his chest when he heard that he was brilliant. He flicked his eyebrows at Mose, who said, “One good thought that you don’t even know you had don’t make you brilliant, brah.”

“Herbie’s pop
repairs
boats too,” I said. “My dad had him work on ours a couple times, and he can probably help us drag it out of the water, too. All we have to do is get it up and float it down to Kewalo.”

“Good plan,” Billy said. “But …”

Another thought was coming. “Yeah,” I whispered, “yeah, yeah, yeah!”

“What you thinking, brah?” Mose said.

“We don’t have to bring this boat up
all
the way,” I said.
“We only have to get it off the mud … just enough to drag it away.”

“Okay, fine,” Billy said. “But how?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Ask Rico,” Mose said. “He look stupit, but he’s brilliant, right, Rico?”

Rico grinned. “That’s me.”

Jeese.

When I got home later that afternoon, the lowering sun was stabbing long tree shadows across the face of our small green house. Like always, Lucky came out to greet me. Little Bruiser was over in the weeds, his knobby head cocked my way.

Mama sat on the steps watching me come up the path.

“What are you doing?” I asked. It was strange to see her sitting there alone, doing nothing. It wasn’t like her.

“Look at this yard,” she said.

I glanced around. “What about it?”

“It looks sad.”

“Sad?”

Mama didn’t go on. She tried to smile, but it only made her look lonely. It was hard for her, living up here with no other Japanese families around. “Where is Ojii-chan?” she said.

“He’s not here?”

Little Bruiser took a few steps toward me, then stopped. I kept him in the corner of my eye as I knelt down to pet Lucky.

“He went with you,” Mama said. “Where is he?”

That old man was complicating my life. “He disappeared on me about three hours ago. I thought he got tired and came home.”

“He’s not here, you need to find him. He comes, he goes, he disappears from right beside you, then he show up like a ghost.” Mama put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up. “Just find him, Tomi-kun.”

I sighed. “You know what I think, Mama? I think he keeps moving around because he’s so happy to be out of that prison camp.”

She tilted her head and studied me. “Maybe.” She looked up at the sky, now blue gray as night rolled down. “Big trouble if he gets caught after curfew.”

“I know, Mama, but where should I look?”

She turned to go back in the house. “Just find him.”

“Crazy old coot,” I mumbled. “Yeah, you too,” I added, glancing over at Little Bruiser, now one or two steps closer. “Come on, Lucky, let’s go see what we can see, huh?”

Mama was right to be worried. If Grampa was out at night anything could happen to him. He could get lost, shot, or arrested. Again.

I jogged back toward the street with Lucky loping out ahead.

We didn’t have to go very far, because Ojii-chan was right at the end of the path—with a BMTC guy’s rifle pointed at his chest.

“Don’t get smart with me, old man,” the BMTC guy said. “Because I’m the one with the gun and you’re the one who should be off the streets.”

Grampa glared at the BMTC, who was maybe thirty years old. Ojii-chan took a step forward. The guy took a step back, raising the rifle to Grampa’s face. “Halt!”

“Wait!” I shouted, running up. “He’s my grandfather. I’ll take him home.”

The BMTC’s eyes darted between mine and Grampa’s.

I grabbed Grampa’s arm and tugged. “Come home, Ojii-chan. It’s curfew.”

Grampa wouldn’t budge, his eyes slicing up the BMTC guy.

“I could take him in, kid. Quick as spit.”

“Yessir, you sure could, but he lives here, right up this path. He’s almost home. He was just a little late.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Come on, Ojii-chan. Let’s go home.”

Grampa finally eased off and turned to head home. “Confonnit,” he mumbled.

I nodded to the BMTC guy and followed Grampa Joji up the path.

“Where
were
you, Ojii-chan?” I whispered.

Grampa winked. “You see that mans’s eye? He scared of me.”

“Jeese, Grampa, you can’t go around challenging them, you know. They’re not fooling. They could shoot you and no one would even make a peep about it. We the enemy to them, you and me. And not only that, you could get the Davises in
trouble, because they’re responsible for you. Remember? They got you released? You got to be good.”

“Bah,” he spat, waving me off.

“Anyway, I thought you came home before me,” I said.

Of course he ignored me, just kept on heading up to the house. “Watch out the goat,” he said, then cackled.

Jeese. Something about him was different. What?

Something was off. I scowled and followed him toward the steps, Little Bruiser trotting toward me.

Mama came out and held the screen door open. Grampa brushed by and went into the house. She gave me a look that said:
You should have stayed with him.

“What?” I said, turning my palms out.

“Come inside. Eat.”

I started up the wooden steps.

“You lucky Ojii-chan didn’t get mad that you left him.”

“Left him? He left
me.
“

“Come inside.”

Lucky he didn’t get—

Hey!
That’s
what was off about him. He wasn’t scowling. He wasn’t grumpy. And what was with that winking? Was he … happy?

Naah, couldn’t be.

What did that old cockaroach have up his sleeve?

The next day, Sunday, me and Billy took the bus over to Mose and Rico’s neighborhood; then the four of us braved up and headed down into enemy territory—Kaka’ako.

The only guys who welcomed us there were the baseball guys we used to play against before the war, the Kaka’ako Boys. Everyone else eyed us with suspicion. The worst part about going down into that area on the Waikiki side of downtown Honolulu was a gang of punks we called the Centipede Boys. They didn’t like strangers coming into their territory, and they especially didn’t like haoles like Billy, who stuck out like the moon on a black night.

