Under the Blood-Red Sun Page 9

  The air smelled like gunpowder. So much was happening, it made me dizzy. Little stars exploded in my eyes. I shook them away and took a deep breath. My arms started stinging, and I looked at them. Long, thin red lines of dried blood. I must have scratched them coming down the tree.

  “Come on,” Billy said. “Charlie’s radio!”

  I got up and ran toward the jungle, following Billy. Behind us, Kimi’s terrified screams filled the air. I stumbled through the bushes, the trees. I kept running, but not thinking. All I asked was to stay on my feet, to follow Billy and be stronger than my rubbery bones. “Papa,” I heard myself call. “Papa …”

  Jackhammers

  Billy’s shirt floated ahead of me like a ghost. Planes kept droning on, out of sight above the trees. We were all going to die! They were going to bomb the whole island, bomb everything!

  Thoomp, thoomp, thoomp …

  “Billy!” I called. But he didn’t stop running. Green and yellow colors shot through the spaces in the trees, coming down like diamonds from the sun, everything spinning, spinning, spinning.…

  “Tomi,” Charlie said, his hand suddenly on my shoulder. “Tomi, you okay?” He shook me. Billy was there too. He stared at me with his mouth slightly open.

  “Tomi.” Charlie squeezed my shoulder.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m … I’m …”

  “Come inside.” Charlie pulled me into the house. My legs were trembling. Billy put his hand on my back and followed me.

  “This is no maneuver.…”

  The voice on Charlie’s radio was tinny. Lots of static.

  “This is the real McCoy!”

  Charlie leaned forward, sitting on the edge of a chair. He kept his fingers on the dial, like he was guarding it from drifting off the station. I noticed that the thumping explosions and rattle of antiaircraft fire had stopped. All I could hear was an occasional pop, like a firecracker.

  “The United States Army Intelligence has ordered that all civilians stay off the streets. Do not use your telephone. Stay off the streets. Keep calm. Keep your radio turned on for further news. Get your car off the street. Fill water buckets and tubs with water, to be ready for a possible fire. Attach garden hoses …”

  Another wave of excitement and fear ran through me, like when you’re sick with a fever. I glanced over at Charlie’s clock. Eight-forty. Only an hour ago I’d been catching pop flies with Billy.

  Thoomp … thoomp.

  The bombing started up again.

  The planes came back, droning high overhead. Billy and I ran out into the yard. Charlie followed us, but more cautiously, peeking out the door first. Now the air smelled like burning rubber.

  “Japanee plane,” Charlie said, shaking a fist at the sky. “Damn Japanee plane.”

  “We better get some hoses up to the house,” Billy said.

  Charlie nodded, and the three of us hurried over to the toolshed. Together we dragged six heavy garden hoses up the driveway. Billy’s brother was nowhere in sight.

  The rumbling grew in the distance. More planes dotted the sky, like a swirl of flies, some circling out over the ocean, some heading toward the mountains and banking back toward Pearl Harbor. “We’d be better off hiding in the jungle,” “Billy said.” “They’re not going to bomb trees.”

  Ka-booom!

  The earth rocked. A shudder rumbled through the dirt under my feet.

  “There!” Billy said, pointing to a cloud of black smoke rolling skyward. It looked like it was over the ridge near our school. You couldn’t tell for sure.

  Another plane burst past and shot up the valley. A wide path of earth and trees shivered beneath it. It was so close you could see the rivets on the wings, and the red sun.

  We got the hoses hooked up and ran back to Charlie’s radio. The announcer said they needed doctors and nurses and shipyard workers and ROTC boys, even Boy Scouts.

  “… a warning to all people throughout the territory of Hawaii and especially on the island of Oahu.… In the event of an air raid, stay under cover. Many of the wounded have been hurt by falling shrapnel from antiaircraft guns.… If an air raid should begin, do not go out-of-doors. Stay under cover.… You may be seriously injured or instantly killed by shrapnel from falling antiaircraft shells.”

