House of the Red Fish (5 page)

“Hey,” Billy said. “You want to come over and see our bomb shelter?”

“You dug another one?”

“No, same one, only now it’s different.”

“Different how?”

“I’ll show you.”

What was he up to? I’d already seen his bomb shelter.
I helped him dig it right after Pearl Harbor got bombed, something the military governor had urged everyone to build. Billy’s was just a hole in the ground with sandbags and lumber on top. A spooky place—dark, dirty, and stinky as a swamp.

We headed through the trees.

When we broke out onto Billy’s vast lawn, his dog, Red, another of Lucky’s puppies, came tumbling over to jump all over us. Billy squatted down and knocked Red on his side to rub his belly. “Yeah, that feels good, doesn’t it?”

Red’s rear leg raked the air as Billy scratched him, the dog’s eyes closed to happy slits.

Billy’s house lay low against the tall trees beyond, as big as the Wilsons’ but spread out on one level, not two. The yard was perfect, the grass cut short and the edges clean, the work of the Davises’ gardener, Charlie, who was Grampa Joji’s good friend.

Billy’s older brother, Jake, was lying on the concrete floor of the garage looking up under a jacked-up black Ford. “Jake got a car?” I said.

“Naw, not him. Dad says he has to earn the money for a car himself. That’ll take a while. That one belongs to his friend Mike.”

“What’s he doing to it?”

Billy shrugged. “Looking at the brakes, I think.”

Jake glanced out at us from under the car. Then went back to work. He always had a greasy rag hanging out of his back pocket. In our neighborhood, Jake Davis was the guy for car problems. That’s how he should make money to buy a car, I thought. But Jake always fixed things for free.

Behind Billy’s house, down a sloping grass yard, the bomb shelter sat belowground, dark and creepy as a grave. Red settled down on the grass to watch us, his tongue jiggling in his panting mouth.

Billy pulled three planks away from the entrance. Five dirt steps dropped down into the lightless pit. “Take a look,” he said.

“I’m not going in there.”

“Too spooky for you?”

I frowned. “No. You go. I’ll follow.”

Billy studied the gaping black mouth. “Wait. I’ll get my flashlight.”

Except for the chatter of a few birds, the yard was silent. Nothing moved, not even in the treetops where a breeze usually blew. Billy’s parents were still at work.

Minutes later, Billy came jogging back down the grassy slope with the flashlight. He tossed it to me. “Okay, now you got your light. Go.”

“I thought
you
were going first.”

“Come on, just go down and take a look, you coward.”

I stepped down into the hole and flipped on the flashlight.

“Ahhh!”
I gasped, staggering back. I fell and crabbed away backwards on my hands and feet. “You punk! You were going to send me into
that
?”

Stupid Billy was laughing so hard he nearly cried. “I knew you wouldn’t get past the second step,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Jeese!”
I spat. “You feeding them, or what?”

The bomb shelter was alive with centipedes, the six-inch kind that live in the cracks in the earth and crawl up inside
your pants when you water the grass. Rusty-red ugly zillion-leg nightmare monsters that could sting like wasps and haunt your dreams for seventeen days. Or years.

I stood up and turned off the flashlight, tossed it back to Billy. “You fool. You’re gonna pay for that.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You right, yeah—when you least expect it.”

We slammed the boards back over the pit, closing it off before any of those vampires decided to make a break for daylight.

Billy rubbed the heel of his hand over his wet eyes, still laughing. “I just couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, it was fun for you, but—”

Billy’s smile vanished.

I looked back over my shoulder.

There they were again. But now there were only three of them, standing stone still at the top of the yard.

Dwight Mason. Chip Perry.

And Keet Wilson.

“Heyyy, fish boy,” Keet drawled.

I squinted, my hands on my hips.

Keet grinned and wagged a finger at me. “I’ve been watching you.”

“Here come the creeps,” I muttered.

“BMTC punks,” Billy added. “Think they might be men.”

“Yeah, BMTC punks.”

The BMTC was a group of men whose main reason for existing was something so spooky I could hardly believe it. It started up just after Pearl Harbor. Most of the BMTC guys were okay, but some weren’t. Billy’s dad told him about it, and Billy told me, saying it wasn’t such a smart thing to have organized. “Because it approaches vigilantism,” Billy’s dad said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Like when people take the law into their own hands.”

“Like, make up their own laws?”

“Exactly.”

What the BMTC was organized for wasn’t to patrol for blackout violations or curfew breakers, like they wanted everybody to think. No, their real mission, the hidden one, was to take care of
enemy aliens
if and when the Japanese returned to invade the islands. Enemy aliens were people like Mama, Papa, and Grampa Joji, who lived here but weren’t U.S. citizens. I was born here, so I was a citizen. What did Billy mean by
take care of
? It didn’t sound good.

Billy said the BMTC had huge wall maps flagged with areas on the island where there were heavy concentrations of Japanese people. When he’d told me that, a wave of fear broke over me. I thought of Mama alone in our house and how they could come and take her away.

But I also knew our house wouldn’t be flagged on anyone’s map, because it was on haole property. Still, no matter where I went, I would be on Keet Wilson’s map—to him a Jap is a Jap, and Japs crushed Pearl Harbor.

Now he stood at the top of Billy’s yard, watching me.

Keet and the two other guys, Dwight and Chip, strolled down the slope. Red leaped and nipped at their legs, looking for attention.

