Home for Kenji was an old frame, two-story, seven-room house which the family rented for fifty dollars a month from a Japanese owner who had resettled in Chicago after the war and would probably never return to Seattle. It sat on the top of a steep, unpaved hill and commanded an uninspiring view of clean, gray concrete that was six lanes wide and an assortment of boxy, flat store buildings and spacious super gas-stations.
Kenji eased the car over into the left-turn lane and followed the blinking green arrow toward the hill. At its foot, he braked the car almost to a full stop before carefully starting up, for the sharp angle of the hill and the loose dirt necessitated skill and caution.
As he labored to the top, he saw his father sitting on the porch reading a newspaper. Before he could depress the horn ring, the man looked up and waved casually. He waved back and steered the Oldsmobile into the driveway.
When he walked around the side of the house and came up front, the father said “Hello, Ken” as matter-of-factly as if he had seen his son a few hours previously, and returned his attention to the newspaper to finish the article he had been reading.
“Who’s home, Pop?” he asked, holding out the bag.
“Nobody,” said the father, taking the present and looking into the bag. It held two fifths of good blended whisky. He was a big man, almost six feet tall and strong. As a painter and paper hanger he had no equal, but he found it sufficient to work only a few days a week and held himself to it, for his children were all grown and he no longer saw the need to drive himself. He smiled warmly and gratefully: “Thank you.”
“Sure, Pop. One of these days, I’ll bring home a case.”
“Last me two days. Better bring a truckful,” he said, feigning seriousness.
They laughed together comfortably, the father because he loved his son and the son because he both loved and respected his father, who was a moderate and good man. They walked into the house, the father making the son precede him.
In the dining room the father deposited the two new bottles with a dozen others in the china cabinet. “I’m fixed for a long time,” he said. “That’s a good feeling.”
“You’re really getting stocked up,” said Kenji.
“The trust and faith and love of my children,” he said proudly. “You know I don’t need clothes or shaving lotion in fancy jars or suitcases or pajamas, but whisky I can use. I’m happy.”
“Are you, Pop?”
The father sat down opposite his son at the polished mahogany table and took in at a glance the new rugs and furniture and lamps and the big television set with the radio and phonograph all built into one impressive, blond console. “All I did was feed you and clothe you and spank you once in a while. All of a sudden, you’re all grown up. The government gives you money, Hisa and Toyo are married to fine boys, Hana and Tom have splendid jobs, and Eddie is in college and making more money in a part-time job than I did for all of us when your mother died. No longer do I have to work all the time, but only two or three days a week and I have more money than I can spend. Yes, Ken, I am happy and I wish your mother were here to see all this.”
“I’m happy too, Pop.” He shifted his legs to make himself comfortable and winced unwillingly.
Noticing, the father screwed his face as if the pain were in himself, for it was. Before the pain turned to sorrow, before the suffering for his son made his lips quiver as he held back the tears, he hastened into the kitchen and came back with two jigger-glasses.
“I am anxious to sample your present,” he said jovially, but his movements were hurried as he got the bottle from the cabinet and fumbled impatiently with the seal.
Kenji downed his thankfully and watched his father take the other glass and sniff the whisky appreciatively before sipping it leisurely. He lifted the bottle toward his son.
“No more, Pop,” refused Kenji. “That did it fine.”
The father capped the bottle and put it back. He closed the cabinet door and let his hand linger on the knob as if ashamed of himself for having tried to be cheerful when he knew that the pain was again in his son and the thought of death hovered over them.
“Pop.”
“Yes?” He turned slowly to face his son.
“Come on. Sit down. It’ll be all right.”
Sitting down, the father shook his head, saying: “I came to America to become a rich man so that I could go back to the village in Japan and be somebody. I was greedy and ambitious and proud. I was not a good man or an intelligent one, but a young fool. And you have paid for it.”
“What kind of talk is that?” replied Kenji, genuinely grieved. “That’s not true at all.”
“That is what I think nevertheless. I am to blame.”
“It’ll be okay, Pop. Maybe they won’t even operate.”
