House of the Red Fish (17 page)

Other cars drove past us, everyone hurrying home before dark.

I felt Mr. Wilson studying me, felt his heat. In the corner of my eye I could see his belly, almost touching the steering wheel. My first thought was: Keet told him about the
Taiyo Maru.

“I’m having a hard time justifying keeping your family on my property,” he said.

I couldn’t even force myself to look at him. “Yes, sir.”

I waited.

“I heard about the Jap kites you had flying over your house.”

Another car passed.

“They’re not there anymore,” I said.
Your son took them down and ripped them to shreds.

“You can’t do that, boy. I can’t have any enemy symbols and emblems around my place, do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

He tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, both hands gripping it. “The FBI came up to the house the other day. They wanted me to give up my shortwave radio.”

When I didn’t say anything he shoved his briefcase into me. “You hear that?”

I jumped. “Yes, sir.”

“I don’t like to be put in the same boat with enemy aliens, don’t like that at all, I’ll tell you, and if there’s just one more incident, one more symbol, or one more visit from the FBI, military, police, or even a block warden, and that incident has anything to do with you or your family, I’m
cutting you loose, I don’t care how much Mrs. Wilson needs your mother up at the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sky was darkening fast, the street ahead turning vague in the dusky light. Mr. Wilson didn’t know about the boat. Because if he could get this mad about fish streamers, he would …

“You know why they wanted the radio?”

“No, sir.”

“The law, boy. Things have changed for everyone, even the innocent, all because of you Japs. Now you can’t keep a shortwave anywhere that an enemy alien has access to it, you get what I’m saying?”

Mama.

An enemy alien. Right, I thought—she’s sending messages to Hirohito, now—
come bomb us again, was fun that first time.

“You know what I did with that radio?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I sure didn’t give it to them, I’ll tell you that. I took it down to the office so the FBI could relax about your mother getting her hands on it.”

I nodded.

Then got bold.

“Mr. Wilson, you think my mother would really ever even get near that radio, except maybe to dust it off?”

He chuckled. “If she ever did, it would surprise me, and it would surprise her, too, because I’d have her arrested quicker than you could turn the thing on. But that’s not the point. The point is you are all an annoyance and, frankly, a
worry to everyone around here. Who’s to say what the old man is up to? They never should have turned him loose. And you … who’s to say you don’t have something subversive going on? My son says he thinks you’re up to something, but he won’t say what that is. You care to enlighten me?”

I pursed my lips, afraid I would pop something off at him, and no matter how mad I got, I couldn’t do that.

Swallow it. Now.

“I’m sorry about your radio, Mr. Wilson, and you won’t see any more fish symbols while the war is going on, or any other symbols.”

Mr. Wilson kept tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. He took a deep breath, then said, “Listen, I don’t want to have to ask your family to leave. I’m a compassionate man.”

“Yes, sir.”

He put the car in gear but kept his foot on the brake, his eyes looking into the rearview mirror and staying there. I looked back over my shoulder at Grampa Joji coming up the road on his wobbly bicycle.

Mr. Wilson’s eyes squinted down. “You tell him everything I just told you, because I’m as serious as a train wreck about this, you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll tell him, and Mama, too.”

He turned to look me in the eye. I looked back at him, but only for a second. “Good,” he said. “You can get out of my car now.”

One thing was for sure—if Mr. Wilson ever heard about what I was doing with the
Taiyo Maru
he would come down on me like a lightning bolt. And even though he’d warned me to pass on what he’d told me to Grampa and Mama, I was keeping it to myself. Why bring them more worry? I would have to be more careful, that’s all.

Very careful.

Billy, too.

The next day at school I told him about what happened in Mr. Wilson’s car.

“He really said that? Get out of my car?”

“He shoved his briefcase into me too.”

Billy shook his head. “Guy’s a winner.”

“Like son, like father, huh?”

“Looks like it.”

We were silent a moment.

“I was thinking I should forget about the boat and get a job,” I said.

“What!”

“Do more to help out, you know?”

“That’s good, but—you just going to drop the whole
thing
?
Now?
“

I looked away. “No, I—”

“Get that thought out of your head, because you already are helping out. You’re trying to save your dad’s boat, remember? He needs it. I don’t see how much is more important than that.”

He was right. The
Taiyo Maru
was our life. It was all we had.

“Hey, I have some news,” Billy said. “First, I had to tell Dad what we’re trying to do.”

“What!”

“Don’t worry. He’s not going to blab it to Mr. Wilson or anyone else. But listen to this—you remember those pontoons I was talking about?”

I frowned. Mr. Davis knew. That wasn’t good.

“You with me here?” Billy said.

“Yeah. Sorry. What?”

“The pontoons … I learned what the marines use them for. Two things. First, they use them to make temporary bridges. What they do is lash them together and anchor them in the river they want to bridge over. Then they put a steel mesh on top on them, strong enough for tanks to cross.”

“Smart idea.”

“You’re going to like the second thing they do with them, because it shows you how close you are to getting it right.”

“No joke?”

Billy rapped the top of my head with his knuckles. “Seems you might have something in there after all, because the military also uses pontoons to bring up small sunken boats.”

“Ho! Really?”

“Yep. Same idea as yours, with those inner tubes. You just did it backwards—and, as we know, you didn’t have enough tubes.”

