Snow Falling on Cedars (17 page)

‘No, thank you,’ the Jap replied. ‘You take money, please.’

Carl’s big hand slid across the table. His fingers covered the stack of bills and pushed it in front of the Jap’s coffee. ‘Zenhichi,’ he said. ‘We won’t take this. Don’t matter what Etta says, we won’t. She’s been rude to you and I apologize for that.’ He looked at her then and she looked right back. She knew how he felt, but it didn’t matter very much – she wanted Carl to know what was up, how he was being duped. She wasn’t going to hang her head. She stared back at him.

‘I am sorry,’ the Jap said. ‘Very sorry.’

‘We’ll worry about this come picking season,’ said Carl. ‘You get where you’re going, you write to us. We’ll get your berries in, write back, we’ll go from there. We’ll just play this by ear a little bit, far as I’m concerned. One way or another you get your payments finished, maybe down the road somewhere, everything comes out like it should in the long run. Everything comes out satisfactory. But right now you got deeper things to think about. You don’t need us bending your ear about payments. You got plenty to do ’thout that. And anything I can do, help you get your things all ready, you let me know, Zenhichi.’

‘I make payments,’ Zenhichi answered. ‘I find a way, I send you.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Carl and put his hand out. The Japanese man took it.

‘Thank you, Carl,’ he said. ‘I make payments. No worry.’

Etta watched Zenhichi. It occurred to her that he had not grown old – she noticed this more clearly than ever. For ten years he’d been working these very same fields, his eyes were still clear, his back was straight, his skin was taut, his belly remained lean and hard. Ten years he had worked in the same
fields she had, and yet he hadn’t aged a day. His clothes were clean, his head erect, his complexion brown and healthy. And all of this was part of his mystery, his distance from what
she
was. Something he knew about kept him from aging while she, Etta, grew worn and weary – something he knew about yet kept to himself, bottled up behind his face. Maybe it was Jap religion, she thought, or maybe it was in his blood. There didn’t seem any way to know.

She remembered, on the witness stand, that Carl junior had returned that evening with a bamboo fishing rod. How he had looked to her coming through the door with his hair rumpled by the wind. How big and young, like a Great Dane puppy, bounding into her kitchen. Her son, a big young man.

‘Look at this,’ he’d said to her. ‘Kabuo loaned it to me.’

He began to explain it to her. She’d been at the sink peeling supper potatoes. He said it was a good rod for sea-run cutthroat. Split bamboo, made by a Mr. Nishi, the ferrules smooth, silk wrapped. Figured he’d go trolling with it, get Erik Everts or somebody, one of his friends, to take him out in a canoe. Rig it up with light tackle, see how it played. Where was Dad? He’d go show it to him.

Etta didn’t stop peeling her potatoes while she said to her son what she had to say: take the fishing rod back to the Japs, they owed them money, the rod confused that.

She remembered how the boy had looked at her. Hurt and trying to hide it. Wanted to argue, didn’t want to argue – wouldn’t win and already knew it. The look of the defeated – his father’s look – big, plodding strawberry farmer. Subdued, pinned to the earth. The boy spoke like his father and moved like his father, but he had a broad brow, small ears, there was a set to his eyes, some of her in him. The boy was not all Carl’s. Her son, too, she felt that.

‘You turn around and take it right on back,’ she’d said again, and pointed with the peeler. And in this, she saw now, on the witness stand, her feelings had not been wrong. He’d taken the rod back, some months had passed, he’d gone to the war,
he’d come on home, that Japanese boy had
killed
him. She’d been right about them all along; Carl, her husband, had been wrong.

They didn’t meet their payments, she told Alvin Hooks. Simple as that. Didn’t meet them. She sold the place off to Ole Jurgensen, sent their equity on down to them in California, didn’t try to hold back their money. Gave every penny back. She moved into Amity Harbor Christmastime ’44. That was that, she’d figured. Looked, now, like she was wrong about one thing: you were never shut of people where money was concerned. One way or another, they
wanted.
And on account of that, she told the court, her son had been murdered by Kabuo Miyamoto. Her son was dead and gone.

Alvin Hooks skirted the edge of his table and resumed the slow, fluid pacing of the floorboards that had been part of his strategy all morning. ‘Mrs. Heine,’ he said. ‘In December of ’44 you moved to Amity Harbor?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Your husband had recently passed away?’

‘That’s right, too.’

‘You felt that without him you could not work your land?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you moved to Amity Harbor,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Where exactly, Mrs. Heine?’

‘On Main Street,’ said Etta. ‘Up above Lottie Opsvig’s shop.’

