Weedflower (10 page)

Sumiko and her family were headed toward one of several buses lined up in a row. Everybody slid quietly into a seat.

The buses drove off. After that all Sumiko could think was, It’s hot. The heat devoured her energy and made her mind so foggy, she could hardly think at all. She wasn’t even scared of what might happen next. All she cared about was that it was very, very hot. Still, she knew it was better to feel this hot than to feel the ultimate boredom. She remembered more of what Jiichan had said: “Every time clock tick, closer to ultimate boredom. Have to get to America before lose mind.”

The bus driver was a jovial fellow. “You’re lucky!” he announced. “It was even hotter last week.”

Sumiko looked out the window, though there was nothing to see, just a few old trees and tangled bushes and a lot of light brown dust. Mountains rose in the distance, and a strange, dirty cloud hovered near them. She yawned.

But as they drove the cloud grew larger. She didn’t want to alarm Tak-Tak. Bull was sitting in front of her, so she poked him on the shoulder and pointed at the horizon. He squinted out the window.

The cloud was brown and lower to the ground than a normal cloud. Sumiko could see the blue sky above it. It looked like brown, boiling water. Closer to the bus she also saw small swirls of dust rise up from the ground like dancing girls. For a moment she thought the temperature had grown so hot that the air was actually boiling. Maybe that was possible. Something felt good, and Sumiko realized it was that she felt really interested in the brown cloud. She was moving farther away from the ultimate boredom.

The driver called out, “Dust storm to the left! Nothing to worry about. It happens all the time.”

Dust! The closer the storm got, the faster it seemed to approach, until suddenly the entire sky darkened and they were in the middle of it. It was hard to tell whether the storm was one big thing or a whole lot of tiny things.

A couple of babies started crying. The driver called out, “Happens all the time, folks! No cause for alarm.”

Sumiko had no idea how the driver could see where he was going. Then he stopped, and everyone stirred in their seats. Sumiko couldn’t see anything outside.

“We’re stuck,” said the driver. “Well have to wait it out.” The driver sat back and drank from a Thermos. He whistled tunes, and every so often he called out, “No cause for alarm!”

After a while Sumiko felt claustrophobic. She wanted to scream and escape this bus. She concentrated as hard as she could on keeping the scream inside her.

In about an hour, when the dust storm died down, the driver said, “All able-bodied men are going to have to help get the bus unstuck.”

All the men got up immediately. The women got off to lighten the load for the men. The other buses had also stopped at various places along the road. Some of the men were covered head to toe in dust. They looked as if they’d jumped into a vat of brown paint. Sumiko couldn’t help smiling when she saw Tak-Tak hurry to the back of the bus to push alongside the men.

When the men had freed the bus, everyone got back on.

Nothing seemed real. The world outside was brown. The sky was sort of tan. All the men were brown; even Sumiko in her previously mint green school dress was brown. Everything in the world was brown and very hot.

14

A
COUPLE OF HOURS LATER THEY PASSED A GROUPING
of hundreds of plain barracks that looked so familiar, Sumiko thought for a moment someone had transported the racetrack assembly center to the desert. She thought a desert was supposed to be full of sand dunes, but this desert was filled with dry bushes and dry trees growing in dry dirt. Tractors moved like huge dirt-eating animals in the distance, and in other places men seemed to be leveling the ground.

“Is that a chain gang?” she asked Bull. She had seen a movie once with a chain gang.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“They’re digging irrigation ditches,” Ichiro told her.

“In the middle of the desert?” Sumiko asked.

“There must be a water source somewhere.”

Sumiko couldn’t see any signs of water. Then she caught a glimpse of what seemed like a mirage: a lush green field.

Several men on the other side of the bus jumped out of their seats to see. One man leaned over Sumiko and squinted.

“Looks like beans,” he said.

