Above the East China Sea: A Novel (15 page)

Sometime during this debate, Father disappeared. When he returned, he was leading Papaya yoked to her cart. He hurried her along as best he could by snapping a short leather whip against her thick hide. Piled high on the cart were the crocks that contained our barley, rice, the fish Mother had dried, as well as the miso pork she’d preserved. Beside them were stacked coops containing most of our flock of chickens. Two goats were tethered to the rails of the cart.

“I will drive this cart myself to Shuri this very night and present our humble offerings to the emperor’s soldiers!” my father announced. But when he tried to climb up onto the cart, his legs turned to rubber, and he slid back down, landing on his bottom on the damp ground. I was shocked; I had never seen my austere, elegant father in such a state.

My mother appeared out of the darkness and yanked him back to his feet as if he were a sleepy child. “What do you think you’re doing with our fish and miso pork and chickens and goats?”

“They are no longer ours, woman,” he boomed out. “I have requisitioned them in the name of Emperor Hirohito!”

“Oh, shut up with these idiocies about your precious emperor. There
is a great and terrible war coming, and your family will starve if you give away our chickens, our food.”

The crowd fell utterly silent at such a treasonous pronouncement.

“Have you forgotten,” my father roared, loud as a Kabuki actor, “that my family is descended from a long line of samurai who died defending their king?”

“And have
you
forgotten that the kings they died for were Okinawan kings? Not the ruler of our invaders?” I gasped, unable to believe what my mother had said. She reached out to grab the yoke. “Now, stand aside so that I can take our food and animals back home, where—”

My father raised the leather lash and cracked it against my mother’s cheek. My hand leaped up to cover my mouth, but I did not dare move. If I intervened, it would be yet another blow to Father’s honor, and my mother would have to answer for that as well. As blood trickled down Anmā’s cheek, her eyes darkened to a shade beyond black, and a silence descended. It was as ominous as when the deceptive calm of the eye of a typhoon passes through, and I feared the terrible storm that was to come, for not only had Mother disgraced my father, she had insulted the emperor.

The awful silence was broken by my aunt Junko yelling out, “
Fiidama!
” We followed her trembling finger to a glowing apparition hovering in the sky above the Sacred Grove beyond the edge of the village.

When I glanced back down from the small phosphorescent blur of a fireball wobbling in the sky, all five of my aunts had taken positions beside my mother, their sister. Next to them were their daughters. At the front of the line of my girl cousins was Chiiko with baby Kazumi, Little Mouse, on her back. Like Mother, all five Kokuba sisters were weathered, their skin tough and dark as ox hide from working the hereditary plots of land in their care.

“An uneasy spirit hunts for a body to claim,” an old-timer called out in a voice quavering with terror. The others like him who were close to dying moved away from one another so as not to make such an inviting target for the phantom predator.

My aunt Junko, who had a wide space between her front teeth through which she liked to spit melon seeds and a headful of uncensored thoughts, announced in a somber voice, “This
fiidama
hasn’t come to steal anyone’s
mabui.
It is a sign that the
kami
are unhappy.”
As a
noro
priestess, Aunt Junko was the village’s spiritual leader, and, though Father and the other modern ones like him disdained our native religion in favor of Japan’s more advanced Shinto, she still commanded respect. The bowlegged old men muttered assent and nodded in fright, their long white beards bobbing up and down in the darkness.

“Enough of your superstitious Okinawan twaddle about fireballs!” Father proclaimed. “The scientist from the mainland who came to investigate has already explained that this phenomenon is nothing more than a pocket of phosphorus gas released from one of the many tombs in this area.”

At that, the old men cooed like doves in agreement.

None of my aunts joined in. Instead, they closed in even more tightly around my mother. “Perhaps,” Aunt Junko said, wrapping a sheltering arm around her little sister, “but why then did the
kami
choose to release this
pocket of gas
at exactly this moment if not to voice displeasure?”

This time, the murmurs of assent were louder and they were against my father. “I will not listen to you ignorant traitors betraying our emperor,” he thundered. “Tamiko, you shall be the one to deliver our offerings to the brave men who fight for us and our emperor. Go home now to prepare. In one hour you leave for Shuri!”

SIXTEEN

“You lost my flashlight?” Kirby asks Jake. “You dickweed. Do you know how much that flashlight cost? I had to pay for shipping from England. It was—”

Jake punches Kirby in the mouth with one quick snap of his fist.

Though I’d warmed up a little on the hike back to the cove after Jake helped me through the narrow crevice he’d found earlier that led to the trail, I’m still shaking from being batted around by the outrushing waves that funneled us back out through the cave opening. I’m even more chilled, though, by what I saw in the cave. I can’t force the
image of the starved girl or the sound of her mewling infant out of my mind.

“What the fuck?” Kirby taps a finger to his lip; it comes away glistening with blood. Kirby’s tongue flicks out. He tastes the blood, and, still not believing, says, “You busted my lip, man. The fuck you do—”

“I told you about that bath-salt shit,” Jake says in a level, information-dispersing tone. “I told you it can cause psychotic episodes. Did I not tell you that, Kernshaw?”

“And I told you I haven’t got the shipment yet.”

Jake ignores Kirby and asks, “What? You decide you’d do a little test? Put a dose in the Cuervo? That it? You spiked the Cuervo. Listen, jerkwad, this ain’t the homecoming dance, and that shit is not vodka you swiped out of your dad’s liquor cabinet.” Jake does a pretty good mean redneck when he puts his mind to it.