‘Lottie Opsvig’s? An apparel shop?’

‘That’s right.’

‘In an apartment?’

‘Yes.’

‘A big apartment?’

‘No,’ said Etta. ‘Just one bedroom.’

‘One bedroom above an apparel shop,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘So you took a one-bedroom apartment then. And may I ask about your monthly rent?’

‘Twenty-five dollars,’ said Etta.

‘A twenty-five-dollar-a-month apartment,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘You’re still living there? You currently reside there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Still paying twenty-five dollars?’

‘No,’ said Etta. ‘
Thirty-five.
Price has gone up since ’44.’

‘Forty-four,’ Alvin Hooks repeated. ‘The year you moved in? The year you sent the Miyamotos their equity and came to live in Amity Harbor?’

‘Yes,’ said Etta.

‘Mrs. Heine,’ said Alvin Hooks, and stopped pacing. ‘Did you hear again from the Miyamotos after that? After you sent them their money?’

‘I heard from them,’ said Etta.

‘When was that?’ Alvin Hooks asked.

Etta bit her lip and thought it over, she squeezed her cheeks between her fingers. ‘It was July of ’45,’ she answered finally. ‘That one there showed up at my door.’ And she pointed at Kabuo Miyamoto.

‘The defendant?’

‘Yes.’

‘He came to your door in 1945? To your apartment door in Amity Harbor?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did he call ahead? Were you expecting him?’

‘No. Just showed up. Just like that.’

‘Just showed up unannounced? Out of nowhere, as it were?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Etta. ‘Out of nowhere.’

‘Mrs. Heine,’ said the prosecutor. ‘What did the defendant indicate was the nature of his business with you?’

‘He wanted to talk about land, he said. Had a few things to say about my land I sold to Ole.’

‘Exactly what did he say, Mrs. Heine? Can you remember? For the benefit of the court?’

Etta folded her hands in her lap and glanced at Kabuo Miyamoto. She could see in his eyes – they didn’t fool
her –
that he remembered everything. He’d stood in her doorway, neatly dressed, his hands clasped, unblinking. It was July and the heat in her apartment was unbearable; the doorway felt much cooler. They’d stared at each other, and then Etta had folded her arms across her chest and asked him what he wanted.

‘Mrs. Heine,’ he’d said. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘’Course I do,’ Etta had answered.

She hadn’t seen him since the day the Japs left – more than three years before, in ’42 – but she recollected him clearly enough. He was the boy who’d tried to give Carl a fishing rod, the boy she used to see from her kitchen window practicing in the fields with his wooden sword. He was the oldest of the Miyamoto children – she knew his face but didn’t remember his name – the one her son used to hang around with.

‘I’ve been back home three days,’ he’d said. ‘I guess Carl isn’t home yet.’

‘Carl’s passed on,’ replied Etta. ‘Carl junior’s fighting the Japs.’ She stared at the man in the doorway. ‘They’re just about licked,’ she added.

‘Just about,’ Kabuo had replied. He unclasped his hands and put them at his back. ‘I was sorry to hear about Mr. Heine,’ he said. ‘I heard about it in Italy. My mother sent me a letter.’

‘Well, I told you people about it when I sent on down the equity,’ returned Etta. ‘Said in my letter Carl’d passed on and that I’d had to go and sell the place.’

‘Yes,’ said Kabuo. ‘But Mrs. Heine, my father had an agreement with Mr. Heine, didn’t he? Didn’t – ’

‘Mr. Heine was passed away,’ Etta interrupted. ‘I had to make a decision. Couldn’t farm the place myself, could I? I sold to Ole and that’s that,’ she said. ‘You want to talk about that piece of land, you’re going to have to talk to
Ole.
I don’t have nothing to do with it.’

‘Please,’ replied Kabuo. ‘I talked to Mr. Jurgensen already. I got back to the island just last Wednesday and went out to see what had become of the place. You know, have a look around. Mr. Jurgensen was out there, up on his tractor. We talked for a while about things.’

‘Well, good,’ said Etta. ‘So you talked to him.’

‘I talked to him,’ said Kabuo. ‘He said I’d better talk to you.’

Etta folded her arms more tightly. ‘
Humpf
,’ she said. ‘It’s his land, isn’t it? Go on back and tell him that. Tell him I said so. You tell him.’

