Under the Blood-Red Sun Read online

Keet wiped his mouth with his knuckle, smearing some blood. He pushed himself up and brushed the dirt from his clothes. Then, without looking at Jake or me, he strode away. Jake watched with fists still clenched and ready.

  “Sorry about your pigeons,” Jake said, when Keet was out of sight. “And sorry about Keet. Sometimes he just gets crazy.”

  Jake started to leave, but turned back. “It was him, you know.… He told the police about your birds.”

  • • •

  Just before the sun went down, Grampa rode off on his bicycle. He was halfway to the trees when I saw him.

  “Grampa!” I yelled from the porch. “The curfew!”

  But he just kept on going. I should have known that even Charlie’s warning couldn’t keep him from doing something if he wanted to. I watched him weave around the holes and bumps in the path, the rusted silver fenders rattling all the way down to the street.

  I sat on the bottom step. Lucky came up to me. “Crazy old man,” I muttered, and Lucky licked my cheek. She had a couple of new ticks in her coat, and I started picking them off.

  Mama and Kimi came out on the porch and stood above me.

  “Where’s Grampa going?” I asked.

  “Kewalo … see if the boat came back.”

  “But what about what Charlie said?”

  “Ojii-chan is ojii-chan.”

  Still nervous about being outside, Kimi inched down to sit next to me. “Ticks,” I said.

  She watched with great concern as I picked one off and smashed it on the step with a stone. Blood spurted out and she pinched up her face in fascinated disgust.

  Lucky panted patiently. I squeezed another tick off and she tried to nip my hand.

  “It’s okay, girl.… I got it.” I showed it to her and she sniffed at it.

  Mama went back into the house. Kimi got up to follow her. “Wait,” I said. “Stay out here awhile.… We can go see if the lost pigeons came home.” She settled back down on the step and pressed her warm arm against mine.

  The day was slipping away, shadows deepening. But I managed to get Kimi to head over to the trees with me. She practically squeezed my hand off.

  Diamond grass was quiet. We walked out to the middle of the field and looked up at the purple sky.

  “Isn’t that color something, Kimi?”

  I looked down at her and she nodded.

  “Mr. Ramos says the sky goes up and up and never ends.” No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t believe that it never ended … and yet, I couldn’t believe that it did end. Either way, it was impossible.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling Kimi along.

  No birds had returned. The lofts were silent. Kimi yanked on my hand, wanting to get back to the house. I had to carry her through the shadowy trees, her arms tight around my neck. The bombs and planes still had her as scared as a wildcat.

  • • •

  Grampa was gone all night.

  When he finally showed up in the morning, he went and tended his chickens before coming into the house. Mama and I watched him from the kitchen. I almost didn’t want to hear what he’d found out, and I didn’t think Mama did either.

  Grampa came back with his morning eggs and set them on the table. “The police take ’um to jail,” he said.

  Mama gasped.

  He was alive.…

  Grampa sat down with a quick glance at Mama. “No can see ’um. No can get close.”

  Grampa motioned for me to sit. He put his hands on the table and stared at them for a while. “Sanji,” Grampa said, “dead.… The ’merican planes went shoot the boat because no flag.…”

  What? No, no, no … not Sanji. For a moment I was too stunned to move. Then the burning crybaby throat came back, and a quivering in my ears.

  “Ohhh,” Mama cried. “His wife … his little girl …”

  Nobody said anything for a minute. Just looked at the table, the floor, the window, listened to the clock. Grampa sat with his own feelings locked deep inside him like always.

  Sanji … dead! Did Papa wave at the planes before he knew they were shooting? Did he see Sanji get hit? And watch him die?

  A tear rolled down Mama’s face. She turned away so no one would see.

  “Papa,” Grampa said. “He going be all right, but got one bullet in the leg.”

  “What!”

  “They shot the leg,” Grampa said, refusing to look at me or Mama.

  “They went take the boat and drag ’um inside Ala Wai canal,” Grampa added. “They chop the bottom … sink ’um.”

