House of the Red Fish (10 page)

Grampa Joji was sitting on the front steps deep in thought, keeping the dogs from bothering him with his foot.

Mama sat two steps above him. They weren’t talking, just keeping each other company, I guess. Mama winked at me.

Ojii-chan scowled. He never went for a walk just to go for a walk. There had to be a reason, but he knew keeping the strokes away was the most important reason. He wasn’t that dumb. Sometimes he got dizzy, and sometimes his vision got blurry, but other than that he was as good as he ever was. He was faking, was what I thought. And I was starting to think
maybe Mrs. Davis knew it too—but was staying quiet about it to keep him out of that camp.

I glanced around for Little Bruiser. Nowhere in sight. “Come on, Grampa. This is important.”

“Confonnit.”

But he creaked up and stepped into his muddy rubber boots. I was barefoot, as always.

Mama stood and watched us walk off.

The deep jungle up behind the Wilsons’ house was still wet from that morning’s rain. Grampa’s khaki pants grew dark to the knees. I knew by the way he’d stopped complaining that he was curious about where we were going. Hiking wasn’t something we did together. But he wouldn’t ask questions about what I was up to. He’d rather gag on American milk than give me an ounce of anything over him.

I made sure to stay clear of Keet’s house, not wanting to stir up any curiosity. But once we were deep enough in the jungle, we cut back over that way, forging our own trail. When we hit the mashed-down grassy path the truck had made, we followed it deeper into the shadowy vine-bearded trees.

We hadn’t gone far before we stumbled on what I was looking for.

Grampa scowled at the pile of boat parts. He squatted down to lay his fingers on the long shaft of the tiller, recognition growing on his face.

“From Papa’s boat,” I said.

It took a moment for Ojii-chan to form his question. “How come this stay here?” he finally said, breaking his unspoken rule of never asking me anything.

“Keet Wilson and some guys … they stole it from down by the boat and brought it up in a truck.”

Grampa frowned deeper, still confused.

I squatted down next to him and told him what I was doing, step by step. “I know I can bring it up, Ojii-chan. I’m not sure how, but somehow I’m going to do it.”

Grampa squinted, his eyes slits.

Said nothing.

“Grampa?”

For the first time in all of my life, Grampa Joji, looking straight into my eyes, into my brain, even—for the first time, he grinned at me.

His old stubby gray head bobbed.

“Unnh,” he grunted. “Good, good … maybe you not so dumb as you look, nah?”

I had never received such a compliment from him in my life. A warm swelling in my chest rolled up into my throat.

Grampa tapped the tiller with a hand. “We take this, hide um.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “Me and my friends are kind of worried, though.” I lifted my chin back toward Keet’s house. “He threatened to have me arrested. If we’re not careful he could make big trouble for us, Ojii-chan.”

“Unnh.”

We were silent a moment, both of us thinking.

“Maybe I should just forget it,” I whispered.

Grampa popped my knee with the back of his hand and glared at me.

“Ow!” I said. “What’d you do that for?”

“Kessite akirameruna!”
he spat. “You can say that one time, but no more.”

I studied him, rubbing my knee. “Okay, Ojii-chan. I won’t give up.”

“No worry.”

Uh-oh. Now he had that rascal dancing in his eyes. “Don’t worry? If we get caught, we could—”

Grampa Joji held up a hand. “You got
me
now, boy,” he said. “I going help you.”

Around noon the next day, Sunday, I sat in Billy’s yard with his dog and the key to Sanji’s truck, waiting for the Davises to get home from church.

I rubbed the key between my thumb and finger.
Wa s
this for Sanji’s truck? Or was it was for something else? Maybe the pants weren’t even Sanji’s. But who cared about the pants? It was the truck I couldn’t get out of my mind. In all this time, how could I not have thought about it?

“I’m losing it, Red,” I mumbled, and Red thumped his tail on the grass. I stuck the key into my pocket and scratched his upturned belly.

