Under the Blood-Red Sun Read online

  “Downtown,” Mama said. “Last night up Charlie house, ojii-chan heard they going send Sand Island men to mainland.”

  “Mainland? Why?”

  “Shira-nai … I don’t know … ojii-chan going try ask somebody … wakara-nai …”

  Mama moved away from the door slowly, like she was getting old. She had so much to worry about. And what could I do? Nothing. But I had to do something. The mainland was a place somewhere far across the sea. California, Arizona, New York. How could we ever go there? How could Papa ever come back here?

  Kimi and I ate a silent breakfast, with Mama sitting and staring out the window. When we were done, I asked Kimi if she wanted to go collect the eggs from Grampa’s chickens. She nodded, and we got the bucket from the back steps.

  We brought back seventeen eggs—five for us and twelve to trade at the grocery store. “After store,” Mama said, “you go see Charlie. Try find out when school start again.”

  School.

  I’d almost forgotten about it. I missed seeing Mose and Rico, and Mr. Ramos. I missed riding in the car with Billy and Mr. Davis. I wondered if we’d still do that. “Tomi,” Mama said. “What you daydreaming about? Somebody knocking.”

  I stuck my head out of the kitchen. Mrs. Wilson was peeking through the screen. “It’s Mrs. Wilson,” I whispered to Mama.

  Mama froze. Mrs. Wilson had never been over to our house before.

  She rapped again, long and hard.

  Mama hurried to take her apron off. She patted her hair.

  “Mrs. Wilson,” Mama said. “Come inside, please.” She opened the door.

  “No, thank you … I … can only stay a minute.”

  Mrs. Wilson glanced around our small front room. She looked nice, like she was dressed for church. I was very relieved that the emperor was buried under the house.

  “Is something wrong?” Mama asked.

  “No … It’s just that … well, Keet … He was supposed to come down to tell you that I … that we … would like you to come back to work … starting today.…”

  Mama didn’t say anything.

  “You have a very good friend in the Davis family,” Mrs. Wilson suddenly went on. “John and … Mr. and Mrs. Davis came over last night to speak to Mr. Wilson and me in your behalf. We, of course, have been worried, but they assured us that your family is completely loyal to the United States.” She studied Mama before going on. “So … well … we’ve decided to have you return to work.”

  Mama thought for a long moment, then said, “I come fifteen minutes.”

  Mrs. Wilson nodded. “Good.” She rubbed her hands together like she was washing. “Yes … fifteen minutes, then.”

  She turned and started down the steps. The pups jumped like grasshoppers around Mrs. Wilson’s legs as she picked her way through them and hurried off into the trees.

  • • •

  After the sun went down and the first stars poked into the sky, Grampa came home. He walked the bike back up the path. “They gone already,” Grampa told Mama without looking at her. “Mainland.”

  “Where on the mainland?” I asked.

  “Jus’ mainland … on one boat.”

  Silently Mama watched Grampa walk the bike around the side of the house. Her face showed nothing. No sadness. No anger. Papa might as well have gone to the moon.

  I sat on the steps and studied my dusty feet. “What are we going to do now, Mama?”

  “We going be strong, that’s what.… We going wait and we going be strong.”

  I can’t do this, Mama, I wanted to say.

  I can’t, I can’t, I can’t …

  The Katana

  Two days later Billy and I walked down to see Mose and Rico. We fooled around at Rico’s house, and had a good time being lazy bums out of school. Rico bragged about how he was making progress with Tough Boy’s sister, Tina. But who believed him? Tina was a tenth-grader, and way too classy for a guy like Rico. He just didn’t know it.

  At about five o’clock, we started back up the valley. The streets were busy with people trying to get home before curfew—except up by our place, where it was as quiet as a coffin. A lot of people who lived around there had evacuated to the mainland on the first boat they could get a ride on.

  When we walked by the Wilsons’ I glanced up. There was a black car parked in the driveway. It was parked only halfway up to the house. And the Wilsons’ car was gone. So what was this one doing there?

