House of the Red Fish (18 page)

Billy, Mose, and Rico followed. The sailors made way.

Fumi glanced up and smiled. We pushed by to the back of the tattoo shop, back through a bamboo curtain to a small room, where we crowded around Grampa Joji. I was still in shock over getting slapped, and even more by seeing my grandfather in such a place. That stockade must have changed him. Or maybe that last stroke opened something up in his brain, like memories of another life, a secret past when he was a gambler, or a criminal.

When he had our full attention, Grampa smiled— something he must have picked up way back in Japan, because he sure never practiced smiling here.

He stepped aside and swept his hand toward an oily piece of machinery on a wooden pallet.

A compressor!

“Oya oya,”
I whispered in Grampa’s beloved Japanese. “Wow.”

“How did you get this, Ojii-chan?”

Grampa shrugged: No big deal.

“I come right back,” Fumi said to the guy in the chair as she walked through the parted bamboo curtain. “I make um extra nice for you, okay?”

Fumi smiled at us. “You like it?”

“Yeah!” I said. “
Really
like it. Is it yours?”

“No, no, not mines. Your grandfather worked very hard to get that here, you know.”

I turned to Ojii-chan, who grunted.

“That’s where you were when I was searching for you?”

“Hnnn.”

“He had to bring it in a wheelbarrow,” Fumi said. “It took him two days. Slow, you know, him. First day he was halfway here. He left it at my cousin’s house. Next day he
brought um the res’ of the way. I got him one ice cream after that.”

“He ate
ice cream
?”

Fumi nodded. “Sure. He likes it.”

I looked at Grampa, who never stopped complaining about American food. “Ice cream?”

He turned to look out toward the front of the shop, ignoring me.

“Who does this compressor belong to?” Billy asked.

Fumi pointed to the guys lined up on the street checking out the tattoo designs taped to the window. “What you think those boys want more than anything else? Even more than one of my beautiful tattoos?”

We all leaned to look out through the bamboo curtain.

“Money,” Rico said.

“No, not money,” Mose said, “what they want is some fun, take away all their problems.”

“Girls,” Billy said.

Fumi snapped her fingers. “That’s right, haole boy. Girls. Dates. Someone to dance with, someone to talk sweet to them.”

“Sounds good to me,” Rico said.

Mose shoved Rico.

Rico made a kissy face.

“Ca-ripes.”

“So what does this have to do with the compressor?” I said.

Grampa tapped the oily machinery.
“Onna hitorito kikai ichidai ka.”

“What?” Rico said.

Fumi put her hand on his shoulder. “I have this one customer—Bobby’s his name. Oh, he’s so cute and so nice, that boy. Come from Chicago. But he was lonely, too, and homesick.”

“A sailor?” Mose asked.

“No-no … defense worker. Shipyard, Pearl Harbor. He isn’t like most of those wild construction guys. No, Bobby is a gentleman—like your grandfather, Tomi—a good man.”

I turned toward Grampa Joji, who smiled his crooked teeth at me.

“So I said to Bobby,” Fumi went on, “I said listen, you know what’s an air compressor? For put air inside car tires, like that? And Bobby go, are you serious? I use those things every day at my job. And I say, how’s about you and me make a deal?”

Fumi wagged her eyebrows, waiting for us to figure it out.

“And?” Rico said.

“And Fumi told the guy you lend me a compressor, I get you a date,” I said. “Right, Fumi?”

Fumi scruffed my hair. “Smart as your granddaddy, you.”

I stretched a little taller.

“Bobby took a big chance letting us use that machine,” Fumi said. “He could get fired if they found out what he did.”

“Must have been some girl,” Billy said.

“She is,” Fumi said. “A good dancer, and pretty, and hoo, was that Bobby happy, because for those poor military boys, must be about hundred fifty of them to every one girl in town.”

“What’d the girl get out of the deal?” Mose asked.

“Bobby.”

“Not,” Mose said. “The girl could just walk out on that street and she could have her pick of any one of those guys and all she got was one Bobby guy, who she didn’t even choose herself?”

“Sure … but Bobby’s special.”

“How?”

“Like I said, he’s a gentleman like—”

“My grandfather,” I said.

Ojii-chan raised an eyebrow. Fumi put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s right, Tomi-boy. Hard to find mens like this.”

I would have laughed, but I knew she was right.

I thanked Fumi a thousand times, grabbing her hand and shaking it. “You really helped us out, and I won’t forget this, ever. I’ll make it up to you someday, just ask. Anything.”

Fumi winked. “Thank him,” she said, dipping her head toward Grampa Joji, who was sitting on a box with his hands on his knees. “He did all the work.”

I studied Ojii-chan. He was a rock to me. “Thanks, Grampa.”