“When do you go?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I will go with you.”
“No.” He looked straight at his father.
In answer, the father merely nodded, acceding to his son’s wish because his son was a man who had gone to war to fight for the abundance and happiness that pervaded a Japanese household in America and that was a thing he himself could never fully comprehend except to know that it was very dear. He had long forgotten when it was that he had discarded the notion of a return to Japan but remembered only that it was the time when this country which he had no intention of loving had suddenly begun to become a part of him because it was a part of his children and he saw and felt it in their speech and joys and sorrows and hopes and he was a part of them. And in the dying of the foolish dreams which he had brought to America, the richness of the life that was possible in this foreign country destroyed the longing for a past that really must not have been as precious as he imagined or else he would surely not have left it. Where else could a man, left alone with six small children, have found it possible to have had so much with so little? He had not begged or borrowed or gone to the city for welfare assistance. There had been times of hunger and despair and seeming hopelessness, but did it not mean something now that he could look around and feel the love of the men and women who were once only children?
And there was the one who sat before him, the one who had come to him and said calmly that he was going into the army. It could not be said then that it mattered not that he was a Japanese son of Japanese parents. It had mattered. It was because he was Japanese that the son had to come to his Japanese father and simply state that he had decided to volunteer for the army instead of being able to wait until such time as the army called him. It was because he was Japanese and, at the same time, had to prove to the world that he was not Japanese that the turmoil was in his soul and urged him to enlist. There was confusion, but, underneath it, a conviction that he loved America and would fight and die for it because he did not wish to live anyplace else. And the father, also confused, understood what the son had not said and gave his consent. It was not a time for clear thinking because the sense of loyalty had become dispersed and the shaken faith of an American interned in an American concentration camp was indeed a flimsy thing. So, on this steadfast bit of conviction that remained, and knowing not what the future held, this son had gone to war to prove that he deserved to enjoy those rights which should rightfully have been his.
And he remembered that a week after Kenji had gone to a camp in Mississippi, the neighbor’s son, an American soldier since before Pearl Harbor, had come to see his family which was in a camp enclosed by wire fencing and had guards who were American soldiers like himself. And he had been present when the soldier bitterly spoke of how all he did was dump garbage and wash dishes and take care of the latrines. And the soldier swore and ranted and could hardly make himself speak of the time when the president named Roosevelt had come to the camp in Kansas and all the American soldiers in the camp who were Japanese had been herded into a warehouse and guarded by other American soldiers with machine guns until the president named Roosevelt had departed. And he had gone to his own cubicle with the seven steel cots and the potbellied stove and the canvas picnic-chairs from Sears Roebuck and cried for Kenji, who was now a soldier and would not merely turn bitter and swear if the army let him do only such things as the soldier had spoken of, but would be driven to protest more violently because he was the quiet one with the deep feelings whose anger was a terrible thing. But, with training over, Kenji had written that he was going to Europe, and the next letter was from Italy, where the Americans were fighting the Germans, and he found relief in the knowledge, partly because Kenji was fighting and he knew that was what his son wished and partly because the enemy was German and not Japanese.
He thought he remembered that he had not wanted Kenji to go into the army. But when he was asked, he had said yes. And so this son had come back after long months in a hospital with one good leg and another that was only a stick where the other good one had been. Had he done right? Should he not have forbidden him? Should he not have explained how it was not sensible for Japanese to fight a war against Japanese? If what he had done was wrong, how was it so and why?
“Would you,” he said to his son, “have stayed out of the army if I had forbidden it?”
Kenji did not answer immediately, for the question came as a surprise to disturb the long, thought-filled silence. “I don’t think so, Pop,” he started out hesitantly. He paused, delving into his mind for an explanation, then said with great finality: “No, I would have gone anyway.”
“Of course,” said the father, finding some assurance in the answer.
Kenji pushed himself to a standing position and spoke gently: “You’re not to blame, Pop. Every time we get to talking like this, I know you’re blaming yourself. Don’t do it. Nobody’s to blame, nobody.”
