House of the Red Fish (9 page)

He studied us.

“Listen,” he said. “This is important. I’ll teach you about science, math, geography, or law, if you like, because that’s why I’m here. But what I
want
to teach you, more than anything else, is how to be intelligent, alert, aware, and contributing members of the world around you. What I can’t accept is to see any of you wandering aimlessly through life, turning whichever way the wind blows and adding nothing to the good in the world. I want your eyes open and your hearts and minds engaged, does that make sense to you?”

We mumbled that it did.

It made perfect sense. But who got up in the morning, foggy and grumpy, and said,
Open your eyes, engage your brain
?

“Listen,” Mr. Ramos went on. “The most basic thing you can do for yourself is keep yourself informed.” He paused, took a step toward me. “Tomi, do you remember last year, what I said power was all about?”

“Knowledge.”

“Right. Knowledge is power. What does that mean, Rico?”

Rico snapped up. “Huh? Oh … uh … it means if … it means if …”

“It means if you don’t know things, then other people can fool you,” Mose said. “Like you can fool Rico because he don’t know nothing.”

The class laughed, even Mr. Ramos.

Rico eyed Mose, whispering, “You wait.”

Mose wagged his eyebrows.

Margaret, a girl across the aisle from me, said, “Knowledge is power because when you know what’s going on, you have the best chance to make the right choice when you’re faced with a decision.”

Mr. Ramos opened his eyes wide. He pointed to Margaret, nodding.

Margaret sank down into her seat, looking embarrassed. She was usually as quiet as an ant.

“Here,” Mr. Ramos said, picking up his newspaper and walking over to her. He handed her the paper. “Take a
moment to read the lead article, the one about the fighting traditions of the United States. When you’re done, tell us in one sentence what it’s all about.”

Margaret took the paper. She sat straight in her seat.

I tried to sit straighter too, look smarter.

Margaret looked up when she was done. “One sentence?”

“One sentence,” Mr. Ramos said.

“But it says a lot of things.”

“What did it say that was most important to you? What stood out most?”

Margaret thought. “Okay … we fight and keep on fighting, because we have a very important reason to, and that reason is that we love freedom and don’t ever want to lose it.”

Mr. Ramos looked at the rest of us. “You think this is important to know?”

We mumbled yes.

“Why?”

After a moment of fidgeting, Rico said, “So we know our guys not dying for something stupid.”

Mr. Ramos grinned at Rico, then looked at the rest of us. “Read the paper! Now, let’s have your homework—you did do
that,
right?”

I made a vow: I would keep on fighting too. I would fight for Papa’s boat and for my family, because like freedom, they were the most important things in my life.
Gaman.
Keep going.

When I got home after school I found Grampa Joji standing in our yard with his arm on the shoulder of a wrinkled old Japanese lady with hair that stuck out like she forgot to brush it.

Mama and Kimi had to be gone, because if they were home, they’d be standing out here with their mouths hanging open just like I was.

I inched closer, keeping an eye on Little Bruiser, straining at the end of his rope.

“This is Fumi,” Grampa Joji said.

“Fumi?”

“New frien’ I met downtown.”

“You must be Tomi,” she said. “I heard you strong.”

I glanced at Grampa.

“That’s what this old man told me.”

Grampa grunted.

“He said you could pull up a hundret-fifty-pound fish from you daddy’s boat, got a grip like steel.”

“Uh …”

Grampa was … bragging about
me
?

Fumi looked about Grampa’s age, but her eyes sparkled like brand-new. She gave me a very un-Japanese hug, her wild hair smelling sweet, like plumerias.

Grampa Joji and Fumi wandered out toward the chickens.

I stood there gawking. Ojii-chan has a girlfriend?

***

“Where is she now?” Mama asked when she and Kimi came home a little after that.

“They went up by the chickens.”

Mama shook her head. “They gone. We just came from there.”

Kimi held up four eggs, expertly, two in each hand. She set them on the counter by the sink.

“She was old like him, but nicer … way nicer. Her name was Fumi.”

“Fumi? I don’t know any Fumi.”

“She was … different,” I said.

“Like how?”

“Kind of wild looking.”

Mama frowned.

“But she smelled good.”

Mama’s mouth turned up on one side, a half grin. “That old man.”

On Saturday, Billy, me, Mose, and Rico went down to work on the boat. This time we wore shorts and brought the four goggles so we could all go in the water. Rico’s wound had healed up good.

“You think that punk live by you going come back today?” Rico said. “Because if he is, I got something for him.”

“Maybe,” I said. “What you got?”

“This.” He held up a fist. “I going introduce him to the four brothers.”

I chuckled and shook my head.

We removed easy parts from the
Taiyo Maru
and dried them out in the sun. Later, we’d take it all over to the hiding place we’d made in the weeds and trees out near the street. All the stuff we’d removed was hidden there now, with rubbish piled over it to hide the parts even better.

The work was easy so far. But soon we’d have to face getting the hull off the muddy bottom.

“Pfff,” I whispered to myself. “How?”