  Red

  A few days later, I took Kimi back out to the field. It was late afternoon, warm and still. School was still out, as far as I could tell. And I hadn’t heard from Billy.

  Like the rest of us, Kimi was used to having Papa gone for days at a time. But hardly ever more than a week. Now it had been more than two weeks since she’d seen him.

  “Did Papa’s boat sink?” she asked, looking up at me with her sad eyes. What could I say? What lie could I tell her?

  “Papa’s … gone somewhere for a while.… He’ll be home soon.”

  Kimi turned away.

  “Let’s talk to him,” I said.

  “But how can he hear us?”

  “I think he can hear every whisper that comes from here,” I said, tapping her heart. “All you have to do is close your eyes and think about what you want to say.”

  Kimi didn’t answer for a while. Maybe she was trying to find just the right words. I knew how she felt. Ever since Grampa came home with the news about Papa I’d been lying awake at night. For hours I stared at the dark clouds that moved across the stars in my window. It was too hard to think about what was happening to Papa. I tried to be practical. What were we going to do? How would we live? We had Grampa’s eggs, but that was practically nothing. We had the house, which the Wilsons let us use … but would they still let us stay there if they didn’t want Mama to work for them? I had to get a job … but what about school? If we still had the boat I could … I could … What? An eighth-grader not even half Papa’s size could do what? I shook the thoughts away.

  Billy. Think of Billy. I hadn’t seen him since the day he lied about Grampa and the flag. Where was he? Lots of haoles were selling their houses and running away to the mainland. It was spooky to see that. What if Billy’s family went too? And what about the lie? How did that make Billy feel? I still shuddered just to think of it. Those soldiers would have shot Grampa, or even me and Billy, if they’d seen us with that flag.

  “Hato poppo,” Kimi said.

  “What?”

  Kimi pulled on my arm. “Hato poppo.” She pointed toward the lofts.

  At first I didn’t see them in the shadows. But there they were, two of the three lost pigeons sitting on one of the lofts. “Hey, you’re right.” For the first time in days, Kimi smiled.

  We raced across the grass to the gentle, familiar sound of their cooing. “Blewww, blewww,” I cooed back. “Where have you runaways been?”

  I scooped some feed into a rusty coffee can, then rattled it. The pigeons stepped closer, walking sideways along the roof, heads bobbing and eyes on the coffee can. I emptied it into the feeder in the loft.

  Whispering soft words like Papa had taught me, I reached up and cupped the pigeons in my hands and rubbed them against my cheek, one at a time. Then I let Kimi run a finger down their backs and put them into the loft. For a moment I wished the pigeons were messenger birds.… They could fly to Papa … take a note from Kimi … and Mama … then they’d come back. Come back …

  Kimi smiled and clasped her hands together in front of her.

  “Let’s go tell Mama,” I said, and Kimi grabbed my hand.

  As we hurried back through the trees, I thought about Grampa. What would he say? Would he refuse to feed them so they’d go somewhere else? Or kill them?

  “Mama,” Kimi yelled, climbing the steps to the porch as fast as she could. “The hato poppo came home!” She disappeared into the house, the door slapp
ing behind her. I waited outside at the bottom of the stairs for Grampa to come out. I knew he would.

  After a few minutes the screen door creaked open, the rusty springs singing over the silence of the yard. Grampa came out and closed the door gently. He stood at the top of the stairs, studying the darkening sky, his hands in the pockets of his wrinkled pants.

  Finally, he glanced down at me and raised his chin toward the sunset sky. “Good, nah?” he said.

  I nodded, and Grampa went back into the house.

  • • •

  A few days later, just before Christmas, I was out back with Grampa and the chickens, building more coops. Grampa was trying to increase the egg production so we’d have more to sell. Mrs. Wilson still hadn’t asked Mama to come back to work. But Mr. Wilson hadn’t kicked us off his land either.

  We’d been working for about an hour when Grampa looked up from unrolling some wire. “The boy come look for you,” he said.