“To lose a leg is not the worst thing, but, to lose a part of it and then a little more and a little more again until . . . Well, I don’t understand. You don’t deserve it.” He shrugged his shoulders wearily against the weight of his terrible anguish.
“I’m going up to take a nap.” He walked a few steps and turned back to his father. “I’ll go upstairs and lie down on the bed and I won’t sleep right away because the leg will hurt a little and I’ll be thinking. And I’ll think that if things had been different, if you had been different, it might have been that I would also not have been the same and maybe you would have kept me from going into the war and I would have stayed out and had both my legs. But, you know, every time I think about it that way, I also have to think that, had such been the case, you and I would probably not be sitting down and having a drink together and talking or not talking as we wished. If my leg hurts, so what? We’re buddies, aren’t we? That counts. I don’t worry about anything else.”
Up in his room, he stretched out on his back on the bed and thought about what he had said to his father. It made a lot of sense. If, in the course of things, the pattern called for a stump of a leg that wouldn’t stay healed, he wasn’t going to decry the fact, for that would mean another pattern with attendant changes which might not be as perfectly desirable as the one he cherished. Things are as they should be, he assured himself, and, feeling greatly at peace, sleep came with surprising ease.
After Kenji had left him, the father walked down the hill to the neighborhood Safeway and bought a large roasting chicken. It was a fat bird with bulging drumsticks and, as he headed back to the house with both arms supporting the ingredients of an ample family feast, he thought of the lean years and the six small ones and the pinched, hungry faces that had been taught not to ask for more but could not be taught how not to look hungry when they were in fact quite hungry. And it was during those years that it seemed as if they would never have enough.
But such a time had come. It had come with the war and the growing of the children and it had come with the return of the thoughtful son whose terrible wound paid no heed to the cessation of hostilities. Yet, the son had said he was happy and the father was happy also for, while one might grieve for the limb that was lost and the pain that endured, he chose to feel gratitude for the fact that the son had come back alive even if only for a brief while.
And he remembered what the young sociologist had said in halting, pained Japanese at one of the family-relations meetings he had attended while interned in the relocation center because it was someplace to go. The instructor was a recent college graduate who had later left the camp to do graduate work at a famous Eastern school. He, short fellow that he was, had stood on an orange crate so that he might be better heard and seen by the sea of elderly men and women who had been attracted to the mess hall because they too had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. There had been many meetings, although it had early become evident that lecturer and audience were poles apart, and if anything had been accomplished it was that the meetings helped to pass the time, and so the instructor continued to blast away at the unyielding wall of indifference and the old people came to pass an hour or two. But it was on this particular night that the small sociologist, struggling for the words painstakingly and not always correctly selected from his meager knowledge of the Japanese language, had managed to impart a message of great truth. And this message was that the old Japanese, the fathers and mothers, who sat courteously attentive, did not know their own sons and daughters.
“How many of you are able to sit down with your own sons and own daughters and enjoy the companionship of conversation? How many, I ask? If I were to say none of you, I would not be far from the truth.” He paused, for the grumbling was swollen with anger and indignation, and continued in a loud, shouting voice before it could engulf him: “You are not displeased because of what I said but because I have hit upon the truth. And I know it to be true because I am a Nisei and you old ones are like my own father and mother. If we are children of America and not the sons and daughters of our parents, it is because you have failed. It is because you have been stupid enough to think that growing rice in muddy fields is the same as growing a giant fir tree. Change, now, if you can, even if it may be too late, and become companions to your children. This is America, where you have lived and worked and suffered for thirty and forty years. This is not Japan. I will tell you what it is like to be an American boy or girl. I will tell you what the relationship between parents and children is in an American family. As I speak, compare what I say with your own families.” And so he had spoken and the old people had listened and, when the meeting was over, they got up and scattered over the camp toward their assigned cubicles. Some said they would attend no more lectures; others heaped hateful abuse upon the young fool who dared to have spoken with such disrespect; and then there was the elderly couple, the woman silently following the man, who stopped at another mess hall, where a dance was in progress, and peered into the dimly lit room and watched the young boys and girls gliding effortlessly around to the blaring music from a phonograph. Always before, they had found something to say about the decadent ways of an amoral nation, but, on this evening, they watched longer than usual and searched longingly to recognize their own daughter, whom they knew to be at the dance but who was only an unrecognizable shadow among the other shadows . . .
