House of the Red Fish (26 page)

The guy glared right back. “Looks that way.”

“But this ain’t no football game, ah?”

The big haole smirked. “I thought you lived out by Kahuku.”

“I do.”

“Then how come you’re here with these punks?”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Calvin said. “You talking about my friends. You sure you want to call them punks?”

The big guy put his hands up. “Fine, your
friends,
then. But how come you’re here, man? Wilson said there was some kind of Jap sedition going on down here. That’s why we came.”

“Sedition, huh?”

“Yeah, sedition.”

“You know what that means?” Calvin said.

“Of course. Do you?”

“Sure, it means you might be stupid.” Calvin swung his hand back toward the canal. “See those sunken boats?”

The guy stretched his fat neck to look. “Yeah, I see them.”

“We going bring one up.”

“Why?”

“Belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Hey!” Keet said. “We didn’t come here to have a picnic.”

The big guy put up his hand. “Hang on a minute, Wilson—so, okay, you’re bringing a boat up. What else?”

“Nothing else. Just the boat. Belongs to his dad,” he said, hooking a thumb toward me.

The guy scowled and turned to Keet. “What’s going on?”

“The boat, you fool, the boat! They’re bringing it up so they can use it to take fuel out to the enemy.”

The guy squinted at Keet, probably wondering if he should kill him now or later for calling him a fool. Slowly, he turned back to Calvin. “Is that right?”

Calvin chuckled. “If you believe what he said, then you really are a fool.”

The guy looked again at Keet, then back at Calvin. “Show me the boat.”

“Hey, come on, man,” Keet said. “This is stupid.”

“The boat,” the big guy said.

“Sure,” Calvin said. “Follow me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Keet said. “Get back in line.”

Ho! Big guy
really
didn’t like that. Keet caught his mistake. “I mean … just wait a minute, let me finish this. We can’t let them do this, this … this boat thing … not after what the Japs did to us at Pearl Harbor, and in case you didn’t notice, that’s a Jap boat.”

The big guy glared at Keet for a long moment, peeling
away his skin with razor-blade eyes. Then he turned back to Calvin. “What do you care about this boat, anyway? I thought Hawaiians hated Japs, just like us.”

“That what you thought?”

The guy crossed his arms.

“Huh,” Calvin said. “Well, guess what? Like always, you wen’ sign up with the wrong side.”

The guy shrugged.

“Just so you know before I mess you up,” Calvin went on, “it’s a small fishing sampan, that’s all.” He motioned toward me. “All he going do is fix um up for when his daddy come home. I just want you to know what you going get hurt for. That’s all. We no more need talk.”

The guy thought that over, his eyes slits in the sun.

“Now, just wait a minute,” Keet said, friendly-like, which was smart. “I know we can settle this peacefully. That’s what my dad always says, you know? Try to reason with your opponent. Get him to see things your way. If that fails, well …”

The big guy and Calvin waited.

Keet turned back to me. He wanted
peaceful
like I wanted to take eggs to his house.

Ben, Billy, Mose, and Rico closed in.

Keet smiled, his fake dog tags glinting in the sun. “Listen. I’m going to give you a choice … let’s see … number one, you could, uh, die. Or you could go home … without my rubber boats, of course, because there’s no way anybody’s letting you get that fuel boat back up. You got to know that. Right?”

“It’s a fishing boat.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what you say.”

“That’s what I say.”

Keet shook his head. “My dad says sooner or later with the right kind of … persuasion … every opponent eventually comes around.”

“Well, your daddy’s not here, is he? And I’m not coming around to anything!
Yo u
are.”

Keet fake-frowned. “What does that mean?”

I leaned closer. “It means we going settle this. Right here in front of all these guys.”

Keet’s eyes slipped one way, then the other.

“Not a chance,” he said, still cool. “You think I’m going to give you such an easy way out? Give you a little beating and go away?” He chuckled and glanced back at his army.

Silence.

Keet sobered up. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

“Smart enough.”

