Ken's War (19 page)

“That’s what buddies do. They cover for each
other.” Ken pointed to the binders. “What about those
correspondence post-tests I did for you? I did that as a favor for
you. Buddies do favors for each other!”

“Buddies don’t abuse each other’s trust.”

“It doesn’t matter anyhow because Dad isn’t
coming home ‘til tomorrow.”

“Then why did you lie to him?”

“Man, you’re an old fogy like the rest of
them,” Ken said.

“Of the highest order,” Wizard admitted.

“You don’t know everything about the
Japanese.”

Wizard waved his hand, implying
So be
it
. He gathered up the U.S. Army Logistics and Supply
Correspondence Course binders and placed them into an empty crate.
“Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure! Yeah!” Ken wanted to put their
friendship back the way it was before.

“Ship the Shiskiko mask to my mom.”

“Sure. How come?”

“Her birthday. She loves Japanese antiques.
Ship it by sea.”

As he left, Wizard brushed against his
yukata
hanging on the wall. The swishing of cotton against
the wall disheartened Ken for some reason. Neko slithered out from
her hiding place, pranced stiff-legged to the doorway and meowed at
Wizard’s retreating form.

He hadn’t meant to piss off his friend. He
slumped in Wizard’s chair. Picked at a scab. Retied his ponytail.
Stood. Sat. Opened the top desk drawer. He extracted a few yen from
a tangled mass of paperclips and rubber bands, and then tossed the
coins back into the drawer. He needed more than that measly amount
to pay for additional
chi gung
lessons. The hut’s metal roof
creaked, expanding as the temperature outside climbed. Sweat
trickled down his spine making him shiver.

Shishiko.

He opened the box in which Wizard had placed
the wooden lacquered theater mask on that day, months ago.
Shishiko’s mouth, caught between a friendly grin and a wail, was
more macabre than he’d remembered. He stared at the thing, defying
it to blink or raise an eyebrow. He alternately winked his left and
right eyes rapidly and repeatedly, creating the illusion that the
mask was shaking his head no, no, no in the box.

The hair on the Neko’s nape bristled. Her
ears flattened. Earthquake coming. The warehouse walls creaked and
the file cabinet tried to shuffle away. Boxes and cans rattled on
the shelves. The earth stopped twitching. Dust sifted down from the
rafters onto the mask, into its eyeholes and black mouth.

He carried Shishiko through the cool, green
temple grounds. Along the way, he spoke to the wooden face with a
storyteller’s cadence, telling the mask the way the world operated
as he understood it, and the way he thought it should operate.

“He’ll think you got lost on the way to his
mom.”

He waited for Takuya at the baseball
diamond.

Chapter
Fifteen

~ Masks ~

The teahouse, a bamboo structure with many
airy rooms connected by walkways and curved bridges, allowed
customers views of the pond and gardens while cleverly obscuring
views of the tea drinkers in other rooms. A carp splashed in the
black waters where reflected lantern light undulated like liquid
moons. Palm fronds danced on light breezes tumbling down the
mountainsides. Tiles resembling fish scales covered the roofs.
Tiles imprinted with chrysanthemums capped the peaks of the
roofs.

The teahouse cocooned him. Hid him. His hands
kept stealing in and out of his trouser pockets, checking that his
yen notes and coins hadn’t slipped out onto the bench. He
waited.

Tatters of last night’s dream clung with him,
fluttering in his consciousness as vividly as an actual memory. In
the dream he was standing at the back door of the barracks
bungalow. With the knowledge that comes with dreams, he knew he’d
grown up, while everyone else had not. A lawn mower groaned
somewhere on the dream barracks and he woke up with a tumescent
penis. He took care of that.

He hadn’t heard a lawn mower since he and his
father had moved to Japan. The noise was lost from memory until the
dream revived it. This realization didn’t sadden him.

A petite woman surprised him when she
appeared at his side, and in a whispery voice asked him what he’d
like. In Japanese, he told the hostess he was waiting for
friends.

He must have misspoken for she brought a
chubby clay teapot and two blue and white cups to the table. She
placed a kettle of water on the burner attached to the table. Ken
smiled at her. She bowed and backed away.

