Summer of the Big Bachi (7 page)

 

There were no photos of Mr. Witt in his former house now. Mas stood in the hall and smelled something that made his nose itch, probably some perfume from an aerosol can.

 

 

“Mas, I’m glad you made it.” Mrs. Witt placed her hand on her hip. Her arms were freckled and leathery like old snakeskin. “I have something to discuss with you.”

 

 

“Dis so?” Mas pulled back his Dodgers cap. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t like what Mrs. Witt had to tell him.

 

 

“Well, first of all, I wanted to discuss the trees, the ones we grafted last spring.” Mrs. Witt’s reading glasses hung from her neck.

 

 

“The broken branches.”

 

 

“Yes. Well, Mas, it’s a disaster. I think it may be the combination. I don’t know.”

 

 

Mas followed Mrs. Witt into the grove in the back of the house. The trees, spaced out about three feet away from one another, stood like thin, emaciated bodies. Branches lay on the ground like amputated limbs. Only one tree seemed not to have rejected the grafted branches.

 

 

“It’s a damn killing field,” said Mrs. Witt. “I haven’t had time to do anything with them.”

 

 

Mas examined the bandages of the branches still connected to the root stock. “You’ve been cutting regular?” He pointed to the buds growing below the grafting tape.

 

 

“Like I said, I haven’t had the time.”

 

 

Mas took out a pair of clippers from his belt and cut off the invading buds.

 

 

Mrs. Witt played with the tips of her glasses. “Actually, Mas.” Her voice grew higher, the rhythm faster. “I wanted to talk to you—”

 

 

Mas looked up from a grafted branch. Mrs. Witt looked paler than usual. She took a deep breath, as if she were entering an ice-cold pond. “I wanted to tell you— oh, I guess I just need to spit it out. I’m going to sell the house, Mas. I wasn’t quite sure until a few days ago.”

 

 

Mas blinked, hard. “What, you move?”

 

 

Mrs. Witt nodded. “I’m going to move into a condo in Colorado Springs. My daughter lives there. I don’t get to see the grandchildren enough. So my real estate agent insists on digging up this grove and putting in Bermuda grass. I know that it’s a job for many people. But can you come over next week, survey, then maybe we can come up with some ideas?”

 

 

Mas’s hand slipped away from a grafted branch.

 

 

“Well, of course I’ll recommend you to the new owners, whoever they are,” added Mrs. Witt. “I mean, they may have their own gardener they like to work with, so I can’t make any promises. And, of course, there’s Mexicans who do mow and blow at any price. It’ll just depend.”

 

 

Mas returned his clippers to the leather case on his belt.

 

 

“I just need to get out of here, Mas. Make a new start. There’s just so much of him, everywhere. I mean, I love this house. But then, all it is, is a house. It can’t give me my grandchildren. You know how it is, Mas.” Mrs. Witt leaned against the trunk of the only healthy tree. “How’s your daughter, by the way? What was her name— Mary, was it?”

 

 

“Ma-ri,” Mas said clearly. “And she fine.”

 

 

 

Mas spent the rest of the afternoon collecting the rejected branches. He threw them down in a large pile on top of a tarp in his truck. As he stared at the broken branches jutting out in all different directions like severed arms and legs, he felt sick to his stomach. Must be the heat, he thought. Maybe I am getting too old for all of this.

 

 

The thing about gardening was that you had plenty of time to think. Mas figured that’s why so many gardeners turned out to be gamblers, philosophers, or just plain crazy. The younger ones who dropped out said that the work was just too darn hard on their bodies, but Mas knew better. They didn’t know how to fill their heads.

 

 

Today Mas felt numb, as if someone had banged him good. Nothing seemed to go right, like a gear had jumped to the wrong place. He tried not to think about the income lost if the new owners decided not to keep him on. Extra cash in the empty coffee can that he kept on the bottom of the closet was getting low; he would have to hit it big at the track just to come out even this year.

 

 

As he loaded his equipment back in the truck, his thoughts returned to Haneda. Why was he blowing his money like some big-shot gambler? Mas hoped that he had stayed in Las Vegas, but he knew Vegas was only a place where vultures landed for a few days before coming back home.

 

 

 

As Mas turned onto his street, he saw a black, shiny Lincoln Continental parked alongside the curb. A few neighbors had the same car, but theirs were twenty years older, with a generous share of dents and scratches. This one looked all wrong in front of his house, and when Mas walked up to his porch, he found his hunch was on target. Standing by the door was a man wearing large, gold-rimmed glasses and a turtleneck sweater. Shuji Nakane.

 

 

The high-tone fellow didn’t waste any time. “You lied to me,” he said straightaway. Mas felt the anger flush up to his earlobes. What no-good Japanese man would call a stranger a liar in front of the stranger’s own house? He could push this Nakane off the porch into a long-abandoned rock garden filled now with broken glass and gravel.

 

 

“You told me that you weren’t friends with Haneda-
san,
” Nakane said.

