House of the Red Fish (11 page)

“Thank you, really … but I think what he’d want was for you to have it. You and Mari.”

Reiko pulled Mari to her side and hugged her. “Yes. Mari.”

We left; Billy had already figured out the whole thing. “The hardest part will be getting Jake to fix it,” he said. “He’s pretty busy.”

“Maybe we can pay him.”

“Naw, it’s never about money for him. But it should be if he’s serious about saving up for a car. He’ll do it if I have to drag him down there.”

“Right. Like you even could?”

“I got ways.”

“How?”

“Wait and see, bud. Like I said, I got ways.”

“You so full of it.”

Billy grinned and slapped my back.

Friday afternoon six days later, right after I got home from school, Mama came home early from the Wilsons’. She was wearing her white work apron and light blue dress, which Mrs. Wilson bought for her to wear when she cleaned their house. She smelled like bleach. “Come with me,” she said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back door.

“Where’s Kimi?” I asked. I was supposed to watch her after school.

“Charlie’s place, planting seeds. Come.”

“Where we going?”

“Wilson house.”

I jerked my arm away. “No, Mama. I’m not going there.”

She studied me. “I need you, Tomi-kun. I not strong enough.”

“For what?”

“Move a big table and the rug underneath it. I need to clean the floor and you need to beat the rug outside.”

“Get Keet to help you, or his dad.”

Mama grabbed my arm again. “They gone Lanikai. Gone till Sunday. Come. I need you.”

I let her pull me out the door. If she needed my help I would give it to her. But only because the Wilsons weren’t home.

Keet’s old dog, Rufus, came nosing up, then hobbled over to plop down in the shade. We went in the back door, like always.

In the kitchen Mama dropped her key into the pocket on her cleaning apron. Bright copper pots hung from a rectangular bar above the stove. The icebox was five times bigger than the one we had. A newspaper lay on the shiny red counter. “Mama, can we have this?” I said.

“That’s where they leave it if I want it. Come with me.”

I’d take the paper when we were done.

The wood floor felt smooth and solid under my bare feet, not like our floor, which was rough and often dusty. And also saggy, because our whole house was up off the ground. The Wilsons’ house was sitting on concrete, with no space under it. I wondered why, because a house was raised up so the bugs and rats couldn’t get in. But I didn’t see any bugs or rats here.

“This the one,” Mama said, showing me into the dining room. The long table was made of some dark wood, with ten chairs around it. That was strange, because only three people
lived in that house, Keet and his parents. The rug under it was bigger than our whole kitchen.

“You want me to drag
this
rug out and beat it?”

“Use the broom. Hang it over the railing on the porch and hit it until no more dust. Then wipe the dust off the railing after you bring it back.”

“You’re serious?”

“Lift up that end. We move the table over by the window.”

I rolled up the rug and dragged it out to the porch, sweating. Mama filled a metal bucket with soapy water and got down on her hands and knees to wipe the wood floor spotless.

It was easier to bring a fifty-pound tuna up from the bottom of the sea than it was to get that rug up over the railing. Sweat poured into my eyes, the heat sucking water out of me like a bilge pump. I went back into the house to find a broom.

I looked at the long, sleek wood railing and dark wood stairs leading up to the second floor.

And the doors above them.

Keet’s door.

I shouldn’t.

I could hear Mama rubbing out the dirt that probably wasn’t even there. I looked back up the stairs. She’d never know.

The steps were solid. A carpet ran up the middle. Soundless.

I knew which room was Keet’s, because a long time ago I came over to his house a few times. I never got farther than the
front room, but I saw him run up to his bedroom to get things we could play with. His mother never let me go upstairs.

His was the second door. Closed.

The white porcelain doorknob turned without squeaking. I peeked back over the railing, listening for Mama. I probably had three minutes before she started wondering where I was. She knew I didn’t have that broom.

I eased open Keet’s door.

A path of sunlight fell through the window onto twisted sheets crunched down at the foot of the bed. The closet door gaped open. What surprised me the most was what I didn’t see—things. Like in Billy’s room, where he had models and baseball stuff and pictures on the wall. Keet’s room was almost empty. A triangular pennant was tacked to the wall above his bed that read NAVY—yellow letters on a dark blue background.

I crept over to his dresser—a ship in a bottle and two small metal airplanes on top, two drawers half open with clothes bulging out. Above, a mirror glared back at me, one I couldn’t look into, the guilt of being there heavy on my shoulders. A photograph stood just behind the bottled ship. It was of Keet around ten years old, standing between two men. One was his father and the other a navy guy, looked like an officer. Behind them was a battleship at berth. Keet was smiling at the camera. Happy.

I peeked in his closet and found two rifles, one a BB gun, the other a .22, the one he’d shot our family katana with in the jungle. Remembering that made my eyes squint down. There was something else in that closet too, coiled up and hanging on a peg. A woven leather bullwhip. I touched it,
took it off the peg, felt its weight, smelled its sweet new-leather smell.

I put it back.

I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. Even though Mama had said the Wilsons were away for the weekend, my mind screamed:
Get out! You shouldn’t be here.
I headed toward the door.

Then froze.

There was something under Keet’s bed.

My heart seemed to stop.

Burlap!

I knew what it was the second I saw it.

I crept over, squatted down, and pulled it out.

