Ken's War (16 page)

He wrinkled his nose and asked, “Do you
always talk like that?”

“I often speak Japanese.”

“You talk like a schoolbook.”

“Can you teach me to talk the way you
do?”

“There’s nothing to learn about it.”

“I saw what you did.”

“I did lots of things.”

She reached for his wrist and traced her
finger over the white scar where he’d cut himself with Wizard’s
fish knife. He was ashamed. As his dad had mistakenly assumed, she
probably also thought he’d tried to take the chicken-shit way and
commit suicide. He jerked his hand away from hers. Her pity clung
to his wrist like cobwebs.

“Your father is American and doesn’t
understand your act was honorable.”

“Huh?”

He recognized the smile, the smile Maeda,
their former housekeeper, had graced Paderson and him with when she
was embarrassed on their behalf. Wizard came to the door, greeted
Yasuko and invited her to join them for lunch. Ken was disappointed
when she said that she had to go home to eat lunch with her
parents. Wizard struck off for a food stall in the village.

“Please, will you meet me at the
torii
Friday night?” Yasuko asked Ken. “Okie dokie?”

He shrugged. He didn’t know if a guy meeting
an unaccompanied girl at the big red gate was local custom or
Yasuko’s original idea.

Back home, guys discussed the best techniques
to work their fingers under a girl’s sweater to get to first base.
In Japan, you saw a girl’s breasts before you were even introduced
to her and, apparently, you waited till later for her to ask you on
a date. The guys back home would never believe these upside-down
customs. She wasn’t coy or snotty like stateside girls, who for the
most part flustered him, yet he didn’t feel at ease with her. She
unnerved him.

He finally replied to her invitation.
“Dunno.”

“Dunno.” She savored the taste of the elision
he’d taught her.

From high up on the gnarly branch, he watched
Yasuko walk down the path until she was out of view.

He pulled the signed request-for-transfer
form out of his back pocket and shredded the paper. The breeze sent
his dad’s RFT403 sailing across the rice fields.

Wizard, feet propped on the desktop, was
tweezing
tsukemono
from a
bento
box with his
silver-tipped chopsticks. He shoved an unopened box toward Ken.
“For you.”

“Do you think I’ve gone native yet?”

The private’s ears twitched slightly under
his wiry hair. “What’s this?” Wizard asked, pointing to his bowl of
soup.

“Bean-paste soup—
misoshiru.”

“This?”

“Pickled vegetables—
tsukemono.”

“This?”

“Buckwheat noodles—
soba.”

Wizard rested his chopsticks on his
bento
and awarded Ken two thumbs up.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Ken asked.

“In fact I do. Etsu lives in Fukuoka, on the
northwest side of the island.”

“That’s decent.” A buckwheat noodle whipped
his nose as he slurped it up.

The phone rang. Wizard told Ken, “It better
be Kelso with news about those documents your dad wants.
Hello...Why? You made the same promise about Westmoreland’s ‘no
tanks in the jungle’ policy. Today? How many? Are you sure they’re
labeled properly? We don’t have adequate space here All right.” He
turned to Ken and said, “When it rains it pours. Two trucks
delivering crates of spare parts are coming in.” He raked his
fingers through his wild hair and sagged.

“I know how to process incoming inventory,”
Ken said.

Wizard jammed his hands in his pockets and
waited to hear more.

“It’s a cinch. I’ll do the spare parts junk
and you can continue carrying out dad’s orders about the stolen
supplies.”

Wizard shook his head. Ken pulled a binder
down from the cabinet, opened Volume I to the pages with the
post-test questions and the answers he had penciled in. He placed
the open binder on the desk in front of Wizard.

“Shut your mouth,” Ken advised the private,
“or you’ll catch a fly.”

“Who completed the competency test?”

“Well, Neko can’t read so good...” Ken
grinned.

Wizard scrutinized the answers written on the
post-test sheet, glanced up at Ken and checked over the answer key
in another binder. He glanced up and down many more times as if a
spastic puppeteer were yanking his head strings.

Trucks loaded with spare parts rumbled up the
gravel lane, raising clouds. He pressed Ken’s face between his
perspiring palms. “You’re a lifesaver, man! What do I owe you?”