The bus drove past a second, smaller group of barracks. The driver announced, “You’ll all be staying in Camp Three.” He drove a couple of miles more and pulled up to a last group of barracks. The road didn’t extend beyond this last group. It stopped right where the bus stopped. The driver explained that Poston—officially called the Colorado River Relocation Center—was divided into three camps that would ultimately hold several thousand occupants each, for a total of more than seventeen thousand. “Camp Three is the smallest one. Some people say it’s the wildest, but that’s just a rumor. They’re all the same.”

Everybody got out and carried their things into the camp. A few
Nikkei
greeted them, but Sumiko didn’t see many people. She turned this way and that but didn’t see much of anything except barracks and
desert. At least the assembly center in California had seemed like it was in the middle of
somewhere
.

Something started buzzing louder and louder—and then even louder. Everyone from the bus started muttering and looking at the sky. A few called out in alarm. A plane swooped down toward the camp. It looked as if it were going to dive right into them! They were going to die! Sumiko felt herself being thrown to the ground. The sound of the plane grew deafening and then subsided. She lifted her head and saw the plane flying away.

Bull was lying next to her, one arm around her and the other around Tak-Tak. Some other newcomers were lying on the ground. She heard laughing and saw several people smiling. She got up and didn’t even bother to dust off, since her dress was already a disaster.

A man said, “That’s a pilot from an American air base. They just buzz us to harass us. We’re supposed to get their number and report them.”

“What number?” said Ichiro.

The man shrugged. “Who knows? We’re not allowed to keep binoculars.”

Tak-Tak started crying; he had skinned an elbow. Bull looked exhausted. “Sumiko, take care of him.”

Just then another man called out, “Ich!” Sumiko recognized one of Ichiro’s friends. Like Ichiro, this man was formerly a party boy in fancy clothes, but
now he looked like any other farmer in plain pants and shirt.

“Mas!” called out Ichiro. They shook hands. Bull joined them as they huddled together and spoke too quietly for Sumiko to hear.

Sumiko hugged Tak-Tak as he cried. “You have to act like a big boy” she said.

“I don’t want to,” he said, crying even louder. Dust covered the lenses of his glasses. Sumiko tried to clean the dust off but ended up just smearing it all over.

Sumiko’s family was checked in by
Nikkei
volunteers. The volunteers were rather cheerful and told Ichiro that they should “try to make the best of it.” The family was assigned a barrack and sent to another barrack for a quick checkup by a doctor. Then they were sent outside.

Sumiko noticed that there was dust everywhere, and it seemed lighter than air. As if there were no gravity the surface of the ground lifted with every step or soft breeze. Tak-Tak coughed and coughed. Sumiko wiped the middle of his face with his shirt and tied his handkerchief around his nose and mouth. Underneath the dust he looked gray and pathetic. His skin looked like a mask in the middle of all the brown dust.

“Put down your things, Tak-Tak. I’ll come for them later,” Bull said. “Come on, climb on my back.”

Tak-Tak seemed so weak, he could hardly hold on
to Bull’s back. But he smiled a little bit as he leaned his cheek on Bull’s neck.

Bull carried a couple of suitcases in his hands as well as carrying Tak-Tak on his back. Sumiko struggled to keep up.

The barrack they were assigned to was at the far end of the camp. As Sumiko trudged across the ground, dust rose like flour with every step. Small groups of kids sat in the shade with wet towels on their heads.

“Welcome to paradise!” one of them called out. To Sumiko’s surprise, here and there she saw signs of home: curtains in a window, some gardens, even a few partially completed ponds. Sumiko wondered, What will they nil those ponds with—dust?

Each of the barracks was twenty feet by one hundred feet, with four families housed in each barrack. There were fourteen barracks to a block, and each block had a mess hall and a men’s and a women’s latrine, as well as one barrack for “recreation.” It was a lot like the assembly center except for a few differences:

1. It was ten times hotter.
   
2. It felt like a leper colony because it was so isolated.
   
3. It was permanent.
   

They reached their barrack and the others went in. Sumiko stood outside, examining a homemade
cage about four feet by four feet holding several rattlesnakes. Sumiko tried to figure out why anyone would keep snakes in a cage.