Halting for a moment to shift the bag, Kenji’s father started up the hill with a smile on his lips. He was glad that the market had had such a fine roasting chicken. There was nothing as satisfying as sitting at a well-laden table with one’s family whether the occasion was a holiday or a birthday or a home-coming of some member or, yes, even if it meant somone was going away.
Please come back, Ken, he said to himself, please come back and I will have for you the biggest, fattest chicken that ever graced a table, American or otherwise.
Hanako, who was chubby and pleasant and kept books for three doctors and a dentist in a downtown office, came home before Tom, who was big and husky like his father and had gone straight from high school into a drafting job at an aircraft plant. She had seen the car in the driveway and smelled the chicken in the oven and, smiling sympathetically with the father, put a clean cloth on the table and took out the little chest of Wm. & Rogers Silver-plate.
While she was making the salad, Tom came home bearing a bakery pie in a flat, white box. “Hello, Pop, Sis,” he said, putting the box on the table. “Where’s Ken?”
“Taking a nap,” said Hanako.
“Dinner about ready?” He sniffed appreciatively and rubbed his stomach in approval.
“Just about,” smiled his sister.
“Psychic, that’s what I am.”
“What?”
“I say I’m psychic. I brought home a lemon meringue. Chicken and lemon meringue. Boy! Don’t you think so?”
“What’s that?”
“About my being psychic.”
“You’re always bringing home lemon meringue. Coincidence, that’s all.”
“How soon do we eat?”
“I just got through telling you—in a little while,” she replied a bit impatiently.
“Good. I’m starved. I’ll wash up and rouse the boy.” He started to head for the stairs but turned back thoughtfully. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.
“Ken has to go to the hospital again,” said the father kindly. “Wash yourself at the sink and let him sleep a while longer. We will eat when he wakes up.”
“Sure,” said Tom, now sharing the unspoken sadness and terror which abided in the hearts of his father and sister. He went to the sink and, clearing it carefully of the pots and dishes, washed himself as quietly as possible.
It was a whole hour before Kenji came thumping down the stairs. It was the right leg, the good one, that made the thumps which followed the empty pauses when the false leg was gently lowered a step. When he saw the family sitting lazily around the table, he knew that they had waited for him.
“You shouldn’t have waited,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I slept longer than I intended.”
“We’re waiting for the chicken,” lied the father. “Takes time to roast a big one.”
Hanako agreed too hastily: “Oh, yes, I’ve never known a chicken to take so long. Ought to be just about ready now.” She trotted into the kitchen and, a moment later, shouted back: “It’s ready. Mmmm, can you smell it?”
“That’s all I’ve been doing,” Tom said with a famished grin. “Let’s get it out here.”
“Sorry I made you wait,” smiled Kenji at his brother.
Tom, regretting his impatience, shook his head vigorously. “No, it’s the bird, like Pop said. You know how he is. Always gets ’em big and tough. This one’s made of cast iron.” He followed Hanako to help bring the food from the kitchen.
No one said much during the first part of the dinner. Tom ate ravenously. Hanako seemed about to say something several times but couldn’t bring herself to speak. The father kept looking at Kenji without having to say what it was that he felt for his son. Surprisingly, it was Tom who broached the subject which was on all their minds.
“What the hell’s the matter with those damn doctors?” He slammed his fork angrily against the table.
“Tom, please,” said Hanako, looking deeply concerned.
“No, no, no,” he said, gesturing freely with his hands, “I won’t please shut up. If they can’t fix you up, why don’t they get somebody who can? They’re killing you. What do they do when you go down there? Give you aspirins?” Slumped in his chair, he glared furiously at the table.
The father grasped Tom’s arm firmly. “If you can’t talk sense, don’t.”
“It’s okay, Tom. This’ll be a short trip. I think it’s just that the brace doesn’t fit right.”