He imagined Mrs. Watanabe saying,
We
apologize. We are sorry to arrive late. We hope you were not
waiting long.
She apologized often—for the weather, for his
misunderstandings, for her notion that her English was
flawed—making him uncomfortable on her behalf. He imagined himself
saying,
No. I got here a second ago,
knowing that they would
know it was a face-saving lie, and Yasuko would give him a special
grin, signaling that he’d said the proper thing.

Worried that he’d chosen the wrong room in
which to wait for the Watanabes, he crossed a walkway to the most
remote tearoom. When his eyes adjusted to the darkened room, he saw
a Negro soldier. The soldier reached across the table and extended
one finger. The Japanese woman seated across from him placed her
hand beneath his finger, and slowly pulled her hand away so his
finger stroked the back of her hand once, lightly. She rested her
hand on her lap.

Ken made his way back to the room he’d waited
in originally. The three Watanabes turned toward him, faces full of
concern.

“I went to the wrong room,” he said.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” Mrs.
Watanabe said.

He looked at Yasuko who gave him a big,
American-style smile. The afterimage of the soldier’s dark strong
hand and the ethereal small one floated in his mind’s eye. He slid
in on the bench beside Yasuko.

Mrs. Watanabe said something to Mr. Watanabe
causing him to nod. He ordered salted watermelon seeds and dried
plums. Mr. Watanabe orchestrated the conversation with excruciating
politeness and precision, asking Ken what he thought of the tea,
the humidity, the dried plums. He passed the conversation to his
wife, who invited Yasuko into the discussion. The pattern exhausted
Ken. His hand crept to Yasuko’s side and found her fine-boned hand,
squeezed it gently. She squeezed in answer while telling her mother
that yes, she believed it was possible for one to write pleasing
haiku using English, however a degree of the poem’s sublimity might
be lost, and therefore, the English language was more suited to the
freedom of Shakespearean blank verse.

“Ah, I am getting value for the bucks at
girls’ school!” Mr. Watanabe’s eyes glittered. Everyone
laughed.

Ken laughed longest, relishing the moment
when he was going to inform Wizard he didn’t understand the
Japanese as well as he’d imagined.

Mr. Watanabe doused the green leaves in the
clay teapot with hot water from the large kettle for an additional
steeping, implying they were going to enjoy another round of tea,
and Ken would have more time to sit beside Yasuko. The Watanabes
weren’t disguising unpleasant feelings about Ken. Look at them
laughing, treating him warmly, and nurturing his relationship with
Yasuko. No booby traps buried here.

He waggled a chopstick, creating the optical
illusion that it was flexible, as if it were made of rubber. Only
Yasuko appreciated this trick, so he laid the chopstick down. He’d
teach her how to do it when her folks weren’t around.

“When we are in Japan, we do so miss our
friends and relatives residing in California,” Mrs. Watanabe said
to Ken. “Oddly, when we are in L.A. we pine for Japan. Don’t you
miss your mother greatly?”

“Um, I, sort of...” Ken removed his hand from
Yasuko’s. He noted that the tealeaves floated in the same position
as if skewered on an invisible axle as he turned the teacup, turned
the teacup. “My mom. It’s a long story. She was fulfilling her
filial duty. She committed suicide.” His great discomfort with this
lie, at least, was authentic.

Yasuko’s parents murmured consolations in
Japanese.

Yasuko clasped his hand. “Losing one parent
is a misfortune. Losing two would be a disaster. Could we possibly
meet your father, the Colonel Paderson?”

Mr. Watanabe grimaced over some bitter tea.
Mrs. Watanabe, smiling tightly, laced her fingers together as if to
prevent an “unexpected” something from escaping.

“He’s just a captain,” Ken said. “He’s real
busy with stuff. He’s working on a top-secret investigation. It’s
impossible to meet him. He’s never home.”

The smile wilted on Mrs. Watanabe’s face. Ken
felt his own face flush hot as he followed her gaze, and it brought
him to his and Yasuko’s hands entwined on the table top. He
released her hand.

“I heard you take correspondent courses for
your schooling. I think you are a hard worker to study without a
teacher,” Mrs. Watanabe said.

“It’s not too hard.”

His face deadpan, Mr. Watanabe contributed:
“Yasuko will be happy to return to her school and hit her books
this coming semester. She will depart for L.A. in two days to
register at school, and meet her student advisor. She is
enthusiastic. She will make long memories with this evening.”