“I going start dragging this stuff over to the bushes,” Mose said. “Rico, help me, ah?”

“You got it.”

They climbed dripping out of the water.

Billy and I dove down into the bilge. I took out what I found down there—coiled ropes, buckets, a pair of soggy old pants.

Soggy old pants?

Papa’s?

My stomach surged, then tightened. Were they his?

I stood chest deep on the sunken deck of the
Taiyo Maru,
the same deck Papa and Sanji stood on the day they got shot, and while they were getting shot, inside the boat, in the hold, were these pants. They hadn’t moved since that day. I felt my eyes swell and turned away, fighting back the emotion.

“What’d you find?” Billy said, popping up out of the hold with another coil of rope.

“Just … just pants.”

Billy understood instantly. “Sorry,” he whispered.

I checked the pockets, hoping to find something of Papa’s. Anything.

But what I found was a key. I held it up.

“I know what that is,” Billy said, “and those aren’t your dad’s pants, they’re Sanji’s. That’s the key to his truck.”

“His truck?” I said, a new realization forming. “His truck!”

We looked at each other. Memories bloomed in my mind—Sanji’s smiling face; Sanji scrubbing the deck; Sanji looking at the moon through Billy’s binoculars; Sanji pulling up tuna, and joking about me with Papa: “How long you t’ink it going take before this shrimp got any meat on his bones, boss?”

Riding in Sanji’s stinky old truck, him with his elbow out the window, whistling as he drove. I rubbed my palm over my eyes.

“What happened to it?” Billy said.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to shake the emotion. “I wonder … what if … what if it’s still there at the harbor? Under the trees where he always parked it.”

“Somebody had to have come for it,” Billy said. “Like his wife.”

“She doesn’t drive, or at least she didn’t before.”

I squeezed the key into my palm so tight it left ridges in my skin. “We have to go to the harbor.”

Billy nodded. Then shook his head. “It’s got to be gone by now. I mean, that was over a year ago.”

“Hey!” Mose shouted from way over by the trees.

I stuffed the key in my pocket and looked up. “What?”

“Come here. You’ll want to see this.”

Me and Billy swam to shore and dropped the goggles onto the dirt.

Mose stood waist-deep in the weeds of our hiding place,
hands on his hips. Rico crouched down. The hatch cover he and Mose had just dragged over was all that was there. Every part we’d removed before was gone.

“Somebody stole everything,” Mose said. “The tiller, the lead weights, the ropes and buckets … all of it.”

No, no, no! This was a disaster.

“I bet I know who took it,” Billy said.

Mose spat.

Keet Wilson. Had to be.

“Man, he going had it, now,” Rico said.

If Keet took it what could I do? Not one thing. My mother worked for his mother. We lived in a house they owned. If I accused him of stealing, he would make such a stink he’d get Mama fired and we’d get kicked out of our home.

“Call the cops,” Billy said. “Stealing is stealing.”

“No,” I said, “we can’t call anyone.”

Mose groaned. “Come on, Tomi, you can’t just do nothing.”

“We live on his land, Mose! I can’t make trouble.” Those words were so cowardly and so hard to say. But it was the truth. I could not make trouble for my family.

“You joking, right?” Mose said.

I shook my head. “If the Wilsons kicked us off their land, where would we go? Where would Mama find a job?”

Silence.

“Listen,” I said. “First we have to find out
if
he took them. Then, if he did, we can decide what to do about it. We got to think, do this right.”

“Yeah, well, he can’t get me kicked out of my house,” Mose spat.

Billy scowled, his arms crossed. “Now it makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Something my brother said a couple days ago. I didn’t think anything of it, except that Keet Wilson was getting weirder by the day.”

“What did Jake say?”

“Couple things. First he said if Keet messed with us again he was going to go have a little face-to-face with him.”

“Now you talking,” Rico said.

“You told Jake?” I said. “He knows about the boat?”

“Jake’s okay. He’ll keep quiet about it.”

I scowled. “Billy, you got to tell Jake not to mess with Keet, okay? No trouble. Just like I can’t go to the police.”

“Fine. I’ll tell Jake we can handle it ourselves.”

“What else did he say?”

Billy thought. “Well … this one is weird. Late in the afternoon, last Wednesday, Jake was cutting across the Wilsons’ yard over to ours. He heard a truck coming up the driveway, so he turned to look. The truck passed by close enough for him to see Keet inside, not driving, but up front with two other guys. Jake knew the guys from school, and the driver waved at Jake.”

“What’s so weird about that?” I asked.

“Nothing, except that the truck was loaded up with something covered by a tarp. Jake wouldn’t have
thought anything about it, but then they did something strange.”

“What you mean, strange?” Mose said.

“Instead of parking the truck in the driveway, they drove it right over the grass and into the trees, blazing a trail into the jungle.”

“Ojii-chan,” I said when I got home late that afternoon. “Go for a walk with me.” He needed to walk, anyway. Mrs. Davis had stopped by to check up on him. “Remember to get him moving,” she said, “but not too strenuously.” I said, “He’s moving around a lot,” but I didn’t tell her about Fumi.