Summer of the Big Bachi (29 page)

 

The boy eventually came in, just to go to the toilet and take a shower. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the steamy corner bathroom, looking like he was ready to take on something big.

 

 

Akemi held her cup of coffee with both hands. “Where are you going?”

 

 

“I have to nose around, ask some questions. I can’t just sit here, waiting to be used as a damn example.”

 

 

“I’m sure the woman will remember in a few days. She knows you had nothing to do with her accident.”

 

 

“Maybe she doesn’t want to remember,
Obaachan
. Maybe she’s known right along.”

 

 

Akemi frowned.

 

 

“What I’m saying is, she could be protecting someone. And here I come along. Conveniently.”

 

 

Akemi puckered her cheeks, trying to feign disbelief, but Mas could tell. She was worried.

 

 

“And I’m not getting help from you two. So I guess it’s up to me.” Yuki shoved his car keys in his pants pocket.

 

 

“What are you saying? No help? I came from Hiroshima to do whatever I could do.”

 

 

“Then give me some leads. Tell me who this Joji Haneda is.”

 

 

Akemi became quiet.

 

 

“I help you,” Mas finally said.

 

 

“Yeah? The way you’ve been helping me so far?”

 

 

“I have idea.” Mas left the kitchen to get something from his desk in the bedroom. He returned to the kitchen with a clean white business card. “I’ll set up a meeting. And then we find out what he knowsu.”

 

 

 

In L.A., there were different kinds of gardeners. A few, some of the top guys, looked nothing like gardeners at all. They wore neat slacks and golf shirts with designer labels and carried beepers on their belts. Underneath them were a slew of workers in uniforms who addressed their bosses as Mister and sir.

 

 

Mas knew that in going to Chochin’s, both he and the boy would have to look the part. It didn’t matter that Nakane knew that Mas was a plain kind of gardener, a one-man operation. He still oiled his hair back and even brushed his dentures. He wore an old polo shirt and pants with no holes.

 

 

The boy, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to shake his image. No matter how he fixed his hair, he still looked like a
yogore
who hung around street corners, looking for excitement or trouble or both. While Mas was waiting in the kitchen, he heard Yuki riffling through Mari’s closet. Finally he emerged in a black jacket. Mari’s.

 

 

She had been wearing that strange, oversized coat when Mas had picked her up from the airport during her first Christmas break from college. He barely recognized her. She had gained some weight, her usually angular face was round, and a fresh crop of pimples dotted her forehead. The coat was from the fifties and apparently purchased at a used-clothing store.

 

 

Mas loaded Mari’s bag into the trunk of the Datsun. “So, New York, crazy town?”

 

 

“I love it. People are alive, interesting. Not all materialistic, like in L.A.”

 

 

Mas didn’t say anything. He had been against Mari’s going to Columbia. It sounded like a foreign country, not a school. And so far away. What was wrong with UCLA or USC?

 

 

“Gosh, it sure doesn’t seem like Christmas around here.” The gold-colored holiday banners and plastic holly waved in the breeze next to palm trees. “I didn’t even need to bring a coat.”

 

 

“You did okay in classes?”

 

 

“They were pretty hard.” Mari rolled down the window a crack. “I think I did all right. So, what’s Mom doing? She didn’t want to come to the airport?”

 

 

“She resting.”

 

 

“Resting? What’s wrong? Is she sick or something?”

 

 

“A lot of things happen.”

 

 

“What are you talking about?” Mari rolled up the window, snuffing out the drone of air.

 

 

“She had operation.”

 

 

“Operation.” Mari grew quiet. “Why didn’t you guys tell me? It’s not serious, is it?”

 

 

“You talk to her. She explain.”

 

 

Mari cupped her hands around her eyes. The coat cuffs were worn, threads coming loose from the fabric.

 

 

Mas stopped at a red light at Airport Boulevard and tugged at his wallet.

 

 

“Here,” he said, pulling out some twenty-dollar bills. “Go to the store and buy yourself a new coat. For school.”

 

 

Mari wrapped the coat closer to her body, in spite of the seventy-degree weather. “Don’t need another one. This one’s perfect.”

 

 

Now, more than ten years later, the redheaded badger boy was wearing the same coat. “Come on,” Mas said. “We don’t want to be late.”

 

 

 

The boy’s Jeep was a rental car, but it didn’t smell like one. It had a syrupy scent, sweet like cotton candy.

 

 

“Nice car,” Mas said from the passenger’s seat.

 

 

Yuki started the engine and began to back out of the driveway. It was close to seven, and the sun was barely starting to set. “Do you know how expensive a car like this would be in Hiroshima? Seventy thousand at least. Got a special deal from a travel agent. My friend. Just have to make sure that nothing’s damaged.”

