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Authors: Kristina McMorris

BOOK: Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
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38
I
n the doorway of his apartment, Lane scowled at the awaiting welcome. A Nisei man stood in a brown and tan uniform, nightstick in his belt, white
POLICE
band around his arm. As the guy attempted to communicate with Lane’s mother—his Japanese sounded broken—Emma sat on her cot. She sent her Mary Janes a look of boredom, scuffing the leather toes on an inch-wide crack in the floor.
Nothing pointed to an emergency. No FBI raid or arrest. Just another wrist-slapping for his sister.
Still, Lane didn’t need this today. A colicky infant in their barrack had been robbing him of what little sleep he could finagle. And more than tired, he was hungry after a long day of monotonous work.
“What’s she done this time?” he muttered.
The civilian officer looked over. His face, shaped like an eggplant, showed relief at Lane’s arrival.
“Has she been skipping more classes?”
“Afraid that’s only part of our problem.”
Lane shot a glance at his sister, whose shoulders suddenly drooped. Truth be told, he couldn’t blame her for avoiding school here. Lessons were held in a rec building, as short on teachers as they were supplies. But her education had been a major lure to the camp, which meant she sure as heck better show up.
“As I was trying to tell your mother here,” the officer said, gesturing toward the table where she now sat, “it’s about your sister and some kids from San Pedro—a pretty rowdy group, I might add. Seems they’ve all been mess-hall hopping again. Three or four times a meal, according to my reports.”
Lane asked Emma, “Is this true?”
She hesitated, shrugged.
“Emma, for crying out loud. We’ve talked about this. You’re not supposed to eat anywhere but in our block.”
“And I would,” she said, “if ours didn’t taste like doggie doo.” A roll of her eyes made clear just how much her demeanor had soured, and not just tonight. “You know our cook used to be a barber, don’t you? He can’t even make rice the right way.”
Not a bit of her statement rang false, but pressure from his mother’s gaze, along with the policeman’s, called for Lane’s sternness. “You eat the food you’re given or you won’t eat at all. I don’t care if the meals taste like dirt. You’re lucky to have them. Understand?”
“Fine. Then I’ll starve.”
The challenge at first shook him, then pricked him with anger. The loss of control in all parts of his life was enough to drive his fist through their tarpaper wall.
“Is everything all right?” Maddie’s voice entered.
He didn’t turn toward her. This was a private affair, a moment of familial embarrassment. He’d never invited her to see any of this.
“There’s one more thing,” the officer said. “We don’t have a name, but we believe a kid in your sister’s gang is responsible for an incident yesterday. It involved the ladies’ showers in block ten. A couple lizards were tossed into the stall. Caused quite a ruckus.”
The visual of screaming women jumping around in the showers, all to avoid a pair of harmless reptiles, would have struck Lane as comical a few months back. But humor had since escaped him.
“It won’t happen again.” The graveness of his pledge appeased the officer, who traded small bows with Lane’s mother.
“Have a good evening, ma’am,” the guy said to Maddie, and closed the door behind him.
The perfect ending to a perfect day.
Lane stepped toward Emma. “You’re grounded. From now on, Maddie will walk you to and from school. You’ll eat with no one but your family. Other than the showers and bathroom, you don’t leave this barrack.”
Emma stood up, devastated. “But I didn’t have anything to do with the lizards. Cross my heart, I really didn’t.”
From the look on her face and plea in her tone, he believed her. Yet that didn’t matter. With their father under suspicion, it wouldn’t take much to further tarnish the family’s standing. A man’s name, as their mother always said, was no less precious than skin to a tiger. To reestablish their worth, the Moritomos needed to act better than everyone else.
“It was that dummy with the spiky hair,” Emma went on explaining. “When he brought up the idea, I told him not to.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Lane ground out.
“But at least let me tell you—”
“Urusai!”
He’d heard enough.
Hurt sprang into her round face. He’d always listened when she asked, never treated her like a baby.
All that was before.
Gently, Maddie touched his forearm. “Honey, please. She deserves a chance to tell her side.”
Deserve? The word had lost any value. No one in this family deserved to be here, yet here they were.
“Emma doesn’t
deserve
anything. She’s a kid. She needs to do what she’s told.”
“Lane,” she said, “you’re her brother.”
Not her father,
he could hear her thinking.
He felt his chest stretch in defiance. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, our father isn’t exactly around.”
As he spoke, doubts planted deep inside shot up like weeds. Doubts he didn’t even know were there: Why
wasn’t
the man here? Other detainees had been released and rejoined their families at Manzanar. All that their own family received were periodic letters from their father, idle talk censored with black markers or scissors. What words had been cut out? If Nobu Moritomo was innocent, wouldn’t the Justice Department have let him go by now?