‘He didn’t
know,’
said Kabuo. ‘You didn’t tell him we were one payment away, Mrs. Heine. You didn’t tell him Mr. Heine had – ’

‘He didn’t know,’ sneered Etta. ‘Is that what Ole told you? He didn’t know – is that it? Was I supposed to say, “Ole, there’s these folks made an illegal agreement with my husband hands over seven acres to them”? Is that what I was supposed to say? He didn’t
know,’
repeated Etta. ‘Most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I’m supposed to tell someone’s buying up my land there’s an illegal contract muddling matters up? And what if I did? Huh? Fact is you people didn’t meet your payments. That’s a fact. And just suppose you done that to a bank ‘round here. Just suppose. You don’t make your payments, what do you think happens? Somebody waits real polite on you? No. Bank repossesses your land, that’s what happens. I haven’t done anything a bank wouldn’t do. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘You haven’t done anything
illegal,’
the Jap replied. ‘Wrong is a different matter.’

Etta blinked. She stepped back and put her hand on the doorknob. ‘Get out of here,’ she said.

‘You sold our land,’ the Jap continued. ‘You sold our land out from under us, Mrs. Heine. You took advantage of the fact that we were gone. You – ’

But she’d shut the door so as not to listen.
Carl made such a mess,
she’d thought.
Now I have to clean it all up.

‘Mrs. Heine,’ said the prosecutor, Alvin Hooks, when she’d finished telling of these things. ‘Did you see the defendant there-after? Did he approach you again about these land matters?’

‘Did I see him?’ asked Etta. ‘Sure I saw him. Saw him in town, saw him at Petersen’s, here and there … I saw him now and again, yes.’

‘Did he speak to you?’

‘No.’

‘Ever?’

‘No.’

‘There was no further communication between you?’

‘None I can think of. ’Less you want to call dirty looks a way of speaking.’ And she glanced at Kabuo again.

‘Dirty looks, Mrs. Heine? What exactly do you mean?’

Etta smoothed the front of her dress and sat more erectly in the witness stand. ‘Ever time I saw him,’ she insisted, ‘there he’d be with his eyes narrowed at me. You know, watchin’,
glarin’.’

‘I see,’ said the prosecutor. ‘And how long did this continue?’

‘Been going on ever since,’ said Etta. ‘Never stopped. I never saw a sociable look from him, not once in all the times I saw him. Always narrowin’ his eyes at me, giving me his
mean
face.’

‘Mrs. Heine,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Did you ever have a conversation with your son about the defendant in this regard? Did you tell Carl junior that Kabuo Miyamoto had come to your door and argued with you about the sale of your family’s land?’

‘My son knew all about it. When he got back, I told him.’

‘Got back?’

‘From the war,’ said Etta. ‘Couple months later, ’bout October, I think it was.’

‘And you told him then the defendant had come to your door?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you recall his response?’

‘Yes,’ said Etta. ‘He said he’d keep an eye on it. Said that if Kabuo Miyamoto was giving me dirty looks he’d keep an eye on him.’

‘I see.’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘And did he?’

‘Yes. Far as I know, yes.’

‘He kept an eye out for Kabuo Miyamoto?’

‘Yes, he did. He watched for him.’

‘To your knowledge, Mrs. Heine, were the two of them on unfriendly terms? They were both fishermen, they shared that in common. They were, as you have said, neighbors in adolescence. And yet there was this … dispute. This family dispute over land. So were they, the defendant and your son, on friendly or unfriendly terms from 1945 on?’

‘No,’ said Etta. ‘The defendant wasn’t no friend of my son’s. Isn’t that obvious? They were enemies.’

‘Enemies?’ said Alvin Hooks.

‘Carl told me more ’n once he wished Kabuo would forget about his seven acres and stop lookin’ at me cross-eyed.’

‘When you told him the defendant had given you dirty looks your son reacted exactly how, Mrs. Heine?’

‘Said he wished Kabuo’d stop doing that. Said he’d have to keep an eye out for Kabuo.’

‘Keep an eye out,’
Alvin Hooks repeated. ‘He saw some danger from Mr. Miyamoto?’

‘Objection,’ cut in Nels Gudmundsson. ‘The witness is being asked to speculate as to her son’s state of mind and his emotional status. He’s – ’

‘All right, all right,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Tell us what you
observed,
Mrs. Heine. Tell us what your son said or did – was there anything to suggest he saw some kind of danger from Kabuo Miyamoto?’

‘Said he’d keep an eye out for him,’ repeated Etta. ‘You know, he’d watch out.’

‘Did your son say he felt he had to watch for Mr. Miyamoto? That there was danger from him of some kind?’

‘Yes,’ said Etta. ‘He kept an eye on him. Every time I told him that man was glarin’ at me, that’s what he said – he’d watch out.’