 

 

Mas continued sniffing and figured out the candy smell was coming from a bottle of blue liquid on the dashboard.

 

 

“Car deodorant,” Yuki explained.

 

 

Mas merely shrugged. There was no telling what they would be inventing next.

 

 

“So, what do you want me to do?” Yuki asked. Mari’s old coat was tight around his shoulders, but at least it hid the warthog tattoo and gave him a touch of a businessman’s look.

 

 

“Just look around. Some girls knowsu Junko. Maybe you can ask somebody.”

 

 

“What about Nakane? You don’t think he’s just going to give up some information.”

 

 

“Leave it to me,” Mas said, but the truth was that he was just taking a roll of the dice and seeing how they landed.

 

 

 

Other than Mas’s grunting out directions, they traveled in silence until they hit the Santa Monica Freeway, a molten river of cars. The sun was right in front of them, bleeding red-orange in the smog. As Yuki changed lanes, a car from the left-hand side swerved into the same lane.

 

 

“Sonafubitchi,”
Mas muttered.

 

 

“Chikusho,”
Yuki shot out. “Crazy driver.” He maneuvered the Jeep into the lane behind the car, a beat-up Chevrolet whose back window was blown out and covered with plastic.

 

 

“They’d never allow a car like that in Hiroshima. You can’t even drive with one scratch on your car. Or you’ll get a citation.”

 

 

“Oh, yah.” Mas gripped the side of the Jeep. He remembered when he was last in Hiroshima, and cars literally ran on charcoal and wood. How could he have worked on engines in such a place? And now look— during the oil crisis, when Mas had had to line up for gasoline, Japan had been the king of cars. And Mazda, where Akemi had worked, was right in Hiroshima.

 

 

“My friend accidentally hit a car in front of him,” Yuki continued. “Just a tap, nothing serious. They took his license away for months.”

 

 

“No kiddin’.”

 

 

“That why I like this place. I wouldn’t mind living here.”

 

 

“You crazy. You almost in jail and you want to stay?”

 

 

“It’s free. It’s great that a new Cadillac can drive on the same streets as that broken-down car.”

 

 

“Huh,” Mas grunted. “They push you down.”

 

 

“That’s the old story,
Ojisan
. You got blacks and Japanese doing the TV news. Maybe if I stayed, I could someday write for
The Washington Post, The New York Times
.”

 

 

Dreams, dreams, thought Mas. The boy was indeed young.

 

 

After they drove a couple of miles in silence again, Mas spoke. “I used to think like youzu. Yah, I used to think big. Work at Ford company. Make cars that work good on the road.”

 

 

“Well, why didn’t you? You were young when you came over, right?”

 

 

“Yah, I’m young. Eighteen years old. First a houseboy in San Francisco. Got a small room for cleanin’ this
hakujin
man’s house. Sometimes my friends— no place to stay— snuck in to sleep. We got caught once— kicked me out, and then I decided to go truck farmin’.”

 

 

Yuki pursed his lips.

 

 

“You know nutin’ about truck farmin’, huh? Goin’ town to town, from Watsonville to Texas. Wherever crops were. Tomatoes here, lettuce there. Build a shack from wood to live in— that be our home for temporary. Met a lot of people that way— Filipinos down south and Mexicans.” The ashes of his cigarette had burnt down to the edge of his knuckles. “Then I thinkin’. Needsu my own business. Had a relative in Altadena, and that started it all.”

 

 

“What business?”

 

 

Mas stared at the boy, who then quickly added, “Oh, you mean gardening.”

 

 

“Yah, I’m talkin’ about gardenin’.” Mas gripped the stub of his cigarette and felt the ash break away. “Built my business from scratch. Gardenin’ not too good, you thinkin’. But I’m my own boss. Not too many guys can say that.” Mas went on about his customers, present and past. The East Indian who had made a fortune on a chain of teriyaki chicken sandwich shops. The Chinese real estate developer who had real parrots in his backyard. And yes, the divorce attorney who wouldn’t agree to give Mas a raise even after ten years of service. “I tore up his check right in front of his nose,” Mas said proudly.

 

 

He told the boy how it was when he’d traveled on the boat over the Pacific. “Came here on my own. Not one cent from my parents. Wouldn’t take one cent, even if they had offered. Had enough. They want me to work on the farm, for
tada,
free. That’s crazy. What the hell. Come ova here; take a chance.

 

 

“When I first came, I saw people push us down—’Hey, Jap, get outta here.’ But inside I thinksu, I’m an American citizen, after all. I belong here.”