Emma dropped hard onto her cot. She snatched her Sarah Mae doll into her arms. “You’re acting so
b
tchie,
” she grumbled at Lane.
Japanesey. That’s what she’d called him, as if the rest of them were actually something else. The only real exception was Maddie, whose very presence made him feel more Japanese than ever.
“I wish Papa were here,” Emma said to her doll, each word a puncture to Lane’s soul. A flood of emotion burst through him.
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Well, Papa’s never coming back, so you’d better get used to me being in charge.”
“Takeshi!”
His mother jumped to her feet. It was her first sign of passion about anything in months.
Emma glared at him, sharp with fear. “That’s a lie. Take it back.”
He opened his mouth to soften the impact, but couldn’t. His declaration, he realized, could very well be the truth.
At his silence, a whimper leaked from Emma’s throat, a heart-wrenching sound. Mother started to reach for her, then pulled back. She gave way for Maddie to sit on the bed and hug the girl to her side.
That used to be Lane’s role. The comforter. Now he was the bad guy. What other significance did he have?
TJ, Dewey ... heck, half the guys from Lane’s old neighborhood were serving in the military. Fighting back, making a difference. And here he was, coloring nets for a living. At sixteen bucks a month, he was a mindless volunteer, a husband pretending to provide. He couldn’t even be intimate with his wife as a real man should.
The thoughts grew smothering. The walls were closing in.
Needing to breathe, he left the room.
Above the mountain range, grayness mottled the October sky. The makings of a daily thunderstorm. Five lines of barbed wire ran parallel to Lane’s path, each connecting wooden posts in the ground. Nearly two feet spanned each opening. Guided by an urge, he angled his walk, edged a bit closer to the perimeter that screamed with a sign.
EVACUEES STAY 10 FT. AWAY FROM FENCE
The closest guard tower sat a good hundred yards away. No older than eighteen, the GI held his rifle in the tedious, clumsy manner of a city kid manning a hoe. Would he actually have the gumption to shoot if a prisoner made a run for it?
“Where are you going?” Maddie demanded, catching up to him. Displeasure burned in her eyes.
“Maddie, please stay out of this.”
“You need to talk to your sister. To tell her you didn’t mean what you said.”
“This is between me and my family, all right?”
She narrowed her eyes. “And I’m not part of your family?”
“That isn’t what I—” Frustration brewed inside, tightening his jaw. “You just don’t understand our culture.”
They stared through a tense pause. Then she took a step back, looking equally stern and hurt. “You’re right. I don’t understand all of it. But more than that, I don’t understand
you.
”
She tramped away, headed for their barrack. A pathetic excuse of a home. If he’d been more truthful in his letters to her, described the real conditions at camp, would she still have been willing to come? To make the sacrifices she had?
Those with Japanese heritage didn’t have a choice of being incarcerated. Maddie did.
Your wife sure must love you,
guys at the factory had told him. Although meant as a compliment, a sign of acceptance, the remark further tipped the scales of his unbalanced marriage. What did he possibly have left to offer her?
A cattle call for supper rang through the desert, launching another meal session for a crowd of ten thousand. Lane wandered away from the growing mass, his appetite lost to a dose of irony: In the confines of but one square mile, he was losing everyone he loved, as well as himself.
39
M
addie had been in line at the post office that morning—at Manzanar half their days were spent in lines—when a white woman extended an invitation. A job at the garment factory. News of Maddie’s tailoring background, she’d explained, had traveled through the grapevine. By their conversation’s end, a startling fact became clear. The woman was an evacuee.
Maddie had seen her before and presumed she belonged to the staff; rather, she was a spouse who refused to be separated from her Nisei husband and their “half-breed” son. And yet, Maddie’s greatest revelation wasn’t the similarity of what had brought her and Elaine to the camp. It was that she and Elaine had the right to stay—or leave—by their own choosing.
Once more, Maddie could tuck in her blouses, free of her deception. Given her blowout with Lane, however, still lingering from days ago, questions formed and gathered. In a bundle of doubt, they lodged on her shoulder.
Was moving here a mistake? Was her staying only making things worse for them all?
To drown out their incessant whispers, Maddie turned to a trusted friend.
At a far side of camp, near the chicken ranch, Maddie found a vacant spot behind a storage shed. A trace of apples and pears from the old orchard rode the autumn breeze, touched with the scent of sage. Distant cheers indicated a scoring run between the Aces and Yogores. Their weekend games always drew a large crowd.