  “I gotta go,” I said, suddenly remembering Mama and Kimi. I started out the door.

  “Tomi,” Charlie said. “You folks need anything, you come see me.… Okay?”

  “Okay …”

  I turned to Billy. So much had happened. “Watch yourself,” he said, trying to smile.

  “Yeah … you too.”

  • • •

  The planes vanished again, sometime after nine-thirty, leaving behind mile-high stacks of black and gray smoke that spread out over the island like a dirty fishnet.

  An hour passed.

  No planes. No explosions.

  I stood on the porch, watching the sky, and filled buckets of water that I put by the front and back doors. In case there was a bomb. In case there was a fire.

  Another hour … into the afternoon … the island calming, calming. The muffled crackling of ack-ack still popped, but only every once in a while.

  The waiting was worse than anything. What would come next? Would they come back? Would they start bombing houses? Would they land on the beaches? And Papa … where was he? Did he even know what had happened?

  For the first time I could ever remember, I saw Mama crying. She stayed in the kitchen, cutting green onions and seaweed for miso soup, and washing dishes, then drying them on a towel—did all kinds of normal things—but all the time crying silently. Tears rolled down her cheeks in thin wet lines. I hated seeing that. It’s okay, Mama, I wanted to say. The planes were gone.

  But it wasn’t okay.

  Mama noticed me watching her and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Go find Kimi,” she said in a calm voice. “She hiding somewhere.… See if she all right, Tomi.”

  And where was Grampa?

  I found Kimi in Mama’s closet. I tried to get her to come out, but she wouldn’t. Wouldn’t even say a word.

  “Come on, Kimi,” I pleaded. “It’s quiet now.… It’s all over.”

  She shook her head.

  I squatted down and opened the door a little farther. “Pretty dark in here, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, clutching her old Raggedy Ann doll.

  “Come,” I said. “Let’s go outside. It’s okay now.… I’ll show you.”

  She shook her head again.

  “How about if I get Azuki Bean from under the house for you?”

  Kimi nodded.

  “Yeah. Good. Let’s go get her.”

  She pushed at me to get out of the way. When we got to the front door, Kimi stiffened up, and wouldn’t move.

  “Okay, wait here,” I said. “I’ll go get Azuki Bean.”

  Lucky was lying with her puppies, trembling. I stroked her head. “I know how you feel, girl.” She licked the back of my hand when I cupped it around Azuki Bean, who was snuggled up against Lucky’s warm belly. Azuki Bean was small and fat and soft and sweet-smelling. “Okay, girl. I got a job for you.”

  Sitting just inside the screen door, Kimi snuggled Azuki Bean in her lap next to Raggedy Ann. Azuki Bean was a girl, Grampa had finally figured out. Red was a boy. Azuki Bean rubbed her wet nose against Kimi’s hand, and Kimi smiled up at me.

  “Good dog,” I whispered.

  A flock of birds raced by, their shadows streaking over the grass. The pigeons! “Kimi, look,” I said, pointing to the birds. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Kimi nodded, and looked down at Azuki Bean.

  Fourteen pigeons had returned. Three were still missing. I fed them and latched the door. If a pigeon didn’t come back in three days, you’d have to wait a week or more before it returned. If it did.

  • • •

  Billy came over a couple of hours later. His father had called and said he’d be home as soon as he could get there
, but it might be a while. They were okay, but the city was in a mess. Billy said his mother went straight to work at the hospital right after the bombing started. His father was at the harbor.

  “Those fires are still burning down by the school,” Billy said, pointing from the porch. “You can see the smoke.”

  Just then Grampa came walking around the house from the back, carrying a bucket of eggs. Eggs? Spooky … eggs at a time like that.

  “Good, nah?” Grampa said, looking over at me and Billy. He smiled and held up the bucket.

  “What?” I asked. “The eggs?”

  Grampa nodded, a quick dip of his head. “Tamago.” He put the bucket down, and one by one took the eggs out and arranged them in a neat line on the top step.

  “Grampa …?”

