Ken's War (2 page)

“Bye, bye.” The boy wiggled his bent fingers
in a childish wave.

Topker squared his shoulders and continued
briefing Paderson. “In addition to the aforementioned items there
are odd lots and nonperishable foods.”

“When do I get a look at the depot I’m in
charge of?” Captain Paderson asked.

“As soon as the plane arrives. You’ll be
flying to the depot with a shipment of provisions.”

“I hadn’t realized Camp Zama was that large,
sir.”

“Your assignment isn’t on this base.” Topker
handed Paderson a manila folder.

Ken knew better than to tell his dad, in a
ranking officer’s presence, not to move his lips when reading
silently.

“We can’t put all our eggs in one basket,”
the light colonel explained. “You’re in charge of a remote post.
You’ll have staff.”

A low-flying cargo plane, judging by the
timbre of the growling engines, obliterated all other sound. Ken
wanted to hop on that plane right now, fly back home and start
practicing for his driver’s license test. Or he’d be super-nice to
his dad so he’d break down and send him home. Better yet, he’d have
a word, man to man, with the light colonel. He seemed like a nice
enough guy. He’d understand and send Ken home. He was too afraid to
do any of these things. He prayed real hard to God, a God that he
never believed cared what happened to people’s lives. He prayed
that his mom would phone long distance, admit she’d made a big, big
mistake, and order the captain to put him on the next plane off
that god-forsaken island. Send her boy home.

“You report to Major Bellamy,” Topker was
saying, “He’ll brief you today. Twelve-hundred hours. At
location.”

The phone rang. The lieutenant colonel
listened, the lines around his eyes tightened. Topker hung up.

“That was the Bureau of Personnel,” Topker
said. “Paderson, I’m sorry to do this at this time, on your first
day in Japan. I’m obligated to inform you that if any further
incidents transpire like that which occurred Stateside, you’ll be
requested to resign your commission.”

“I’d hoped,” Paderson said, “personnel’s
legendary lethargy would be on my side, just this once.” His dad’s
dispirited laughter was saddening.

“Not in this instance,” Topker said
quietly.

The meaning of what was said hit Ken and
caught in his throat. His dad had been reassigned because of the
fight Ken and his dad’s commanding officer’s snot-nosed boy got
into. One more screw up and his dad was a goner. Could the Army do
that to a man? Hold him responsible for something his kid did? Ken
scootched to the edge of the chair and tried to think of the right
way to ask the light colonel, all polite and everything, who did he
think he was threatening his daddy, but a sergeant appeared in the
doorway.

“Pardon the interruption. Captain Paderson’s
transport to Kyushu Island is ready and waiting, sir.”

“Dad, where’s Kyushu?” Ken pronounced the
word quickly, like a sneeze.

“Between purgatory and hell.”

“Don’t be so grim.” Topker stood, making the
room shrink. “One day soon you’ll learn to love this
archipelago.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“If you change your attitude first, you’ll
discover that living here can be as agreeable as living anywhere
else. It’s not likely to happen the other way around.” The
lieutenant colonel looked pensive and then brightening with an idea
said, “This is for you.” He forced a pouch into Ken’s hands. Inside
the pouch were wads of dried green stuff.

“What are they? Silk worms?”

Topker’s booming laugh competed with a prop
plane’s engine coughing to a start on the runway. “Green tea
leaves. The dried leaves unfurl in warm water and emit a flowery
aroma.”

Obliged to, Ken held the opened pouch under
his nose, inhaled and wondered why adults thought they had to tell
tall tales to get a kid’s attention.

“Don’t wrinkle your nose!” Topker laughed.
“You’ll acquire a taste for green tea, I guarantee it.”

“Yes, sir.” Ken didn’t drop his salute until
they were in the hallway. He had so many questions to ask. He
started with an easy one. “Dad, who was that Jap squirt?”

“Michael is the lieutenant colonel’s
son.”

“He can’t be!”

Paderson shrugged off Ken’s disbelief.

“The lieutenant colonel isn’t a Jap!” He
trotted to keep up with his dad. He looked up to his father’s face
to see if something in his expression held a clue. His father only
stared ahead and kept striding toward the exit. Ken ran ahead of
his dad and turned around.