  We passed by and went into the trees, following the path to my house. Someone was yelling … Mama!

  I started to run.

  “No …” I heard her say. “Let him go.”

  I ran faster, sprinting up the trail. “No, no,” Mama was begging.

  I burst out of the trees and ran into a man. Billy bumped into me from behind.

  “Watch it!” the man said. There were two of them, both huge. And hanging between them, looking like some old jacket on a hanger, was Grampa. Each man had a hand under one of his arms. Mama was trying to pull Grampa back. The first man knocked her hand away.

  “Grampa,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  Grampa spoke quickly. “Katana, Tomikazu …”

  “Hey! Speak English,” the smaller man said. They pushed past, dragging Grampa between them. I followed, keeping off to the side. Mama went back to Kimi, who was screaming on the porch.

  “Tomikazu … katana o mamore!” Grampa said. The men turned and headed toward the Wilsons’ house.

  “Nakaji no namae o mamore!”

  One man covered Grampa’s mouth with his hand. They kicked weeds and bushes aside and cut through toward the black car. Rufus charged down, barking. I ran after them, and tried to pull the man’s hand off Grampa’s mouth. He shoved me away, and I fell into the weeds. “Grampa!”

  Billy ran over and helped me up.

  Rufus barked and snarled and nipped at the men all the way to the car. Grampa stumbled along between them, glancing back at me. One man opened the back door and pushed him in, then slid over next to him. The other man got into the front and started the car. Rufus bit at the tires as they backed down the driveway. The car bounced out onto the road, slid to a stop, then sped away.

  The Wilsons’ house loomed over me. They did this, I thought. Keet and Mr. Wilson. They called those men to come take Grampa. An explosion burst inside me, hot and wild. I ran across the yard, jumping the low hedge along the driveway, leaping up the steps to the front door.

  Barn! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! “Come out of there!” I screamed. Bam! Bam! Bam! “Come out of there!”

  Billy ran up and grabbed me, pulled me away. “Don’t, Tomi.… Hurry, let’s get out of here.”

  “They did this to Grampa!”

  “You don’t know that.… Come on, let’s go before you get in trouble.”

  Billy grabbed my shirt and pulled me off the porch and back into the trees. I wanted to burn their ugly house down. “Come out of there,” I yelled. “Come out!”

  “Let it go,” Billy said.

  The farther away I got from that place, the more the monster inside started to scare me. I’d never felt like that before. Billy put his arm on my shoulder and urged me toward my house. “We’ll find where they took your grampa.… Let it go, Tomi, let it go.”

  I shrugged Billy’s arm off, and instantly wished I hadn’t. But I couldn’t help it.

  Mama was sitting on the steps hugging Kimi, who was still sobbing. I thought Mama would be crying too. But she wasn’t. She was angry.

  “What happened?” I managed to say. Breathing hard. Legs shaking. The swelling in my throat strong.

  “They just come and take him,” Mama said. “No tell why. No tell nothing.”

  “But who were they?”

  “FBI.”

  I had to sit down. My head was spinning. Dizzy. First Papa, now Grampa. “Why, Mama …? Why now?”

  Mama didn’t answer. Just sat there pressing Kimi close. Her hand fanned the back of Kimi’s head.

  “What are
we going to do, Mama?”

  “We going do just like always,” she said. Still hugging Kimi, Mama got up and carried her into the house.

  Billy and I sat on the steps. I tried to think. Everything had happened so fast.

  “Damn,” Billy whispered.

  “Why …? Why Grampa?” I wasn’t even sure if it was the Wilsons. They weren’t even home.

  “What did your grampa say?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to calm down and pull it back. “He said to save the katana … the sword.”

  “What sword?” Billy asked.

  “A samurai sword that he had. It’s … sacred to us. And he said to protect the family name, and not to disgrace it.”

  We sat there thinking while the sun burned out, Billy with his elbows on his knees, and me bent forward with my arms buried in my stomach. Lucky dozed under the steps and thumped against the boards whenever she scratched.