  “What boy?”

  “Haole.”

  “Billy?”

  Grampa nodded.

  “When, Grampa? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? What did he say?”

  “Nothing … he only looking for you. That’s all.”

  In Papa’s toolshed I found some old fishing line and cut off about eight feet of it, then made a small loop on one end. I ran the other end through it and made a bigger loop.

  Red, now about six weeks old, tripped along by my feet with the string leash keeping him from straying. At first he tried to bite it. All the way to Billy’s house he jumped and stumbled and nipped at my feet.

  I stopped at the edge of Billy’s yard, and looked everything over before stepping out of the trees.

  I knocked, but no one answered. I started around to the back of the house. Red was beginning to lag behind, so I picked him up.

  Jake and Billy were down at the back edge of the yard. Jake was shoveling dirt into a burlap bag that Billy held open. Jake saw me first. Then Billy looked up.

  I walked toward them with Red warm in the crook of my arm. Off to the right was a big, freshly dug hole. A long, sloping ramp with crude stairs chopped into the dark dirt ran down into it. Most of the hole was covered on top by pieces of lumber laid across it, like a roof.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Billy wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. “Bomb shelter.”

  “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  Billy looked down at his feet. “Yeah.”

  “What’s that you got there?” Jake asked.

  “Billy’s dog.”

  “What?” Billy said, dropping the bag of dirt. I took the leash off and put Red on the grass. Billy came over and kneeled down. He stuck out his hand, and Red licked his dirty fingers. “Thanks …” Billy said, without looking up.

  “I came by two times before,” I said. “But no one was home.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jake leaned on the handle of the shovel. He looked at the ground when I glanced at him.

  “Mom’s been at the hospital a lot, and Dad joined the volunteers. Jake and I have been … busy … helping out,” Billy said. He kept playing with Red without looking at me.

  “Nothing personal,” Jake said. “It hasn’t been easy … know what I mean?”

  “Dad told us to dig this hole,” Billy said. “All we have to do now is put the dirtbags on the roof.”

  “Come on,” Jake said to Billy. “We’re almost done.”

  Billy stood up. “You want to help?”

  I stared into his calm light blue eyes. Who was in them? Billy Davis of the Rats? Or someone different now?

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Come on, then. Drag some of those bags over to the shelter and put them on the boards that go across the top.”

  Billy let Red roam while he and Jake went back to shoveling dirt. I dragged the loaded bags over to the wood roof. In about twenty minutes we were all standing there looking at it.

  “Want to go down inside?” Jake asked.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Watch those steps, though,” Billy added. “Jake made them.”

  “Only because you couldn’t, mudbrains.”

  Jake ducked under the lip of the roof and dropped down into the darkness. Billy went next, then me. Red came up and peeked down at us.

  “The only thing that’ll get you in here,” Jake said, “is a direct hit.”

  “This is too creepy,” Billy said.

  Jake gave him a friendly shove. “You weeny.” But he didn’t waste any time following me and Billy back out into the sunlight.

  Billy watched him walk back up to the house with the shovel, carrying it on his shoulder like a rifle. “Jake told Keet to take a hike after he found out Keet told the police about your birds. He feels really bad about that.” Billy paused and kicked at the grass. “Dad’s worried about Jake. He wants to quit school and join the army.… He’s almost old enough.”

  At that moment I liked Jake as much as I liked Billy.

  “Want to see something?” Billy asked.

  “What?”

  “Come.”

  Billy picked up Red and carried him into the jungle, following a thin path that zigzagged through the trees. I trailed behind, still thinking about Jake and Keet—and Mose and Rico. They seemed like men, almost. Now even Billy did, digging bomb shelters. Pretty soon we’d all be wearing camouflaged uniforms and steel helmets. But the papers said local Japanese who wanted to sign up couldn’t, that they weren’t loyal to the U.S. It was all wrong, like Papa in jail was wrong.

  “They shot my father in the leg and arrested him,” I told Billy.