“Huh.”

I glared at him.

“Well, I got something that might change your mind.”

He reached up over his shoulder, down behind him, his ice-eyes on mine. Slowly, slowly—he came up with a long blade that gleamed in the sun.

A silver sword.

I gasped, my jaw dropping. “Wha—”

Keet grinned, holding up my family’s katana, the shiny blade pointing to the sky. “You like my toad sticker?”

I stepped back, my heart a hammer in my chest. Something
like whirling dust bobbed in my eyes and hate rushed over me like never before.

“I thought you might recognize this.”

He turned the katana slightly so the sun’s reflection snapped in my eyes and made me squint. The blade was so close I could see where his greasy fingers had smudged the silvery steel, and the small knick the .22 had made when Keet shot it in the jungle. “You—you can’t—”

“Shut up! Now, you listen to me.” He glanced down the line of guys, everyone watching. I stood ready to hit the ground if he swung the blade. That was what he’d brought it for. It would cut deep. I stepped back, sweeping away the sweat dripping into my eyes with the back of my hand.

Keet lowered the blade, angling the point down to the dirt at his feet so that it crossed his body from right to left. Then he raised his foot and rested it on the steel. “I could step on this and break it, easy,” he said. “But even if it’s too strong to break it will bend. Either way it’s ruined.”

“Don’t! That’s—”

“Listen close,” he said. “You’re going to do exactly what I say. Get the picture?”

All eyes were on Keet.

He pushed down on the blade, lightly. “See it bend?”

“You can’t do that!” Billy said. “That sword’s—”

“Shut up!”

Billy shouted, “That sword’s been in his family for hundreds of years!”

I clenched my teeth, ready to lunge, waiting for a break
in his concentration. It had to be timed exactly right. His foot had to be off the blade.

“You know what’s wrong with you, Nakaji?” Keet said. “You’re a coward, afraid to fight. You’ve been like that forever—talk big, but under your skin you’re nothing.”

“You stupit haole,” Rico said, starting toward him.

One of Keet’s guys blocked him. Rico shoved him, but the guy didn’t budge. When Rico tried to go around him, the guy shoved Rico back.

“Wait!” I said. “I can …”

I can what?

“See?” Keet said. “A coward. Only your monkeys stand up for you. And like you, they’re nothing.”

Keet moved his foot off the blade, then put it back, making me sweat.

He gritted his teeth and stepped down, hard.

“No!”

I hammered my fist into his mouth.

He reeled back. The katana fell from his hand. Billy dropped to his knees and grabbed it, then scrambled up, took it behind Ben.

Keet staggered, blinking. He charged me.

I ducked his flailing fists and hammered him just above his eye. He roiled back.

A dog in the dirt! That was me.

He swung again. I ducked, grabbing his arm the way Grampa Joji grabbed mine. I twisted hard and sent him to his knees.

Keet yelped, his face contorted. “Stop, stop!”

I let go.

Keet grabbed his wrist and staggered up. Blood drooled from his fattening lip. “You’re going to die!” He turned to his gang. “Kill him!”

No one moved. Not even Dwight.

He turned back to me, his face mangled with hate. “If you think this is over then you better think again, because when I tell my—” He squeezed his eyes shut and touched his lip. “You and your family are
history
!”

“Go tell your mommy and daddy,” Mose shouted.

Keet held his wrist, glaring. “Find a nice slum to move to, Jap.” He backed away, looking everywhere but at the punks who came with him.

He turned and ran for the street.

“Watch your back!” Rico yelled.

Keet’s gang glanced at each other, then at us, some of them shrugging, some shaking their heads. The big guy Calvin knew headed over to the canal to look down on the
Taiyo Maru.
Slowly, the others followed, tossing down their sticks and bats.

Rico came up and tapped my back. “Yeah, brah! You shamed him.”

It didn’t feel good. But it felt right.