  Finally, Billy got up to go home. “I’m really sorry,” he said, looking back at me.

  “Yeah … I’m sorry too.… I was kind of nuts.”

  “I would’ve been too.”

  • • •

  That night Mama sat alone in the darkness of the front room—an unmoving shape on the couch, with the emperor’s bare wall looming over her.

  “Mama?” I said.

  She didn’t answer, just sat there staring at nothing.

  I waited a moment, then started to leave.

  “When I first came to this islands was more worse than this,” Mama finally said.

  Silence.

  I waited, standing next to her in the dark.

  “My husband-to-be was dead from gambling. I only knew three women, and they went with their new husbands. I only had one small box of clothes.”

  She paused again. I remembered the story Grampa had told me about Mama the picture bride, and how she had arrived to no one, to nothing. How scared she must have been.

  “I came this islands to make new life, and with your good papa, that’s what I did. I could survive then, and we can survive now.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “You must find work, Tomi, make a little money to help. Kimi can do Grampa’s chickens, get the eggs and sell them. I will work for Mrs. Wilson, like always.”

  Mama thought for a second, then went on. “She good woman, Tomi. She was just afraid before. Did you know she gave us that meat we had last week?”

  That surprised me. I thought Mama just got lucky at the store. “Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Yes. Was her.”

  Kimi’s soft crying drifted in from Mama’s bedroom.

  “Go to Kimi, Tomi,” Mama said. “No worry about me; I just need to think.”

  Kimi’s wet tears dripped onto my hand. “It’s okay, Kimi, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Go to sleep.”

  She let out a small cry, a small sob. “I want ojii-chan …”

  I hugged her, suddenly feeling like more than her big brother. “He’s a strong old man … no one can hurt him.… Wherever they took him, Kimi, no one can hurt him.”

  She finally fell asleep on my lap. I moved her over on Mama’s futon and covered her with a sheet.

  I went to my own room, holding my hands out in front of me as I crept through the blacked-out house. You could only see shapes, dark against darker. Grampa’s mat was a gray rectangle on the floor. I sat on my bed staring down at it for a long time.

  I got that trembling in my ears, that trembling that came from fear or sadness or hate or what, I didn’t know.

  Why Grampa? Why?

  • • •

  Dawn.

  Barely. The sky was purple-black.

  Mama was already clinking plates in the kitchen.

  I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house, inching the screen door open just enough to squeeze past. The air was warm, but the grass was wet and cold under my feet. I prayed Charlie knew where Grampa had hidden the katana. It had to be somewhere near where I’d found them that day, sitting in the jungle.

  I took the trail Grampa’s own feet had dug out of the weeds from years of going to listen to the police. Grampa. Arrested. Where was he? What was he doing now? Would they send him to the mainland too?

  I rapped on Charlie’s door and peeked through the screen. “Charlie,” I called.

  No answer.

  I walked around back to the garden, and found him squatting on his heels, pulling weeds. He saw me coming and stood, and wiped his hands on his pants.

  “They arrested Grampa,” I said.

  Charlie gaped at me. “Joji-san?”

  “The FBI … they took him away.…”

  Charlie just stared, his mouth half open, his eyes vacant. Then he shook his head, and said, “Tst … chee … why they did that?” He frowned at the dirt.

  “He had that flag,” I said. “Maybe that’s why … I don’t know.”

  “Sure he had it … Why not? That was his country.”

  “But … they attacked us, and—”

  “He was ashamed of that. They wrong about him … they wrong.”

  “Grampa wanted me to get the katana,” I said. “Where did he hide it?”

  “Inside one log that was rotten in the middle.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “What?”

  “The sword … show me where it is.”

  Charlie put his hand on my shoulder, still grimacing. “They wrong,” he said again. He led me out of the garden and into the jungle.

  • • •

  The katana was wrapped in the burlap bag and hidden inside a soft, rotting log, just like Charlie had said. I took the bag off, and the scarf, and pulled the katana out, careful not to touch the blade with my fingers. The steel gleamed and flashed in the sunlight that fell through the trees. “That thing was very important to him,” Charlie said. “His history … your history, Tomi.”