We got lucky. No Centipede Boys in sight.

“Remember when coming here used to be the spookiest thing we did?” Billy said. “Now, with this war, it’s nothing.”

“Spooky?” Rico said. “You was scared? Those punks don’t worry me.”

“Talk big, ah, you?” Mose said. “You face down the Butcher, you going wet your pants.”

“Pfff.”

Mose chuckled. “You ain’t been the same since you got shot in your face.”

Rico shoved Mose, and Mose staggered off, laughing like the rest of us.

“Hanabatas … all of you,” Rico said.

Okubo’s Boatyard was down by the ocean, near Kewalo Basin, where Papa’s boat used to harbor. And where Sanji’s truck still sat, rusting. I reached into my pocket and rubbed the key, which I carried around like a good-luck charm. I needed some luck. I hoped I’d find some at the boatyard.

I’d met Mr. Okubo a couple of times with Papa when we went to him with boat problems. He was stiff in the old way, like Grampa. He was also the father of one of the Kaka’ako Boys—Herbie, at second base, a good guy.

I hoped Herbie would be around the boatyard, because I didn’t know where his house was, and we sure didn’t want to be drifting around Kaka’ako looking for it.

The boatyard was a big shed on the water, with an open yard to the side, where two sampans sat in dry-dock cradles, in for repair or repainting. Inside the shed was where Mr. Okubo built the new ones.

A scraggly dog eyed us from the entrance.

“Man, that dog is ugly,” Rico said, wincing. “Looks like it got kicked around and ain’t too happy about it.”

He squatted down and stuck out his hand, making kissy sounds. “Here doggy, doggy, I not going kick you.”

The dog growled, scarily deep for such a small dog. Rico jumped up.

“He says you ugly too,” Mose said.

“What you going say to Mr. Okubo, Tomi?” Rico said.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I hope he’s more nice than his dog.”

“Ask him where Herbie is,” Billy said. “Then we can ask Herbie to ask his dad if he has any ideas that could help us.”

“Good idea. Let’s go inside.” We squeaked past the growling dog, who crouched, ready to fly at us if we made a wrong move. That mutt would have a dog like mine for lunch.

We got lucky. Herbie was there. His jaw dropped when we slouched in.

“Heyyy,” I said. “Howzit?”

“Holy moly,” he said. “You folks lost or something?”

“Naah,” Rico said. “We came to see your dog.”

Herbie laughed. “You met Sharky, huh? My brother Eddy’s dog. He’s in the army.”

“Who?” Rico said. “The dog?”

“Shuddup, you fool,” Mose said.

“I remember your brother,” I said. “He came to see us play that one time, right?”

“He was home on leave.”

“Yeah-yeah.”

“He’s somewhere in Europe now.”

I nodded, then shook my head. Poor guy. I’d been reading
about our war with the Germans in the paper. Spooky, what was going on—all over the world.

We stood wondering what to do next. This was enemy territory, even if we did know Herbie.

“Uh … you … you got a minute to talk about something?” I said.

Herbie picked up a rag and wiped his hands. “Sure. I was just cleaning up. Let’s go out back. Pop and Bunichi—that’s a guy who works for him—they down at Pearl Harbor.”

“Doing what?” Billy said.

“Fixing boats. What a mess they got down there … even now. Come,” Herbie said.

We followed him around a brand-new sampan his dad was finishing up.
Red Hibiscus
was painted across the back of it. “Nice boat,” I said.

Herbie nodded. “Second time Pop built this one. The first one burned.”

“Ho, really?”

“The day it was finished we anchored it in the harbor for the night. Next morning it was underwater.”

“Why?” I said.

Herbie shrugged. “Nobody knows. Just burned up. I saw it go down.”

“Bad luck,” Mose said.

“Took Pop forever to make this new one, with Eddy gone and all that work in Pearl Harbor.”

Herbie led us out back into the sun. The ocean was right there, light blue and flat as a pond, with two tiny boat specks crawling along the horizon.

“Wow,” I said. “Nice.”

We sat on the rocks at the edge of the sea.

“What’s up?” Herbie said.

“A sunken boat.”

“I guess I should have said what’s down, then.” He grinned.

“Way down. My father’s boat sank in the Ala Wai Canal with a bunch of boats.”

Herbie bobbed his head. “I heard about those. Ten of them, right? Sampans?”

“That’s them.”

“And your pop’s is one of them?”

“We’ve been trying to bring it back up,” I said.

“We? Who’s we?”

“Us,” I said motioning to Billy, Mose, and Rico.

“Just you?”

I nodded.

Herbie gazed at me a moment. “Huh … you four guys and what? A crane?”

“No. Only us.”

“But how can you bring up a sunken boat without a crane?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, “but if we do, can we bring it here for your father to fix?”

“Well, sure, of course.”

We sat watching the ocean.

“If you can get it here,” Herbie said, “then Pop could get some guys and …” He glanced at me again. “Man … you need a crane.”

Rico tossed a stone into the ocean.

Mose leaned back on his hands, closed his eyes, and raised his face to the sun.

“Well,” I said. “At least I know I got somewhere to bring it if I can float it.”

“Pop would fix it for free, I know he would.”

“Really? I was thinking maybe I could work it off.”

I gazed down the coast, trying to hide my discouragement, because even Herbie thought it was impossible, and he should know.

“I’m telling you,” Herbie said. “You need a crane.”