Under the Blood-Red Sun Read online

  Me and Billy moved out to the center of the field. Papa opened the loft door and tapped the side lightly. Six high-fliers exploded out, almost too fast to see, wings flapping, beating against each other, bursting into brilliant whites and grays when they flew above the trees into the sunlight. A faint feathery dust followed them out.

  Papa came over and lay in the grass next to us. No one spoke, we just watched the birds climb into the sky. Those birds flew so high I thought they would pop. Soon they became specks. Straight up, higher than even the bravest clouds would go, it seemed.

  I tried to imagine being one of them, floating in the sky with the wind pushing up under the fan of my wings, rumbling in my ears. I’d look down and see me and Billy and Papa like ants in the field far below, and the shiny silver roof of our house, and Keet’s and Billy’s houses nearby. And then the cemetery past the trees, that whole city of gravestones in one view. You could see so much it would make you dizzy.

  “Mama should see these birds,” Papa said, mostly to himself.

  I peeked over at him. Mama once told me there was no one else in the whole world like Papa. “We all very lucky, Tomi-kun,” she said.

  One day when Grampa was in a dreamy mood because his friend, Charlie, had given him a green bottle of sake, Japanese rice wine, he told me the story of how Mama and Papa met.

  When she was only sixteen, Mama sailed over from Japan to marry a sugarcane worker. She was one of those picture brides—she’d never even met the guy except through a picture and a couple of letters. In those days that was the only way a Japanese man in Hawaii could meet a Japanese woman, and lots of people did it. I told Mama it seemed like a big gamble, but she said it was a way to get out of the poverty she’d grown up in, which was worse than any I would ever see in Honolulu.

  So Mama sailed over with hundreds of other picture brides to meet her new husband and start a new life.

  But before she got here, the guy was killed in a gambling fight. Mama got off the boat and no one was there to take her in. She ended up staying with a fisherman who had sent for a bride from the same ship. Mama’s story spread quickly around the fishing boats, Grampa said. The poor girl. What she going do? Sell herself in a bar for the navy guys? When Papa heard the story, he found the fisherman and asked if could meet the bride with no husband. Papa was kind of lonely, Grampa said.

  “Just think about that, Tomi-kun,” Mama said. “If he never did that, how sad would my life be.… I would probably have sailed back home … alone. Unwanted bride. Then who would marry me?”

  I looked back up at the high-fliers, now almost invisible. So high. So sure of themselves, like Papa. I wondered if I could ever be like him.

  The P-40 Tomahawks

  “Tomi,” Papa said early one Saturday morning a couple of weeks later. He nudged me and I sat up. A kerosene lamp, turned low, hung from his fingers.

  “Okay … I’m awake.”

  Papa nodded and set the lamp on the floor near Grampa’s mat, which was empty. Then he left.

  For a moment I stared at the wall, not awake, but not asleep. The lantern made the whole room glow an orangy-brown that made getting up that early worth it, just to get the feeling. Papa and Grampa probably felt like that, too, because they never got up after the sun.

  I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the clock by my bed. Three forty-five.

  A pair of shorts and an old shirt. That’s all I’d need, because we’d only be gone two days. I got dressed and took the lantern out to the kitchen, where Mama was heating up the kerosene stove. The sweet smell of the flame filled the room. Mama smiled at me.

  The screen door to the backyard squeaked in the blackness as I went out. The trees and jungle loomed gray and spooky in the light from the lantern. Lucky sat at the bottom of the stairs looking up, whining and wagging her tail.

  “Go back to sleep,” I said, walking down the stairs. “You’re just wasting your time.” Papa would sooner carry bad-luck bananas on his boat than Lucky, who would leave little puddles around the deck. Besides, Papa was already taking a chance on bad luck by letting me bring Billy along this time. It would be the first time a haole had ever even set foot on the Taiyo Maru. Maybe it would even be the first time a haole set foot on any Japanese fishing boat. Papa’s helper, Sanji, said haoles were bad luck.

  “Where the boy?” Papa asked as he came out of the darkness of the path that led to the outhouse.

  “He’ll be here,” I said.

  Papa nodded and went up the back steps to the kitchen.