Maddie opened her case on the ground. Her hand slid down the fingerboard, over the length of the strings. A feeling of coming home after a long trip washed over her, an odd sensation of reuniting with something familiar yet, due to time apart, seemingly new.
Since her move to Manzanar, Lane had often inquired about her not playing. She’d blamed the scarcity of privacy. How could she focus on her music with curious eyes staring, ears around every corner? Her goal was to blend—the same goal of the Japanese before the evacuation.
At this, they had failed equally.
Today, though, her desire for order outweighed any concern. Eighth notes, quarter notes, rests, repeats. To Maddie, the best-written pieces gave little room for interpretation. A musician could thereby play the same combo of notes hundreds of years after initial transcription, and still it could sound the same, or at least very close.
Such consistency would soon bring her reprieve, witnessed by the audience of a setting sun. Patches of clouds joined in a quilted stage, stitched by threads of a purple and orange sky. A lovely if unsettling scene. For with the majestic rise of Mt. Williamson to one side, and the desolate low of Death Valley to the other, she felt insignificance in a tangible form.
Too windy for sheet music, she would play by memory.
The Chaconne, for her father.
With rosined bow she began her tuning, and tried not to think about the dust scouring her violin’s varnish. She started with A. The note, as expected, emerged off-key. She twisted the corresponding peg and tested the note again. Repeated adjustments improved the sound, but its vocal cords had changed. Resisting panic, she went on to D, then G and E with open fifths. A garbled tone raked the tunnels of her ears. She shook dust from the F-holes on its wooden body, willing to try anything.
Then the answer hit her: the climate. The dry air and dramatic heat had choked the voice from her precious violin. Was the gift from her father ruined, her only connection to him lost?
In the desert, no amount of cold cream could replenish her parched skin. What did she think would happen to a wooden instrument? The most basic fiddler would have taken precautions.
Maddie folded onto her knees, scorning herself. Moisture filled her eyes as tumbleweeds rolled past. Now thorny withered flowers detached from their roots, they continued aimlessly on their solitary paths.
She stored her violin and bow, ushered her emotions into the velvety coffin. About to close the lid, she glanced at her wedding picture. She studied Lane’s face, then hers, their temples touching. When it came to physicality, the racial differences were obvious—the shape of their eyes, tint of their skin—but she had genuinely believed that beneath all that, they were the same. Always she’d thought of Lane as just another American. Perhaps, in reality, he was an immigrant’s son who
strove
to be American.
And how would he achieve this? By stomping on tradition, by marrying a girl whose heritage and complexion could complete that evolution.
A tear broke free.
“Maybe you were right, after all,” she whispered to the adjacent photo, a military portrait of her brother. She suddenly missed the guidance she’d spent so much time resenting.
“What wrong,
hakujin?
” asked a male voice. Derision in the word
foreigner
made her wary to make eye contact. “You not play for us?”
As she swiped her cheek dry, the guy leered, dressed in all black, a scar through one eyebrow. To his side, another fellow in black spat at the ground; chewing tobacco lumped his cheek.
Maddie knew about them from Lane’s warnings. The Black Dragons were troublemakers whom even the administrators were reluctant to punish. Their fanatical allegiance lay with the Emperor. Now this close to them, she could feel their hatred toward her kind.
She hurried to close the latches on the case.
“We want music. You play,” the scarred one told her. Orochi was his name. How could she forget the namesake of a mythological eight-headed serpent?
Rising, she went to leave, but their firm stances implied a blockade. Her pulse pumped like a captured prey’s. The closest watchtower was out of sight, far from reach. She shouldn’t have come out here alone.
“Really, I’d love to.” She strained for casualness. “But I’m afraid I can’t. It’s broken. From the heat.” She motioned to the sun, unsure how much he understood. “Maybe after it’s fixed, though. Another day.”
“No.” Orochi stepped closer. “Now.”
Every fiber in her body quaked beneath his roving gaze. She squeezed the case to her chest, clutched the handle even tighter. The crowd roared again. Would a guard mistake her screams for cheering?
She produced a smile, stalling for a plan. “Okay. I’ll play for you. But just one song.” She bent over a bit, as if to open her case on her thigh. A vision of being dragged into the shed firmed her resolve. She had to make a break for it.
As Orochi angled his face back, her defenses kicked in. She slammed her case across his jaw, knocking him aside. The second guy grappled for her arms.
“Get away!” she yelled, and caught him in the ear with a shorter swing, then took off running. She’d made it around the corner of the shed when a hand grasped the back of her skirt. Her body flew forward, knees and palms skidding across gravel. Her violin case landed open and out of reach.
Lane,
she thought, her only thought, before a grip closed around her arm, pulling her to her feet. The second guy hadn’t gone down.