I turned. “Billy—”

“It’s bent but not broken.” He held up the katana. There was a slight bow to it. “We can find someone who can straighten it out. Yo u stopped him just in time. It could have been way worse.”

I took the katana. It was painful to see even the smallest damage. “Thanks.”

“Dad or Charlie will know where to take it.”

The big guy peered into the water. “Which boat?”

“That one,” Calvin said. “It’s just a fishing boat.”

“So what Wilson told us was a lie?”

“Does that boat look dangerous to you?” Calvin said.

“If it is, it’s not going anywhere soon.”

“It’s not an enemy fuel boat.”

“Maybe not.” He glanced back toward the street. No trace of Keet Wilson. “Man, I’d hate to be in his shoes,” he said. “He won’t be able to look anyone in the eye.” He turned to me. “And he ain’t gonna be telling his dad anything.”

I nodded, still so angry it spooked me. It was hard to breathe.

I mashed my lips tight. I’d get the katana fixed.

“I got work to do,” I said, pushing past the big guy Calvin had faced down. I stopped and looked back at him. “You … you want to help?”

He raised his eyebrows, glanced at his friends.

“Tomi,” Billy said, nodding toward the trees.

A jeep was heading our way.

An army jeep, with two MPs in it.

I hid the katana behind my back.

We parted to let the jeep drive up. “What’s going on here?” the driver said. “You got a problem we can help with?”

“No sir,” I said. “No problem.”

The MP glanced at the pontoons. “Is that military property?”

Silence.

The MPs got out of the jeep. They wore khaki U.S. Army uniforms, new bucketlike steel helmets, and black armbands with MP in white.

“We borrowed them from the marines,” Billy said. “My dad got them for us. We’re returning them as soon as we’re …”

The MPs waited for more, but Billy looked down, probably wanting those words back as much as I did. Someone
came up behind me and took the katana. “I hold it for you,” Mose whispered.

“They’re for my father’s boat,” I said, keeping myself from looking back at Mose. “We’re … we’re using the pontoons to bring it up off the bottom so we can take it to dry dock.”

The MPs walked over and looked down on the ten boats. “All of them, or just one?” the MP asked.

“Just that one,” I said, lifting my chin toward the
Taiyo Maru,
rust-colored under the wobbly water.

One MP squatted down, took off his helmet, and held it in his hands. “That’s a big job, son. I see why you got all these boys here.”

“Yessir.”

“Mind if we watch? Not much going on for us today.”

My jaw dropped. Billy and I glanced at each other.

“Sure, watch,” Rico said, breaking through the crowd. “In fact, if you want, you can jump in and help us out.”

The MPs grinned. One said, “Now, why would we want to spoil your fun? How’d these boats get sunk, anyway?”

It was good while it lasted, I thought. Now we’ve had it.

“Storm,” someone said.

Ojii-chan.

I looked back at Grampa Joji straddling his bike with his feet planted in the dirt. Where had he been?

“Who are you?” the MP said, standing, putting his helmet back on.

“My son’s boat,” Grampa said, trying to get his English right, which gave me great relief. We didn’t need those MPs to think about Japan just then.

The MP nodded. “It went down in a storm?”

“Unnh.”

“What about the others?”

“Same-same.”

“What?”

“They all went down the same way,” I said. True.

“That right, old man?”

“Unnh.”

The MP took his helmet off again and set it on the ground, then sat on it as if it were a footstool. “Take a load off, Mike,” he said to the other MP. “This might be the best show we’ll see all week.”

Grampa laid his bike in the dirt. Mose eased over and handed him the katana. If Grampa Joji was shocked to see it, he didn’t show it.

Just as we were starting to drag the pontoons to the canal, someone else showed up—Fumi.

With about twenty-five of her customers. And in the back, even Suzy.

A sailor walking next to Fumi had a half-finished tattoo on his arm. REMEMBER PEAR. Must have jumped out of the chair to come.

“Your grandpa came for us,” Fumi said, striding up. “He said had trouble here.”

“No trouble,” I said. So he went for reinforcements!