Ken's War (9 page)

Suddenly, the wholly formed knowledge
arrived: his grandfather was a thief. The picnic table, the
bathroom mirror, the squares of rough toilet paper, and who knew
what else, had been stolen from the state park where he had worked.
Why hadn’t Grandma scolded Grandpap about stealing? What if
Grandpap would have gotten caught and been fired from his job?

Now “Grandpap” and “thief” became fused
together like “bacon and eggs” or “arrest and trial.”

Ken plunked the quartz stone against a tree.
It landed with a conclusive thud somewhere. He tried not to care
where.

A nocturnal bird or animal screeched. He
stood for a while, trying to get used to the lightness of his
pocket without the stone in it. He ran to the tree, searched in the
underbrush by feel, retrieved his talisman and sprinted along the
tracks. His breath burst out as clouds before him. He was very
near, or very, very far from home. He pressed his ear against the
railroad track, listening for the weight of things to come.

Voices. Voices from behind him. He peered
into the darkness. Shadows coalesced into substance. Figures
floated toward him on a footpath that intersected with the tracks
roughly ten feet back from where he was standing. He couldn’t quite
make out who it was. He squinted to make their faces recognizable.
It had to be Maeda, his dad, Wizard and a posse of village folks.
They’d formed a search party.

None of the figures was tall enough to be his
dad. The people were short, wiry. Japanese boys. Six of them.

“Ohiyo gozimasu?”
he said. Good
morning: A dumb thing to say.

One boy stepped out from the edge of the
woods. His skin was lustrous in the moonlight. Ken’s chest squeezed
his breath. It was the boy the gang members had stoned and beaten
to death. Five other boys stepped from the edge of the woods and
into the moonlight. They formed a semi-circle behind their
leader.

Ken pivoted and ran in the direction he’d
been heading. Just as he looked over his shoulder, he saw them take
chase. The sticks they wielded flashed like sabers in the
moonlight. On the run, he scooped up a stick as big as a baseball
bat lying along the railroad tracks. Whipping the air in front of
him with the stick, he snarled, “Go away! Go away! Go away!”

“Gah way! Gah way! Gah way!” they yowled.

Ken bolted into the woods. He ran—eyes
closed, arms windmilling in front of him, ripping through the
plants. Brambles snagged his pants, vines snared his legs, twigs
clawed his face.

A profound calm embraced him. The orderly
bamboo trunks, each as thick as his neck, soothed him, combed his
straggling thoughts. The scenery was tinted in shades of gray in
the pre-dawn light. The sounds of the boys’ yelling and pursuing
footsteps had faded and finally withdrawn like the stars. He felt
secure here, like a flea snuggled deep in dog fur. He crawled into
a bamboo lean-to and lay on a straw mat someone had placed on the
dirt floor. A squirrel skittered over his toes. Startled, Ken
looked outside the lean-to to see who or what was chasing the
animal.

A bird screeched. The bird wasn’t chasing the
squirrel, rather, it was scratching for insects among the dried
bamboo leaves. The bird appeared to be a species of peacock, but
not the usual blue and green kind you see strutting in zoos. This
peacock was dark with a white streak running down its forehead, and
bright orange-red wing feathers. The exotic bird screeched again
and took flight, sweeping just above the floor of the bamboo grove
and swooping out of sight into the shadowy green. A strange
bird.

A man dressed in white appeared, standing on
the spot the bird had been scratching. Ken tried not to be afraid
of the man who’d materialized in the grove. The man didn’t resemble
the other villagers. He didn’t look Japanese, really.

The bridge of his nose pushed deep into his
face. His nostrils and nose tip formed three pudgy spheres. His
eyelids bulged. A mole on his chin was as large as a lotus seed
with black hairs kite-tailing out of it. His queue dusted his
shoulder blades. The man was a dead ringer for one of those troll
dolls the girls back home played with and braided their hair. Maybe
he was an aborigine, an Ainu. If he was, he was away from his
people who lived on Hokkaido.

The troll rested his fists at his hips, and
with four sharp movements spread his feet shoulder-width apart. He
performed a series of graceful patterns during which, eyes closed,
he raised his hands prayer-like above his head, opened his arms and
lowered them to his sides. He slowly raised one leg then lowered it
with the foot angled up, reminding Ken of a wading egret. Arms
extended in front of him, he held an invisible large vase in his
hands. He rotated the vase end over end as if it was priceless. A
kind of dignity, new to Ken, radiated from the man’s homely
face.