“Why do you even think I did that?”

Jake pauses, glances my way. “Luz, she …”

… 
saw shit that wasn’t there.

“… she’s having a rough time.”

“Luz? Dude, you don’t look right.”

“Jesus, Kirby,” Jacey snaps, then hisses, “her sister.” She steps up next to me, takes my free hand in hers, makes a sandwich of it, warming my fingers. None of them ever said anything directly to me about Codie, but after the
Stars and Stripes
did an article last month about heroes that mentioned Codie, Jacey sent me a card. Just something from the BX. A photo of some purple tulips on the front and a verse from Scripture inside. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” She tilts her head and her expression is a blobby mush of concern. I want to reach over, ram the heel of my hand into her face, and smush it around like Silly Putty.

“You do realize who her mother is, don’t you?” Jake asks Kirby, assuming that, as usual, Kirby is lying about the bath salts.

“Yeah, but—”

“Do you have a fucking death wish?”

“If you would shut up and let me—”

“No, I’m not going to let you open your mouth and tell me again how they sell bath salts in head shops and it’s such a safe, great high. Did you
not hear me the first time, when I told you that it causes strokes and hallucinations and psychosis? Did I only imagine telling you all that?”

“A. It
is
legal—”

“Kirby, you
are
tripping. I mean, you have got to be seriously,
seriously
high to say something that stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, dicklick. I read up on it. They keep changing the formula so that the DEA can’t actually write a law making it illegal. So, eee-yaah, it
is
legal, dude. And B. You sucker punched me like the little bitch you are.”

“Sorry. It’s the only way to get you to shut up sometimes.”

Kirby gives him a fair-enough shrug.

“As for all your DEA technicalities? You really think OSI gives a shit about that?”

Everyone takes a collective inhale at the mention of the Office of Special Investigations. OSI is the air force’s FBI. They’re the agents in black T-shirts who investigate felony crimes. And they’re actually a lot more like the Mafia than the FBI. They get your name and you and your family just disappear. Overnight. No questions asked. Due process is a civilian concept.

Since there is no arguing with OSI, Kirby stomps away, dragging the empty cooler behind. He hurls back, “Even if I actually had any shit, I wouldn’t waste it on you losers.”

The moon is setting behind the cliffs above, making a pointy crown from the zigzag of peaks at the top; the fire has burned down to embers, and the night has grown darker. A general agreement passes through the group that it’s time to leave. They gather their things and follow Kirby up the winding path.

“Luz,” Jake asks, “you ready?”

I pick up my shoulder bag from the sand and we trail behind the others.

Kirby spiked the Cuervo. Kirby spiked the Cuervo.
I repeat the words like a chant to ward off evil spirits. Except that the spirits aren’t evil. They can’t be. I asked Codie for a sign and she sent a mama sea turtle that saved me from drowning. I don’t want that to be a figment. But the Okinawan girl with an infant crying for help? They had to have been products of whatever evil chemical Kirby snuck into the Cuervo. I wish Codie were here to help me figure out what the hell is going on.

In the dark, I start to wander off the path, and Jake grabs me. “Luz, look out. That’s Devil’s Claw.” He points to the tangle of tough, scrubby vegetation bordering the path. “It’s got thorns like needles that’ll rip your skin to shreds.”

With him still close, almost holding me, I ask, “Jake, did you drink any of the tequila?”

“Yeah. Some.”

“Did you …? See things?”

“Luz, that shit affects everyone differently. Body weight. Mental state. You know, you’ve been through a lot lately.”

Body weight. Mental state. Body weight. Mental state.
Jake is so reasonable. I hope Christy appreciates him. I carefully work the syllables through the snarls in my brain, then, with exaggerated casualness, ask, “So, you really think Kirby spiked the Cuervo?”

“All that shit he was talking about bath salts? He probably did actually get some and was running his perverted idea of a test.”

“But no one else who drank out of the bottle seemed, you know, affected.”

“Like I said, it hits everyone different. Shit, look at you.” He does just that. “Your body mass index is what?”

I shrug.

“Have you even eaten today?”

“I had some yogurt this morning.”
Or was that yesterday morning?

“We should go find you some soba or something when we get back.”

“That would be good.”

Being taken care of, someone looking out for me, is like my Kryptonite; it makes me weak, and I have a sudden, overwhelming desire to tell him about Codie. It seems really important that he know that she has an unnatural passion for Cheetos, sucks limes like they’re Jolly Ranchers, and celebrates her birthday every year by doing her age times three in push-ups. And not girl push-ups either. Real ones. But I don’t say anything, since it would involve using the past tense, and I can’t do that to Codie, because she’s not “was.” She’s “is.” Mostly, though, I want to tell him about seeing that girl in the cave, but I can’t figure out how to arrange the words so they don’t sound either drug-induced or insane. I hate being so pathetic and weak. I ask him logical questions, like how he managed to find me.

“There aren’t that many places you could have disappeared to. I just planned to try them all.”

“Why?”

“Process of elimination.”

“No, why did you come and look for me?”

“Be kind of crappy if I hadn’t.”

Jake moves on ahead. I study him for a moment then follow him to the base of the long, steep trail. The slushy roar of the East China Sea dims as we zigzag higher and higher up the cliff face. The farther we go from the ocean, the less and less sure I become of what I saw. What I think I saw or experienced makes no sense on dry land. By the time we reach the top of the trail, everyone is already pulling out, cutting crazy beams through the dust with their headlights as they rock off the tilting shoulder and turn back onto the road.