Under the Blood-Red Sun (13 page)

We watched them go. Silence spread, huge and strange, like the silence in the eye of a hurricane. Little
riffles of thought tried to organize something in my brain.

Grampa sat down on the steps next to his eggs and stared off into the trees. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or dazed or what.

“I … better get going,” Billy finally said. He turned and walked away, looking back once.

Thanks … for not telling
, I wanted to say.

Billy hurried into the trees. I stared until the last hint of him had vanished.

Grampa sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at the ground. I sat down next to him and watched a trail of ants go in and out of a crack in the dry earth.

•   •   •

Just before dark, Charlie came over and told us that the territory had been placed under martial law. Major General Walter C. Short was now the governor of the islands. “And you gotta make the windows black,” Charlie said.

Mama invited him in, but he said he had to get back up to the Davises’ house and help Billy and Jake. “The parents not home yet.… No forget the blackout.… No can have any kind light show through from inside the house.”

Mama thanked him and gave him six of Grampa’s eggs.

“Lucky got water tank your house,” Charlie told me
after Mama had gone back inside. “The radio said they went poison the water supply in the mountains.”

“Really?”

“That’s what they said.”

Charlie left. Mama hung blankets up over the back door and the windows in the kitchen. I found a candle and lit it. Kimi, Grampa, Mama, and I ate a small meal of pickled vegetables and rice, then sat in the hot, airless room, dripping with sweat until we couldn’t take it anymore.

Finally, Mama blew out the candle. We moved into the dark front room and tried to sleep, huddled together on the floor. I got one of Papa’s fishing knives and kept it next to me, in case we were attacked in the middle of the night. Through the screen door, you could see a reddish glow above the trees from the fires that still burned at Pearl Harbor.

I couldn’t sleep.

Could anyone? With the whole island blacked out, it was the blackest of black nights. I nearly stopped breathing when I heard a papery, rustling sound somewhere under the house. Rats, or Lucky … maybe a mongoose. I slid down under my blanket and curled up into a ball.

A little later, the whole island came alive with machine-gun fire and explosions. Somewhere down in the city, or maybe it was in the mountains. Searchlights exploded across the black sky, slicing the clouds like glowing white bayonets. I peeked up and watched from where I lay, the lights framed by the screen door. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes.

Then the lights went out.

The guns stopped.

Kimi cried softly in Mama’s arms. Grampa and I got up and crept out to the porch. I looked around the yard, but couldn’t see anything that shouldn’t have been there. Were Japanese soldiers landing on the beaches? Were they in the hills and working their way down? Were they in reloaded planes heading back, just minutes offshore?

After a while, Grampa and I went inside and lay down on the floor again. Mama didn’t ask us what we’d seen out there. I finally dozed off, but woke sometime later to a muffled, rattling sound … nearby … but not too close … a rattling, like guns … no, not guns … something else.

Grampa was gone.

I got up and felt my way out to the front porch, the old floorboards creaking under me. Outside, the trees surrounded the yard in huge black blobs that swayed in the breeze, leaves hissing. The air was cool. A gunpowdery smell mixed with burning rubber.

The rattling sounded louder on the porch.

Jackhammers … that’s what it sounded like … jackhammers. But in the middle of the night?

“They digging graves,” someone said.

I jumped back.

Grampa stood below me, hidden in the dark blur of the yard.

“Criminy, Grampa!”

He climbed the steps halfway, then sat down slowly, as if he’d just discovered how old he really was. I went down and sat next to him.

“Who’s digging graves?”

“Army mens … up the cemetery … bodies from Paru Haba.”

Bodies? It hadn’t even occurred to me that people had been
killed
down there.

“Lot of bodies, Tomikazu … lot of bodies.”

“Did you go up there and look?”

“Lot of dead peoples.”

Grampa and I sat in the dark without speaking, listening to the jackhammers. After a while we went back inside. Grampa lay down on his mat. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the ceiling.

I woke several times again. Jackhammers. Noises in the yard. Grampa’s rooster, off schedule. The black dead of night made every little fear bigger. I almost couldn’t stand it. Every movement in the trees outside was a Japanese soldier sneaking up to the house.… Every
dut-dut-dut-dut-dut
of the jackhammers at the cemetery brought back the faces of dead people staring out from the magazines at Billy’s house.… Every distant barking dog was a warning that when the sun finally rose we would be looking down the barrels of enemy guns.

Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut
.

I covered my ears.

Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut
.

Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut
.

Messenger Birds

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Open up in there!”
Bam! Bam! Bam!

The screen door rattled like it would fall off. I bolted up with a pounding heart, staring at the dark shadow of a man in the doorframe.

“Whatchoo want?” I heard Grampa say. He was coming out of the kitchen, Mama following him.

“Taro Nakaji … Does he live here?”

Six-thirty. Dark, wet morning. I staggered up as Grampa opened the door. “Please … come inside,” Mama said, bowing in the Japanese way.

“Taro Nakaji,” the man said without coming into the house. He was tall. A khaki uniform showed under his rainslicker. Army. A pistol was strapped to his belt. Two policemen in olive-brown uniforms, also wearing slickers, stood behind him on the porch. One of them was looking
around the yard. A Hawaiian guy. Gray clouds moved in the sky beyond, the wind pushing them toward the sea.

“He fishing,” Mama said.

“Fishing?”

“Three days ago, he went. Come home tomorrow, or next day after that.”

The army man glanced around the front room. “You have a radio?”

Mama shook her head.

Kimi sneaked up and peeked around Mama’s legs.

“You mind if we look around?” the man asked.