“You mean that?” He looked hopefully at Kenji.
“Sure. That’s probably what it is. I’ll only be gone a few days. Doesn’t really hurt so much, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Gee, I hope you’re right.”
“I ought to know. A few more trips and they’ll make me head surgeon down there.”
“Yeah,” Tom smiled, not because of the joke, but because he was grateful for having a brother like Kenji.
“Eat,” reminded the father, “baseball on television tonight, you know.”
“I’ll get the pie,” Hanako said and hastened to the kitchen.
“Lemon meringue,” said Tom hungrily, as he proceeded to clean up his plate.
The game was in its second inning when they turned the set on, and they had hardly gotten settled down when Hisa and Toyo came with their husbands and children.
Tom grumbled good naturedly and, giving the newcomers a hasty nod, pulled up closer to the set, preparing to watch the game under what would obviously be difficult conditions.
Hats and coats were shed and piled in the corner and everyone talked loudly and excitedly, as if they had not seen each other for a long time. Chairs were brought in from the dining room and, suddenly, the place was full and noisy and crowded and comfortable.
The father gave up trying to follow the game and bounced a year-old granddaughter on his knee while two young grandsons fought to conquer the other knee. The remaining three grandchildren were all girls, older, more well-behaved, and they huddled on the floor around Tom to watch the baseball game.
Hisa’s husband sat beside Kenji and engaged him in conversation, mostly about fishing and about how he’d like to win a car in the Salmon Derby because his was getting old and a coupe wasn’t too practical for a big family. He had the four girls and probably wouldn’t stop until he hit a boy and things weren’t so bad, but he couldn’t see his way to acquiring a near-new used car for a while. And then he got up and went to tell the same thing to his father-in-law, who was something of a fisherman himself. No sooner had he moved across the room than Toyo’s husband, who was soft-spoken and mild but had been a captain in the army and sold enough insurance to keep two cars in the double garage behind a large brick house in a pretty good neighborhood, slid into the empty space beside Kenji and asked him how he’d been and so on and talked about a lot of other things when he really wanted to talk to Kenji about the leg and didn’t know how.
Then came the first lull when talk died down and the younger children were showing signs of drowsiness and everyone smiled thoughtfully and contentedly at one another. Hanako suggested refreshments, and when the coffee and milk and pop and cookies and ice cream were distributed, everyone got his second wind and immediately discovered a number of things which they had forgotten to discuss.
Kenji, for the moment alone, looked at all of them and said to himself: Now’s as good a time as any to go. I won’t wait until tomorrow. In another thirty minutes Hana and Toyo and the kids and their fathers will start stretching and heading for their hats and coats. Then someone will say “Well, Ken” in a kind of hesitant way and, immediately, they will all be struggling for something to say about my going to Portland because Hana called them and told them to come over because I’m going down there again and that’s why they’ll have to say something about it. If I had said to Pop that I was going the day after tomorrow, we would have had a big feast with everyone here for it tomorrow night. I don’t want that. There’s no need for it. I don’t want Toyo to cry and Hana to dab at her eyes and I don’t want everyone standing around trying to say goodbye and not being able to make themselves leave because maybe they won’t see me again.
He started to get up and saw Hanako looking at him. “I’m just going to get a drink,” he said.
“Stay, I’ll get it,” she replied.
“No. It’ll give me a chance to stretch.” He caught his father’s eye and held it for a moment.
Without getting his drink, he slipped quietly out to the back porch and stood and waited and listened to the voices inside.
He heard Hisa’s husband yell something to one of his girls and, the next minute, everyone was laughing amusedly. While he was wondering what cute deviltry the guilty one had done, his father came through the kitchen and out to stand beside him.
“You are going.”
Kenji looked up and saw the big shoulders sagging wearily. “I got a good rest, Pop. This way, I’ll be there in the morning and it’s easier driving at night. Not so many cars, you know.”
“It’s pretty bad this time, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said truthfully, because he could not lie to his father, “it’s not like before, Pop. It’s different this time. The pain is heavier, deeper. Not sharp and raw like the other times. I don’t know why. I’m scared.”
