Missing in Action (21 page)

But after the game, the tall guy came over to him and said, “Ken told me to say I'm sorry. I shouldn't have slid into you like that.”

Gordy was standing next to Jay. “That's what Ken told you to say, but what about you? What do
you
say?”

“I shouldn't have done it.”

“It didn't hurt much,” Jay said. “Not for long.”

“You're the best player on your team. Especially when you play shortstop.”

“That's probably right, Chief,” said Gordy. “You played really good. I gotta work hard to get as good as you now.” He looked back at the Japanese boy. “We want to make it to the majors.”

“That's what I want to do too,” the boy said.

“Just about everyone does,” said Jay.

“What are you?” asked the boy.

“What?”

“Are you an Indian?”

“Not exactly.”

“Is your name Chief?”

But Gordy answered for him. “No. It's Jay. He doesn't like to be called Chief. And he's not anything. He's just an American.”

The tall kid nodded.

Ken was walking toward them by then. “I'll tell you what Jay is,” he said. “He's my little brother.” He laughed, but he put his hand on Jay's shoulder again, the way he had before.

•  •  •

In late August, Ken left for the army. Jay started school right after that. A few guys still wanted to make something out of Jay dancing with Ken. Gordy always threatened to beat up on them, but Jay didn't say too much. He just tried to look those guys in the eye and not hang his head.

Gordy still called him Chief sometimes, but mostly he didn't.

Jay got a letter from Ken in the fall. He was doing okay. Some of the guys hadn't liked having a Japanese-American soldier at basic training, he said. “But I'm showing them what I can do, and they don't worry about it as much as they did at first.”

Things were okay for Jay, too. He still hoped he could make it to the major leagues, but there were
other things he could do if that didn't work out. Grandpa even said he could take over the drugstore someday, and he was working there a little already. Mom was doing better too, and Hal was becoming almost like part of the family.

Jay still thought about his dad quite often, but he wasn't expecting him to make it home from the war. He had promised his mom that he would remember the good things about him, not all the bad stuff, and that seemed best.

He did think about the war ending someday, and he thought about Ken coming back. Ken hadn't promised that he would make it home, but he'd said he'd try his best. One thing Jay had learned, there were certain promises no one could really make. But he liked to think about being Ken's brother, and he hoped they could be friends all their lives.

Jay and Gordy would always be buddies too, that was for sure. Maybe one of them would even marry Elaine. Mom said she was staying in Delta, and Jay was thinking that was what he wanted to do too.

The main thing was, Jay didn't feel like nothing these days. He felt like a regular guy.

Dean Hughes is the author of more than eighty books for young readers, including the popular sports series Angel Park All-Stars, the Scrappers series, the Nutty series, the widely acclaimed companion novels
Family Pose
and
Team Picture
, and
Search and Destroy
.
Soldier Boys
was selected for the 2001 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list. Dean Hughes and his wife, Kathleen, have three children and nine grandchildren. They live in Midway, Utah.

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Soldier Boys

Search and Destroy

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Hughes, Dean, 1943–

Missing in action / Dean Hughes. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: While his father is missing in action in the Pacific during World War II, twelve-year-old Jay moves with his mother to small-town Utah, where he sees prejudice from both sides, as a part-Navajo himself and through an unlikely friendship with Japanese American Ken from the nearby internment camp.

ISBN 978-1-4169-1502-7 (hardcover)

[1. Prejudices—Fiction. 2. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Fiction. 3. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 4. Baseball—Fiction. 5. Grandparents—Fiction. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 7. Family life—Utah—Fiction. 8. Utah—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H87312Mis 2010

[Fic]—dc22

2009011276

ISBN 978-1-4424-1248-4 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-9904-1 (eBook)