  I held the lantern high to spread the light around. The shadows in the trees moved as I crept into the jungle. The air smelled sweet, full of some kind of flower you could only smell at night. I took a deep breath and tried to remember it.

  But when I got near the outhouse my memory went blank. That place was just a deep hole in the ground surrounded by a wooden closet with bugs inside, the kind that live in the dark and run for it in the light.

  I held my breath and went in. I almost made it without breathing. Hoo, that place smelled like a grave, or something. The air smelled twice as sweet when I ran back out.

  It was going to be a great day.… I could feel it.

  “Ssssst,” someone whispered from the blackness, and I jumped.

  Billy came smiling into the small circle of light.

  “Jeese! Don’t scare me like that, confonnit.”

  “Look,” he said, handing me a pair of binoculars. “Dad said we could use them.”

  They were black and heavy. I looked through them but couldn’t see anything, then handed them back.

  Billy stuffed the binoculars into a small canvas bag that hung from his shoulder. He smelled like toothpaste.

  “You had breakfast yet?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  I picked up the lantern and started toward the house. “Come on, then.”

  You could see Mama and Papa working in the kitchen through the screen window. Billy stopped and waited at the bottom of the steps while I went up. “Come inside,” I said, turning back. It was only the kitchen.

  Papa came to the door carrying a metal bucket with a lid on it. He lifted the bucket to show Billy. “Bait … fresh opelu … Charlie went catch ’urn.” Papa squeezed past me and started down the stairs.

  Billy stepped back so Papa could get by. “Mr. Nakaji …” Billy said. “Thank you for inviting—”

  “Nah,” Papa said, butting in. “’S okay.”. Papa was a lot more friendly to Billy than Mama was. He was friendly to everyone. It drove Grampa crazy, because he wanted Papa to be more firm, like he was. And anyway, Grampa wasn’t too sure Papa should let me mix with haoles.

  Billy nodded.

  Papa smiled and said, “Go inside, you boys. Eat. I going get birds.” Papa always took a couple of racers out on the boat to let them fly home, to keep them in shape.

  Billy came inside and sat on the edge of a chair at the kitchen table. He was barefoot, like I was, so he didn’t have to take his shoes off. I glanced at Mama’s face to see how she felt about Papa’s invitation to Billy to come inside and eat. But Mama looked just like always, kind of serious, but not worried about anything, as far as I could tell.

  Mama brought us each a steaming bowl of rice, and in another, smaller bowl, a raw egg. Then she poured some shoyu into the bowl with the egg and whipped it around with her cooking chopsticks. Raw egg and soy sauce. My mouth was watering. Billy watched with big wide fish eyes. “It’s good,” I said, to reassure him. “Eggs don’t get much fresher than this.”

  Mama poured the shoyu-egg over our sticky rice and gave us some chopsticks.

  Billy waited, staring at the bowl in front of him. He picked up the chopsticks and tried to make them work.

  “Itadakimasu,” I said, and Billy looked up.

  “It’s what you say before you eat,” I said.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means, let’s eat.”

  I mashed the rice and shoyu-egg together and dug in. Billy poked ar
ound the eggs, trying to keep the rice and egg separate. He managed to balance a few bits of eggless rice on the ends of his chopsticks. I tried to keep from laughing. It was good to finally have him come into our house for more than just a couple of minutes. Maybe I’d think about letting him see my room someday.… Maybe.

  Pretty soon Grampa came in the back door with more fresh eggs from his chickens. He seemed to be in a good mood. He tipped his head toward the bucket of eggs and glanced at Billy. “Good, nah?”

  Billy nodded. He looked nervous, and I had to smile. Grampa always made Billy kind of shaky, and Grampa knew it. “You seasick today?” Grampa asked Billy.

  “Grampa!”

  “I hope not,” Billy answered. “Never have been before, anyway.”

  Grampa put the eggs by the sink and sat down next to Billy.

  Billy stopped picking at his rice.

  Mama poured Grampa a cup of tea. I just hoped he wouldn’t start slurping it in front of Billy. Criminy, sometimes he sounded like Lucky drinking water.

  Papa’s voice sliced through the nighttime stillness from outside. “Sanji coming soon.… You boys ready?”

