Missing in Action (3 page)

That didn't sound right. Grandpa always liked everybody. Maybe he just liked to have Japs spend money at his drugstore. Jay didn't want to work with one.

Sometimes, in Salt Lake, boys had called him “Injun,” and they'd made Indian noises, slapping their mouths and whooping. Gordy didn't seem to care if he was part Indian, but what would he say if he found out he worked with a Jap? Then he'd probably be a dirty Indian, not a Chief.

His dad had said things about Indians sometimes. Maybe he was half Navajo, but he made fun of Jay anyway—when he was joking around. “Hey, red man,” he would yell, “don't scalp me,” and then he would pretend he had a tomahawk and chop at Jay's head. But that was just joking. He liked to remember things like that now—when Dad was funny and playing around.

Mom had been mad at Dad way too much back then. But he was fun sometimes. That was what she always forgot. Once his dad had taken Jay up by the mountains to a zoo, and they'd walked all over and seen all the animals and everything. He'd even told Jay about things he'd done when he was a boy and had gone out to the Navajo reservation in the summer. He said, serious, he didn't mind being half Indian. His mother had taught him good things.

It seemed like Mom was still mad about everything. She remembered all the bad stuff too much. She hadn't even gone to the zoo with them. She should have done things like that, and not always told Dad what was wrong with him. He was a hero now, and when he came back, everything would be different. He wouldn't get mad when he got back.

GRANDPA DROVE JAY TO THE
farm early in the morning. It was about a mile out of town. He introduced him to Ken, who was a little guy, no taller than Jay, but he had on a white undershirt with the sleeves rolled up high, and Jay could see what big muscles he had. He had tied a red bandanna around his forehead, and over that, had on a floppy old straw hat that was worn out and falling apart.

Ken started laughing, for no reason Jay could understand, and then he said, “I'm going to put some mileage on you today, Jay. Are you ready for some hard work?”

He sounded like an American.

“I guess so,” he said, and he found out what Ken was talking about. The heat came on fast and got worse every hour. Ken had been cutting hay with a tractor for a few days, and it was bunched up in
windrows. Now it needed to be raked and turned so it would dry all the way through before it was baled. Ken could turn the hay with the flick of a pitchfork, like turning pancakes, but Jay had trouble figuring out how to do it. After a couple of hours he was catching on better, but his back was breaking. The air was full of dried alfalfa, a million little pieces flying around. They were in his hair and ears, making him itch. The stuff was down his back, too, inside his shirt. It even felt like it had gotten into his lungs.

“What your grandpa needs is a rake a guy can pull with a tractor to turn this hay,” Ken told him. “Most people don't do it by hand anymore.” He straightened up and then leaned backward to stretch his muscles.

Jay hadn't said much to Ken all morning. He didn't want to start. The guy didn't seem like a Jap, but he was one anyway. He didn't wear glasses, and he didn't have big teeth, but he did look sort of like the guys on those posters—with the same kind of eyes.

“What he told me was, he doesn't cut enough hay to pay for something like that. I guess that might be right.” And then Ken grinned. “It's okay with me. I need the money, and slow work is better than no work.”

Jay didn't say anything, but he thought about that. He didn't like anything about this hay, but he wanted his mom to know, just by looking at him, that he'd worked hard. He'd buy his own school clothes this
year, and that would be one thing she didn't have to worry about. It might put her in a better mood.

“Let me show you something.” Ken jabbed his pitchfork into the ground and stepped over next to him. “You gotta raise the hay up higher, and then just flip your wrists, so you aren't making such a big motion with your arms. You're going to wear yourself out, fighting the stuff so hard.”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said.

“Go ahead and try it.”

He stabbed at some hay with the pitchfork, got a good load, but as he lifted, Ken caught his forearm and forced him to lift higher than usual. Then Ken twisted his arm, so the pitchfork flipped over fast. Ken was right. It was easier that way. For a moment he was glad to know how to do it right. Then he thought about Ken touching him. He didn't like that. He didn't want the guy to start acting like they were friends.