“I owe you. This is my
shin no on
—my
obligation to you, my teacher.”

“I haven’t taught you anything worth
knowing.”

“That’s what you think.”

After the men had delivered the spare parts
to the Quonset hut, Wizard supervised Ken as he logged in part
numbers on the designated forms, and stacked the parts on the
warehouse shelves. Wizard admitted Ken didn’t need his help and
soon found himself frantic in the center of a typhoon of phone
calls.

“Hey, partner,” Wizard said, his hair spikier
than ever, “I have to make a run to Okinawa to help dim-bulb Kelso
find the personnel files Captain Paderson requested.”

“OK, partner.”

“I’ll be back tonight.” Wizard frowned. His
thoughts seemed to trouble him.

“I can survive a few measly hours alone.” But
that didn’t clear Wizard’s uneasy expression. “Dad won’t know
about...” Ken twirled his hand at the papers and parts scattered on
the desk and floor. “He will go ape shit if you don’t get those
papers he needs.”

Wizard rushed out the door.

Hours of unsupervised time gave Ken the
chance to cull certain items from the warehouse shelves, and plunk
them into a duffel bag. A sack of yen-to-be, was how he thought of
the olive drab sack slung over his shoulder. The bag’s contents
jostled and poked his back as he walked past the
torii
where
Yasuko wanted to meet him Friday. When he laid the bag on the
ground, the contents clanked and rattled.

As he was sitting on a stone wall at the
outskirts of the village, he tried not to study the paving stones
that had been stained with a boy’s blood. He waited. They would
come.

A flock of birds swooped up from the pine
branches and sailed into the air, their wings thrumming him into
alertness. Six Japanese boys, all ears and bones, approached. They
weren’t wearing dojo uniforms today. One carried a blue drawstring
sack with outlines of round shapes and stick shapes bulging against
it. As soon as the gang saw him, they ran toward him, talking too
fast for him to pick out any words. The leader made the motions of
throwing things and swinging a club.

“I don’t want to fight,” Ken said. He tried
to say it in Japanese, but he didn’t know enough words to be
understood. The boys made throwing and swinging motions again. Ken
grabbed his duffel bag and jumped down from the wall. The boys
swarmed on him and carried him off by his arms and ankles.

This is it,
he thought.
This is the
part where they beat me to bloody mush with the specially selected
death-rocks and death-sticks from their blue sack. Dad and Wizard
will find my bones picked clean by vultures in the woods.
He
kicked and squirmed and hollered, but couldn’t bust loose from
their rubber band-like grips. The boys carried him away from the
stone wall and to the other side of the temple grounds where they
set him down. They wouldn’t let go of his arms and legs.

“Basebar,” the leader said.

Slowly the pieces came together. They’d
plopped him onto a pitcher’s mound. The boys dumped the contents of
their blue sack at Ken’s feet, and gestured for him to pick a mitt.
After the equipment was divvied up, they took their positions at
the bases and the outfield, and warmed up.

Ken tossed a slow ball. The leader ran to the
mound and demonstrated that Ken should throw fastballs. Which he
did. And those boys, they’d stand poised with intense torque, and
swing with power, meeting the sweet spot, sending the ball into the
subtropical atmosphere. And they’d throw themselves into long
slides, indifferent to the skin they’d left on the baselines. And
they’d run, legs churning like pistons. Ken had never seen anybody
play with such zeal and totality of purpose. Kamikaze baseball, he
dubbed it.

At a signal from the leader, the boys tossed
their mitts, balls and bats into the blue sack. Ken opened his
olive drab duffel and laid out a stapler with staples, a pack of
asphalt shingles, a can of snails marinated in oil, and other
samples of warehouse stock. The setting sun twinkled on the array.
None of the goods bore marks identifying them as U.S. Army
property. He wasn’t an idiot. None of the goods would be of
practical use to soldiers fighting Vietcong. He wasn’t a
traitor.

The leader and Ken discovered, while
negotiating on the first item, a metal cook-pot. That sales
transactions required very little understanding of each other’s
language, up to a point. They flashed numbers at each other with
their fingers, although when they were within striking distance of
a mutually agreeable price, their stubborn natures slowed
progress.

