Ken's War (6 page)

Timmy and Tommy, twins, both two grades
behind Ken, walked with him from the bus stop. Timmy's face was
rounder than Tommy's, and he was a better outfielder, but that
didn't mean Ken wanted to be seen hanging around with these two
doofusses.

“Hey, Red!” The festive voice calling
someone's nickname came from the top of the library fire
escape.

“Bombs away!”

An orange orb hurtled downwards. A balloon
filled with mud burst on Ken’s chest, splattering brown muck on his
yellow shirt and schoolbooks and on the twins.

David Marshall folded over with exaggerated
laughter. He stomped his feet making the third-story iron fire
escape clatter. Three more near-misses burst with sloppy, heavy
plops on the road.

“Your dad eats your mother with a spoon!”
David hollered. He ducked into the building.

“You gonna chase 'em?” Tommy asked.

“Nah,” Ken said, “I’d only end up killing
him.”

“He'll just be hair, teeth and bones when
you're done with him,” Timmy said. “Won't he?”

“What happened to your lip?” Tommy asked. “I
heard David decked you.”

“Bullshit. It's a football injury.”

“Hurt much? Looks like it hurts.”

“Nah.”

“Then how come you talk like this?” Timmy
asked with clenched teeth and minimal lip action.

“Buzz off.”

“He got you but good,” Timmy said.

“It’s nothing.” Ken dashed to the creek at
the bottom of the hill behind the library. He stripped off his
muddy shirt, dunked it in the chilly water and slapped it against a
large, flat rock the way pioneers washed clothes in the movies. The
wet smacking sound was the only noise he could hear.

Ken wiped mud off his books with maple
leaves. Under the cold, clingy shirt, goose bumps rose on his chest
and arms. He selected a round, flat stone from the creek side,
threw it across the water, and counted six skips. “Act natural,” he
said.

Tommy and Timmy, through telepathic
consultation, agreed that skipping stones was the most natural
activity to pursue here at the creek. The twins were on the alert
for an attack, but engrossed in finding perfectly shaped skipping
stones, probably forgot about David Marshall.

Ken did not forget. He did not want to be
dilly dallying at the creek with the doofuss twins as a tactic to
delay confrontation. He did not want a fight. Nor did he want the
word to get out that he was chicken, a sissy who runs from
battle.

“Did you see that?” Tommy cried. “Five skips!
Five skips that time!”

“David’s coming! He’s coming to get you!”
Morbid excitement pitched Timmy's voice high. David sped down the
hill on his bike propelled by gravity and maliciousness.

Ken gathered his textbooks. His father’s
command resounded:
Knock the bastard’s block off and he’ll think
twice about bothering you again.
If he went home with battle
scars, his dad would grill him until he found out if and how Ken
had defended himself. If he lost this fight, he’d have to bear his
father's heavy disappointment and bow to David's supremacy. If he
won, the retribution would be doubled, because David’s daddy
outranked Ken’s dad. He could run for it. Yeah, across the creek,
through the thrift store, around the old guard house and then
home.

“Ah! High karate kick!” David’s black sneaker
knocked Ken's books out of his hands and into an oil-slicked
puddle. The books splayed in the puddle like injured birds. In a
freak moment of silence they watched the pages soak up scummy
water. “What are you going to do about it?” David asked, his lips a
mean slit.

Ken said that David didn't even want to
think
about what he was going to do. Adrenaline, not
confidence, was his ally.

Out on Route 11 or possibly as far away as
the turnpike, the grumble of a tractor trailer shifting through its
gears sounded like a beast chomping at the bit. In response, a
rumble, felt more than heard, reverberated through the heavy air.
Thunder.

David lunged at Ken. The twins jabbed their
fists in the air and cheered. Ken broke out of the tussle and stood
facing David. He held his arms loosely at his sides, ready for
David to tackle him.

David grabbed a weathered gray board; rusty
nails protruded from the end. He swung mightily. Ken twirled,
trying to spin out of range of David’s weapon. The board hit his
forearm solidly. A nail hooked his forearm, ripping shirt and skin.
A chain of blood blossomed on Ken’s yellow shirtsleeve. He slipped
his hand into his pants pocket and, for good luck, touched the
quartz stone he'd found in Grandpap's garden.