 

 

“I have no business with you.” Mas made it a point to speak English. He didn’t want Nakane to get the wrong idea that they shared anything in common. He tore open the screen door, which flapped off its hinges. Mas had meant to fix that someday.

 

 

As Mas fumbled with his keys, Nakane was unrelenting. “In fact, you knew him very well. Like brothers.” He pushed a photo in front of Mas’s nose.

 

 

It was an old-fashioned black-and-white photograph, about wallet size. At first Mas made no connection to the image, but then he began to focus more carefully. It was a stone bridge, the kind that you often saw in Hiroshima before the war. This one had been near the train station, Mas remembered. Three boys in black school uniforms stood on different spots on the bridge.

 

 

“That’s you.” Nakane’s manicured finger pointed to the middle boy in between the other two, taller and lean. Those other two, in fact, resembled each other. Look-alikes with strong noses. But one was born in California, like Mas, while the other was a native Hiroshima boy.

 

 

“Where you get dis?”

 

 

“That is not your concern.”

 

 

“Well, then, I have no concern.” Mas finally opened his front door and attempted to close it behind him, when the screen door fell down, almost knocking Nakane’s glasses off his face.

 

 

“We can give you money for information,” hissed Nakane, stepping over the torn screen.

 

 

Mas kept the door open a crack. “Whozu we?”

 

 

“My associates and I. We are prepared to make you a generous offer.”

 

 

“You be wastin’ money. I have no information.”

 

 

“You were with him, weren’t you? When the
pikadon
fell. What happened to him? Where is he now?”

 

 

“I don’t know no Joji Haneda. Don’t come round here anymore, Nakane-
san
. There’s nutin’ I can help you with.” His chest pounding, Mas slammed the door shut. He waited to hear the hum of an engine and pulled back the curtains an inch to see the Lincoln Continental drive away. After a good five minutes, Mas took a deep breath and went back outside.

 

 

 

When Mas felt trouble coming, he usually closed his eyes a few seconds in hopes that it would pass him by. He had done so when the doctor, almost all green in his surgical scrubs, had told him that Chizuko had stomach cancer, stage four. Mas had blinked hard, yet the green doctor was still in front of him, and the tumor still in his wife.

 

 

This other trouble was more familiar. It chased him through the corridors of his life, turned when he turned, flew over ocean and land. Mas, in fact, had gotten used to it, like a pebble in his work boot. Soon the sole of his foot would get so callused and blistered that he couldn’t feel a thing.

 

 

Mas made it to the dead-end street faster than he had earlier in the day. An Impala with its bumper detached was parked in front of the apartment. Mas eased the truck right behind it and jumped out, not even bothering to check the door.

 

 

The mistress’s apartment was dark, but a window was open and the drapes were pulled back. Mas pressed his face against the window screen. The duffel bag had been moved from the living room floor.

 

 

“Kakita-
san,
” he called out. “Kakita.” No answer. Mas could only hear muffled sounds of a television and a clatter of pots and pans from a neighboring apartment. Damn woman. Sleeping off the power of the yam wine, he figured. He pounded on the door. “Missu Kakita.”

 

 

There was the click-clack of high heels below on the concrete. Who was that passing by the foot of the stairs? A woman with long, dark hair? “Hallo . . .” Mas called out.

 

 

The woman disappeared. Mas rushed down the concrete steps and out to the street. A child wailed from one of the open windows, and the smell of onions and spices soaked the air. This was one no-good place, thought Mas. Faceless people coming and going. The sidewalk was still, too still. Mas’s body pulsed, down to even the tips of his fingers.

 

 

Then he heard it. It shrieked at first, as high-pitched as an air raid siren. Then a rumble like a summer thunderstorm. He knew the familiar music, a morning ritual. It was the song of his Ford Custom Car truck, now hurtling from its resting place in the hands of a stranger.

 

 

In the darkness, Mas struggled to see the driver, but everything was happening too fast. He grabbed hold of the truck’s bed, as Mari had done years ago, and ran forward, desperately trying to keep it from leaving. His gnarled hands grasped for anything, the rakes with missing teeth, the loops of garden hoses, the Trimmer lawn mower, which was being tossed about with the stacks of broken branches. The truck squealed and squeaked before gaining speed and tearing up the road. Yell, he thought, yell. But all that came out was spit and air and wheezing. The ends of the rake were cutting into his palms, and the edge of a blower pressing into his forehead.
Sonafugun, you not going to leave. You not leaving.
But as the truck turned, Mas tripped into a pothole and felt a burning in his back. His face smacked against the concrete. Mas tried to look up. He heard the truck abruptly stop. With the motor still running, the door of the Ford was creaked open, and then footsteps, hard heels of a man’s dress shoes. The thief’s knees popped as he knelt down. All Mas could see was the tops of his brown leather shoes— a fancy kind with silly-looking tassels. “Keep your mouth shut about Haneda, or next time it’ll be more than your beat-up truck.” A male voice— but young, old;