House of the Red Fish (7 page)

Riding to the hospital sometime near midnight in a totally blacked-out town was eerie. Mr. Davis had to crawl through the streets with headlights covered with black tape, and only one small crack of blue to show the road ahead. It was the law.

Billy sat up front with Mr. Davis.

Kimi sat between me and Mama in the back. I wondered if Mama might be holding her breath like I was, unable to think about anything but Grampa, hoping it was really true. We were going to see
Ojii-chan!

We parked and got out at Queen’s. Huge monkeypod trees loomed in the starlight, and beyond, the black mass of the hospital pricked with small red lights. Mama hesitated, staring up at the massive building. She’d never been in a hospital.

“It’s okay, Hideko,” Mr. Davis said, gently taking Mama’s arm. “Come with me.”

Mama nodded, and we went in.

Seeing Mr. Davis put Mama at ease like that made me like him even more.

No police or soldiers stood guard outside the door to Grampa’s room, like I’d expected. Inside we found a small old man lost in bright-white sheets in a four-bed hospital room. One low light lit the room, the windows covered over with black paper. He was alone, the other three beds empty.

“Grampa!” Kimi cried, and ran over to him.

The rest of us inched in and stood in a clump at the foot of the bed. My breath caught when I saw him. It had been over a year. He looked shrunken, or maybe the bed just made it seem that way. He appeared to be asleep, white lotion spotting a zillion mosquito bites on his face and arms. A frown crept across Mr. Davis’s face. “They never should have taken him away from home,” he said softly.

Grampa stirred, then squinted one eye open.

Then the other. His mouth curved up when he recognized Kimi.

She grabbed his hand.

“Unnh,” he mumbled. “You more big.”

Kimi leaned down and rested her head on his shoulder. He patted her back.

I glanced at his ropy mosquito-ravaged brown arm lying on the clean white sheet. Once that arm had been like steel. I could almost feel again the unbearable pain that he could
inflict on me by grabbing my wrist and twisting it in a special way—just so—and sending me to my knees. He was the bone crusher. I’d practiced that grip myself, over and over, until I’d gotten it down as good as that old coot.

“Now, now, give the poor man some breathing room,” Mrs. Davis said, rushing in. She put her hand on Mr. Davis’s arm, smiling across the bed at Kimi.

Mrs. Davis looked up at Mama. “This is certainly our lucky day, isn’t it? They could have taken him anywhere, even to another ward in this hospital, and we might have never known he was here.” She grabbed Mama’s hand. “How are you holding up, Hideko?”

“We are so … grateful … Mrs. Davis.”

“Please call me Marie. Now let’s see how Mr. Joji is doing. He’s been kind of ornery, you know.”

Ho, the relief! If Ojii-chan was well enough to be cranky, he was doing just fine.

“Let’s get you a drink of water,” Mrs. Davis said, easing her arm behind Grampa’s shoulders to help him sit. She took a cup from his bedside table and filled it halfway from a container by the bed.

Grampa slurped it down grudgingly. Some of it dripped off his chin onto the sheet. He lay back down.

“He’s better than those mosquito bites make him look,” Mrs. Davis said. “He had a small stroke that left him dizzy and gave him some disturbing but temporary vision blurriness. Now he needs rest more than anything. Lots of it, actually, and hopefully you can see he gets that at home.”

“Home?” Mama said.

“I’m seeing if I can get him released to my custody,” Mrs. Davis said, gazing at Grampa. “Sending this tired old man back to that … to that
place
wouldn’t do anyone any good, including the military. They aren’t set up to be a hospital.”

Grampa scowled, then grunted. “Unnnh.”

I looked at the polished tile floor, my throat starting to burn. I was so happy to hear that familiar grunt that I wanted to hug him. He’d be horrified, but so what?

“Grampa!” Kimi lifted her head off his shoulder. “The chickens are laying lots of eggs, you should see.”

“Unnh.”

Mama moved closer and patted his hand.

Grampa tried to sit up but couldn’t. “Confonnit,” he said, kind of squeakily.

Mr. Davis chuckled.

“Can we really take him home?” I said.

“In a few days, I hope,” Mrs. Davis said. “If Mr. Davis and I can clear it.”

She adjusted the bedsheets and helped Grampa sip more water. “Dr. Graner said the stroke, though worrisome, was not all that bad. The important thing is to keep him from getting overly excited about things, keep him on an even keel, so to speak.” She grinned. “A pretty tall order, huh?” She rested her hand on my shoulder. “And you’ll have to help him get some moderate exercise.”

Grampa mumbled under his breath. He was groggy, but he understood everything. I could tell by the cocky
tilt of his head and the old rascally eyes glaring back at me.

I reached out and placed my hand on his bony shoulder. “It’s good to have you home, Ojii-chan.”

He didn’t even try to slap my hand away.

A week later, Grampa Joji had improved a lot and was getting well enough to come home soon. He could get out of bed on his own and walk up and down the hallway outside his room. When I took his arm he felt like a flamingo, skinny and bony light. I’d been back to the hospital twice after school to walk with him. He was so cranky I was beginning to think he’d been faking the stroke thing.

But that just made me smile. Being with him, even in the stark, greenish hospital room, made me feel like I was almost complete again after so long. Everything felt different with him back. As much as we grumbled at each other, Grampa Joji was a rock in my life, and I’d missed him almost as much as I missed Papa. When Kimi came with me, Grampa’s eyes seemed to get extra watery. Mama always sat
near his bed with her hands in her lap, smiling. It was almost like in the before time.

Almost.

***

Saturday.