“Come on, this is stainless steel. No rust.
It’s worth more than that,” Ken said.

Takuya responded as if offended. His buddies
copied his annoyance.

“I’m the duck talking to a chicken,” Ken
said. In quick succession he thrust a fist, a peace sign and his
open palm at Takuya.

Takuya’s friends jumped up and down and
shouted, “
Gu, choki, pa!”

“Yeah, rock, scissors, paper.” His scissors
lost to Takuya’s rock, and the pot was sold for less than he’d
hoped. His scissors recouped the loss from Takuya’s paper on the
sale of collapsible cups. They continued like this until Ken sold
all his wares. There was more where that stuff had come from. He
jogged home with the empty duffel bag flapping against his
back.

He sat on the boulder in the bamboo grove
waiting for Sikung Wu to arrive, waiting, hearing night noises give
way to roosters crowing, dogs barking, the village well handle
creaking. After the five-thirty train whistle sounded, he realized
that the chi gung master had been behind him, practicing his forms
for who knew how long. This pissed Ken off. The old troll could
have said, “Zow” or “How” or “Get lost” or something.

Ken bowed and presented a gift to the master.
Sikung was strong. Sikung was fast, and he knew your history and
your secrets without being told. For these reasons, Ken was as on
edge now as he’d been when the Japanese boys had carried him off to
the baseball diamond.

“This is for you,” Ken said, eyes locked on
the ground between them. “I don’t want charity from you. I’ll pay
for my lessons.”

Sikung yanked the package out of his hands
and ripped the fancy box apart, wings of paper floated to the
ground. Sikung held the white martial arts uniform against his body
and seemed pleased with the cut of the new
jifu
.

“There’s something for you in the pocket,”
Ken told him.

Sikung’s eyes sparkled at the wad of money.
He counted the money, licking his thumb to flip each note. The
Chinese man’s display of greed disappointed Ken. He’d thought the
master would raise objections and then, in the end, accept these
worldly gifts with monkish restraint. Ken didn’t want a sneer to
reveal his disappointment, but he could feel his nose crinkling. To
hide his face, he collected the tattered wrapping paper from the
ground and stuffed it in his pocket.

“How long did it take me to count the money?”
Sikung asked.

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Three seconds. It’s never enough. Three
seconds of happiness while I count the money. Then,” snapping his
fingers, “poor me. Humans become discontented. True contentment
doesn’t come from money or possessions. True contentment comes from
here.” He stabbed Ken’s sternum with his finger, knocking him back
a few steps. “Where does a boy come by money of this quantity?”

“It’s my allowance.”

Sikung waited.

“My dad pays me for helping in the
warehouse.”

“You are the youngest civilian employee on
the U.S. Army’s payroll. Is that what you expect me to
believe?”

“Yeah.”

“Do not plant seeds which grow poison fruit,
monkey boy.”

Ken tucked his chin into his collar.

“You are an arrogant, Yankee pipsqueak who
thinks he can buy my time and expertise. Suppose I did deign to
take on a student at this time? Do you think for one moment I’d
accept you?” A pulsating hum in Ken’s head wasn’t loud enough to
drown out Sikung’s words. “You are a liar and a thief. Your motives
are dubious. I know about boys. They dream of becoming heroes, and
they think the one path to glory is fighting and winning. That’s
not the way.”

He didn’t say, “I’m not arrogant.” He didn’t
say, “I’m not a pipsqueak,” or any of the other rebuttals snarling
in his head. He sighed. “What is the way?”

“Breathe in,” Sikung replied flatly.

Ken did.

“Breathe out.”

Ken farted. Loudly. “Sorry.”

“You release excess bodily chi,” Sikung
intoned. He taught Ken how to inhale down into his abdomen, and
harmonize his breathing with the animal-inspired movements he’d
memorized. Sikung, braiding Japanese, English and Mandarin Chinese,
talked in a voice that suggested he’d talked about these concepts
thousands of times. He talked about heavenly chi, bodily chi and
earthly chi, and about remaining soft like water. Rigidity is the
characteristic of death.

To Ken the lesson was riveting, but sort of
jumbled, similar to that Chicago radio station that faded in and
out when his transistor radio picked it up one night in the States.
He’d felt secretive and privileged then, too.