The Sound of Life and Everything (17 page)

24

All afternoon, I thought about what Mama had said.
If we really had to send him home to prove how much we loved him, then that was what we'd do. But it was a long way to Japan, and maybe he'd rather save the trip. What if he didn't remember his old life? What if me and Mama were the only family he knew?

There was only one way to find out.

Mama had tried to feed him dinner in his room, but Takuma had insisted on eating dinner at the table. Now he was holed up in the living room, hunched over his sketchbook. I approached with cautious steps, since he didn't look terribly steady. When I finally got close enough to see what he was working on, my elbow bumped his arm.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” I said. The gash was seven inches long and not easy to erase. Daniel hadn't let me get within five feet of his drawing hand, but I'd only just remembered that.

Thankfully, Takuma didn't scold me. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice. After studying the gash, he incorporated it into his drawing.

I licked my lips. “May I sit down?” I couldn't have said where this formality had come from, but for some reason, it felt right.

Takuma blinked and looked around as if I'd just woken him up. As he took in Daddy's armchair and Mama's rosebud wallpaper, I got the impression that he'd been very far away.

I touched his arm. “Are you all right?”

He considered that, then said, “All right.” Shivering, he added, “Cold.”

“I could get you a blanket, if you want. I think there's one in the linen closet.”

“No,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He motioned to the couch. “Sit down.”

Obediently, I sat. I tried not to look at his sketchbook, but it was hard not to. Takuma wasn't doodling. He was actually drawing.

I grabbed the sketchbook. “You're an artist!”

Takuma took it back and swiftly turned the page, hiding whatever drawing he'd been working on. “Like Daniel,” he whispered.

My heart ached. “Yes, like Daniel.”

For a long time, we just sat there, staring at our hands. Mine itched to grab the sketchbook and paw through his new drawings, but I didn't want to rattle him. Besides, beating a sick man at a game of tug-of-war would have hardly been a challenge.

“You look?” he finally asked as he offered me the sketchbook.

I held my breath. “Is that okay?”

He half nodded, half shrugged.

Indecision froze my fingers, but before I could change my mind, he set the sketchbook in my lap. It was heavier than I'd expected, like it was carrying a heavy load. Suddenly, I didn't want to look.

But Takuma was insistent, so reluctantly, I opened it. He'd been drawing feverishly for days, but the first couple of pages still belonged to my brother. There was the close-up of the soldier we'd never had a chance to meet, and there was the wide shot of the valley where he'd ultimately died. The charcoal had smudged over time, but the smudging looked deliberate, like these sketches were supposed to look fuzzy, incomplete.

I hurried through the rest of Daniel's drawings, ignoring the dull ache in my chest. Daniel was dead and buried, but Takuma was still here. When I reached one of a courtyard, I stopped flipping the pages. The lines were sharper, more distinct, and I didn't recognize the rows of soldiers. Their uniforms were lighter, and their helmets were oddly shaped.

Takuma tapped the drawing. “I guard emperor.”

I squinted at the soldiers. “You were one of those little guys?”

I tried to picture him in a funny-looking helmet, but the image wouldn't settle. It was hard to picture him fighting in a war on either side.

Tentatively, I turned the page, revealing a length of beach and a funny-looking hill. It looked vaguely familiar, but my brain was probably playing tricks on me.

“Ee-oh-toe,” he said.

“What's ee-oh-toe?” I asked.

Takuma tapped the drawing.

“Oh,” was all I said as I felt my cheeks get hot.

Ee-oh-toe was probably the name of the island. That wasn't so scary. Still, I held my breath as I turned the page. I wasn't sure what I was waiting for, but I was waiting for something.

The next sketch was of a box partly buried in the dirt. It only looked big enough to hold one soldier, maybe two.

“I make,” Takuma said as he stuck out his chest.

“You
made
that box?” I asked. It explained why he was good at building towers out of dishes.

“I make
many,
” he replied.

I wrinkled my nose. “What were they for?” They didn't look like they would fit even a single cot.

Takuma's chest deflated. “Kill boxes,” he mumbled.

I swallowed, hard. Had Takuma killed my cousin in a box like that?

My insides turned to jelly as that awful thought sank in, and it was all that I could do not to shove the sketchbook off my lap. But before I had a chance to give it back to him, Takuma turned the page, revealing what I assumed was the same beach. We were on the hill this time, with the whole island spread before us. The ocean was rough and choppy—and dotted with dozens of ships.

“They come,” Takuma said.

My hands started to tingle. I didn't want to see the rest. I didn't want to know. Takuma must have sensed my hesitation, because he didn't turn the page. Gratefully, I let it go. When it tumbled down my legs, I didn't even try to stop it.