Ken looked to Yasuko for an explanation. She
would not meet his eyes. She pushed something into his hand beneath
the table.

“Ken!” At the sound of his name, he pulled
his hand away from Yasuko’s as if scalded.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe rose from the bench and
bowed deeply—too deeply, in Ken’s opinion, for a
gaijin
warehouse man. Paderson watched until the Japanese couple completed
their bowing ritual, and then he extended his right hand.

Mr. Watanabe shook Paderson’s hand, again
bowing.

“What a fortuitous coincidence. We were
talking about meeting you,” Mr. Watanabe said. “What a pleasure it
is meeting you. Please sit with us and drink tea.”

“You hate green tea,” Paderson said to
Ken.

“No, Dad. You do.”

Ken was biting down swear words, trailing his
father who chopped out long strides through the darkness, where
ghosts of steam escaped fissures in the earth.

Captain Paderson barked, “Double time it,
double time it, soldier.”

“You didn’t have to embarrass me like that.
They were being extra nice to you.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t whip your butt on the
spot, wise guy.”

“I thought you were in Nagasaki.”

“I thought you were with Abernathy. You lied
to me.”

“You lied to me first. You said you were
going to Nagasaki.”

“That was misinformation for Operation
Valiant. Why did you lie?”

“Because I don’t want to have to beat you
up.”

Paderson halted, lifted his shoulders by
millimeters. Ken stopped too, poised on the balls of his feet a few
paces behind his dad. A fertile, eternal silence. Then Paderson
continued onward saying, “I forbid you to see that girl and her Jap
family again.”

“She’s
Issei.
She doesn’t count as a
real Japanese.”

“You have your orders.”

“How come it’s OK for you to be with a
Japanese girl, but I can’t?” The question stung his tongue. He
couldn’t fool himself that Wizard had been wrong. Although the
Watanabes were being kind, civil, and the consummate hosts, they’d
had no intention of allowing their daughter to become involved with
him.

“I’m not with a Japanese girl,” Paderson
countered.

“Yeah, you were. That night I went to the
bonfire, there was a naked girl in your room.”

Paderson kept walking, throwing his words
over his shoulder. “I paid her. I didn’t love her.”

“You don’t love anybody. That’s why Mom isn’t
with us.”

Ken felt dizzy. His knees buckled. His dad
lurched forward, waving his arms, trying to find handles in the
air. The ground wrenched beneath them. Father and son splayed their
legs, and watched each other as earth’s tectonic plates readjusted.
Roof tiles clinked when they slipped free, broke and settled under
the eaves of homes and shops. For a millisecond, other than the
slapping of mineral water against the
ofuro
stonewalls, the
night world was unnaturally noiseless. And then the dogs took up
barking.

“Come on. The earthquake’s over.” Paderson’s
heartbeat could be heard in his throbbing voice.

“I know.” Was the earth still moving or not,
or was he moving? It was impossible to tell. His imagination never
forgot the sensation of blood and fluids sloshing within his own
skin, which was what tremors felt like.

“What the...?” Paderson exclaimed, pointing
into the jungle brush to the right of them.

Ken turned to glimpse the cloud shape his
father saw at the edge of the path. It tumbled in front of them,
and climbed up a low bough.

“Albino macaque,” he told his father. And
once again he wondered how it came to be that he knew so much more
about this world than his father did.

Thanks to the earthquake-resistant shelving
system, the warehouse sustained negligible damage during last
night’s tremors. The doorframe had been knocked askew, and a
ceramic hanging chopstick holder Wizard stored his silver-tipped
chopsticks in had popped off the wall and shattered on the floor.
Ken kicked green ceramic shards against the wall.

“Throw those away,” Wizard said
distractedly.

Ken sighed, but gathered up the green shards
nevertheless, and grabbed a length of twine from the trashcan. Neko
twisted in the air, failing to snag the twine Ken whipped at her,
always out of the cat’s reach. He made her run in circles and dive
under the desk, and pounce this way and that way. Ken broke his
concentration when Wizard emptied a drawer full of blank forms into
a trash box. Neko sunk her front claws into Ken’s hand, biting him
while rabbitting her back legs, instinctively trying to disembowel
her victim.