Ken's War (13 page)

A bubble burst in Ken’s chest.

Wizard cut twine off the box that was sitting
on his desk. He opened the box, uncovering an object swaddled in
newspaper. The object was an oriental mask. The wood lacquered mask
represented a baldheaded male with earlobes hanging past its jaw.
The tip of its broad nose was chipped.

“Do they have Halloween here?” Ken asked
Wizard.

“This isn’t a Halloween mask.”

Now that he was in Kyushu for the long haul,
Ken couldn’t wait until he turned native and understood these ins
and outs as well as Wizard did. Then he wouldn’t have to
continually be asking questions. “Is it Buddha?”

“It does resemble the Buddha, doesn’t it?
It’s Shishiko, the boy who leads the lion in a Gigaku performance.
It was, in fact, the Koreans returning from the T’ang court who had
brought Chinese masked comedy pantomime to Japan about three
hundred and fifty years ago. I bought this mask in an antique shop
in Nara. The shopkeeper guaranteed it to be eighth century. I’m not
too concerned with its provenance. I enjoy the mask’s expressive
face.”

Ken didn’t give a hoot about that historical
stuff. He wanted to put that mask on.

Wizard removed the mask from its nest of
paper, winked and gingerly lowered it over his head. The hollow
mask, shaped somewhat like a temple bell, covered Wizard’s entire
head, not only his face.

“Amazing transformation, wouldn’t you
say?”

The mask threw Wizard’s voice from an
otherworldly place. Shishiko frolicked around, happy with the way
of the world. The curved brows conveyed delight, the wide smile a
near delirious state, the cheeks a plump naiveté. He pantomimed
picking flowers and smelling them. His stance changed. Shishiko
planted his legs far apart and chopped the air with his arms. The
fat cheeks pushed the eyes up at evil angles. The arched brows and
hungry mouth belonged on the face of a warrior the instant before
eviscerating his enemy. He advanced upon Ken who had involuntarily
stepped back against the file cabinet. Wizard lifted the mask off
his head. His wiry hair was dark and flattened with
perspiration.

“How’d you do that?” Ken asked, breathing
again.

“Do what?”

“It was friendly and then scary. A
little.”

“So much emotion from a piece of old wood.
The mask carver captured a halfway expression that, combined with
the actor’s gestures, conveys many personality traits of the
character. Gigaku masters can communicate complicated plots with
pantomime because the masks are versatile. The actors pump life
into the masks.”

The mask, resting on its bedding of paper,
was sizing up Ken.

Wizard shirt-sleeved sweat off his forehead.
“The audience members also project their own states of mind on the
mask. As with every great art, Gigaku is participatory in the sense
that we respond in unique ways. Try it on.”

The inside of the mask smelled of attic and
tree sap. He could see pretty well straight ahead, but had no
peripheral vision. When he high-stepped spiritedly, the mask
swiveled and threw him into darkness. Ken adjusted the mask so he
could see again.

The phone on the desk rang. Wizard trapped
the receiver between his ear and shoulder, and pawed through file
folders, searching for a document the caller, a soldier of higher
rank judging by the erect back of the private first class, was
asking about. Ken moved steadily and slowly. He swiped the fish
knife off Wizard’s desk and stepped outside to disembowel enemy
warriors.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty. Don’t be scared. It’s
me.” Ken knelt, keeping his spine straight so the mask wouldn’t
wobble, and he diddled Neko’s chin where she liked it. He raised
his arm up in front of him until the eyeholes framed his left
wrist. He slid the blade over the W of blue veins. A crimson trail
rose. He held his wrist low to the ground. He couldn’t see her, but
he felt Neko’s rough tongue lap his blood the way the ghost-cat did
in Maeda’s story.

“What the hell!” His dad’s voice.

The mask slipped, throwing Ken into
blackness. He heard feet pattering and childish tittering. Village
kids had been watching him. His father gripped him under the
armpits and dragged him up to his feet. He wrapped a bandage—his
handkerchief maybe—tightly around Ken’s wrist.

“I didn’t realize he was that depressed!”
Wizard’s voice. “Bring him in here. I have a first aid kit.”