A few of the pages turned themselves as the sketchbook gathered speed. By the time it hit the floor, Takuma's final drawing—the one that he'd been working on when I bumped his hand—was staring up at us. It was a close-up of a man, not Japanese, who looked like he was shouting. The gash I'd made Takuma draw had turned into a rifle.

With slightly quaking hands, I picked the sketchbook up. My eyes started at the barrel, then moved up the hand, the arm. Hatred boiled in my stomach—that arm, that hand, that gun had to belong to the man who'd killed him—but when I reached the face, I froze.

The face belonged to Robby.

A sob caught in my throat and came out as a gasp. My gaze darted back and forth between Robby and the rifle. I barely recognized the angry man shouting at Takuma. He looked nothing like the Robby in Auntie Mildred's photographs.

The sketchbook started to tremble. That must have meant my hands were trembling, too. When Takuma tried to take it, I didn't bother to object.

“Ella Mae?” he whispered.

Ee-oh-toe was Iwo Jima. Ee-oh-toe was where my cousin had murdered my best friend.

I dragged a hand under my nose. I had to get away. Being around Takuma hadn't made me feel uncomfortable since that very first day, but now I couldn't sit beside him without bouncing in my seat. My flesh and blood had killed him. He must have thoroughly despised us.

“I'm sorry,” I said as I bolted for the stairs. “I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Takuma called my name, but I didn't stop, didn't slow down. With his leg the way it was, he wouldn't be able to come after me. When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut on my heels and threw myself onto my bed. I tried to lose myself in the squiggles on the ceiling, but this awful, creeping guilt was too heavy to ignore. The only thing that I could think about was how it would feel to kill someone. And how it would feel to die.

25

A few minutes or a few hours later, Mama tromped
upstairs. “I saw Takuma's pictures.”

I scrubbed the tears out of my eyes. “They're not pictures, they're drawings.” That was what Daniel had always said.

Mama didn't seem concerned about what they were or weren't. “He said they made you sad.”

A drop of guilt leaked out of me. Of course he'd make me sound less crazy than I actually was.

“This doesn't change anything,” she said.

“No, it changes
everything.
”

Mama sat down on the bed. The mattress groaned beneath her weight. “No one has to know the truth.” When she realized what she'd just said, she sighed. “No one but you and me.”

I didn't think that I could carry so much truth around.

She patted my knee. “I know it seems like this will never be okay again, but you know how these things are.”

I plopped my chin into my hands. “I don't see how this will
ever
find a way of working itself out.”

“Oh, don't be sensational. That's your auntie's job.”

“But Robby shot him, Mama. Robby
killed
Takuma. Doesn't that erase all the good things that we've done?”

“Well, for one thing,
we
didn't shoot him.” She tucked one of my braids behind my ear. “And for another, even if we had, why couldn't we ask for forgiveness?”

I might have acted like a scalawag, but the truth was, I'd never asked for anyone's forgiveness before. I'd thought that me and Mama were scoring points in heaven for taking Takuma in and standing up for him—and that those points made us better than the other folks we knew. But it hadn't occurred to me that maybe I'd thought we were better than Takuma, too. That I was doing him a favor by being his friend.

How had I never realized that Takuma was the one who was doing
me
the favor?

Mama bumped me with her shoulder. “Just go down there and talk to him.”

I didn't move a muscle. I didn't want to talk. If we talked, then I would have to put these feelings into words, and I doubted I could do that even if I'd wanted to.

Mama clucked her tongue. “Of course, if you'd rather do some housework, I'm sure that I could find a toilet for you to clean.”

Reluctantly, I stood back up and headed toward the stairs.

“Oh, and Ella Mae?” Mama said.

Slowly, I turned back around.

“Just remember that you owe this friendship to whatever happened.” She folded her arms across her waist. “Sometimes a little good can grow out of a lot of bad.”

• • •

I found Takuma sitting on Mama's swing in the backyard. His head was tipped back, and his eyes were closed. He didn't have his sketchbook, though he still had a pencil tucked behind his ear. Guess there wasn't much to draw once you'd recorded your whole life and death.

I scuffed my foot. “Do you want to go for a walk?” I'd always thought talking was easier when I was walking, too.

Takuma thumped his leg. It looked as stiff as an old board. “No walk today,” he said.

I probably should have guessed that. “So what do you want to do?”

“May-so?” he asked.

“May what?”

Takuma shook his head. “No mind.”

I dug my toe into the crack between two bricks in the patio. Daniel and Daddy had laid it back when I was two or three, so even though they'd let me help, I'd mostly gotten in the way. When I dropped a brick on my finger, Daddy had just rolled his eyes, but Daniel had scooped me up and carried me inside the house. I never found out where they'd laid my brick, but secretly, I hoped that it was one of these, that it was tying Daniel to Takuma and me to both of them.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “I wish I could say or do
something,
but I just—”

“Ella Mae,” he interrupted. He waited until I met his gaze. “No sorry. Never sorry.”