“What you got?” I said.

Billy lifted the tools he’d dug up in his garage. “Heavy wrench I borrowed off Jake, two screwdrivers, and these,” he said, turning around so I could see the four bamboo goggles hanging from his back pocket. “I borrowed them from Charlie.”

“Perfect,” I said, snapping my fingers. “This is what I got.” I swung up the old crowbar we had lying around under our house, but I would only use that if I absolutely had to. “All I could find.”

“Not much, is it?”

“Good enough to start with, I guess. Maybe Mose and Rico will bring something.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

We headed toward the street. “How’s your grampa doing?” Billy asked.

“That old faker,” I said. “Grumpy, impatient, snappy. Same fun-loving guy you knew from before.”

“That’s good news!”

“Yeah, we can’t wait to get him home again.”

“Back out with his chickens.”

“You watch, first thing he’ll do is take Kimi out to check for eggs.”

Billy chuckled. “Next thing you know he’ll be having you take eggs up to the Wilson house again.”

“Never.”

“I guess we’ll see about that, huh?”

“Won’t happen. Ever. Going be nothing for you to see.”

“Never say never, they say.”

“Yeah, well, whoever said that doesn’t know the Wilsons.”

“True.”

We headed down to the bus stop to catch a ride to the canal. Mose and Rico said they’d meet us there. Today we were going to try to remove some boat parts to keep them from getting ruined in the water.

“I still don’t think this will work,” Billy said.

I grinned. “Giving up already?”

“I’m just saying this is a job for a crane, not a wrench and a rusty crowbar.”

“Maybe.”

Mose and Rico did bring a couple of tools … and, amazingly, two guys from our old baseball team, the Rats. Tough Boy Ferris and Randy Chock came walking up cool as can be. Mose and Rico had run into them on the way to the canal. They went to a different school now, so we hardly ever saw them anymore. All those baseball games were just a memory.

“Heyyy!” I said. “Howzit?”

They grinned. We shook hands.

“Mose and Rico said come help you take this sunken tub apart,” Tough Boy said. “They gave me this,” he added, lifting a sledgehammer.

“And these,” Randy said.

“Baseball bats?”

Mose shrugged.

“The idea is to
bring
that boat up, not smash it up.”

Tough Boy frowned. “Aw, man, I thought we was going bus’ um up. Would be more fun, ah?” The morning sun gleamed in his brown eyes.

“What we really brought those bats for is for your friend,” Rico said. “Him and those punks, they show up again.”

“Let’s hope they don’t.”

“No,” Mose said, taking a bat from Randy. “Let’s hope they do.”

Billy, Tough Boy, and I put on bamboo goggles and went down first. Rico’s wound, luckily, hadn’t gotten infected from his jump into the dirty water. Today I told him, “Stay out. We’ll hand you stuff and you can pile it up somewhere.”

“Fine,” he said. “But you need me, you say so, ah?”

“You got it.”

I was glad to have those bamboo goggles, even though they were the old-style Japanese kind. The water was murky. We needed all the help we could get.

Since it was impossible for us to get the engine out, we concentrated on the easy parts, anything to lighten the load, whatever we could take out or off.

We removed the tiller arm, the canvas tarp Papa sometimes used for shade, and a bucket of lead weights. Rico set them out in the dirt and weeds to dry out. A bite at a time, I kept thinking, a bite at a time.

Speaking of bites, it was two o’clock and I was starving.

“Anybody bring food?” I said.

We glanced at each other.

“How’s about water?”

Nobody. How dumb was that? I thought, shaking my head. For sure, I wouldn’t forget next time, but for now we had empty hands and empty stomachs.

We searched our soggy pockets and between us came up with one dollar and forty-two cents.

“Rico,” Mose said. “Try see what you can buy with this. Go the Chinese store up McCully. You know the one?”

“What should I get?”

“T-bone steak,” Tough Boy said.

Rico grinned. “You like that well done?”

“Raw, like a man.”

“Pfff,” Rico said. He headed toward the street.

Halfway across the field, he stopped.

Right on time, I thought, sighing. This was getting old.

Mose, Tough Boy, and Randy picked up the bats.

“How come those punks always know when we’re here?” Mose said. “Spying on us, or what?”

“Let um come,” Tough Boy said. “They can spy this bat up close.”

There were nine of them this time, Keet striding like a rooster out in front with that same sharpened stick. His eyes were pinched. Birds pecking in the dirt rose and flew off in his path.

No matter how tough Mose and Tough Boy talked, if things got ugly, we’d be the ones getting hurt, not those nine guys. So far Keet Wilson was pretty much all talk. But now he had bigger backup.

They spread out, silent.

Keet stopped about five feet out. He looked at me.

No way would I speak first.

Finally, he said, “You never did listen. Neither does your mama. I tell her how to make my bed and she always does it wrong. Must be something messed up about you people … some part of your brains missing?”

Rico snapped. “Beat it, haole, before I broke your face. You starting to make me mad.”

Keet’s grin vanished.

His army closed in.

Keet flinched when Mose tossed Rico a bat, his eyes never straying off Keet’s.

“Pssh,” Rico spat. “Scared, ah, you? How’s about you and me go man to man? Ah? What you say? Just us two. Come on, we go.”

Keet shoved Rico.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Billy said, stepping between them. “This is stupid.”

Keet spat on Rico’s foot.

Rico pulled the bat back to take a swing at Keet’s head.

Every club, stick, and baseball bat flew up, ready.

“Stop!” Billy shouted. “Just hold on.”

Nobody moved. In the distance a siren wailed, but not for us.