Ken was carried back into the Quonset hut and
laid on the desk. The handkerchief was unwound. Wetness stung his
wrist. Mercurochrome. The bottom edge of the back of the mask dug
into his neck. The eyeholes circumscribed his field of vision down
to a view of a large spider waiting in its web on the ceiling. The
web trembled.

“Why?” His father’s voice was more puzzled
than angry.

“It’s a displacement reaction, sir,” Wizard
said. “Too much has changed for a boy whose young mind has yet to
develop the tools to cope, and whose mother—”

“That’s all, Abernathy.”

“It’s not too deep. He won’t need stitches,”
Wizard said. Ken heard Wizard’s retreating footsteps.

“Ken!” Paderson gripped Ken’s right shoulder.
“Are you trying to get even with me?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I know I don’t look after you as much as I
should. Maybe a kid your age should still be with his mother. If
you want to go home again, you can go, even if my request for
transfer isn’t approved. It’s your only other option.”

“No, Dad, no!” His voice bounced around
inside the mask.

“When there’s a war on...” His dad made funny
noises, as though he was trying to blow his nose. “Maybe Abernathy
is partially right. When people are frightened they do things
they’d never do in normal times, but that’s no excuse for resorting
to drastic measures.”

“Dad, it’s not what you think. I was
only—”

“Your grandparents are gone. Your mom’s
remarried. You and me... We are it. We are it.”

He was right about that. After Ken had told
his dad about family life back in the States, sparing no gory
details, his dad had drunk a bottle of
sake,
even though he
hated rice wine. West Point was never mentioned again.

“OK, Dad.”

“OK, then.”

The mask was lifted off. His father’s jaw was
unusually soft and at ease. Letting go of Ken’s shoulder, he rubbed
his face back into its normal constitution and said, “I’ll be back
at eighteen hundred hours.” Paderson saluted first and spun on his
heel. Ken returned the salute to his father’s back. The hollow mask
rocked on the desk. There were some emotions even a master carver
could not sculpt into Shishiko’s wooden features.

He hung upside down by his knees from a
gnarled branch reaching out over the brilliant green rice paddies.
Dogwood blossoms foamed the hillsides, on this the warmest day of
spring so far. His head filled with blood pulled by gravity as he
ripped open the letter with the handwritten Aberdeen, Maryland
return address in the upper left corner. After weeks and weeks of
waiting, his mom’s answer to his request for money to pay for
chi gung
lessons had arrived. The first part of the letter
was junk about the Holm clan, and her hoping his trip back to Japan
was “uneventful.” The last paragraph said:

“The money in your bank account is your nest
egg for your future, not for hobbies. One of these days you’ll be
getting married and buying a house and having kids. You’ll have a
head start with that money plus the interest. You won’t have to
scrimp and save like most young couples do.”

Jeeze, she had him signing mortgage papers
and burping babies when he didn’t even own a car yet. He scrabbled
down the tree and loped into the Quonset hut.

His father and Wizard were opening the rest
of the mail that had arrived.

“Dad?”

“Hm?”

“Can I have some money?”

“What for?”

Ken sighed. He would try the truth and see
where it got him. “
Chi gung
lessons.”

Paderson squinched up his face as if a rotten
odor had socked his nostrils. “What’s that?” he asked.

With assistance from Wizard, Ken introduced
his father to the ancient martial art.

Paderson, eyes squinting drolly, waved his
hands at Ken and said, “Charge at me like you want to kill me.”

Ken planted his feet wide and crouched in a
position he thought was a martial arts stance, but before he had a
chance to shift his weight to drive home a nut crusher, his dad
whipped his index finger out of an imaginary holster and said,
“Bang, bang. You be dead.”

“That’s not fair,” Ken protested.

Wizard and Paderson weren’t listening,
though. Wizard slammed a file drawer shut. With a grin squirming on
his lips, Paderson blew on his index finger and used it to guide
his eyes along lines of fine print on a form that had arrived in
the mail.

After lunch, Captain Paderson said, “We’ll be
back early this evening.” He and Private First Class Abernathy
hopped into the jeep parked beside the hut. The vehicle coughed and
rolled away, twirling dust clouds behind it.

After some time, Ken moseyed to the back of
the Quonset hut...just to see, just to see. Neko twined her feline
body between his ankles. “Git!” Ken hissed. Neko sat on her
haunches and licked her paw, cocked ears betraying her
displeasure.