  I felt the weight, the quality.

  Ancestors. Honor. Respect. It was all just an old man’s talk. Something I’d always listened to with only half of one ear, if even that. But now Grampa counted on me to save it all, save the katana. Not my katana … but the family katana. It belonged to no one, and to everyone … past, present, and future. Thinking about it made me nervous.

  “Put oil on ’um, so no rust,” Charlie said. “Then hide that thing someplace safe … and don’t take it out until this war is over.… Some people scared when they see that kind of things.”

  I wrapped the katana back up and tied the string around it. Charlie patted my shoulder and left me alone in the jungle.

  This is a good place, Tomi.…

  I tried to believe that Papa and Grampa were there with me—in the brilliant sunlight that streamed through the trees, in the warm earth and the sea that surrounded the island—not in some camp on the mainland. Not in some jail downtown.

  I hiked deeper into the jungle and came to a small clearing.

  I wanted to look at the katana again.

  Grampa had kept the steel polished. I could see my face in it. I thrust it out in front of me, trying to hold it in one hand. It was as heavy as an ax. I tried to swing it around, but could only do it with two hands. I didn’t know how those samurai guys lifted these things, except that they usually had two katanas, long and short, one in each hand, and maybe they balanced each other somehow.

  “Haaa!” I said, swinging the katana, slicing the air.

  “Hold it right there, fish boy.”

  I jumped and swung around, still holding the katana with both hands.

  Keet Wilson came out of the trees, his .22 raised to his cheek. The rifle was pointed at my head. “I knew you were in on it,” he said.

  “In on what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You and that old man and the Jap flag.” He took a step closer, then stopped, squinting down the barrel with one open eye.

  “I wasn’t in on any—”

  Bam!

  A bullet whizzed over my shoulder and thwacked through the trees. “Shuddu
p!” Keet said, and I froze. “Drop that thing.”

  Slowly I bent down and put the katana in the dirt.

  “Back away from it.”

  I did, shaking.

  Keet lowered the .22, still keeping the rifle aimed at me. “Move.”

  I backed away to the edge of the clearing.

  “Where’d you get that thing?”

  “It’s my grampa’s … it’s been in our family for hundreds of years.”

  “Shhh,” Keet scoffed. “He probably got it at a carnival.” Staring straight into my eyes, he lowered the rifle more, aimed it at the katana.

  Bam!

  The katana bounced. Dirt exploded in a puff of dust. Keet cocked the rifle and sent another bullet into the chamber. A brass shell flipped to the ground. When the dust cleared, I could see a small nick in the handle. My fists were as tight as hammers.

  I stepped toward the katana and reached down to pick it up. “Touch that and the next bullet goes in your hand.”

  I looked up at him. Our eyes locked. Slowly I kept reaching, my eyes on Keet.

  “I mean it, punk,” Keet said. “I’ll shoot.”

  Bam! The dirt near my hand puffed and fell back.

  I picked up the katana.

  Keet grinned at me. “You little pecker.”

  I found the furoshiki scarf and burlap bag, and put the katana away, then slowly backed into the jungle. Bushes closed around me. Keet burst out laughing. “Hey, my dad’s gonna go nuts when he hears about that sword.”

  I stopped and moved a low branch aside so I could see him, so he could see me. “You’re not going to tell him anything.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why not?”

  “You’re not that stupid.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means if you tell anyone about this sword and someone takes it away from me because of what you said, I’m going to make you pay for it … and not in money.”

  Keet laughed again. “Yeah? You and whose army, shrimp?”

  I stepped back out into the clearing, into the sunlight. “Me and this army,” I said.

  “What? I don’t see no army.”

  I tapped my chest with the tip of my finger. “This one.”

  “You?” he said, then laughed harder.

  Finally he stopped and stared back at me. He cocked the rifle—hard—brass shell flying out. Then he turned and walked back into the jungle.