“
Bakamono!”
a voice growled, a new voice. “
Nani o yatterunda?”
Not ten yards away, the veteran from her barrack set down a pail of chicken feed and fisted his hands at his sides. His eyes shone with the combative instinct of a warrior. The soft wrinkles of a gardener were nowhere to be found. He said something else in his language, fiercely low and cool. Maddie found herself hypnotized by the controlled power of his voice. Until now, she had never heard him speak.
Orochi arrived from behind the shed. He scowled at the sprinkling of evacuees who had appeared on the scene. The baseball game had ended. He grumbled a word and tapped his lackey, who released Maddie’s arm, and the two strutted off down the street, heads held high.
In an instant, a flock of Nisei women encircled her.
“Are you okay?”
“Did those creeps hurt you?”
“Do you need the police?”
Maddie shook her head, stunned by their concern. “No. It’s not necessary, but ... thank you.” Suddenly remembering her rescuer, she looked over to express her gratitude. Yet he’d drifted into the growing crowd, drawn back into his humble shell.
“Your knee—does it hurt?” one gal asked. “Do you need a bandage?”
Maddie glanced down to find blood surfacing on an ugly scrape. Oddly, she didn’t feel anything but kindness and compassion. “I’m all right,” she assured them, and at that moment, she recalled how it felt to belong.
 
The sting set in soon after. Treatment at the hospital had cleansed Maddie’s wounds, but the long trek to her barrack caused a throbbing in her leg. She refused to rest regardless. She was too anxious to reunite with Lane.
As she pushed toward the net factory, smiles from genial strangers gave her pause. They couldn’t
all
know about the incident. Maybe they had always been this welcoming. Perhaps she’d needed only to raise her eyes and see them.
“Maddie!” She made out Lane’s voice through a cluster of kids. School had just let out for the day and many young girls had gathered tightly around him. “Wait up,” he hollered.
A resonance of urgency told her the news had already reached him. Was that the reason for the children’s overlapping chatter? Good grief. She hoped the version he’d heard hadn’t been exaggerated from gossipy momentum. If anyone could master the art of stretching tales it was kids.
Lane strode away from the group. As he approached, Maddie felt an overwhelming desire for the comfort of his arms.
Surprisingly, his features weren’t taut with concern or anger. Rather, he boasted a wide and wonderful smile. The sight, like seeing the sun after a yearlong winter, blinded her mind against any other thought.
From a high-pitched squeak, she traced the source of his mood. In Lane’s arms lay a puppy with enormous black eyes. Its narrow pink tongue draped to the side as if an inch too long for its mouth. No wonder the children had swarmed around. They were likely missing their own pets they’d been forced to leave behind.
“Who’s this?” Maddie asked him.
“Townspeople have been dropping off strays at the edge of camp. Guys at the factory say this one’s been snooping around for the past week. He’s a little skittish, but I fed him some bread, and now I can’t get rid of him.”
She ran her hand over the length of his white fur, all of it needing a wash and trim. His rib cage displayed a need for more regular meals. “Hiya, sweet stuff,” she said to him. “You hungry for lunch?”
The dog whimpered twice, a presumed yes.
Maddie grinned. “What kind is he?”
“Some kind of terrier, I think.” He massaged behind the animal’s ears, causing the pup to lean into Lane’s chest for more. The sight reminded Maddie why she and TJ had always wanted a pet growing up. Their schedules, packed with sports and music and school, hadn’t allowed the luxury.
“Has anyone given him a name?” she asked.
“Not yet. I thought Emma should do it, since the dog’s going to be hers.”
Maddie could already see the girl’s face beaming from her gift. Reconciliation with her brother would be instantaneous. “Oh, Lane, that’s grand. She’ll absolutely love him.”
“For years she’s talked about wanting one. But Mother didn’t want anything shedding in the house, chewing on the furniture, that kind of thing. Now, though, with the place we’re living in”—he shrugged—“I figured there’s nothing a dog can ruin.”
A refreshing upside of their abode.
“So does this mean Emma’s off restriction?”
“Oh—that’s right,” he said, remembering, making Maddie wish she hadn’t brought up the topic. Then he shook his head. “You know, I think a pet might be just the thing to keep Em out of trouble. Don’t you think?”
Maddie smiled. “Definitely.”
Although Lane’s eyes looked weary and reddened from the wind, his skin rough and speckled with dye, Maddie detected the youthful, carefree man she loved.
“Here,” he said, “why don’t you go give him to Emma.” When he began passing the dog over, Maddie gently refused.
“He’s
your
gift. You should be the one to give it.”

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