These dusty boxes had been stacked against
the walls for years and years according to the dates on the sides.
He brushed cobwebs and bug carcasses off one box, opened it, and
found four rectangular pieces of metal mesh stacked inside. A
diagram showed how to install the metal vents on portable latrines.
First he checked that Bellamy wasn’t lurking around and then he
rummaged through the rest of the boxes and crates at the back of
the hut. Dirty and sweaty, he was satisfied none of the other boxes
contained the remainder of the latrine kits. The vents were
orphans, useless, and would never be instrumental in winning the
war in Southeast Asia. After finger-raking dirt out of his hair, he
tied his sweaty mane into a ponytail at the base of his neck.

He lugged one box to the bamboo grove.
Perspiration slicked his fingers gripping the corners of the
cardboard box. Insects sucked salty moisture from his face. He set
the box down and assumed a waiting stance as Sikung Wu performed a
graceful dance of life in the dappled light.

Every day since his return from the States,
he had sneaked over to the bamboo grove and watched Sikung Wu. He’d
mimicked the Chinese man’s actions until he’d memorized a
half-hour’s worth of movements by heart. So what? You couldn’t kick
the shit out of anyone using this slowpoke stuff. He had noticed,
though, that he didn’t lose his balance anymore when he raised his
legs and walked like an egret in slow motion. He could high-step
like the aquatic bird with his eyes closed.

So now, mirroring the man’s movements, Ken
extended his arms in front of his chest and held an imaginary
porcelain vase between his gently cupped palms and rotated it from
end to end.

“You know the movements but not the way,”
Sikung said. “You are a shell with no meat inside.”

The repetitive linear tree trunks of the
bamboo grove weren’t having their normal calming effect on Ken.
Slender green spears of bamboo leaves pricked his patience.
Clanking, hollow stems annoyed him. A caterwauling bird, no, two
birds hiding in a dark pocket goaded him. He exhaled dramatically
and slapped his arms against his thighs. “Teach me how to fight,
Sikung.”

“It will invite trouble.”

“But what if an enemy attacks me?”

“No one will attack you.”

“How do you know? I saw some kids beat up a
boy in the village. In front of his house.”

There was a thrumming of wings nearby. Sikung
said nothing.

“That boy was dead...for a while.” Ken’s ears
felt hot and fat.

For the first time in Ken’s presence, the
master was baffled for a second. Then he let loose a belly laugh.
He slipped back into his impassive demeanor. “The boy you speak of
quit the dojo. He broke the unity of the group. You are an outside
person. You can never join. Therefore you won’t have the
opportunity to quit and be killed.”

“I don’t want to join them. I want to take
lessons from you. I can trade stuff for the lessons.” Ken placed
the box of latrine vents at Sikung’s feet. He lifted one metal vent
from the box and wiggled his hot fingers under the mesh. “Hibachi
grill!”

“You dishonor your father. You dishonor
American warriors with this purloined gift.” Sikung Wu’s quietly
spoken words caused Ken to step back. A brown worm humped its way
up the box.

Sikung said, “Your desire to be strong makes
you weak. Have less desire.”

Without forethought, Ken’s hand plunged into
his pocket and produced the quartz he’d found in his grandfather’s
garden nearly two summers ago. Sikung’s hand blurred. The stone
disappeared from Ken’s hand to reappear in Sikung’s callused palm.
He threw it. The quartz landed out of earshot. Ken opened his mouth
to shout, “You jerk!” but didn’t.

“Even things of rock are not everlasting and
will decay.” Sikung spoke softly. “Your grandfather is not in that
stone. He’s in the wind and the trees and every stone.”

A roar of confusion mixed up with anger
deafened Ken to whatever Sikung Wu was saying next. He saw the
Chinese man’s lips and mole hairs move, but he heard only the din
in his head. He’d never mentioned his grandpap to Sikung. How did
the old troll know that the stone crystallized Ken’s memory and
love for Grandpap Paderson?

“If you want to learn practical and healthful
skills,” Sikung Wu was saying, “you learn from water. Water
subjugates fire, of which you have too much. Your body is out of
balance. When you understand the water principle, you will be a
wise individual and then you can teach me.” His mouth twisted up in
a grin, and he jabbed Ken in the shoulder with a rigid index
finger. “I won’t give you hibachi for tuition.”