Unfolded the
furoshiki
scarf inside the burlap.

Tiny needles prickled all over my scalp, because there on the floor shining in the sunlight was our family katana, the samurai sword that I had hidden in the jungle.

Keet had found it!

I stood, quickly wrapping it back up, my jaw tight with a rage I’d never felt before, ever. Even Papa would feel that same anger.

Mama had to know.

She was still on her knees scrubbing the floor.

I ran down the stairs and stood in the dining room doorway. She felt me behind her and stopped scrubbing to look back. “What, Tomi-kun?”

I held up the burlap and unwrapped the katana. “I found this in Keet’s room, under his bed.”

Mama pushed herself to her feet, dropping the rag into the bucket of water. “You were in his room?”

“I just wanted to see it.”

She came over and held her hand over the blade but didn’t touch it.

“I hid it in the jungle, Mama, and he found it and took it.” I paused, thinking. “I’m taking it home.”

“No.”

I gaped at her. “No?”

“We will be accused of stealing, Tomi-kun. You must leave it.”

“Stealing? Mama, it’s ours!”

“We need this work, we need our home. If we are accused of stealing we will lose all of it.”

“But
he
stole it, not me.”

“He found it.”

I stared at her, clutching the katana to my chest. I had promised Grampa I would take care of it. Nothing we had was as important as the family katana, the symbol of generations of family strength, and honor.

“Mama—”

“Put it back. We will find another way.”

We stared at each other. Lines I hadn’t noticed before trailed across her forehead. But the look in her eyes told me the real story. Mama wasn’t getting older; she was getting stronger.

And she was right.

I mashed my lips together. Never in all my life was anything so hard as climbing the stairs back to Keet Wilson’s bedroom.

A week later Grampa Joji made me take him down to the boat. It was Saturday, and we could work all day. The katana was still on my mind, but I’d settled with it. I would get it back somehow, sometime. No question.

Billy went over to get Mose and Rico, and they met me and Grampa Joji at the canal. But none of them were sure of how to act with grumpy Grampa around. They glanced sideways at him and stood around saying nothing.

“He won’t bite you,” I whispered.

Mose and Rico put on goggles and grabbed a couple of wrenches, anxious to get in the water. There were a few more things we could remove from the boat. After today we would have only the impossible left.

Grampa squatted on his heels at the edge of the canal.
“Go,” he said to me, nodding toward the boat. “I going think.”

I frowned: You think you can come up with something we didn’t?

Billy and I grabbed goggles and jumped off the rocks.

Grampa picked up a large rock and lifted it, like lifting weights in a gym. Exercising while he thought, the way Mrs. Davis had showed him.

When Grampa and I had found the boat parts in the jungle behind Keet’s house, we decided to leave them exactly where they were. They would be safer there than anywhere else, because Keet wouldn’t steal from his own hiding place. Later, when we were ready, I’d get as many guys as I could and go up there and get them.

But right now I had two huge problems.

One—get the boat up and float it down the canal and over to Kewalo Basin, where we could get it onto land, dry it out, and repair it.

And two—deal with Keet Wilson, and anyone else who believed we were bringing the
Taiyo Maru
up to get it back into action on the side of the enemy.

Grumpy or not, I was glad Grampa Joji had come along. He made me feel stronger, just by believing in what we were doing. With him and all my friends I was feeling pretty good.

“Hey,” I said to Billy after we’d both come up for air. “You ask Jake about fixing up that truck yet?”

“Done deal.”

“He’ll do it?”

“Piece of cake.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What’d you have to do for him?” There was always a catch.

Billy wiped the water from his face and shrugged.

“Come on, tell me.”

“Okay, fine, I said I’d take over his job of taking out the garbage.”

“For how long?”

“We got work to do, let’s go back down.”

“Come on,” I said. “How long?”

“A year.”

“What! That’s the best you could do? Some negotiator.”

Billy laughed. “Small price to pay, son.”

I smiled. “Yeah, you right.”

I looked back toward shore. “Where’s Grampa?”

“Huh,” Billy said. “Maybe he got bored.”

Mose and Rico popped up. “What’s going on?” Rico said. “You two not working today or what?”

“Grampa Joji’s gone.”

We climbed up out of the water. Billy stood dripping, hands on his hips. The small pile of things from inside the boat lay strewn at his feet—two coils of rope, some canned food, three empty buckets, and two soggy blankets. “Looks like we’ve finished the easy part.”

“Now what?” I mumbled.

We stood brooding. I looked around for Grampa, but he was nowhere in sight. Boy, sometimes he drove me crazy.

Rico snapped his fingers. “I know what we need now— muscle. How’s about we try go get that Kaka’ako Frankenstein, the guy Gayle the Whale, the Butcher? Remember him? He could help us pull up this boat.”

“We could get all those guys,” Mose added. His face lit up. “Yeah! They would help us, I know they would.”

Billy snickered, shaking his head. “Won’t work. Even with all those guys, and even more guys, if you could convince them to break their backs for us—the boat is completely full of water, and water is about the heaviest thing you can imagine. It would take about five hundred guys as big as the Butcher to drag this boat up.”

“Hey, ain’t no time to go sissy, haole boy,” Rico said. “You got to believe, ah? You want it, go get it. That’s what Uncle Ramos always saying … right?”