“That's a lot better,” Ken said. “Are you going to make it through the whole day?”

“Sure.”

“I don't know. It's hot, and you're not used to work like this. If you have to knock off before the day's over—you know, just to rest up—I'll do your share for a while, and mine. It doesn't bother me to do that.” Ken gave him a little punch in the shoulder and laughed.

“I can hold up,” Jay said, and went back to work.

By noon the sun was straight above and burning Jay's bent back. Ken finally said, “Let's go sit behind the house and see what your grandma fixed us for lunch.”

So the two walked to the farmhouse and sat in the shade of the willow trees out back. There were a couple of old wooden kitchen chairs out there. Grandpa had left their lunches on the back porch, in the shade, but there was no icebox to keep anything cool. Grandma had made a bunch of sandwiches out of baloney and cheese and they were about half baked by the heat, but they tasted all right. Best, though, was pumping up cool water from the old well, filling up a Ball jar over and over, and drinking it in long gulps.

“I'm not saying that I love to work this hard,” Ken told him, “but one thing about it, right now a baloney sandwich tastes as good as a big old beefsteak.”

Jay was thinking the same thing.

They were sitting close to a fat tree trunk, to stay in the shade. “How old are you, Jay?”

“Thirteen in a couple of months.”

Ken laughed—deep in his throat, almost like a cough. “I guess you think that sounds better than ‘twelve.'” He slid down in his chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He had eaten three sandwiches by the time Jay had started on a second one, and now he was holding his jar of water, resting it on his leg and then lifting it for a sip now and then. “What do you wanna do when you grow up?”

“I don't know.” He thought he might walk into the house, or maybe say he needed to go to the outhouse. He didn't want to go back to work yet, but he didn't want to talk, either.

“I want to work hard now, then go to college so I won't have to work hard later. My dad ran a truck farm out in California. That's hard work, weeding those rows over and over, and then getting up early to pick and deliver the vegetables when they're nice and fresh. I never did like to get up early.” He laughed some more. “But that's because I like to go out and cut a rug—you know, go out jitterbugging. My pop would roust me out anyway, and I'd be one tired customer—just barely in from bein' out.”

He wasn't sure what to think of this guy. He didn't talk like the Japs in the movies—always saying “ah so,” and that kind of stuff. And he hadn't known that Japs ever did the jitterbug.

“Do you like to dance, Jay?”

“I don't know how.”

“What?” Ken raised his head. “At your age, I could already dance pretty good. Now me and Judy Okuba win every dance competition at the camp. The other kids just enter to see if they can come in second.” Ken had gradually lowered his head backward onto the chair back. His eyes shut. “You want me to teach you some dance steps?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I don't want to dance.”

“You will.”

He didn't think so. He didn't like the way Ken bragged, either. That was one thing about Japs he hadn't known.

“Do you play any sports?”

“Baseball. The boys in town play just about every day—after it cools off a little.” He wanted Ken to know that he had some friends.

“You any good?”

“Not real good.” The heat was gathering under the trees, like it was swelling up the air. Crows were sitting in the trees and on the barn, but they weren't making a racket now. They were sitting still, like black, dried-up leaves on the branches.

“What position do you play?”

“I don't know. All of 'em.”

“I'll bet most of the time you're out in right field, where they figure you can't do too much damage.” Ken broke out laughing again, chugging like he had started a coughing fit. “No. I'm just giving you a hard time. But me, I play mostly shortstop. I made varsity in tenth grade back in California. Here at the camp, I lead my team in just about everything: batting average, runs batted in, runs scored. We beat everybody around here, easy—Delta High, Millard, all of 'em.”

None of this sounded true. He didn't think a Jap team
could beat a regular high school team. Ken was just talking big again.

“I wish I could have finished school back in California. I went to this great high school in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. Have you ever been out there?”

“No.”

