Summer of the Big Bachi (16 page)

 

 

“Yes, yes,” Wishbone said impatiently. “But my brother would have killed you son of a guns back in Japan if we were left free.”

 

 

Mas tried to shield the boy from Wishbone’s wholesale anger toward the Japanese and American wartime leaders. “That’s fifty years ago. So what?”

 

 

“Mas, you weren’t over here. You don’t understand,” said Wishbone. “Your friend and his people are the ones making a big deal about being veterans, making monuments. They’re the ones talking bad about us, even now. All running scared about dying.”

 

 

“Tug’s not like that. He minds his own business.” Thinks more about fixing toilets and doorbells than anything else, thought Mas.

 

 

“That’s what you think.” Wishbone picked his teeth with the fold of a matchbook cover, while Luis had his own stories about being kidnapped in Peru by the U.S. government, to be used as a pawn in a possible prisoner-of-war exchange. Yuki was scribbling even more furiously in his notebook. Soon he’d have enough for a full-out book.

 

 

Mas traced his front dental plate with his tongue and then noticed Riki staring right at him. He hadn’t said much during the past few minutes, and Mas took that as a bad sign. When Riki wasn’t talking, it meant that he was thinking. And Mas knew that that didn’t lead to anywhere good.

 

 

 

From the very beginning, Riki didn’t have anything nice to say to Mas. “You’re a
chibi,
and nobody notices you,” Riki said after school. Mas didn’t let anyone call him runt, and got ready to box the new boy’s ears. But then Riki held up his hands. “No, no, I’m saying that’s good.” Halfway good-looking people, according to Riki, blended into the crowd. They never left any kind of strong impression. They were bland and anonymous. Ugly people, on the other hand, with fleshy noses or thin lips, always attracted attention.

 

 

Mas, who was smack in the middle of seven brothers and sisters, never really accepted Riki’s theory. But there was something intriguing about this new boy. So when Riki invited him to his house in the city one day, Mas went along with it. Even though it was in the middle of downtown, Riki’s house was still large, almost as big as Mas’s in the countryside. They left their shoes in the
genkan
and entered the two-story building. An old man, his face squeezed with wrinkles, nodded from his seat on the floor. He sat underneath a
kotatsu,
even though the room was already oppressively hot. A piano coated with dust sat on the left side of the room, while a Buddhist altar was placed on the right. A framed photo of a man wearing round-framed glasses was displayed next to a stick of lighted incense masking the scent of rotting tangerine.

 

 

“Who’s the man in there?” Mas asked as they sat outside on a wooden deck. Next to Riki were a newspaper, matches, and something wrapped in a purple
furoshiki,
the kind that women knotted over a box of fresh rice balls.

 

 

“My grandfather.” Riki creased the corner of the newspaper. “He doesn’t even know when it’s morning or night. He even does
unchi
in bed. It’s disgusting. Mother has to drag him in the neighborhood bomb shelter every time she hears a siren. Two blocks away. I tell her just leave him. It would be better if he were blown away.

 

 

“She slapped me when I said that,” he continued, and grinned. “Pretty hard. Right here on the
hoppeta
.” Riki tapped the side of his cheek— smooth, aside from a few stray hairs. “Felt good.”

 

 

“No,” said Mas. “I mean the man in the picture, by the
Butsudan
.”

 

 

“My father.” Riki carefully tore out a square from the newspaper.

 

 

“Is he dead?”

 

 

“No. At least I don’t think so. Mother thought it would be easier on us if he were.” Riki took a package from his shirt pocket and sprinkled some dried-out grass into the newspaper square. He rolled it, twisting the sides. “Here,” he said.

 

 

Mas was going to refuse. Smoking these makeshift cigarettes sometimes made his head spin. But he thanked Riki and struck a wooden match against the wooden deck. “So, what did you want to tell me?”

 

 

“I didn’t say I was going to tell you anything.” Riki had folded himself a cigarette and tipped a flame against the end.

 

 

“Yes you did. On our way home.” Mas coughed.

 

 

“No good?” Riki blew out some gray smoke. “Here, take mine.”

 

 

“No, I’m fine.” Mas’s head pounded, and his stomach was starting to feel queasy.

 

 

“I just said I was going to share something with you.” Riki untied the
furoshiki
. “Look what I have.” It was a bottle of sake, manufactured by a local distillery before it closed due to lack of rice. The label was still intact, with cursive Chinese characters glimmering in silver.

 

 

Mas licked his lips. “Where did you get that?”

 

 

“Connection.” Riki twisted the top of the bottle and poured the clear liquid into a chipped rice bowl. “Here,” he said, handing Mas the sake. “You first.”

 

 

Mas balanced the cigarette on the side of the deck and received the bowl with both hands. “Why me?” he asked. “Why do you want to share this with me?”

 

 

“Why not? We’re friends, right?”

 

 

Mas nodded, gazing greedily at the rice wine. He raised the bowl in thanks and slurped it down, feeling it warm the back of his throat and bite into his nasal passages.

 

 

Riki poured himself a bowlful of the sake and tipped it into his mouth. He then traced the lip of the bowl with his finger and licked it, not to waste a single drop.

 

 

“How about a game of
hanafuda
?” Riki returned to the deck with a stack of small cards.

 

 

Mas grunted and folded his arms around his bent knee. The sun was at the same level as the low mountains, but there was still plenty of light. The cicadas droned, and Mas and Riki played, taking swigs of the sake and puffs of their cigarettes in between hands. As they flipped over cards of maple leaves, cherry blossoms, banners of purple, an orange warthog with raised hairs, Mas could almost forget that while his two brothers were in the navy, he was hungry, fifteen, and worthless.