After he’d finished these slow prayerful
motions, the man sliced the air with his arms, swiveled his hands
on his wrists, and kicked his legs out piston quick, his heels
aiming at an imaginary foe. The man never acknowledged Ken during
the fluid performance that lasted nearly an hour judging by the
height of sun building nests of lights in the bamboo leaves
overhead.

Ken wanted to learn the fast stuff. Not that
slow ballet stuff. He wanted to be able to kick the shit out of
people when he returned to the States, and here in Japan, if
necessary. Some doofuss or other would step up and ask for it, he
was sure of that. And he wanted to protect himself against the
swarm of Japanese boys should they have a mind to kill him. Ken
crawled out of the lean-to. He dug a divot out of the damp loam
with his sneaker toe to create noise so the man would open his eyes
and see him.

“Ohiyo goziamasu.”
Ken bowed
deeply.

“Zao.”

He’d never heard Maeda or anyone say zow. “I
want to learn that stuff.”

Joints loose and flowing evenly, the man
strode closer, his bearing erect, stomach flat. His eyes searched
inside Ken, exploring his body, knowing his mind. The sensation was
one of unreserved empathy. No pity in it. No desire to control or
manipulate. No traps being set. No calculations of worth. No
obligatory obedience in exchange. Ken was unafraid, but
uncomfortable with this exotic intimacy.

“I want to learn that stuff,” Ken said
softly.

“Who is stopping you?”

Ken blinked, not understanding the question.
Thinking simplification would bridge the language gap, he said, “I
want learn.”

“Speak the King’s English. I understand
perfectly. I asked, ‘Who is stopping you?’” As he spoke, he took
Ken’s left arm into his hands and held it firmly. The man swept his
right hand back and forth, palm facing down about two inches above
the tender spot on Ken’s wrist. The man’s palm generated warmth,
soothing warmth as from a fire burning in a hearth. Soon, tingles
traveled up Ken’s arm. The man manipulated Ken’s fingers, tugging
and pulling them as if trying to lengthen them. Ken had never
complained to his father about his achy wrist because he was afraid
Captain Paderson would take him to an army doctor, a sawbones, a
quack doctor sent to Japan because he didn’t sterilize his
implements.

The homely man’s long, mole whiskers yielded
to the gentle whims of a breeze. “Return to your father.”

Ken ran along a path with the breeze at his
back. He didn’t have to worry about bad doctors anymore. The ache
was a memory.

At last he recognized the path at the edge of
the bamboo grove. It was the trail the villagers trod daily to
fetch water from the public well. Women carrying infants on their
backs stopped gossiping and glanced up at him as he raced by. A dog
leapt at his thighs, muddying his pants with its paws. Stringy
chickens complained and scattered.

Around this time of the day his dad usually
ate breakfast or was gulping the dregs of his first cup of coffee,
while Maeda quietly carried dishes to and fro, giving him sugar and
powdered milk before he requested it. Their mouths would drop open
and eyes pop when they saw that he was home, safe.

Ken opened the door, crashing it against the
wall. “Dad! Maeda! I’m OK! I’m back!”

A kitchen almost as empty as the day they’d
moved in mocked him. His dad’s watch ticked hollowly on the table.
He must have been awfully worried judging by the battalion of dead
soldiers crowding the kitchen table. Maybe Army buddies up from
Okinawa helped snorkel down those Kirin beers during a break from
the manhunt. His dad and Maeda were no doubt combing the mountain
right this minute helping the search party, or filing a missing
person report at the prefecture police station.

When they discovered him here in the house,
he’d catch holy hell or be hugged to death. Or both.

A soft hiss—the kind of noise you make when
you stub your toe and you suck in air to keep from swearing—came
from his dad’s sleeping area. Two shadows embraced on the pearly
shojii.
Ken slid the door open. Her black hair waterfalled
over one shoulder. The woman was sitting on her haunches, her
squarish buttocks rested on her heels. Her toe pads were pale,
perfect bleached peas. The possibility of his father being in bed
with Maeda was too appalling, yet completely appealing to have
entered Ken’s conscious mind until his intrusion upon this tableau
that embarrassed and aroused him. Ken loved Maeda and it was the
intensity of his love that rendered her too perfect for his
father’s affections, such as they were. If his dad married Maeda,
the union would ruin everything. If Maeda accepted Paderson’s love,
she would be a less than the perfect goddess-creature Ken had built
her up to be in his heart.

