House of the Red Fish (23 page)

All you could do was keep on trying.

Calvin followed me into the alley behind Tattoos by Fumi. “Ho, man, this place is wild! Where all theses military guys came from?”

“Pearl Harbor, Schofield, Hickam, all over.”

“Hoo, mama.”

“My friend Mose doesn’t like them, but they aren’t so bad.”

“How come he don’t like them?”

“Some army guys messed around with his girl cousin. There was a fight.”

“Ahh.”

Trash spilled from bins behind every back door in the alley, the road black with grime. A sailor was sleeping, leaning up against the wall, his white uniform all roughed up. Calvin studied him, frowning.

Fumi’s back door was unlocked.

We eased it open and went in. I could see her through the bamboo curtain, working on a sailor.

The compressor sat covered by a canvas tarp. I lifted the edge to show Calvin. “This is what we came for.”

He whistled, low. “You know how to work it?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Me and Billy can figure it out.”

Through the bamboo curtain and out the hazy front window, you could see the long line of patient men in white and tan waiting for Fumi. By the samples she’d tacked to the walls it was easy to see that she had great artistic ability and could probably tattoo anything you wanted on your arm, or your chest, or wherever you wanted it. I prayed Ojii-chan would never go for one of them. He would look like a fool.

Out in the shop Fumi chatted with the guy she was working on, tattooing REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR on his shoulder.

Yeah. Remember.

Lot of guys wanted that one.

The sailor, a haole not much older than Calvin, saw us watching. “Looks like it hurts, but it don’t.”

Fumi stopped and looked behind her. “Ah,” she said to us. “Come watch. I only be a minute.”

Me and Calvin crept out into the shop but stayed back. It was amazing, the ink being shot by needle into the guy’s white skin to the low hum of the tattoo machinery. I winced. No way I could ever do that.

“Look his other tattoo,” Calvin whispered.

On the sailor’s forearm was a heart with a scrolling banner running across it with the name ELIZABETH inside it.

“He must really like Elizabeth to put it on his arm where he can never take it off,” I whispered.

“Crazy,” Calvin whispered back. “What if he gets in a fight wit’ her and they break up?”

“Every new girl going be angry every time they see it.”

Calvin humphed. “He going spen’ his whole life looking around for girls name Elizabet’. That’s all he can do now— go out wit’ Elizabet’s.”

“He wasn’t thinking straight.”

“None of these guys thinking straight, nowadays. Gotta weigh you down, ah?” He shook his head. “This war.”

“My friend Herbie Okubo’s brother is in the army,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Somewhere in Europe, Herbie said.”

“Poor buggah. I hope he come back alive.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Where was Ojii-chan? He’d already left the house when I got up. I thought he’d come here.

“Okay, solja boy,” Fumi said, wiping the sailor’s arm with a clean cloth dampened with alcohol. “Whatchoo t’ink?”

The sailor got up and aimed his shoulder at Fumi’s brightly lit mirror. “Now, there’s a work of art for you.” He paid Fumi and tipped her an extra two dollars, then showed off his new tattoo to the guys in line behind him on his way out into the sunlight.

The next guy, army, sat in the chair.

“Hold on, solja boy,” Fumi said. “I’ll be right back.

“Who’s this?” she said, eyeing Calvin.

“Friend of mine, Calvin. He’s from Kahuku.”

“Ah, good, nice to meet you, Calvin.”

Calvin ducked his head.

Just then a girl squeezed through the line of guys crowding into the shop. A silver clip held her long hair back on one side. She looked to be about my age and seemed way out of place in Fumi’s tattoo shop.

She smiled when she saw me.

I blinked and looked away.

“Aunty,” she said to Fumi. “Mama said to meet her at Rosie’s for lunch.”

“Good, good,” Fumi said. “Save me a seat.”

The girl glanced our way.

“These boys are Tomi and Calvin,” Fumi said. “Friends of mine.”

The girl smiled again, then pushed her way back through the crowd of guys. “See you at Rosie’s.”

She vanished.

Ho, I thought. Who was that?

“Suzy,” Fumi said as if reading my mind. “My niece.”

Calvin nudged me and wagged his eyebrows.

I glanced away. “Kind of hot in here,” I said.

Fumi ushered us into the dimly lit back room. She took the tarp off the compressor. “You brought something for move this machine?”

“We got a wagon.”

“Good, because heavy, this. That wagon can fit through the door?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Too wide.”

“Hmmm …”

“No problem,” Calvin said. “I carry um out.”

Both Fumi and I gaped as Calvin picked up the compressor like it was a bag of rice he was taking out of the grocery store for somebody’s grandma.

He grinned. “You like open the door?”

“Yeah-yeah,” I said, and jumped to whap it open. “Thank you, Fumi, thank you.”

She waved me off. “Good luck with that.”

By the time we’d hauled the compressor all the way back to the Ala Wai Canal, Billy and Ben had the two pontoons out on the dirt, unfolded and ready to be inflated. When they were blown up they would look like rubber lifeboats. Along with each pontoon came a long hot dog–shaped tube that you were supposed to inflate and put in the middle of the pontoon for support.

It was late afternoon now, and Mose and Rico had finally showed up. “Glad you could make it,” I said. “You two sleep in today?”

“We had chores,” Mose said.

“You missed out on getting these beasts down here,” I said.

“That’s why we had chores,” Rico said. “You got gas for that compressor?”

Dang, I thought. I hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t know.” I found a small stick and went over and stuck it in the tank.

“Almost empty,” I said.

“Now what we going do?” Rico said.