“If . . . if . . .” Throwing his arm around his son’s neck impulsively, the father hugged him close. “You call me every day. Every day, you understand?”
“Sure, Pop. Explain to everyone, will you?” He pulled himself free and looked at his father nodding, unable to speak.
Pausing halfway down the stairs, he listened once more for the voices in the house.
Hoarsely, in choked syllables, his father spoke to him: “Every day, Ken, don’t forget. I will be home.”
“Bye, Pop.” Feeling his way along the dark drive with his cane, he limped to the car. Behind the wheel, he had to sit and wait until the heaviness had lifted from his chest and relieved the mistiness of his eyes. He started the motor and turned on the headlights and their brilliant glare caught fully the father standing ahead. Urged by an overwhelming desire to rush back to him and be with him for a few minutes longer, Kenji’s hand fumbled for the door handle. At that moment, the father raised his arm once slowly in farewell. Quickly, he pulled back out of the driveway and was soon out of sight of father and home and family.
He fully intended to drive directly to the grocery store to get Ichiro, but found himself drawn to the Club Oriental. Parking in the vacant lot where only the previous night Ichiro had experienced his humiliation, he limped through the dark alley to the club.
It was only a little after ten, but the bar and tables were crowded. Ignoring several invitations to sit at tables of acquaintances, he threaded his way to the end of the bar and had only to wait a moment before Al saw him and brought the usual bourbon and water.
Not until he was on his third leisurely drink did he manage to secure a stool. It was between strangers, and for that he was grateful. He didn’t want to talk or be talked to. Through the vast mirror ahead, he studied the faces alongside and behind him. By craning a bit, he could even catch an occasional glimpse of couples on the dance floor.
It’s a nice place, he thought. When a fellow goes away, he likes to take something along to remember and this is what I’m taking. It’s not like having a million bucks and sitting in the Waldorf with a long-stemmed beauty, but I’m a small guy with small wants and this is my Waldorf. Here, as long as I’ve got the price of a drink, I can sit all night and be among friends. I can relax and drink and feel sad or happy or high and nobody much gives a damn, since they feel the same way. It’s a good feeling, a fine feeling.
He followed Al around with his eyes until the bartender looked back at him and returned the smile.
The help knows me and likes me.
Swinging around on the stool, he surveyed the crowd and acknowledged a number of greetings and nods.
I’ve got a lot of friends here and they know and like me.
Jim Eng, the slender, dapper Chinese who ran the place, came out of the office with a bagful of change and brought it behind the bar to check the register. As he did so, he grinned at Kenji and inquired about his leg.
Even the management’s on my side. It’s like a home away from home only more precious because one expects home to be like that. Not many places a Jap can go to and feel so completely at ease. It must be nice to be white and American and to be able to feel like this no matter where one goes to, but I won’t cry about that. There’s been a war and, suddenly, things are better for the Japs and the Chinks and—
There was a commotion at the entrance and Jim Eng slammed the cash drawer shut and raced toward the loud voices. He spoke briefly to someone in the office, probably to find out the cause of the disturbance, and then stepped outside. As he did so, Kenji caught sight of three youths, a Japanese and two Negroes.
After what sounded like considerable loud and excited shouting, Jim Eng stormed back in and resumed his task at the register though with hands shaking.
When he had calmed down a little, someone inquired: “What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble,” he said in a high-pitched voice which he was endeavoring to keep steady. “That crazy Jap boy Floyd tried to get in with two niggers. That’s the second time he tried that. What’s the matter with him?”
A Japanese beside Kenji shouted out sneeringly: “Them ignorant cotton pickers make me sick. You let one in and before you know it, the place will be black as night.”
“Sure,” said Jim Eng, “sure. I got no use for them. Nothing but trouble they make and I run a clean place.”
“Hail Columbia,” said a small, drunken voice.
“Oh, you Japs and Chinks, I love you all,” rasped out a brash redhead who looked as if she had come directly from one of the burlesque houses without changing her make-up. She struggled to her feet, obviously intending to launch into further oratory.