“I gotta tell you, it's the best. The kids were
cool
—that's what they say in California. We all went over to this one drugstore after school and we'd listen to the jukebox, maybe dance, or just talk to everybody.” He was smiling, like he wanted to remember all that. Jay liked how he looked—wished he had some memories like that. “It's hard to believe I'm stuck in a place like this, so hot and everything. Out by our camp there's nothing but greasewood as far as you can see. The dust blows off the desert and right on through those tar-paper shacks we live in. You can hardly breathe when all that dirt is blowing.”

“Can't you build better houses if you want to?”

Ken sat up. “Where have you been, Jay? Don't you know what's going on?”

“I just moved down here.”

“I know. But there's a war on, man. And I'm Japanese American. People think we're on the other side. They rounded us up and
made
us come out here. The government calls it a ‘relocation center,' but it's a
prison
. Guys with rifles watch us from towers. We're
Americans, the same as you, and we're locked up for no reason except that our families came here from Japan.”

Jay nodded. He figured there must be more to it than that, but he wasn't going to say so to Ken. The guy was already sounding mad.

But Ken had started to laugh again. “I don't care, though. I'm making the best of everything. I'm going to join the army just as soon as I turn eighteen in August. We've got an all-Japanese-American combat team now, and it's going to get into the battle before long. I'm going to get into it if I can. Then I'm going to win me some medals and come home a hero. I'll have it made in the shade once I do that. I just figure if someone hands you a lemon, you make lemonade out of it. You know what I'm talking about? There's always a sunny side if you just look for it.”

“I guess so.”

“Life's what you make of it. That's my philosophy.” Ken leaned back again, rested his head. His eyes shut.

Jay thought about telling Ken that his dad was a hero, just like Ken wanted to be. He wanted to say, “Japs took him prisoner. And I don't like Japs.” Then he wouldn't talk to him anymore. He was almost sure that Ken was a liar. The guy wanted to act like he was an American and everything, but he wouldn't be in prison if there weren't some reason for it.

“You're not all white yourself, are you, Jay?” Ken asked.

He shrugged his shoulders, but he didn't answer.

“You're part Indian or Mexican or something, aren't you?”

“My grandma's Navajo.”

“Okay. There's an example. Look at all the Indians stuck out in the desert on reservations. It's a lot the same. My name's Tanaka—Kenji Tanaka—so that's supposed to make me Japanese. But what about a guy named Gunther, or something like that? The guy who runs our camp is Mr. Ernst. That's a German name. Why don't they put him in prison for being German? You better be careful that someone doesn't say you've gotta live on a reservation because your grandma does.”

“They don't do that.”

“I know. I'm just saying. We were living in California, doing fine, and then Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and all of a sudden we're supposed to be the enemy. It doesn't make sense.” He stared into Jay's face, like he wanted him to say that was right. Jay looked away. “But I'm not getting mad. I'm getting even. I'll fight for my country and show what I can do—and then I'll look any guy in the face and tell him, ‘I'm just as much a man as you are. And I'm an
American
, right down to my little Japanese toes.'” Ken liked that. He laughed for a long time.

Jay had heard enough. He got out of his chair and lay on the grass. He shut his eyes and tried to pretend that he'd gone to sleep.

Not long after that Ken said it was time to go back to work, and before long everything was worse than in the morning. The heat was almost more than he could take—over a hundred, he was sure—and all the bits of hay floating around made him sick to his stomach. Ken got twice as much work done, and he never stopped joking, but every time he told Jay to go rest for a little while, Jay tried to work harder. He didn't know when quitting time was, but he knew he had to stick it out until then. His arms and shoulders and back ached so bad that he would slow down sometimes without knowing he was doing it. Then he'd see Ken watching him, and he'd speed up.

Finally Ken said, “Let's call it a day. We've got more done than I ever expected we could do.” He took off his straw hat, pulled the bandanna off his head, and wiped it across his face. “Next time somebody tells me that Indians are lazy, I'm going to say, ‘You don't know Jay Thacker. That boy can work like a man.'”