House of the Red Fish (14 page)

I eased open the squeaky door. “Mama?”

She turned to look back over her shoulder and in her hands I could see the fish kites torn to shreds. She held the pieces up.

“Tst,” I spat, and jumped down off the porch without using the steps. The screen door slapped shut behind me.

The bamboo pole the fish had been tied to had been ripped out and broken, two sad pieces at her feet. “Keet did this?”

Mama nodded. “I was standing right here.”

“He did it in
front
of you?”

Mama was silent for a moment, as if wanting to say more, and wanting not to as well. “When … when he tore them up, he looked at me, right in my eye. I was too shocked to speak.”

“Did he say anything?”

Mama nodded but offered nothing.

“What, Mama? What did he say?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“He said, ‘No Japanese symbols on our land—understand? Next time I going call police.’ “

“What!”

“He’s angry boy, Tomi-kun. You stay away from him.”

“I want to, Mama, believe me … but I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

“What you mean?”

I looked off into the trees, over toward the Wilsons’
house, big, white glimpses of it peeking through the branches.

“Mama … he’s not getting away with this, no.” I took the torn-up
koi-nobori
from her.

“Tomi—”

“Don’t worry, Mama. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

I took the torn fish streamers into the house and put the pieces under my mattress. I would tape them back together and get a new bamboo pole, because for sure, when Papa came home after the war, those fish would fly again.

Especially the red one.

Over this house.

On the Wilsons’ property.

And Keet Wilson would have to go through me if he wanted to tear them up again.

On Friday at school just after lunch, me, Billy, Mose, and Rico were sitting in our usual sunny place, leaning up against the side of the building. Mr. Ramos wandered by and waved. We waved back, and he walked on.

Then he stopped and came back.

He eased down and sat in the dirt between me and Rico.

We sat silent. He’d never done this before, and who ever saw a teacher sitting in the dirt with students?

Mr. Ramos put his knees up and rested his arms on them. “So,” he said, then waited a moment, thinking.

Rico glanced at him. We all did.

“I heard your grandfather came home, Tomi.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, turning away. I didn’t want to spread that around, thinking if too many people heard about
it, the army might think we were bragging and take Grampa away again.

He chuckled. “Good news gets around.”

“Billy’s parents did it. They got him released because … he had a stroke, and—”

“And he shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place,” Mr. Ramos said.

I nodded. “So Billy’s parents took responsibility for him.”

Mr. Ramos reached over and tapped Billy’s knee.

“You know how rare it is that he got released?” he said, turning back to me.

I looked at him.

“He’s the only one I’ve heard of,” he said.

I shook my head, considering our good fortune.

“We’re lucky here in the islands,” Mr. Ramos went on. “On the mainland they took all the Japanese from the coast and put them in camps, everyone. Here they didn’t do that. You boys know why?”

We shook our heads.

“Labor,” he said. “If they put all our Japanese in camps our economy would fall apart.”

I nodded, wondering if I knew what that meant.

“I heard something else, too,” Mr. Ramos said. “About a boat.”

“Uh …”

Mr. Ramos chuckled. “You didn’t know I knew that, right?”

Stupid Rico. It was him that told, like always.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Ramos said. “I’m not going to try to stop you and I’m not going to spread that knowledge around,
either. I know what you’re thinking, because I was your age once too, believe it or not. Right now you’re thinking about how you’re going to get whoever told me that, right? And you’re thinking it was Rico or Mose, right?”

I nodded again.

He shook his head, smiling.

I glared past Mr. Ramos at Rico.

Rico shrugged and looked away.

“Listen, Tomi,” Mr. Ramos went on. “It was Rico who told me, but don’t blame him. He came to me because he is your good friend and he was worried about you.”

“Worried?”

Mr. Ramos turned to Rico. “Tell him.”

“Well,” Rico said. “The way I been thinking, if the army catch you fooling around that boat … that they put up in the canal for some reason … they might think you’re a traitor for messing with it, and arrest you … and maybe even your grampa … put you both in jail, you know?”

I frowned. Stared at a scabby scratch on the back of my thumb. I’d had that same thought myself, but I’d been shoving it out of my head every time it came to me.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“So I looked into it,” Mr. Ramos said. “I made some calls, trying to find out what the military had in mind for those sampans. And guess what?”

“They’re going to toss me in jail?”

“Hah! No. They didn’t even remember those boats. So I asked about salvaging one of them, and the guy said he didn’t think the army would care, so long as the boats were never used … at least, while the war is on.”

“So I won’t get in trouble?”

“Not from them. But if you do, you call me, all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I will. Thanks, Mr. Ramos.”

“Thank Rico.”

“Yeah, Rico, thanks.”

“No problem.”

Mr. Ramos pushed himself up with a grunt and brushed off the back of his pants. “That’s about the most uncomfortable place to sit that I can think of.”

We all grinned.

Mr. Ramos walked away, whistling.