He nodded, quick. Anxious to get the attention off of him.

Fumi chuckled. “That old buzzard still got some moves lef’ in him.”

“Right,” I mumbled.

“No, for real.” She looked at Grampa Joji. “He prob’ly save one sailor boy’s life, you know. Right outside of
here, on the street. I saw it … that’s how I met your grandfather … I was impressed.”

All of us turned to look at Grampa, who tried to make himself be somewhere else.

“He fool you when you look at that grumpy face,” Fumi said, smiling at Grampa Joji. “But inside he’s a puppy dog.”

“Yah!” I yelped. I couldn’t help it. Puppy dog?

Grampa scowled, probably trying to translate
puppy dog
into Japanese.

“How did he save the sailor?” Billy asked.

“Five, six drunk army guys was beating up one sailor, right out there.” She pointed to the street. “I was making a heart on this one boy, and I looked out when I saw everybody running over to watch in the street. The sailor tried to run, but they caught him and held him. What they were arguing about, I don’t know. But
boom,
they knock that boy to the ground and start kicking him. That’s when your grandfather jumped in.”

I glanced again at Grampa Joji, his eyes at half-staff. Looked like he was falling asleep.

“He shout at the army guys to stop, but they no stop, ah? So Joji-san went to work.
Boom, boom,
he strong-arm two guys down. The army guys were amazed at the crazy old man, so they back off. The sailor got up and ran away. The army guys look at your grandfather and put up their hands, laughing.”

Now Grampa’s eyes were closed.

Sleeping.

“He’s a real firecracker, all right,” I said.

The next day I was getting ready to black out the windows in the front room when I looked out and saw a Japanese woman and two small kids standing at the edge of the yard, just out of Little Bruiser’s range. Like statues, they waited to be noticed, not calling out.

“Mama,” I called. “Come here.”

Mama came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Grampa stayed at the table with Kimi.

“Who are they?” Mama said.

“I don’t know.”

We went out and into the yard. “Go move that goat, Tomi-kun,” Mama said.

“Aw, really?”

“Go.”

Little Bruiser eyed me as I edged around behind him and picked up his rope. He seemed torn between guarding his yard and going after his favorite target. I took his rope and tied him up short to a tree. He glared at me, then leaped. I stumbled out of range just in time. “You miserable little rat. I thought we were becoming friends.”

Mama went on down to the lady and her kids.

By the time I got there Mama had a hand on each kid’s shoulder and was ushering them toward the house. “Come inside,” she said. “He’s home.”

As I followed them, the goat stared me down, waiting for the next time. “I’m changing your name to Little Rat.”

Inside, Mama said, “Please,
irasshaimase.
“ She motioned them toward our old brown couch. “I go get him.
Shooshoo omachi kudasai.
“

But the woman didn’t sit. I gave her a slight bow. She bowed back but said nothing. The kids were empty-eyed and silent.

Ojii-chan followed Mama out from the kitchen. He seemed strangely younger. Must be Fumi, giving him a new life.

“Uhnn,” he said, greeting the lady.

She bowed deeply.

“You were in a camp,” she said in Japanese.

Ojii-chan dipped his head, yes.

“My husband, did you see him? His name is Giyozo Uyeda. He is Japanese-language-school teacher.”

Ojii-chan frowned, trying to remember. In Japanese,
he said, “I don’t know that name. What did he look like?”

The lady glanced at the boy sitting on the couch. “He looks just like his son. His hair is very gray, though—a man of forty with gray hair.”

“Uhnn,” Grampa said again, one of his favorite non-words. Then he shook his head sorrowfully. “I apologize,” he said. “I have not seen this man.”

The lady bowed again, clearly thankful to Ojii-chan, even though he had no news to tell her. “I had hoped you might, but thought the answer would be as it was. Thank you … thank you.
Ojima shimashita.
“

“Mon dai nai,”
Ojii-chan said. “I hope he is well. And … if it helps … they did not mistreat us at our camp. And I was among good men, like your husband. We helped each other. There is little to worry about. He will be fine, I’m sure.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“Come,” Mama said, ushering the kids into the kitchen. She gave a ripe orange mango to each of them, then brought them back out and wished the lady well. “Please come back anytime,” she said. “My husband is in a camp too. I wish I knew how he was.”

“Yes,” the lady said.

“We will wait for our husbands together,” Mama said.

The lady smiled, a sad smile that shared Mama’s hope.

I led the small family back to the street, and as they walked away I thought of
hato poppo.
Pigeons. How they
raced back from wherever they were, the island calling them home. Our fathers were pigeons. Papa and the gray-haired father would return in the same way. Their bodies would not fly like the pigeons, but their spirits would.

And we would all cry in our happiness.