“I can get a gallon or two,” Billy said. “At home.”

We stood saying nothing. Going all the way back home would use up all the time we had left in this day.

Calvin checked the sky, thinking the same thing. “I guess we go home, come back tomorrow. We staying wit’ Uncle again.”

“Yeah, good,” I said. “But …” I turned toward the compressor and pontoons.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “We can’t just leave them here.”

For a moment I felt crushed. This was a big problem. We couldn’t haul everything back up to Nu’uanu.

“I’ll stay with them,” Rico said. “No problem. Mose will work it out with my moms. I can sleep on top of the pontoons.”

“You’d do that?” I said. “You think it’s safe? What about curfew?”

“Forget curfew. Who going come out here? I’ll be your guard dog, little man. It’s warm. No need nothing, except maybe Mose might bring me some food.”

“Sure, how’s about I bring you a dog bone?”

“I’m not so sure this is safe, Rico,” I said.

“Who going mess with me, ah?” He flexed his muscles and wagged his eyebrows.

We left with the sky turning dim and Rico lying back on one of the pontoons with his hands behind his head. Could not be comfortable, I thought. Like sleeping on a flattened out old shoe.

“Your cousin kind of lolo,” Ben said to Mose as we headed home.

Mose humphed. “True, but we need more crazies just like him.”

“He’s the best,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. “Make that three yeahs! Rico’s got guts.”

It felt strange, dangerous even, leaving Rico down at the canal by himself. First of all, when it got dark he would be breaking martial law and could get in big trouble. But worse was the idea that we had to leave him down there at all. If life was normal, like before Pearl Harbor got bombed, then we could just go home and come back the next day. Nobody would mess with our pontoons.

But we figured nobody would be roaming around at night by the Ala Wai canal. Anyway, even if somebody did come around, Rico and those pontoons would look like a shadowy pile of rubbish.

But maybe the compressor wouldn’t.

I frowned.

“Check it out,” Billy said, nodding toward the Wilsons’ place when we finally got back up on our street. The windows
were blacked out, the sun down fifteen minutes by then. Nothing looked unusual.

“What do you see?” I said.

“Look on the side of the house, just past the tree.”

I squinted into the dusky light, the Wilsons’ yard still as a graveyard. Just beyond the tree the back end of a black car aimed out toward the driveway, parked on the grass. The right-side taillight was busted.

“It’s them,” Ben whispered. “Those punks who passed us when we were taking the pontoons to the canal.”

Calvin studied the car and the Wilsons’ yard, the muscles in his jaw working. “Maybe I go broke the other tail-light.”

“Pfff,” I said, moving on. “Forget it.”

Reluctantly, he followed.

Lucky, Azuki Bean, and the two homeless mutts came trotting down to greet us, Lucky walking sideways as always, her flagpole tail sticking up. “Hey, Ben,” I said. “You like a dog? I gotta find homes for these two. You can have one of them.”

“Ho, yeah,” Ben said, scooping up the smallest one. “Dusty, this dog. Stinks, too. He needs a bath.”

“He’s yours,” I said.

“The old man ain’t going like it,” Calvin said. “You know him.”

“Yeah, but if I tell him I going train it to be one pig dog, then he no mind. You watch. I tell, Daddy, this going be one pig hunter. He going say okay, keep um.”

Calvin humphed. “Your funeral.”

“I going name him Dusty … since he so dirty.”

“You can bring it back if your dad says get rid of it,” I said.

“He won’t.”

Billy, Calvin, and Ben with his new dog hurried through the trees to Billy’s place, Little Bruiser hot on their trail. “Take that goat, too,” I called.

“Hundret bucks, I take um.”

“Hah!” I said, kneeling down by Lucky. “Well, that’s one less mouth to feed.”

The screen door of our house squeaked open. I glanced up to see Ojii-chan gazing down on me. He stood stiff in the fading light, his long-sleeved khaki shirt buttoned to his neck. His head was freshly shaved and shiny.

With slow, deliberate, boastful steps he came down off the porch.

I stood and took a step back. Something was on his mind.

“Come,” he said in Japanese. “Little more light, still yet.”

Not much, I thought. “Where, Ojii-chan?”

He didn’t answer.

I followed him through the weeds into the trees, then into the jungle. He walked fast and steady for an old man who had supposedly suffered as many small strokes as he had. The faker was humming, too, softly singing
“Kimigayo,”
the Japanese national anthem, slow and mournful.

“Where we going, Ojii-chan?”

But he just kept on humming.

We cut through a dense thicket of bamboo and broke out to a patch of yellow ginger. Grampa waved his hand: little bit more.

We stopped in a place so well camouflaged no one could ever know it was there—a dome of bushes, with a tunnel leading into it. Inside was like being in a tent. What was this?

Grampa crabbed his way in and sat cross-legged, nodding for me to do the same.

For a long, uncomfortable moment we sat. He studied me, staring into my eyes, unblinking.

“What, Ojii-chan?” I finally said.

He leaned over and removed some sticks that were lashed together so intricately they blended into the rest of the brambly wall, completely hiding what lay in the small dark cave beyond. He reached in and brought out the black lacquered
butsudan,
the small Japanese altar he kept in memory of his wife, my grandmother, who died long ago in Japan.

“So this is where you hid it,” I said.

Grampa set the
butsudan
between us on the dry dirt. He opened the doors to a photograph of my grandmother and a small dish. He placed a pebble of incense in the dish and struck a match.

We both sat silently, and the sweet-smelling smoke rose like a serpent in the still, secret cavern of sticks in the jungle.