“You punks got the best uncle,” I said. “The best.”

“Hey!” Mose called to Mr. Uncle Ramos. “You still got dirt on your pants.”

Without turning back, Mr. Ramos slapped a hand over his rear end and flashed us a low-handed shaka sign: Thanks.

After school, Jake drove me and Billy down to Kewalo Basin in the black Ford he was fixing up. “A test drive,” he said. “See how she runs.”

“You some kind of a mechanic now?” Billy said.

Jake snorted. “You a dead little brother now?”

Billy laughed. I shook my head and watched the world go by, so much faster in that car than on a city bus. Someday I hoped I would have a car. It would be black, of course … and polished up so glassy you could comb your hair in the reflection.

We drove slowly when we got to the harbor, inching past the pier over toward the vacant land beyond. Jake parked in the trees near the hulk of Sanji’s truck. A huge palm frond had fallen on it, brown and crinkly.

“This is what you want to get going again?” Jake said.

“ That’s it.”

We parked and got out. Billy dragged the dried-up frond off the hood, then opened up the driver’s-side door and slapped his hand on the seat. A cloud of dust poofed up. Billy coughed and stepped back. “That’s what you get for leaving the windows down.”

“You got the key to this thing?” Jake said.

I dug it out and gave it to him.

Jake slipped in behind the wheel, not caring if the seat was dirty. He tried the ignition, just like we had. “You got to try the obvious first,” he said, grinning.

He got out and went around to open up the hood. He propped it up and stuck his head in, poking around every grimy part in that engine. “If the fuel line is clear, and the pump works … get a new battery … we can probably get this thing going. Then I can drive it home and clean up the engine, and you kids could wash it and clean up the wheels and tires, and then we can sell it. I think we could get maybe a hundred dollars or we could ask for a hundred and twenty-five, then come down to a hundred. Something like that.”

“Need to get some air in those tires,” I said.

Jake squatted down to check each of them. “Just enough left in them to hobble over to the nearest service station.” He stood. “Boy,” he said to me. “Grab my tool box.”

“Yessir,” I said, grinning.

Jake was black with grime to his elbows by the time he’d gotten the battery out. He handed it to me. “Put this in the trunk of the Ford.”

I sagged under its weight.

“We got to get that recharged,” Jake said. “Or buy a new one.”

Back over at the pier, we washed our hands from a spigot. A man from the fish shed headed toward us. “Saw you boys over there in the trees. You going get that wreck out of here?”

“Yessir,” Jake said.

“Good,” the guy said. “Does it run?”

“Well, not yet.”

“I hate to see a good truck waste away like that.”

We all looked across the harbor toward the truck. “Too bad about Sanji,” the man said.

“You knew him?” I said.

“Of course. Good man. I know you, too,” he said to me. “Taro’s boy, right?”

“You know my dad?”

“I’m Jimmy Hiroki,” he said, sticking out his hand to shake. “I work in the shed. I know every fisherman in Honolulu.” He shook his head. “Too bad your daddy got arrested.”

I looked down.

“How come nobody came for that truck before?” he said.

“Sanji’s wife didn’t know what to do with it, so we’re going to try to fix it up and sell it for her.”

“Yeah, good.” He shook his head. “Bad for everybody, this war.”

“Yeah,” we muttered.

“Hey,” the guy added. “Push it over behind the shed. I got an air pump. You can fill the tires, at least. I seen how flat they are.”

Jake’s face lit up. “That’d help a ton. Thanks.”

The man waved him off. “Least I could do.”

“Got to do something, you know?” I said. “For Sanji’s family.”

The guy grinned and tapped the side of my arm. “Your daddy would be proud of you.”

I hoped that might be true.

“You need anything, come inside the shed, ah? Ask for Jimmy. If I got it, you can have it. We get it done one way or another.”

“Hey,” I said. “You got any inner tubes?”

One day Billy and Charlie came over with two Hawaiian guys, big as bulldozers. They were about sixteen or seventeen. Each had so much muscle that his head looked like one of Grampa’s eggs on a fifty-gallon drum.

I glanced around for Little Bruiser. Charlie, for some reason, was on his good-human list, like Kimi, Mama, and Grampa Joji. But maybe not these new guys.

I stepped off the porch.

“Recruits,” Billy said. “Meet Charlie’s nephews. This small guy is Ben, and this one is Calvin. They’re brothers. Last name is Young. Ever heard of them?”

The Young twins! Ho! They were probably the best high school football players the entire territory had ever seen. They played barefoot ball in a country rural league on the other side of the island.

“Ho,” I said. “You guys play for Kahuku, right? The Red and Whites? One time you played Punahou just for fun? Right? And you won.”

Both of them glared at me with their beefy arms crossed, giving me their most dangerous looks. I stepped back.

Billy, the fool, grinned.

“Nuff, already,” Charlie said, elbowing one of his giant nephews.

Ben and Calvin both broke out into big white-tooth smiles and reached out to shake my hand.