In a weird gesture that appeared as if he
were tugging a glove off his hand, Paderson tore the gold band off
his finger. He tossed it into a clump of potted palms.

Ken lunged to retrieve the wedding ring.

His father croaked, “Don’t.”

“But you might need it again.”

“And you might need this.” He raised his good
hand threateningly.

Ken retreated into himself and kept quiet
during the flight to Kyushu, where they were to be picked up by
Major Bellamy.

Chapter
Two

~ The Hooch ~

Major Bellamy, Paderson’s new CO, drove the
jeep over the rutted road, jouncing Ken in the back seat. His dad,
sitting in the front seat, held onto his hat. While climbing up the
optimistic slope of his drinking binge during the flight to Japan,
Paderson had told Ken about U.S. Army families stationed overseas
who lived in “big houses, mansions, palaces!” He went on about how
they swam laps in Olympic swimming pools and ordered household
servants to fetch them iced tea and sandwiches with the crust cut
off. They played basketball on regulation-sized courts, played
Ping-Pong and lifted weights in fully equipped recreation rooms
complete with well-stocked wet bars and concession stands. Why, if
Ken wanted to go somewhere, a chauffeur wearing a hat would drive
him there, wait until Ken was finished doing whatever he was doing,
and drive him home.

Bellamy slowed the jeep.

“Are my quarters nearby?” Paderson asked.

“You’re lookin’ at your hooch right there.”
Major Bellamy spat and parked the jeep in the middle of the dirt
road. He was the only man on earth whose whiskers were heavier than
Ken’s dad’s. Wiry hairs furred his forearms and knuckles.

A white house with gray tiles covering its
low sloped roof, that mimicked the slopes of the forested mountains
behind it, was no larger than the combined space of the living room
and dining room of the Padersons’ barracks house back in
Pennsylvania. The west wall, with its two rectangular windows
oriented horizontally low to the ground, was as aloof as a blank
stare.

Bellamy found the key to the only exterior
door of the house. The interior—plain, white, empty but for shadows
and mildew—was as uncommunicative as the exterior. He gave a tour
while remaining in one spot in the middle of what Ken supposed was
where you cooked meals, ate them and watched TV. But there was no
TV. In fact, he stepped outside and checked the roof, no
antenna.

Bellamy pointed to a door with what looked
like waxed paper stretched between the wooden frames. He said,
“Behind that shoji, that’s one bedroom. This shojii opens to the
other bedroom.”

“What’s show-gee?” Ken asked.

“Toilet paper,” Bellamy answered. “These here
doors are made of toilet paper. Each room at six tatamis is large
enough for one futon and your ditty bag.”

The Padersons looked in upon two very small
rooms, the floors covered entirely with straw mats. Apart from bare
light bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling, the mats were the
only furnishing in the so-called bedrooms. When his dad was
irritated, he squeezed his lips together. They were squeezed
together now.

“What’s in here?” Ken pointed to a door.

“You live here,” Bellamy said. “Don’t ask me.
Go look.”

Ken opened the door. A rectangular porcelain
basin with a drain hole at one end had been sunk into the floor.
Oddly, there were ridges like tread marks on both sides of the
basin rim. A cord hung from the low ceiling. He looked expectantly
to his dad for information, but he was as perplexed as Ken.

“Don’t know what that is?” Bellamy asked.

“A sink?” Ken guessed.

“The head. The loo, latrine, shitter, pot,
crapper, privy, can, W.C., thunderbox, throne, john, toilet.”

“Get out! What’s this?” A large square
stainless steel tub with sides that came up to Ken’s first ribs
squatted in the corner.

“Bathtub. Or you can twaddle on down to the
ofuro
in the village.” Bellamy’s eyebrows lifted
suggestively.

“Dad, what’s a furro?”

“Let’s get on with it.” Paderson jerked his
sleeve away from Ken’s tugs. “Show me the warehouse.”

Furro must be a Japanese swear word,
Ken thought.

Bellamy led them down a footpath running
along the top of a dirt bulwark bordering the rice paddy, through a
grove of pines, and onto a shelf of black rock overlooking terraced
rice paddies which shone like hammered silver flecked with green. A
man standing in one of the silver ponds beat a sack against the
corner of a bamboo shack that stood crookedly on a dirt mound. Each
soft whapping sound reached Ken’s ears a delayed moment after the
man had whapped the sack against the hut. From a nearby tree, a
bird took flight, its black wings pumping the air. He marveled at
its slow, spiraling ascension and placed his hopes on that bird.
Hopes that he’d be OK here and would soon be riding in an airplane,
flying off the island, returning to the familiar landscape he
called home.