  “For soldiers.”

  “What soldiers?”

  “From plane.”

  I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Soldiers come, I give egg …”

  “I think he means Japanese soldiers,” Billy said.

  I stared at Grampa. Was he joking? Had he lost his mind? Oh, Papa, where are you? Come home.… Come home now.

  “Where that flag?” Grampa asked.

  Before I could say anything, I heard the tramping sound of boots pounding on dry dirt. Billy’s mouth dropped open. I turned around. Eight U.S. Army guys charged toward us with rifles and bayonets pointing at our stomachs. They spread out around the front of the house, dust settling at their feet, sweat pouring down from under their helmets.

  “You live here?” one of the men asked Grampa.

  Grampa looked a little surprised. I think he really was expecting Japanese soldiers. But he caught himself and bowed. “Good afternoon, officers,” he said in his best English, then pointed toward the eggs.

  “Yes,” I said, quickly stepping in front of him. “We live here.”

  “We got a report that someone around this area was signaling the Jap fighters.… You know anything about that?”

  “N-no,” I said.

  He looked at Billy, and Billy shook his head.

  “Think hard, boys. This is extremely serious. This is war.… Tell me anything you might have seen. We were told the Japs dropped parachuters up the valley, and that someone around here was signaling them with a flag.”

  “We didn’t see any parachuters,” I said.

  If I told him about Grampa’s flag they’d shoot him. Shoot us.

  The man turned to Billy. “Who are you?”

  “Billy Davis, sir. I live next door.”

  “You see anything?”

  Billy stared at the man. He didn’t answer.

  Mama opened the door, then stepped back inside. The door hinges squeaked as the door sprang back.

  “Come on out here, ma’am,” the man said, then turned back to Billy.

  “Did you see anything?” he asked again.

  “No, sir.”

  “Think! This is very, very serious.”

  “I didn’t see anyone signaling any parachuters.”

  The man studied Billy’s face. He turned to Grampa. Glared at him, glared at Mama. Then, with a quick wave of his hand, he left. The men jogged off behind him, heading through the trees toward diamond grass.

  We watched them go. Silence spread, huge and strange, like the silence in the eye of a hurricane. Little riffles of thought tried to organize something in my brain.

  Grampa sat down on the steps next to his eggs and stared off into the trees. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or dazed or what.

  “I … better get going,” Billy finally said. He turned and walked away, looking back once.

  Thanks … for not telling, I wanted to say.

  Billy hurried into the trees. I stared until the last hint of him had vanished.

  Grampa sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at the ground. I sat down next to him and watched a trail of ants go in and out of a crack in the dry earth.

  • • •

  Just before dark, Charlie came over and told us that the territory had been placed under martial law. Major General Walter C. Short was now the governor of the islands. “And you gotta make the windows black,” Charlie said.

  Mama invited him in, but he said he had to get back up to the Davises’ house and help Billy and Jake. “The parents not home yet.… No forget the blackout.… No can have any kind light show through from inside the house.”

  Mama thanked him and gave him six of Grampa’s eggs.

  “Lucky got water tank your house,” Charlie told me after Mama had gone back inside. “The radio said they went poison the water supply in the mountains.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  Charlie left. Mama hung blankets up over the back door and the windows in the kitchen. I found a candle and lit it. Kimi, Grampa, Mama, and I ate a small meal of pickled vegetables and rice, then sat in the hot, airless room, dripping with sweat until we couldn’t take it anymore.

  Finally, Mama blew out the candle. We moved into the dark front room and tried to sleep, huddled together on the floor. I got one of Papa’s fishing knives and kept it next to me, in case we were attacked in the middle of the night. Through the screen door, you could see a reddish glow above the trees from the fires that still burned at Pearl Harbor.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Could anyone? With the whole island blacked out, it was the blackest of black nights. I nearly stopped breathing when I heard a papery, rustling sound somewhere under the house. Rats, or Lucky … maybe a mongoose. I slid down under my blanket and curled up into a ball.

