Above the East China Sea: A Novel (27 page)

I run through the list of my latest Quasis. I really wish that one of them was an actual friend. Someone who’d cover for me if I showed up at their door with an MP, acting like I was staying with their family. But
I don’t even know where any of them lives. Except for one. “Uh, yeah, not a problem. I’m staying with the Furusatos.”

“They on base?”

“Of course. That’s regs, right?”

“What’s the address?”

“Over by the golf course.”

“I need an address, Luz.”

“Yeah, it’s something-something.… Shit, I can’t remember the name of the street.”

Boone shakes his head, starts the engine. “Give me directions.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Fortunately, when we get to the Furusatos’ house, Jake is cool, saying in a casual, unsurprised way, “Hey, Luz.”

I start talking then. Fast. “Yeah, Jake, hey, hi, here I am. Again. As usual. Because I’m staying with you while my mom is TDY, since she’d never leave an underage dependent unsupervised in base housing.”

Jake doesn’t miss a beat. “Which is why you’ve been staying with me. Us. My whole family, including my parents.”

Boone takes a minute to size up the situation. He glances around at Jake’s house. It’s nice. Not just officer nice. Civilian nice. Walls a nonreg color, shelves filled with the ultimate weight-allowance buster—books—stuff hanging everywhere: paintings, photos. So many nail holes drilled into the concrete walls.

Boone puts on his official voice, asks, “Might I have a word with your father?”

“Yes, sir, no problem, sir. If you’re really sure that’s what you want. I’m just saying that because my dad, Colonel Furusato, has a predawn briefing and he might not be too happy about being woken up, sir.”

I’m surprised by what a convincing liar Jake is and almost believe myself that his father is an officer giving predawn briefings instead of a glorified lawn boy in the civil service. It’s lucky that it’s too dark
outside to see that there’s no plate with a name and a rank on Jake’s house. “But it’s your choice, Airman …” Jake carefully reads off the name tape. “Boone.”

Boone nervously crimps the insignia on his black beret between his palm and fingers so that the screaming eagle is all erect, as he weighs the joys of fucking with me against the dangers of annoying an officer. Before the opportunity for Boone to call Jake’s bluff even arises, I step through the door and stand next to Jake like we’re a fifties couple and Boone is the dinner guest who has overstayed his welcome and we’re trying to ease him on his way.

“Okay, then, Boone, I guess we’re cool here. We should wrap this up. Don’t want to wake the colonel.”

“Yeah,” Jake agrees, “he’s kind of hard-core, know what I’m sayin’?”

Boone blinks, furrows his brow.

I wave nightie-night, call out, “Thanks for the ride,” as I gently close the door.

Jake and I huddle by the door until we hear the car pull away. I crack the door. When the white cruiser has finally disappeared, I start to step outside. “I should leave. I can get back to my place without anyone seeing me.”

“I don’t think so.” Jake pulls me in and shuts the door. “Not now that you’re officially listed as staying here. If anything happens, my father will get reported, and that would be so not good. You would not believe how far under the radar we have to stay to be able to keep living here.”

“Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else—”

“No worries.”

In the living room, behind Jake, a large cabinet dominates a wall. A pair of doors is open, and sticks of burning incense poking from a holder lacquered scarlet and gold send twines of smoke up, scenting the air with a fragrance both floral and ancient.

“So you went with them,” Jake says with obvious annoyance. “To see the ‘haunted house.’ ”

“I did, but—”

“But what?”

His hostility catches me off balance, and I can’t figure out how or whether to tell him about what I experienced.

Jake takes my silence for shame, and his tone is beyond dismissive
when he says, “Yeah, right. You’re really
Uchinānchu.
Did they even bother telling you about that place?”

“That it was built over a tomb?”

“You knew and you
still
went in?” He shakes his head in something between amazement and disgust. “Wow, you are so not who I thought you were. You’re not even who you were pretending to be, are you?”

“Jake, it’s not like that. I had a reason to go in.”

“What? To check out the freak show? See the superscary Okinawan ghosts?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“So what then? You writing a paper on primitive superstitions of Ryukyuans? An anthropological study of strange funeral rituals?”

“Jake, listen. The reason I went in was …” I stop, tripped up by the sight of the gallery of family photos haloing the cabinet. Lots of cute little girls in kimonos with high obis snugged up under their armpits. Bowlegged grandparents on wooden
getas
leaning on canes. Couples on their wedding days, husbands standing stiffly beside brides made up like geishas with powder-white skin and cherry-red rosebud mouths. Some of the black-and-whites are so old that the subjects have the rigid, unblinking look of people photographed with flash powder who had been ordered not to move. How do I explode the mess of my family, my life, my possibly deranged imaginings, in front of them?