Minutes later the Davises drove up and parked outside the garage. The black Ford Jake had been working on was still jacked up in there. Mr. and Mrs. Davis waved at me and headed into the house.

I lifted my chin, hello.

Jake went straight into the garage, still in his clean white church shirt. He squatted down to look at the underbelly of the black car.

Billy strolled over, undoing his tie. “What’s up?” he said, stretching his neck to unbutton his collar. He folded his tie and stuck it in his back pocket.

I held up the key.

“Ahh,” he said.

“Want to go take a look and see if it’s still there?”

“Darn right. Hang on. I gotta change.”

A half hour later we were sitting in the back of a half-empty Sunday bus heading for Kewalo Basin. I sat by the window, looking out at the people and cars and buildings that made Honolulu what it was, a busy mixture of everything you could think of—rich, not so rich, clean, dirty, nice, junky, loud, peaceful, generous. I loved this place. Even after it had been beaten up and scarred by war.

The bus headed down Queen Emma Street and passed the Pacific Club, just after a row of run-down shacks that some people had to call home. I gazed at the club as we drove by. Monkeypod trees spread out over a parking lot full of expensive cars in front of the low stucco building where Honolulu’s rich went to eat, play tennis, swim, and do business.

“What you looking at?” Billy said.

“Nothing. Just remembering when Keet was a decent guy.”

“You mean in his last life?”

“His dad belongs to that place,” I said, nodding toward the club. “He took me there once.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, really. It was before you moved here. We were just small kids then, and he invited me to go swimming. It’s something else, that place, how rich people live.” I shook my head, remembering how nice it was. “You can even get food by the pool.”

“Did you know only men can be members?”

“Really?”

“True,” Billy said. “That’s how come my parents never joined. My mom won’t step foot in that place until they change that rule.”

“Huh.”

We rode on in silence, me still thinking about how Keet and I had a good time swimming there. Funny to think how he was once an okay guy. What happened to him? That was the mystery. What changed him, really? Was it really just that I was Japanese, and only that? Somehow I didn’t think so. There had to be more to it than that.

The harbor at Kewalo Basin was hot and quiet.

The sun, now heading out to sea, poured silver onto the light green water. Two old men sat out on the rocks at the mouth of the harbor with fishing poles, looking as sleepy as the boats lounging motionless at their moorings. One tuna boat leaned against the pier’s black tire bumpers. The air smelled like dead fish. “Man, I miss going out on the boat with my dad,” I said, breathing deep.

We headed over to the grove of coconut trees where Sanji had always parked.

And there it was.

It was covered with the dirt, dust, and grime of having sat
for too long in one spot. Its tires were pancaked out on the bottoms, but some air was left in them. The truck itself was kind of boxy looking, with wood sides around the bed, like a fence. Seeing it hit me like a slap in the face: one sunny day a year and a half ago Sanji had jumped out, thumped the door shut, and dropped that key into his pocket. That last day.

We stood staring at the abandoned truck.

Instantly, the memory of the stinky fish smell in the cab rushed back, the smell I hated but now would give anything to have back, just to sit in that cab with Sanji and Papa like in the before time.

“When Sanji parked it here he had no idea what was coming,” Billy said.

“No.”

I shook my head and looked across the harbor toward the pier. I didn’t want to picture Sanji and Papa getting shot one more time.

“I wonder why nobody came and got it,” Billy said.

“Good question.”

“Got that key?”

I pulled it out and gave it to him. We went over and sat in the truck, Billy in the driver’s seat. He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. “Dead as a rock,” he said. “But this is the key, all right. Fits perfect.”

We sat.

I started to sweat in the stuffy cab, flies buzzing in and out of the windows. I tried to open the glove box. It was rusted shut. Sanji was proud of his truck, and so lucky to have it. “You think we should go tell his wife about this?”

“Don’t you think she already knows?”

“Well, maybe she doesn’t know what to do with it.”

“That could be.”