  A little later, the whole island came alive with machine-gun fire and explosions. Somewhere down in the city, or maybe it was in the mountains. Searchlights exploded across the black sky, slicing the clouds like glowing white bayonets. I peeked up and watched from where I lay, the lights framed by the screen door. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes.

  Then the lights went out.

  The guns stopped.

  Kimi cried softly in Mama’s arms. Grampa and I got up and crept out to the porch. I looked around the yard, but couldn’t see anything that shouldn’t have been there. Were Japanese soldiers landing on the beaches? Were they in the hills and working their way down? Were they in reloaded planes heading back, just minutes offshore?

  After a while, Grampa and I went inside and lay down on the floor again. Mama didn’t ask us what we’d seen out there. I finally dozed off, but woke sometime later to a muffled, rattling sound … nearby … but not too close … a rattling, like guns … no, not guns … something else.

  Grampa was gone.

  I got up and felt my way out to the front porch, the old floorboards creaking under me. Outside, the trees surrounded the yard in huge black blobs that swayed in the breeze, leaves hissing. The air was cool. A gunpowdery smell mixed with burning rubber.

  The rattling sounded louder on the porch.

  Jackhammers … that’s what it sounded like … jackhammers. But in the middle of the night?

  “They digging graves,” someone said.

  I jumped back.

  Grampa stood below me, hidden in the dark blur of the yard.

  “Criminy, Grampa!”

  He climbed the steps halfway, then sat down slowly, as if he’d just discovered how old he really was. I went down and sat next to him.

  “Who’s digging graves?”

  “Army mens … up the cemetery … bodies from Paru Haba.”

  Bodies? It hadn’t even occurred to me that people had been killed down there.

  “Lot of bodies, Tomikazu … lot of bodies.”

  “Did you go up there and look?”

  “Lot of dead peoples.”

  Grampa and I sat in the dark without speaking, listening to the jackhammers. After a while we went back inside. Grampa lay down on his mat. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the ceiling.

  I woke several times again. Jackhammers. N
oises in the yard. Grampa’s rooster, off schedule. The black dead of night made every little fear bigger. I almost couldn’t stand it. Every movement in the trees outside was a Japanese soldier sneaking up to the house.… Every dut-dut-dut-dut-dut of the jackhammers at the cemetery brought back the faces of dead people staring out from the magazines at Billy’s house.… Every distant barking dog was a warning that when the sun finally rose we would be looking down the barrels of enemy guns.

  Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.

  I covered my ears.

  Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.

  Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut.

  Messenger Birds

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! “Open up in there!” Bam! Bam! Bam!

  The screen door rattled like it would fall off. I bolted up with a pounding heart, staring at the dark shadow of a man in the doorframe.

  “Whatchoo want?” I heard Grampa say. He was coming out of the kitchen, Mama following him.

  “Taro Nakaji … Does he live here?”

  Six-thirty. Dark, wet morning. I staggered up as Grampa opened the door. “Please … come inside,” Mama said, bowing in the Japanese way.

  “Taro Nakaji,” the man said without coming into the house. He was tall. A khaki uniform showed under his rainslicker. Army. A pistol was strapped to his belt. Two policemen in olive-brown uniforms, also wearing slickers, stood behind him on the porch. One of them was looking around the yard. A Hawaiian guy. Gray clouds moved in the sky beyond, the wind pushing them toward the sea.

  “He fishing,” Mama said.

  “Fishing?”

  “Three days ago, he went. Come home tomorrow, or next day after that.”

  The army man glanced around the front room. “You have a radio?”

  Mama shook her head.

  Kimi sneaked up and peeked around Mama’s legs.

  “You mind if we look around?” the man asked.

  “Please,” Mama said. “Look the house … please …”

  Grampa stepped back and let them pass. He studied them closely. We waited in the front room while the three men searched the house in less than a minute. When they finished, the army guy went over to Grampa and said, “Someone reported that you kept messenger pigeons.… How long have you been sending messages to the enemy?”