When I don’t speak, Jake shrugs, says, “Yeah? Pretty much what I thought.” He points down the hall. “I think there’s clean sheets on the bed in the guest room. See you in the morning.” Walking away, he tosses over his shoulder, “Or not.”

Just before he closes the door of his bedroom behind himself, I call out, my voice louder and tighter than I expected, “I went in because they told me you can communicate with the dead there. I went in to try to make contact with my sister. I may be going crazy, but I’ve been getting signs that I’m supposed to do something. Except I don’t know what. I don’t know what a
yuta
is, but I think I’m supposed to go to one. And I …” I stop because I feel a warm gush of tears rising in my chest. I stomp them down so hard that I sound almost hostile when I say, “I need your help.”

Jake doesn’t turn around, and for a moment I’m convinced he won’t. That he’ll shut the door on me and my psychotic rambling. He doesn’t even face me when he says, “Maybe I’ll help you, but there are some things you have to understand first.”

“I know, Jake. There’s so much I have to understand.”

He comes to me then, gets right in my face. “First off, this isn’t any folkloric bullshit or cultural awareness field trip. This is Okinawa. This is how it is: We live with the dead and the dead live with us. It’s not spooky or creepy or woo-woo; it’s just how it is. Got that?”

“Yes.”

He studies me. “How do I know you won’t be standing back, taking notes, judging?”

“Because if I don’t figure out what Codie wants me to do, if I have to live the rest of my life completely alone, I’ll kill myself.”

Jake nods, and though he doesn’t say anything, I know he understands more than I have any right to expect him to. I want to tell him the whole truth—that I saw a dead girl in the cave and she needs me to save her and her baby—but I can’t get the words out. That part is so crazy that it will make him miss the real point: Codie. Codie is always the point.

Jake leads me to the back door, slides it open, and we stand for a moment with the air-conditioned inside air rushing past us. In the living room a clock bongs out. Jake says, “Midnight. Happy Nakanuhi.”

“Come again?”

“Second day of Obon. Starts right”—the clock chimes a final time—“now.” He steps out the door, stops. “Okay, I’m going to show you something that no other base kid has ever seen. But if you ever tell anyone about it, you’ll wreck a lot of lives.”

He doesn’t wait for me to promise that I won’t ever say a word, just stalks off across the course, which the streetlights shining on the freshly watered grass has turned into a lake of silver.

I follow him into it.

TWENTY-SIX

“Eight small villages once existed where Kadena is now,” Jake says as he spins numbers into the lock on the gate of the Deigo Tree Golf
Course. A sign on the gate informs members, “Course closed in observance of Obon.” An illuminated display next to the fence shows photos of various holes taken in the early summer, when the trees were in full bloom. They’re coral trees like the ones shading Codie’s grave. A small plaque says that on Okinawa they’re called
deigo
trees, and that the red blossoms were named the prefectural flower in honor of the blood that was shed during the Battle of Okinawa.

Jake opens the gate, we step in, and he locks it behind us. As we walk through the dark, empty course with its perfect swells and paths, it’s like being in Disneyland after hours. It’s the perfect place for a quick hookup, and for a split second I wonder whether that’s where we’re headed after all. But the determined way Jake strides forward eliminates that possibility.

As we go farther in, away from the lights, it grows dark and all I can hear are the sounds of distant air conditioners cycling on and off, frogs croaking, birds singing lonely songs, and the rustle of a breeze swirling around in the high branches of tall trees. It takes no effort for me to imagine that this was once the site of a peaceful, rural village. I try to imagine what secret could possibly be hidden here. Jake leads me off the fairway into a heavily wooded area. Signs warn golfers,
DANGER: SNAKES. REMAIN ON FAIRWAY
.

I stop. “Jake?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got antivenin at the house. Most likely you won’t die before I can run back and get it.”

“ ‘Most likely’?”

“I’m messing with you. There aren’t any snakes. Come on. We’re almost there.”

Once we turn off the fairway, it is so dark that I have to hold on to the back of Jake’s shirt to follow him. The trail ends at a large concrete platform surrounded by a high fence with razor wire at the top. A sign on the gate has “Danger” and “High Voltage” written in Japanese characters, English, and Spanish, and the icon of a lightning bolt stabbing a guy in the chest as he falls backward. Inexplicably, the fragrance of jasmine and sandalwood incense perfumes the air. Jake pulls the unlocked gate open and gestures for me to go in.