My eyes watered like a leaky faucet. I must have developed allergies in the last couple of days. It was the only explanation.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

Takuma shook his head, but slowly, like he could tell I didn't want to.

“It's okay,” I said after drawing a deep breath. “I want you to tell me. Really. It's about time I started acting like the friend I claim to be.”

He smiled, a little. “I make boxes,” he said slowly. “Holes in mountain, too.”

I scrunched up my nose. “How'd you make holes in a mountain?”

He made a stick out of his hands, then pretended to throw it across the grass. When it hit, he covered his ears.

“Dynamite!” I said. “You made caves with dynamite!”

“Dynamite,” Takuma said, trying out the new word.

I nodded reassuringly. “So what were the caves—the holes in mountains—for?”

“For live,” Takuma said, then added softly, “and for die.”

I shuddered despite the warm spring breeze. Why had Takuma died when so many others lived? Of course, maybe if he hadn't, the Allies would have lost the war. I didn't like that idea, but I didn't like the idea of Takuma lying in the dirt, either. The trade-offs weren't cut-and-dried when you cared about people on both sides.

“We wait long time,” he went on. “Hole in mountain shake.”

“Why didn't you fight back?” I asked. I didn't like the thought of Takuma fighting—killing—but I didn't like the thought of him just sitting there, either.

Takuma shrugged. “No hope. Kuribayashi say we die, so we wait. We wait and hide.”

“Caw-coo-say,” I mumbled. It was the first Japanese word he'd taught me. I hadn't liked it then, and I certainly didn't like it now.

“Yes, caw-coo-say,” he said. “Like Theo.”

I wished his game of hide-and-seek had turned out as well as Theo's.

“They reach top of mountain,” he went on. “Then they rise flag.”

I perked up. “They raised a flag in the middle of the battle?” It must have been the first raising. I knotted my arms across my chest. “I probably should have known.”

Most folks didn't realize that there had been two raisings: the first when they reached the top of the island's highest point and the second, hours later, when there was a reporter present. By the end of the battle, most of the boys who'd launched that first attack were lying in a row of bodies, waiting to be shipped home to their families. And no one even remembered the first flag that they'd raised.

No one except Takuma.

“Nakamura yell. They shoot.” Takuma dropped his gaze. “We watch Nakamura die.”

I swallowed, hard. “Is that when . . . ?” I couldn't bring myself to ask,
Is that when Robby shot you?

Takuma shook his head. “No, Miyazaki next. He run after Nakamura. They were friends—no, brothers.”

I thought I understood what he was trying to say. Nakamura loved Miyazaki in the same way I loved him.

“Then,” he went on, but before he could get the words out, he started to cough. He coughed for what felt like forever, but just when I decided it was time to go for Mama, he cleared his throat and tried again: “They shoot fire,” he croaked.

I'd seen the old newsreels, so I'd seen flamethrowers in action. Or at least I'd seen them take out a bunch of lifeless dummies. It was harder to imagine them shooting actual people, especially people who were huddled at the back of a man-made cave, waiting patiently for death. What had they thought about as they'd waited there to die? Had it ever occurred to them that some cockamamie scientist might bring them back to life?

“I run,” Takuma said. His breath was coming in short spurts, but whether that was because of the coughing or the memory, I couldn't decide. “But fire everywhere. I fall. And when I look up, he . . .”

Takuma didn't have to say who
he
was. Guilt twisted my insides, but I tried to ignore it.

“He rise rifle. I rise hands. Then everything go white.”

I squeezed my eyes shut—I didn't want to see Takuma's hands (or Robby's rifle, for that matter)—but my eyelids made a better screen than the backyard ever could have. Before I could tell it not to, my brain replayed the scene as Takuma had described it. I could almost taste the fire, smell the burned meat in the air. My eyes opened on their own.

I must have made a face, because Takuma's forehead crinkled. “Ella Mae?” he asked softly.

“I'm fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

“No,” he said, “not fine.”

I half laughed, half sobbed. It was the same thing I'd told him when his leg gave out.

Takuma smiled softly, and fresh tears sprang to my eyes. For once, I let them fall. I was tired of lying to myself. It was time to stop pretending I was something that I wasn't.

“Do you forgive me?” I peeped, drying my cheeks off on my sleeve. “For thinking I was better?”

He thought about that for a moment, then dragged himself out of the swing. “I give my forgive,” he said. He could barely stand up straight, but he bowed, anyway. “
Always
give my forgive.”

I felt my face flush. Things felt strange between us, but they felt better, too. I'd never thought of us as equals. It was about time.

“I hear your birthday's comin' up,” I said. “Want to help me plan a party?”