  “They shot him?”

  “They sunk his boat, too … and … and they killed Sanji.”

  Billy stopped and looked back. “They what?”

  “They weren’t flying a flag. They never even knew they needed one. A plane shot up the boat.”

  “Aw, criminy,” Billy said, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “Not Sanji … he was a good guy. … Jeeze … damn stupid war. Is your dad okay?”

  “I think so.”

  We started walking again, Billy leading the way in silence. He kicked at the weeds in the trail, and though he tried to hide it, I saw him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. I knew what he was feeling.

  Soon sunlight fell through an opening in the trees.

  “Over there,” Billy said, his voice soft. He pointed to a big tree that was shattered and half burned. Everything around it was shredded.

  “A bomb?”

  “Dad thinks it was one of our own … a stray antiaircraft shot.”

  We pushed through the shoulder-high ginger, Billy holding Red close to his chest. When we got to where the bomb landed, Billy kneeled down and pulled a piece of twisted shrapnel out of the dirt. “I can’t believe Sanji’s dead.”

  Silently we dug more pieces of metal out of the ground, and worked some out of the dead tree. Red rested in a spot of sunlight. For a moment I forgot about the war. It was me and Billy again … like it used to be. Only now we shared a sadness.

  “You want to know why I didn’t come see you for so long?” Billy said.

  “Why?”

  “Because of your grampa’s flag. Because I lied about it.” Billy sat in the dirt. “It’s okay now, I guess.… I thought about it and decided that even if it happened again I’d still lie.… I know your grampa was only afraid, and not trying to signal or anything.…”

  I picked up a clod of dirt and broke it up. What could I say?

  Billy went on. “I hope your dad’s okay.”

  “Me too.”

  We were quiet for a while. Then I said, “You want to go throw a ball around?”

  “You still owe me fifteen cents, you punk.”

  “I can pay you in eggs.”

  “Forget it. I’ll wait.”

  “So … what? You want to get your glove?”

  Billy gave me his shy smile. “Yeah.”

&n
bsp; • • •

  Billy got his glove and the ball that Mose and Rico had given him, and we started over toward my house with Red stumbling along behind.

  “Hey, you got your ID card yet?” I asked. A teacher from Lincoln School had come to our house and signed me and Mama and Grampa up. She took our fingerprints and gave us cards that she said we had to carry everywhere we went. Since Kimi was only five, she didn’t need one.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Kind of spooky, isn’t it?”

  “Spooky?”

  “The cards … don’t you know what they’re for?”

  “To identify who you are?”

  “Yeah, but the main reason is to identify your body if there’s another attack and you get killed.”

  • • •

  When we got to diamond grass, Red was ready for a nap. Billy took him over and put him in the shade under one of the lofts.

  I ran home and got my mitt. When I saw the fading ink of Keet’s name written on it, I punched the glove that used to be his.

  “I heard you had to kill the birds yourself,” Billy said when I got back.

  “Me and Grampa … we cut their throats.”

  Billy nodded toward the two birds in the loft. “What about those two?”

  “They were out at the time. They were lucky.”

  “Can you keep them?”

  “I don’t know. But who’s going to ask?”

  “Right.”

  “Come on,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about the birds. I just wanted to get back to how it used to be. “Let’s see if you can still throw a curveball.”

  “Shhh … are you kidding? I could make it circle your head and come back to me, if I wanted to.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Thwack! The ball hit my mitt like a cannon shot. Still squatting, I tossed it back. Watching Billy catch it, just like it used to be, almost choked me up.

  “Hey,” Billy said, winding up.

  “What?”

  Thwack!

  “Your grampa really wasn’t cheering those planes on, was he? I mean with his flag?”

  I stood, and studied the ball. “He hates them,” I said. “They disgraced him. They disgraced a lot of people by doing what they did.” I threw the ball back, hard.

  Billy caught it and shook his hand out of his glove, and rubbed it. “Jeese, keep your hat on, already.”