“How’d I do it backwards?”

“We did it the hard way. The easy way would have been to put the air in
after
we secured the rubber to the hull.”

“But how?”

“The compressor I told you about. Remember?”

“Yeah, they work underwater?”

“Sure do.”

Ho … you could blow them up underwater. I knew what a compressor was, but how could we ever get one? “So all we need is pontoons and an air compressor?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Billy said. “But don’t cash your chips in yet. Dad might be able to borrow two pontoons, and he thinks that’s all we’d need—two.”

“I’m sorry you told your dad about this, Billy … what if he says something accidentally?”

“ To who?”

“I don’t know, but Mr. Wilson could find out.”

Billy frowned. “You know Dad better than that, Tomi.”

“Yeah, but it could slip out.”

“Not a chance. He’s on your side, remember? Always has been.”

“I know, I know. That’s not what I meant, it’s just—”

“So quit looking depressed. The forces are moving.”

“What about a compressor?”

Billy opened his hands. “Just another challenge, son.”

“I got too many challenges already.”

“Make a man out of you.”

“Better me than you, I guess.”

Billy snickered. “Hey, guess what—Jake got a call on that truck.”

“He did? He sold it?”

“No, but the guy wants to come over and take a look.”

“But it’s still down at the harbor.”

“There you go, another challenge, son. You can do it.”

“Me?”

Billy gave me an easy shove. “Naah, not you. Jake said he’d tow it home. He’s got to get it running first, huh?”

“Right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Pfff.”

I liked going down to Hotel Street a lot better when I wasn’t trying to find Grampa Joji. It always popped my eyes and put a spring in my step, because the place was as alive as centipede legs, antsy and crawling with people. It was right in downtown Honolulu near the harbor and the big boats, and though it was called Hotel Street, it had little to do with hotels, at least not the kind of hotels I’d ever go into. Mostly there were tattoo parlors, laundries, bars, and restaurants, and girls looking good as color calendars. It was where all the military and civilian defense workers went to take a break, have a good time. Men in uniform or loud flowery shirts, some fighting and getting dragged away by MPs and SPs.

I loved that place!

And even though Mose and Rico didn’t like army guys,
they never passed up an opportunity to go to Hotel Street, either. Billy, too.

That Wednesday afternoon, instead of taking the school bus home, the four of us hopped on a city bus and headed downtown. Last night Grampa Joji had asked me to meet him at Fumi’s place. “No can miss um,” he said. “You see plenny soljas line up on the street, you follow um. Take you right there.”

“Ho!” Rico said. “That’s your grampa’s girlfriend’s place?”

TATTOOS BY FUMI, WORLD’S GREATEST BODY ARTIST.

Fumi was a
tattoo
artist? “Ojii-chan, you’ve lost your mind,” I mumbled.

“No,” Rico said, brightening. “He’s finding it.”

“Fumi’s Japanese, right?” Billy said. “I thought all the tattoo guys were Filipino.”

“She’s Japanese. She’s just … unique.”

Billy shook his head. “Like your grampa, huh?”

“ Two of a kind.”

The line into Tattoos by Fumi went around the block. In the window a sign said TATTOOS $15. Sample designs were taped to the glass: REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR, an anchor, eagles in different poses, hearts, and hula girls. We squeezed through the line of guys and put our hands around our eyes to look in the window.

Fumi was working on a navy guy in his white uniform, just finishing up an anchor on his forearm. Above the anchor was REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR. The sailor saw us looking and nodded with a grin.

Fumi wiped his arm with a small towel. She was dwarfed
by the big sailor. The guy checked out his tattoo, then stood up and paid her. He came up to the window and showed us his new piece of art, grinning like a donkey.

“Looks stupit,” Rico whispered.

“What?” Mose said. “The guy or the tattoo?”

“Both.”

Before the guy even got out the door another guy took off his shirt and jumped into the chair.

Somebody was breathing down my neck. I could smell garlic and chicken stink. I turned to look.

Grampa Joji jerked his chin toward the window. “Good, nah?
Anohito wa okane motterukara.
“

Rico scrunched up his face. “What he said?”

“He said Fumi is getting rich.”

“Ho, yeah, no kidding.”

She probably made in a day what Mama made in a month. But then we also got a house out of Mama’s job.

I grabbed Ojii-chan’s arms and checked them for tattoos, wondering if he’d added to her riches. Luckily, his papery flesh was art free. “What’s this all about, Ojii-chan?” I said. “How come you hanging around this kind of place? Not like you, Grampa.”

Mose, Rico, and Billy crowded closer to hear about how a cranky old goat became a Hotel Street playboy.

Grampa scowled. “You like I help you, or what?”

“
Help
me? You want me to get a tattoo?”

He slapped the side of my head.
“Meueno hitoni mukatte nanda sonotaidowa!”
he said. “No talk sassy!”

“
Ow,
what’d you do that for?” I rubbed the sting, just above my left ear.

Mose and Rico stepped back. Billy’s eyes opened wider. They knew Grampa often made snappy remarks to us, but they’d never seen him strike out like that.

“Fumi wa kimae ga iihito nandakara,”
he said. “You no talk bad about her.”

“Okay, Grampa, no problem, I know she’s a kind person, just calm down.”

He glared, then pulled me into Tattoos by Fumi, his steel fingers pinching my elbow.