“Let’s stop by her place,” I said. “It’s only a little bit out of the way.”

“She knows,” Billy said.

“Yeah, but just to be sure.”

“Fine.”

We walked downtown, three or four miles away. Found the alley where Sanji’s wife and daughter lived with Reiko’s mother. Mama knew Reiko but hadn’t visited in a long time. Maybe she should, I thought. Mama was stuck up in Nu’uanu with no Japanese friends to talk to.

The street was still as grimy as I remembered it, and clothes hung out of every window just like the last time me and Billy had gone there, right after Sanji was killed. We climbed the rickety wooden stairs.

“You knock,” Billy said. “I’ll stand behind you.”

“Good idea.”

Haoles made some people nervous, especially those who rarely talked to them, like Reiko and her mother. But they’d met Billy before.

I knocked and Mari opened the door, now a good two inches taller than the last time I’d seen her. She was about as tall as Kimi, up to my chest. Black hair cut short, and dimples in her cheeks.

She recognized Billy and brightened. Forget about me, she beamed straight in on Billy. On our one visit he’d given her the brand-new binoculars he’d just gotten for Christmas.

“Mama!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Reiko appeared behind her in shorts and an old shirt of
Sanji’s that I recognized. Her hand flew to her hair, patting it down like Mama always did when somebody showed up unexpected. She was barefoot. “Oh, Tomikazu, how are you? And Billy, right? Long time no see, long time.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Billy said.

Reiko opened the door wider. “Come inside. Please.”

The place was just as before, dark and crammed with odd pieces of furniture. I sat on one end of the couch. Reiko sat on the other. Mari stood next to Billy, who didn’t know what to do, so he just stood with his hands clasped in front of him like you would at a funeral.

“How is your family?” Reiko asked.

“We’re doing all right,” I said. “My grampa came home.”

Reiko cocked her head. “Came home? How can that be? I thought they arrested him.”

“They did, but he’s home now. He was at a camp on Kauai, and he had a stroke, so they brought him to Queen’s Hospital. Billy’s parents …”

I stopped, feeling the emotion rise in my chest.

Billy studied the floor.

“This is amazing,” Reiko whispered.

“Yes.”

Silence.

“There’s more,” I said. “I mean more that’s amazing.” I pulled the key out of my pocket and polished it with my thumb. Stared at it. Then handed it to her. “This is the key to Sanji’s truck. I mean … well, I guess it’s your truck now.”

The key lay flat in Reiko’s open palm. She looked up at me, her eyes beginning to swell with tears.

“I … the truck,” she said, wiping tears with the back of her wrist. “I tried to sell it, but who can afford such a luxury these days? You can’t even get the gas to put in it? I didn’t know what to do with it, so …”

She fell silent, staring at the silver key in her hand.

Billy glanced at Mari, who smiled at him. He smiled back, then looked at his feet.

I rubbed my chin. “Maybe we can—”

I stopped to let the thought form.

Yeah, we could do it. “Listen, maybe me and Billy can fix it up and try to sell it for you,” I said. “You could prob’ly use the money, right?”

Billy looked up.

“Maybe we could,” I said.

Billy snapped his fingers. “Jake!” He looked at Reiko. “My brother could get it going again, absolutely. Then we could put an ad in the paper and—”

“What did you want for it when you tried to sell it?” I said, the idea now leaping in my mind.

“I don’t know, fifty dollars? Whatever I could get.”

Billy scrunched up his face, thinking. “Sounds low,” he said. “But Jake would know.”

We waited a moment longer; then I got up. “We need to get back home soon. So if it’s okay with you, can we work on trying to sell it for you? Better than letting it rust and fall apart.”

“You boys sell it,” she said, grabbing my hand and pressing the key into my palm. “Keep the money. Sanji loved your father, Tomi. He would want you to have it.”

We looked at each other, her eyes smiling with the memory of her good husband. She squeezed my hand shut, then let go.