David dropped the cudgel and wiggling his
fingers, urged in a girlish voice, “Come on, come on. Come on,
Red.”

The twins screamed, “Get ‘em, Ken! Get ‘em.”
The rumbling noise crept closer, but it wasn't originating from the
highway. The rumbling surrounded them.

Using a similar arm action he used to strike
out the townies' baseball team, Ken swung at his enemy. The
exquisite sensation of his arm whirling in an arc, the smack of his
fist on David’s cheekbone intoxicated him, churned his stomach.
David’s head jerked back violently. His hand flew to his cheek.
Seeing blood on his fingers, David wailed, dropped to his knees and
rolled his eyes up at Ken. His expression was of questioning
intimacy seen in a mutt's eyes after its owner has delivered a boot
in the rump. Blood, surprisingly cherry-intense against ashen skin,
trickled into David’s ear. Ken wasn't sure if he was the victor, or
in some bass ackwards way, the victim.

The twins turned tail and ran.

“You’ll pay for this, Red.” David sobbed. He
made no moves to carry out his threat. He dragged himself upright
with a queer, cautious articulation of arms and legs, like an old
man.

Disgusted at this pathetic display and drunk
with residual adrenaline, Ken shouted, “Crybaby!”

He plucked a stone from the mud and hurled it
near David, as a final warning.

He'd collected a lot of facts that teachers
don't teach you in school—bats weren’t blind, dogs wouldn't attack
you if you acted like the pack leader, and he’d have hell to pay
because David Marshall’s father was Ken’s dad’s CO—but teachers
never quizzed them on that stuff.

He had trotted home. Exhilarated. Famished.
Victorious.

After beating up the CO’s kid back in the
states, he’d braced himself for the walloping his dad was going to
give him. A beating would have been fair punishment, considering,
but his parents were too distracted, ensnarled again in their
private battle into which he wasn’t enlisted. This time, though,
their fight didn’t have the same tone as the others.

There were frequent telephone calls. Terse
conversations. Tight faces. Long sighs. This time sudden silence
cloaked the barracks bungalow when he opened the back door and
strolled into the kitchen. His mom’s makeup was smeary. His dad’s
forehead was ridged, his stubble sprouting upon his ashen skin. His
parents took their argument behind the closed bedroom door. Ken
tried to listen to what they were arguing about, but his mind
snarled, couldn’t receive the message that was undecipherable in
its finality and terror. His parents’ voices, venomous and bitter,
stoked his dread. No. It couldn’t be true. That’s why they weren’t
telling him anything. If it were true, they would tell him. They’d
have to tell him.

He didn’t tell his mom and dad that his arm
hurt like hell.

When he woke up the next day, his sheets were
all twisted and his arm still hurt like hell. His mother didn’t
scold him, in fact she didn’t say much to him as she drove him to
post infirmary to get a cast put on his left arm. That whack David
had given him with a board had snapped his ulna bone.

Then a few days later, their little family of
three was sitting at the dining room table. Funny the details one
remembers: they were eating baked beans on new dishes. White
dishes.

They’d told him almost a full month after
he’d returned home from his summer vacation at Grandma and Grandpap
Paderson’s farm, in time for the Labor Day parade and the start of
school. He’d ridden the train the entire way to Lancaster and back
by himself like a “young man.” He wasn’t even worried on the bus
trip back from the Harrisburg train station to the Molly Pitcher
hotel bus station. He avoided lavatories, though.

He couldn’t remember how exactly the subject
came up. Just that he was expecting his dad to blow his top about
the fight with David Marshall. His mom looked at him funny, then.
He thought she was going to scold him for stabbing too many beans
on his fork when what she said was, “Look, Ken, honey, we didn’t
think you were old enough to be put through all that.”

Through all what?
He didn’t ask. He
concentrated on lifting the forkful of beans to his mouth.

“Your grandparents have passed.” The captain
scraped baked beans into a neat pile at the rim of his plate. That
abrasive sound.

Passed?