Keet knelt down with one knee cocked and rubbed Red’s head. Dwight and Chip stood watching. Keet scratched behind Red’s ears, whispering to him. “You’re a cute little feller, ain’t ya? Yeah.”

Keet looked up, still scratching Red’s ears. “You traitors got something I should know about hidden in that pit?” When neither of us answered, he stood and walked closer to peer around Billy. Billy was almost as tall as Keet.

Keet waited for an answer. Black hair, blue eyes, clean
face with no zits. Wiry, muscular arms. Fake army dog tags around his neck.

Me and Billy kept silent.

“Oh, my,” Keet said to his friends. “Look … they’re trying to be tough guys.”

Dwight snickered.

Chip pushed Red away with his foot. “Git.”

“One more time,” Keet said. “What’s in the pit?”

Billy handed Keet the flashlight. “See for yourself.”

Keet took the flashlight, his eyes boring into Billy’s.

“No, don’t,” I said, blocking the boarded entry.

“Move,” he said.

The corner of Billy’s mouth curled so slightly you could barely see it.

Keet yanked the planks aside and stepped down into the hole. Other than the centipedes, all that was down there were a few boxes of canned food, two chairs, a couple of cots to sit on, and ten gallons of water.

Keet shined the light around. “What’s in these box—”

He froze. Centipedes were crawling up his pants and oozing up over his bare feet. He shrieked and came flying out, dropping the flashlight.

“Get them off me!” he screamed, slapping at his pants.
“Ahh! Ahh!”

Billy and me backed off, trying so hard not to laugh.

Chip and Dwight scurried away, not wanting to get stung.

“They’re crawling up my
leg
!” Keet yelled. He ripped off his pants, batting at three centipedes making their way up to his blue and white striped boxers.

I tried to control my face.

He slapped the last one off and glared at us. “You sick animals!”

He searched his pants, then put them back on and lunged toward us, his eyes bulging with rage. He took a swing at me, but I jerked my head back. He swung again, hitting my shoulder. Then Billy was on him. They fell to the grass.

Red started leaping around and yapping, making a terrible racket, thinking it was a game.

Dwight shoved me down, then came at me with his fist cocked. I moved and his knuckles hit grass. Chip went for Billy and grabbed him from behind, holding his arms back. Keet jumped up and was about to drive the hammer of his fist into Billy’s face when he saw the Davises’ gardener, Charlie, running down the slope with a shovel held up like a baseball bat. Chip let go of Billy and backed off with his hands up. “Dwight,” he said.

Dwight looked over his shoulder and rolled off me, stood and backed away.

Charlie tossed me the shovel, grabbed Keet by the back of his pants, and yanked him away from Billy, strong as a bull. “Nuff!” he snapped. “Nobody going beef in my yard!”

Keet tumbled back, then leaped up ready to go at it with Charlie, but he was smart enough to change his mind.

“Go home,” Charlie said. “Go back your place.”

“You’re going to be sorry you stepped into this, old man,” Keet spat. “I’m going to get you fired.”

Charlie said, “You do that, boy, but for right now you jus’ get out of this yard.”

“All right, no problem, but I’ll be back to watch them kick your sorry self back to the dump you came from.”

Charlie glared at him.

Keet came up to me, eyes burning. “I know what you’re planning to do with your pappy’s boat, fish boy,” he growled. “I ain’t stupid. But
you
are.” He jabbed a finger into my chest.

Charlie put his big hand on Keet’s shoulder. “Time to go.”

Keet shrugged him off, his eyes still pinned on me. “Get this clear, you so much as touch that boat and I’ll get you arrested. This is war, now. You hear me? And you Japs started it, not us. There is no way anyone in his right mind is letting you use that boat against us again, so nail this into your brain: you mess with that boat, you messing with me, because I’m going to take you down. Count on it.”

That did it.

The boat was coming up.

A couple of weeks later Rico was limping around school without his crutches. He said his
okole
still hurt, like if you just got a shot in it at the doctor’s. He was shuffling like an old man, but he still had his usual stick match in his mouth, a toothpick with a red tip, so I knew he felt better if he was thinking about being cool.

Mose, as usual, had the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to show off his muscles. “We go sit in the shade,” he said. “Too hot.”

We sat in the dirt, leaning back against the side of the building. Rico winced as he gingerly lowered himself, trying to squint and look tough, which made me laugh. He would do anything to keep from looking sissy. I had to admire him, though. Sitting on a shot-up
okole
was pretty manly.

Funny thing was, I was feeling manly too. Or maybe it
was anger. Two things had collided in my mind—Papa’s boat and Keet Wilson. It was kind of like when we got bombed. One day you’re sitting around minding your own business, and the next you got a war on your hands.

That was me and Keet.

His father never really liked or trusted my family, for some reason, but he pretty much left us alone. But for Keet to threaten me about Papa’s boat was going too far, just like he went too far that day in the jungle when he tried to take the katana from me. The more nasty he got, the more stubborn I got. He even made me angry enough to consider breaking my promise to Papa.

Don’t fight and shame this family!

I would bring that boat up first for Papa, then for me. To get beaten down by a fool like Keet Wilson was something I could not accept.

If I had to fight, I would fight.

Sorry, Papa.

Don’t fight,
Papa’s words blared in my head. I covered my ears. Then realized where I was and took them away.

Mose, Rico, Billy, and I sat silently for a few minutes, watching the ants crawl in the dirt. Mose was right, it was hot. The back of my shirt was sticking to me.