Captain Paderson, wearing only boxer shorts,
pushed the Japanese woman away from him. He rubbed his day-old
stubble and, glassy eyed, watched the woman, a stranger to Ken, bob
around the tiny room plucking her clothes off the tatami floor.

“What do you want?” Paderson asked.

“I’m back,” Ken said.

His dad held his arms out and said without
enthusiasm, “Great.”

“I’m all right.”

“How about rustling up some breakfast?”

“Where’s Maeda?”

“Not here.”

“Did she come—”

“And get that damn hair cut, or I’ll cut it
for you.”

Ken carefully slid the screen shut. His dad
didn’t know he’d been out all night, lost in the forests of Japan.
The woman pranced out of the sleeping area and padded through the
kitchen with her head bowed. Two birdlike chirps surprised Ken,
making him plunge his thumbs into an egg he was going to crack. He
turned around to see what had made the chirps and saw that the
woman had collided with Maeda, who’d just opened the door. The
Japanese women bowed apologies as they sidled past each other,
Maeda entering the kitchen, the other woman leaving the house.

He wiped his egg-smeared hands on his pants
and looked at the housekeeper. Lines, like crazed porcelain, netted
Maeda face. Mud defiled her blue kimono hem. A lock of loose hair
encircled her neck. Maeda pulled him to her. His shoulder muffled
her sobs, drank up her tears.

Holding her slight body up, he whispered,
“Where were you? I didn’t know where you went! I looked and you
were gone. Then everybody left. I walked all night.”

She stroked the back of his neck and made
consoling noises.

“Where in the Sam Hill have you been?”
Paderson roared.

“I looking for Ken. No Sam Hill.”

More angry than embarrassed, Ken pulled away
from Maeda’s embrace. “Don’t yell at her!”

“Watch it, wise guy.”

“You should yell at me!” Ken shouted. “Not
her!”

“Nobody yell,” Maeda said.

Ken and Maeda interrupted each other,
sacrificing their own reputations in hopes of giving the other
face. Nothing Ken said had the intended effect on his father. His
reaction was the opposite of what Ken and Maeda desired. Paderson’s
thin lips signaled that he’d heard enough. His voice swelled
against the walls.

“You let my son wander around, lost in a
foreign country in the middle of the night.” He laid a leaden hand
on Ken’s shoulder and dragged him away from her side. “You’re
discharged from service, woman. Pack your gear and leave.”

“Hai.”

“Do you understand what I mean?”

“Hai.”
She collected nothing, bowed
deeply at the door and unveiled a smile that perched on Ken’s
heart.

“Don’t look at me like that, wise guy. You’re
the one who said you were too old for a babysitter. You got your
way. You’re on your own.”

He’d been feeling that way for a long, long
time.

Chapter
Eight

~ Escape Strategy ~

He stretched out on his futon, propped up on
his elbows, and opened
The Pearl
. The book’s pages were
yellow and soft from multiple readings. The house was quiet. No
distant sounds of cars and trucks on highways, no TV, nothing. Only
his sighs and the rustling of buckwheat husks in his pillow.

Usually the quaint life of the fisherman, who
ate cornbread and beans and loved his family, comforted Ken the way
putting on his favorite sweatshirt and drinking hot chocolate milk
from a thick mug used to. Old Kino’s quandary of whether to sell
the pearl or keep it refused to distract Ken from his own question.
It wasn’t working. Steinbeck’s magic failed. The author’s words and
their meaning slipped past his consciousness like the houses,
football field and water tank used to spin past him unnoticed on
his daily bus rides to and from school when he was thinking about
weightier things.

He placed a palm nut on the seam of the
futon. Beside the nut, a chunk of black lava, after the lava,
another nut and then another chunk of lava. He wished he had his
1/16 scale army men. He used to tease out the process of lining up
the warriors from different eras by moving one whole column over an
eighth of an inch and then back again. The sound of the plastic
soldiers on the maple floor in Grandma’s parlor signaled that the
world would soon be under his control. Without an army to control
and command, he felt unsettled.