“The doctor found cancer in your grandpap’s
stomach,” his mother said. “It took him fast. Grandma Beatrice died
a week later.” She refused to look at Ken. In a stern voice she
added, “Heart attack, she had a heart attack. Your grandmother died
of a broken heart. It happens to old people. One of ‘em can’t live
without the other. A crying shame that they got too dependent on
each other.”

His eyes burned as he tried to adjust his
inner universe to accommodate the news his parents had withheld
from him until now. On the wall behind his dad, the framed jigsaw
puzzle picture of a mountain in the tropics blurred.

“If you want to lay flowers at their
tombstones, I’ll drive you to the cemetery this Sunday,” his dad
said. He ladled baked beans onto his plate, ringing the spoon
against the bowl.

Ken didn’t hear what his parents were saying
next. He was remembering what he’d been told back when it had
happened, when his grandparents had passed, had died. That baloney
his mother had told him about his dad going to an APICS seminar for
a full week was a lie, and Ken had fallen for it because APICS had
something to do with warehousing. His mom said she was meeting
Daddy at a hotel in Lancaster after his seminar. She said Ken was
old enough to stay home without a babysitter for one night.
Just
call the Garstons next door if you need anything. Meatloaf’s in the
fridge,
she’d said as she folded her black cocktail dress she
wore to parties into her overnight bag.

What a doofuss he’d been not figuring it out.
Black dresses were for funerals. He felt his cheeks trembling. His
parents’ mouths were moving, nonsensical sounds poured off their
ugly lips. He picked up the white bowl of baked beans and shattered
it against the wall. Beans and sauce snailed down the green
wallpaper.

“I could’ve gone to the funeral!” He shrieked
into the stunned silence. “I would’ve behaved!”

“Obviously not!” his mom chirped righteously.
“You were too close to them.”

His dad shot up from the table. His right
hand flew to his belt and began unhooking the buckle.

Ken’s buttocks clenched involuntarily. He
could dash to his room and lock his door, or fly out the front door
and not come back till after they’d cooled down and were worried
about him running away. Ken’s eyes were riveted on his dad’s
gleaming U.S. Army buckle. A beating he’d endure. The pain would be
physical pain, the kind he could cope with. He would hole up in his
bedroom to make them both feel guilty, and he could hate his dad
for thrashing him. Gripping the edge of the dining table, he stayed
seated in the chair, waiting for his dad to yank him up and whup
his ass, but silent messages were flying across the table between
his parents.

“Clean up the beans,” his mom told him. She
stacked smeared dishes, and guided her husband away from the table.
Captain Paderson left the dining room and turned on the evening
news. After a moment she had said, “We were simply trying to
protect you, Kenny, from the way I felt when my parents died. The
way your dad feels now. We honestly did what we thought was
best.”

He knew he could leave and not be reminded to
clean up the beans he’d thrown on the wall. And he left, giving the
screen door a hard shove so it slammed resoundingly.

Getting his parents’ “best” was worse than
not getting the truth.

Chapter
Six

~ Fujiyama ~

“I follow you,” Maeda said, meaning she
wanted Ken to follow her. Maeda’s wooden zori clop-clopped on the
cobbled street to the bus station. She’d declined to tell him where
they were going. The thrill of secrecy was heightened when they’d
quietly left the house before dawn, while his father slept in his
area of the house partitioned by the
shojii.
Ken didn’t know
if she had cleared this trip with the captain or not. The
possibility that she hadn’t secured Paderson’s approval for this
venture endeared him to her as much as the possibility that she had
gained the captain’s approval. Both avenues were rife with
risks.

The sun was hinting at rising over serrated
hills carpeted with bamboo and pine. He could look up from this
moment of his life and see the rim of the sun, crackling with
potential, ready to light up the valley. Things could turn out
good, or turn out bad.

An odor that he first had thought was a
decaying animal carcass or cat shit invaded his nostrils. The
stench was from the fetid, over-ripe ginkgo nuts. Fallen ginkgo
leaves, shaped like yellow goose feet, stampeded the gravel path he
and Maeda were walking along. A middle-aged woman was placing
ginkgo leaves, one at a time, into a red lacquered basket. The air
was cool enough for her every breath to augment the low-hanging
mist. She stood up straight with one hand pressed against her lower
back and regarded Ken and Maeda openly.