 

 

“So, you close to the Hanedas, huh?”

 

 

Mas was surprised that Riki would even notice. “Neighbors,” he merely stated.

 

 

“Heard the MPs were at their house yesterday.”

 

 

Mas shrugged. His parents had told him to stay away from Joji, but Mas hadn’t listened.

 

 

As they kept playing, Riki kept pushing. Where was Mas from? Didn’t he want to fight in the navy, too? Mas began to feel weak. The sake didn’t even seem to have the same bite, the cigarettes tasted even worse, and a grayness covered the yard. Mas laid out his last hand, the set of maple leaves. His favorite card was the one with the deer, its rear, plump legs tapered, and short tail taut. The deer was looking back, waiting to see what was beyond the autumn leaves of the maple trees.

 

 

 

After Tug returned to his seat, the table grew quiet. The only sound was the flipping and shuffling of cards. Even Yuki had stopped asking his questions. Mas watched the motion of tiny red diamonds in Riki’s hands, which were arched in the shape of two Cs. Finally he folded his hands over the cards and produced a flat, neat deck.

 

 

“Cut.” Riki stretched out his palm toward Haruo.

 

 

“Wait a minute,” Mas interrupted. “He not playin’.”

 

 

“Cut,” Riki repeated louder.

 

 

Haruo lifted half of the stack and then bent toward the table. The cards were being edged onto the green felt when they began to tip and then fell onto the spotted linoleum like blown dead leaves.

 

 

“Baka.”
Riki spat into the trash can again. Haruo and Tug knelt down to pick up the scattered spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, but Riki stood over them, the metal tips of his boots shiny and pointed. “Leave it. You’d probably end up bendin’ some card anyhows.”

 

 

Riki gathered the cards and placed all except one on the table. He turned over that one card, a king of spades, and held it toward the window. The scar on Riki’s neck bulged like a row of deadly crabs. “Wishbone, come here.”

 

 

“What?” Wishbone stumbled out of his chair, his face bright red.

 

 

“What do you see here?”

 

 

Wishbone struggled with a pair of reading glasses extracted from his shirt pocket. “Well, yeah—”

 

 

“Sometin’ wrong?” Mas felt his stomach churn.

 

 

The scarred neck twisted around, and then, in one swoop, the card was slapped onto the green felt. “This card’s marked.” Riki traced his chipped fingernail alongside a thin pen mark. Faint, but distinct. Looked blue, dark blue.

 

 

Luis, his elbow on the cash box, propped himself up. “Yes, that’s a marked card.” He blinked, his heavy eyelashes batting together. “Who—”

 

 

“King of spades. Part of the winning hand.” The chipped fingernail tapped against the fine line. “Mas’s hand.”

 

 

Mas almost started laughing. So that’s how Riki was going to play it. But Mas wasn’t interested in silly games anymore. “No sense cheatin’. Not with
shiroto
like you.”

 

 

“Shiroto?”
The linoleum squeaked under Riki’s boots. Calling Riki an amateur had apparently hurt. “You fools are the ones ova your heads. Cheatin’ is your way of life, Mas— you knowsu that.”

 

 

Tug extended his right hand, the one with the shortened finger. “Look, I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. Maybe there was some ink on the floor; maybe it was marked from before.”

 

 

Riki grinned, his sagging cheeks tightening into creases. “You trust this man,” he said to Tug. “You know him?”

 

 

“Known him since our daughters were in preschool. At least thirty years.”

 

 

“Knowsu how he thinks?” Riki now tapped the side of his head. “Just thinks about his own self, I tellsu you.”

 

 

And you don’t? Mas said to himself.

 

 

“You all think heezu your friend. But watch out. He’ll cut your throat. I know. I saved his life, and look what he did to me. Sold me out. Escape to America with my money.”

 

 

Everyone was looking down at the green felt poker table, scared to look at Mas eye to eye. Mas remembered sitting in that makeshift police station, a former tofu factory. He was only eighteen. You better not hang around that
chinpira,
they said. Tell us his name and where we can find him, and we’ll let you go.

 

 

Haruo picked up a stray card and laid it on the table. “Sad things happen to all of us.” His long hair was again behind his ears, and his
Ron-Pari
eyes seemed to be focused on Riki and Mas simultaneously. “Can’t change the past. Just can look ahead.”

 

 

“You shut up, you old fool.” Riki twisted a card in his hands. “You have no sense. I know; I’ve heard. Stealin’ other people’s money. There’s only one thing worse than a
dorobo
— an
inu
.”

 

 

“Now, there’s no need to call names—” The linoleum creaked underneath Tug.

 

 

Riki gripped a half-empty beer bottle. “Stay away.” Tug seemed unafraid. Mas had seen Tug in action a few times before. In one incident, when Mari was still small, their families had been waiting in a restaurant in San Diego after going to a wild animal park. For five minutes, nobody seated them. Ten minutes later, still no one came around. Mas told himself that it wasn’t any big deal; he was used to it, anyhow. But Tug made a fuss— demanding to see the manager, and kicking the door open when they left without eating. Mas had turned to Chizuko, expecting her face to be like his, withdrawn and tight with embarrassment. Instead, her eyes behind her glasses practically gleamed, so genuinely was she in awe of Tug’s power and righteous anger.