“Please,” Mama said. “Look the house … please …”

Grampa stepped back and let them pass. He studied them closely. We waited in the front room while the three men searched the house in less than a minute. When they finished, the army guy went over to Grampa and said, “Someone reported that you kept messenger pigeons.… How long have you been sending messages to the enemy?”

Mama made a small gasping sound, then covered her mouth with her hand. Grampa scowled at the man.

“They’re not messenger birds,” I said. “They’re racing pigeons, and some other kinds.”

“Shhh, Tomi,” Mama said. “No talk like that to this man.”

The army man glared at me, like he was trying to keep what I looked like in his mind. I thought he was going to slug me. I looked at the floor.

The local guy came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, son. We’re just doing what we have to
do. If there are enemy agents around here, we have to find them.… Do you understand that?”

“Yes … I do.”

“Good. So can you show us the pigeons?”

I nodded, still looking at the floor.

Grampa and I led them out into the yard. A fine light rain was falling. Lucky barked at the men and Grampa shushed her. Mama and Kimi watched from the porch.

The army man stopped at the wire clothesline and nodded to one of the policemen. Mama watched him cut the wire and loop it around his hand.

What was going
on?

“Let’s go,” the army man said, waiting for me and Grampa.

We headed into the trees. The cold, muddy path pressed up between my toes. The air smelled clean again. No gunpowder. And the jackhammers from last night had stopped. When we got to the edge of the field, I pointed with my chin to the lofts. The army man glanced around the field, then strode over to the pigeons with the rest of us following silently.

He studied the birds, his face blank. His eyes never even blinked. Spooky. A sudden gust of wind and rain rushed into the field. Little rivers ran down the guy’s slicker. Me and Grampa were getting soaked.

“Destroy them,” the man said to Grampa.

It took a couple of seconds to hit me.

“
What
!” I said.

The local guy grabbed my arm. “Hold on, son. They have to go.”

“But
why?
They’re just racers.… No one sends any
messages on them.” The policeman’s grip was rock tight, now holding both of my arms.

“I’m sorry,” the army man said. “We’re at war.”

Silence.

“Go on,” he ordered Grampa. “Kill them.”

The policeman let me go and I ran over to Grampa. “No,
ojii-chan
… no …” Grampa put his hand on my neck. He pulled me close to him. He’d never done that before. In that moment I knew the birds would die.

“Grampa …?”

“Go back house,” he said. “Get knife.… Get two … sharp ones. Go!” He shoved me away.

I ran back through the trees.
Destroy … Kill …
Why? What did the pigeons have to do with anything?

I leaped up the steps to the porch and burst into the front room. “Mama! Mama!”

She was in the kitchen with Kimi, cutting an apple.

“I need … I need two sharp knives.” I tried to slow down, remembering too late not to scare Kimi. I took deep breaths, gulped, and swallowed air.

“Fish knife,” Mama said softly. Did she
know
this would happen?

Kimi’s dark eyes were as round as plums.

I took Papa’s two fish-cleaning knives, then ran back outside. The screen door slapped against the house.
Kill
the birds. Why? Who even knew how to put any kind of message on them? And where would they fly to? Japan? Stupid!

The two policemen watched me run toward them, their arms crossed, frowning from under their plastic-covered flat-topped hats. Grampa stood next to them,
looking small, but strong in his stubborn way. My eyes pleaded with him to say something, to tell me they’d changed their minds.

I slowed down and walked up to the army man. I offered him the two knives, handles forward, the oiled blades razor-sharp and dark with age.

“Not me, son. You and the old man.”

“Me?”
I said.

Grampa reached over and took one of the knives. He ran his thumb over the cutting edge, then, without looking at me, pointed the knife to the loft the racers were in. “You get those,” he said. “I get these ones.”

I turned to the policeman, the nice one. He shook his head.

Without a word, Grampa and I reached in and removed the pigeons one by one and silently bled them to death with quick, clean slits across the throat. Blood spurt out over my arms, my shirt, dripped from my hands, landed on my feet. We dropped the fluttering bodies to the grass, one by one. When we were done, we laid them all in a long line on the ground. The blood turned the wet grass a glistening red-brown. A sourness rose from my stomach, swelled at the back of my throat, like gasoline. I could barely see through my flooding eyes.

The memory of the gentle cooing of thirty-five silky-feathered pigeons slowly died away, faded away, bled away … and, finally, in silence, flowed down into the earth forever.

I stood looking down at the silent line of bodies. They never had a chance. They just had to take it.

Grampa reached over and took my knife, then put
both knives on top of one of the lofts. He wiped his hands on his pants and faced the army man. “We are
’merican,”
he said, glaring into the man’s eyes. “We talk Inglish.… We no make trouble.”

I looked at Grampa like it was for the first time in my life. Grampa? Did
you
say that? You who gets your flag out and says
We are Japanese?

His words … exactly like Papa’s. Had they been in him all along? I suddenly felt so proud of that old man.

The army man nodded, then stared down at the bloody grass. After a moment he looked up. “I’m sorry, son …”

He paused, then said, “When your father gets home we will want to talk to him. But then, we’ll probably catch him at the harbor.”

The men left, bending a trail of wet grass toward the trees. Why Papa? What did he do?

“Kuso,”
Grampa whispered, kneeling down by the birds. His hands were red, sticky with blood. I rubbed mine on my bloody shirt. I rubbed and rubbed, but the blood stuck to me. I ripped the shirt off and threw it into the bushes. I never wanted to see it again.

Grampa put his hand on my shoulder. “Come, boy. We take home, put on ice … at least can eat, nah?”

Careful to keep the pigeons out of Kimi’s sight, Grampa and I plucked and washed the birds out behind the water tank. We wrapped them in old rice bags and hid them in the back of Mama’s ice box until Mama and Grampa could spread them among their friends.