  “Ready,” I said, pushing my chair back and gulping the last bite of gooey, sweet rice. “Gochisoh-sama.”

  Billy stood up, half the rice still on his plate. “It means you’re done eating,” I said.

  Grampa glanced at Billy’s uneaten rice, then at Billy. With his arms resting on the table, Grampa clenched and flexed his jaw, and made his lips curl back to suck air in through his teeth. The tendons in his neck stood out like wires. Mama always told us never to leave even one grain of rice on the table, that it was a small treasure, that a farmer went through a lot of trouble to grow it.

  Billy glanced at me.

  “He’s just telling you that if you want to be a muscle man like he is you gotta eat all your rice. Come on, let’s go.”

  Billy pushed past me and hurried out.

  “Che,” Grampa mumbled under his breath.

  Yup, it was going to be a great day, all right.

  • • •

  Sanji met us out on the road, his old fishy-smelling truck rattling as it idled, or tried to idle, anyway. He had to pump on the gas pedal every time it sounded like it was about to die. Sanji nodded to me and Billy, a big grin on his face, as if taking Billy along was the craziest thing he’d ever done. It probably was.

  Billy climbed into the back, and I handed him the wooden crate that held Papa’s two racers. I jumped in after him. Papa handed me the bucket of bait and a box of sweet specialties that Mama had made for us to eat on the boat. “Let’s go,” Papa said to Sanji as he slid into the cab.

  Sanji worked hard for that truck. Papa said he had two other part-time jobs besides fishing. The only problem with Sanji’s truck was the fishy stink, which stuck to you like sunburn. But Sanji was very lucky. Not many fishermen had a truck.

  The streets were deserted and silent. Only a few lights were on in the dark houses we passed. The slightest hint of morning edged up over the mountains behind us, a faint purple-black glow. Sanji only had to restart the truck twice before we got down to Kewalo Basin, where Papa kept the Taiyo Maru.

  As usual, Sanji had already gotten the boat ready. When did that guy sleep? There was ice in the fish box and four buckets of fishing line set out on the deck. He’d also filled the wooden keg with fresh drinking water. We’d only be gone two days this time, because we couldn’t miss school, so the one bucket of bait Papa brought along would be enough.

  Papa and Sanji looked like twins in their long khaki pants and white BVD tank tops. Sanji even had a ballahead haircut, like Papa.

  Papa put the bait in the iced fish box, then fired up the old diesel engine, which made a lot of racket in the quiet harbor. We were lucky to have diesel. Some boats still ran on kiawe wood, where you had to keep a hot fire going all the time.

  Sanji took the crate with the pigeons aboard and put it by the deckhouse, where the birds would be out of the wind. “What they call you?” Sanji asked, passing by Billy.

  “Billy.”

  “Okay. So, Billy. You ever been on one boat?”

  “Only ocean liners … my dad works for Matson.”

  “Hoo,” Sanji said, making big eyes like he was impressed. Matson was the biggest shipping line in Honolulu, maybe even the whole Pacific Ocean.

  “Well, anyway,” Sanji went on, “the main thing is no fall off, yeah? Easy to fall in the water from this boat.”

  Papa’s sampan was about thirty feet long, mostly a flat, open deck with a small deckhouse toward the front where the engine was. Papa steered from a long-armed wooden tiller in the back. There was no shelter. You couldn’t even get out of the sun unless you went down into the fish box under the deckhouse, or else Papa hung the tarp up for shade. But the box made you sick just to smell it, and Papa never put up the tarp unless it was raining. He never thought to get out of the sun. He and Sanji didn’t even wear hats, which is why Papa’s face was ten times browner than the skin under his shirt and had a lot of lines on it, especially by his eyes.

  “I can keep myself aboard,” Billy said.

  Sanji nodded, and tapped Billy’s shoulder. “Good … One boy in the ocean hard to find.”

  Sanji was only nineteen, but he seemed much older. I guess it was because he was married already, and he had that truck and was working. “His parents must have been a couple of jokers,” I whispered. “Sanji means ‘three o’clock.’”

  Billy peeked over at Sanji.

  “And he’s got a three-year-old daughter, you know, which means he was only three years older than us when she was born.”