“Sumiko, get out of this sun!” Auntie called, and Sumiko stepped through the door.

There was nothing at all inside their room. Sumiko could hear people talking from next door. There were big knotholes in the wood; something that looked like a scorpion sat in one. She screamed. Bull saw what she’d screamed at and poked the scorpion out with his foot before stomping it so hard, the whole barrack shook.

A man with a patch over one eye stuck his head inside. “Everything okay here?”

“It was a
scorpion
,” said Sumiko.

“Don’t worry. They bite, but they’re not the fatal kind,” said the man with the patch. He leaned in and stuck out his hand aggressively “I’m Mr. Moto.” Bull and Ichiro shook his hand.

Ichiro looked furious. “We have children here,” he said. “We can’t live with scorpions!”

Mr. Moto laughed and said, “Tell that to the scorpions.” But he saw how serious Ichiro was and stopped laughing. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”

“Who do we complain to about the scorpion?” Ichiro asked.

Mr. Moto looked surprised. “Well, nobody,” he said. “They live here.” He paused. “Okay, bye.” He disappeared from the doorway.

Sumiko gaped at the pile of gunk that had been a scorpion a minute earlier. Ichiro snapped at her, “Clean that up.”

Sumiko stepped into the dust outside and saw an old woman walking slowly down the way.
“Sumimasen!”
Sumiko called. She hurried to the woman. “Do you know where a mop is?”

“One mop each block. Maybe Mura-san have.” The woman indicated a barrack and continued walking slowly away.

Sumiko peered into the barrack. Inside were tables, chairs, pretty curtains, bedspreads, and a rug. A woman was mopping.
“Sumimasen,”
Sumiko said. “We’re new, and I was wondering if I could use the mop when you finish.”

“Take it,” the woman said tiredly. “Here, you can borrow my bucket, too.”

Sumiko brought the mop and bucket back to her barrack. Tak-Tak was kneeling, fascinated, over the squished scorpion. Seeing Tak-Tak’s face so alert made Sumiko actually feel happy that there was a dead scorpion on the floor. “The guts have yellow in them,” Tak-Tak said. He lifted his glasses and looked more closely. “There’s a piece of blue, too.”

“Careful, it’s poison. Did you touch it?”

“I don’t know. Sumiko, can I have the scorpion?”

“No.”

“Please?” He gave her his best cute look.

“No.”

His face fell. “Well, here. Mr. Moto said to give you a rag.”

She sprinkled dust on the scorpion to sop up some of the liquid, then wrapped the scorpion in the rag.

Auntie said Bull had gone to get their cots. Dust covered everything. Just curious, Sumiko stamped her foot and watched dust rise into the air.

Auntie shrieked, “Stop that, are you crazy?!”

The way she shrieked made Sumiko wonder whether Auntie herself was crazy. But Sumiko apologized.

Ichiro surveyed the room. “I’ll have to make some chairs and a table,” he said. He glanced at Sumiko holding the rag. “Haven’t you thrown that thing out yet? Get busy.” He walked out. Sumiko wrinkled her nose at Tak-Tak. “Everybody’s in a bad mood,” she whispered.

Sumiko mopped until another woman came in to ask for the mop, and Sumiko gladly gave it up.

But after she had given it up, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She just stood outside looking around. Her family was in the last barrack in the last block of the last camp. There was no fence, but, Sumiko realized, there was nowhere to go, either. She’d seen a guard gate when they drove by the first camp, but she didn’t see one here. She knew what
would happen if someone tried to escape into the desert. They would die of thirst.

Sumiko stepped away from the barrack. She didn’t know what was considered the border of the camp. She took a couple of steps out, then a couple more, then a couple more. She felt nervous. She saw something in the distance growing closer. At first she thought it might be a car, but then she saw it was a horse, and finally she realized it was a man on a horse. The man rode until he was only about a hundred feet from her. He was an Indian man with long hair. Sumiko looked around. Was she just imagining this man? He seemed to nod at her before he rode away.