Her escort, a pale, lanky Japanese screamed “Shut up!” and, at the same time, pulled viciously at her arm, causing her to tumble comically into the chair.
Everyone laughed, or so it seemed, and quiet and decency and cleanliness and honesty returned to the Club Oriental.
Leaving his drink unfinished, Kenji left the club without returning any of the farewells which were directed at him.
He drove aimlessly, torturing himself repeatedly with the question which plagued his mind and confused it to the point of madness. Was there no answer to the bigotry and meanness and smallness and ugliness of people? One hears the voice of the Negro or Japanese or Chinese or Jew, a clear and bell-like intonation of the common struggle for recognition as a complete human being and there is a sense of unity and purpose which inspires one to hope and optimism. One encounters obstacles, but the wedge of the persecuted is not without patience and intelligence and humility, and the opposition weakens and wavers and disperses. And the one who is the Negro or Japanese or Chinese or Jew is further fortified and gladdened with the knowledge that the democracy is a democracy in fact for all of them. One has hope, for he has reason to hope, and the quest for completeness seems to be a thing near at hand, and then . . .
the woman with the dark hair and large nose who has barely learned to speak English makes a big show of vacating her bus seat when a Negro occupies the other half. She stamps indignantly down the aisle, hastening away from the contamination which is only in her contaminated mind. The Negro stares silently out of the window, a proud calmness on his face, which hides the boiling fury that is capable of murder.
and then . . .
a sweet-looking Chinese girl is at a high-school prom with a white boy. She has risen in the world, or so she thinks, for it is evident in her expression and manner. She does not entirely ignore the other Chinese and Japanese at the dance, which would at least be honest, but worse, she flaunts her newly found status in their faces with haughty smiles and overly polite phrases.
and then . . .
there is the small Italian restaurant underneath a pool parlor, where the spaghetti and chicken is hard to beat. The Japanese, who feels he is better than the Chinese because his parents made him so, comes into the restaurant with a Jewish companion, who is a good Jew and young and American and not like the kike bastards from the countries from which they’ve been kicked out, and waits patiently for the waiter. None of the waiters come, although the place is quite empty and two of them are talking not ten feet away. All his efforts to attract them failing, he stalks toward them. The two, who are supposed to wait on the tables but do not, scurry into the kitchen. In a moment they return with the cook, who is also the owner, and he tells the Japanese that the place is not for Japs and to get out and go back to Tokyo.
and then . . .
the Negro who was always being mistaken for a white man becomes a white man and he becomes hated by the Negroes with whom he once hated on the same side. And the young Japanese hates the not-so-young Japanese who is more Japanese than himself, and the not-so-young, in turn, hates the old Japanese who is all Japanese and, therefore, even more Japanese than he . . .
And Kenji thought about these things and tried to organize them in his mind so that the pattern could be seen and studied and the answers deduced therefrom. And there was no answer because there was no pattern and all he could feel was that the world was full of hatred. And he drove on and on and it was almost two o’clock when he parked in front of the grocery store.
The street was quiet, deathly so after he had cut the ignition. Down a block or so, he saw the floodlighted sign painted on the side of a large brick building. It said: “444 Rooms. Clean. Running Water. Reasonable Rates.” He had been in there once a long time ago and he knew that it was just a big flophouse full of drunks and vagrant souls. Only a few tiny squares of yellowish light punctuated the softly shimmering rows of windowpanes. Still, the grocery store was brightly lit.
Wondering why, he slid out of the car and peered through the upper half of the door, which was of glass. He was immediately impressed with the neatness of the shelves and the cleanness of the paint on the walls and woodwork. Inevitably, he saw Ichiro’s mother and it gave him an odd sensation as he watched her methodically empty a case of evaporated milk and line the cans with painful precision on the shelf. He tried the door and found it locked and decided not to disturb her until she finished the case. It was a long wait, for she grasped only a single can with both hands each time she stooped to reach into the box. Finally, she finished and stood as if examining her handiwork.