“I didn’t realize the depot would be this
small.” Pointing to a Quonset hut near the black rock ledge,
Paderson asked Bellamy, “What kind of capacity requirements
planning and lot-sizing techniques do you utilize?”

Bellamy spat.

Paderson went on. “With our troops in
Vietnam, priority control and safety stock levels are crucial. I
brought along implementation procedures for cycle time reduction
and FIFO—”

“Don’t jack me off with that war college
shit. Your task is simple. Receive it. Store it. Ship it. Don’t
complicate things. You got yourself a boondoggle here courtesy of
Uncle Sam.”

Ken could have told Bellamy that his father
didn’t want a boondoggle. Not here.

A man wearing wrinkled, sweat-stained
fatigues, and whose regulation haircut had grown out months, if not
years ago, yelled with mock annoyance. He shooed a flock of
laughing, squawking Japanese children out of the Quonset hut. Like
geese flying in formation, the children fluidly changed course and
veered toward Ken who was too stunned to dodge out of their path.
They clamored over him. Pinched his arms. Tugged at his clothing.
They fingered his hair and shouted incomprehensible syllables that
sounded like “Guy jean! Guy jean!” He raised his arms to repel
them.

The shaggy-haired man in fatigues with
private first class insignias on his shoulders and “Abernathy” on
his nametag shouted more strange syllables, causing the children to
scatter and dissolve into the murky pine grove. Their voices
trailed after them like twinkling lights.

“What’d that man say, Dad?”

“Hell if I know,” Bellamy answered Ken’s
question. “It’s all Greek to me.” He laughed at his own stupid
joke.

“What’s that dirtball doing here?” Captain
Paderson asked, jabbing his thumb toward Abernathy.

PFC Abernathy approached Bellamy and calmly
looked at Paderson and Ken. After a long pause he said, with no
particular emotion, “This isn’t Kansas, Toto.” His face broke into
an easy smile.

Paderson’s disapproving glare snuffed Ken’s
chuckle that escaped like a lonely hiccup.

Directing his question to the wild-haired
man, who in his mind had to go by the nickname Wizard, Ken asked,
“What’s guy jean? Those Jap kids kept saying guy jean and pulled my
hair and stuff.”

“Gaijin
is foreigner. We will be
gaijin regardless of how long we live in the Land of the Rising
Sun.”

“I can’t stand them,” Ken said. “They pulled
my hair.”

“They pulled your hair because it’s red. It
dates back to the days when seafaring Dutch merchants traveled here
and set up a trading post in Nagasaki harbor. Since that time red
hair has been associated in the Japanese mind with the Dutch
propensity to maintain a prophylactic level of insobriety. Red hair
equals drunkenness.” At last a man, who in spite of his ragtag,
non-regulation appearance, could answer your questions. Now if only
Ken could understand it.

The three men walked toward the Quonset
hut.

“You got bombs and guns in there?” Ken wanted
to know. He followed them into the hut.

Inside the Quonset hut were shelves and
wooden crates with USARJ stenciled on them. Paderson, Ken and
Bellamy sidled up and down the narrow aisles. Paderson disapproved
of the slanted shelving system until Bellamy told him that small
innovations like rims on the cantilevered shelves and joints that
flexed, instead of breaking under stress, prevented inventory
damage, and destruction during earthquakes.

Earthquakes?

“Inventory,” Paderson said, and spat, an act
Ken, who’d never seen him spit before except at the sink when
brushing his teeth, concluded was a custom practiced in Japan. Ken
tried to work up saliva, but his mouth was too dry to spit.

The inventory consisted of ten box lots of
cream of tartar, four hundred cans of black olives (with pits),
fifteen doors belonging to the driver’s side of camouflaged jeeps,
and gallons and gallons of isopropyl alcohol, among other equally
uninteresting things.

“The Army’s trash comes home to roost.”
Bellamy looked directly at Paderson and bared his teeth in an
ape-like smile.

“Where’s the staff duty roster, then?”
Paderson asked.