  Billy shook his head, and whispered, “Wow …”

  Papa thought Sanji was the greatest thing since diesel engines. He knew the ocean as well as anyone, Papa said. And Sanji was a good swimmer and he had courage, which sometimes came in handy. Like one time when they got a line wrapped up in the prop and Sanji went down to cut it loose or else they would have been stuck out there until somebody found them. When Sanji got in the water some sharks came nosing around and Papa had to throw chunks of fish meat out to them to keep them away. And Sanji just kept on working under the hull.

  I’d gone out on the boat lots of times, but I still worried because Papa didn’t have a radio, so he couldn’t call for help if we needed it. He couldn’t afford one. He said he was lucky just to make the payments on the boat. But with no radio … What if the engine broke? What if the prop got jammed? What if a shark had gotten Sanji that day?

  We finished loading up, and Papa walked the boat out of the black harbor. Even at that early hour, we passed fishermen squatting like toads on the rocks with their bamboo poles. Sanji waved at one of them, his deaf cousin. The shadowy man lifted his chin.

  Papa aimed the Taiyo Maru for open sea. The ocean was as smooth as melting ice, and the lights on shore shimmered out over the dark water like wobbly palm trees.

  Papa stood at the tiller, guiding it with his knee while he rummaged through a bucket of line, checking the hooks and sinkers. The boat rose and fell in the dark, smooth and easy, slicing the morning water. The engine chugged and vibrated in the floorboards and spat out smoky bubbles in the wake.

  “This is a good place, Tomikazu,” Papa suddenly said. “Smell that sweet air.”

  I faced into the breeze and took a long, thirsty breath. Sweet like the jungle. Clean, and rich with salt.

  “Ii-na. Good, nah?” Papa said.

  I nodded. “Good.”

  • • •

  In an hour’s time the sun had colored the ocean silver, then deep, deep blue. And you could see puffy white clouds sitting stone-still way out on the horizon, where we were headed. Now, far behind, the purple-green island drew down into the sea as if it were sinking, looking like one pretty good wave could just roll right on over it.

  “Tomi,” Papa said, slowing the boat down to a crawl. He pointed his chin toward the racers. “Let ’um go.”

  Billy and I
set the box in the center of the deck and each lifted a pigeon out, holding them the way Papa had taught me, and I had taught Billy—with the feet tucked between the second and third finger and the belly cupped in the palm of the hand. Mine was gray, with a white neck. Billy’s was all rusty red.

  The pigeon seemed to hum in my hand, eager to fly. I put its solid body next to my cheek, and smelled the musty feathers. “See you tomorrow night, bird,” I whispered.

  Me and Billy glanced at each other, then threw the pigeons into the air with easy sweeping motions. The birds fluttered out, then rose into the sky. They circled the boat once and raced back toward the island.

  Billy got his binoculars out and watched them, with Sanji breathing down his neck. “What’s that?” Sanji asked.

  “Binoculars.”

  “Oh, yeah. I heard of it.”

  “Heard of them? You mean you’ve never looked through binoculars before?”

  Sanji laughed. “Who I know got that thing?”

  Billy handed the binoculars to Sanji, who thought they were a miracle. He put his hand out and looked at his fingers. “Ho!”

  “Look at the island,” Billy said, turning Sanji so he faced the right way. “Ho!” Sanji said again.

  When Papa wanted to look through them, he had to wrestle them away from Sanji. Papa smiled under the binoculars as he studied the island, then the birds getting smaller and smaller, and the ocean all around the boat, and the clouds on the horizon. He even looked at me. I had to keep sticking my hand in front of the lenses to get them back.

  “Hey,” Billy said, tapping my shoulder. “Look.”

  A silver dot on the horizon, growing larger, fast. A single pursuit fighter, flying low and heading straight toward the boat.

  Billy took the binoculars from Papa and raised them to his eyes. “P-40. Tomahawk.”

  Another plane appeared from the left and banked in to join the first one. Silently, they flew toward us, their shadows racing over the surface of the sea. Then the rumble of their engines, coming louder and louder.

  Papa started waving at them.

  “He always make like that,” Sanji said, hooking a thumb at Papa. “Just like one kid.”