Kenji rapped briskly on the door but she took no notice. Instead, she reached out suddenly with her arms and swept the cans to the floor. Then she just stood with arms hanging limply at her sides, a small girl of a woman who might have been pouting from the way her head drooped and her back humped.
So intent was he upon watching her that he jumped when the door opened. It was Ichiro, dressed only in a pair of slacks.
“You’re early,” he said, blinking his eyes sleepily.
“Yes. Is it okay?”
“Sure. Be ready in a minute. Can’t get any sleep anyway.” He shut the door without asking Kenji inside and disappeared into the back.
Looking back to where the woman had been, he was astonished not to see her. He searched about and eventually spied her on hands and knees retrieving a can which had rolled under one of the display islands. He followed her as she crawled around in pursuit of more cans, which she was now packing back into the case. Ichiro came out with a suitcase and went directly to the car.
Kenji looked once more before driving off and noticed that she, having gathered all the cans, was once more lining them on the same shelf.
“We’ll make good time driving at night. Won’t be so many cars on the road.” Out of the corner of his eye he watched Ichiro light a cigarette.
“Snapped,” he said harshly.
“What?”
“Snapped. Flipped. Messed up her gears.” Drawing deeply on the cigarette, he exhaled a stream of smoke noisily. He twisted about on the seat as if in great anguish.
“Is it all right for you to be going?”
“Sure, sure, nothing I can do. It’s been coming for a long time.”
“You knew?”
Ichiro rolled down the window and flung the lighted butt into the wind. As it whisked back, spraying specks of red into the dark, he craned his neck to watch it until it disappeared from sight. “Something had to happen,” he said, cranking the window shut. “Still, I guess you could say she’s been crazy a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ever since the day she was born.” He turned abruptly to face Kenji and said appealingly: “Tell me, what’s your father like?”
“My dad is one swell guy. We get along.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. We just do.”
Ichiro laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Things, everything’s funny because nothing makes sense. There was an Italian fellow in prison I used to talk to. Sometimes I’d confide in him because he once wanted to be a priest and so he was the kind of guy you could talk to. He got sent up for taking money from old ladies. You can see what I mean. I used to tell him about how tough it was for kids of immigrants because parents and kids were so different and they never really got to know each other. He knew what I meant because his folks were born in Italy and raised there. And he used to tell me not to worry because there would come a time when I’d feel as if I really knew my folks. He said the time would come when I grew up. Just how or when was hard to say because it’s different with everyone. With him, it was when he was thirty-five and went home on parole after four years in prison. Then it happened. He sat at the kitchen table like he’d been doing all his life and he looked at his mother and then at his father and he no longer had the urge to eat and run. He wanted to talk to them and they talked all through that night and he was so happy he cried.”
Slowing down a little, Kenji pointed through the windshield. “That road goes to Emi’s place. Go see her when you get a chance.”
Ichiro didn’t answer, but he seemed to be studying the landmarks. “It won’t ever happen to me,” he said.
“What won’t happen?”
“The thing that happened to the Italian.”
“You never can tell.”
“She’s really crazy now. You saw her with those milk cans. Ever since eight o’clock tonight. Puts them on the shelf, knocks them down, and puts them back up again. What’s she trying to prove?”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“No. I’ve been more worried about you.”
After that, they didn’t talk very much. Some eighty miles out of Seattle, they stopped for coffee and sandwiches at the roadside café and then Ichiro took over the wheel. There were few cars on the road and he drove swiftly, not bothering to slow down from sixty-five or seventy to twenty-five or thirty as specified on the signs leading into small towns where nothing was open or no one was up at about five o’clock in the morning. As the needle of the speedometer hovered just under seventy for almost an hour without any letdown except for forced caution at curves, monotony slowly set in and it began to feel as if all that separated them from Portland was an interminable stretch of asphalt and concrete cutting through the darkness. Occasionally, Ichiro would feel his foot easing down even harder on the accelerator pedal, but he restrained himself from tempting danger. Rounding a curve and shooting down a long hill, he saw a bunch of houses sitting darkly and quietly at the bottom in the filmy haze of earliest morning. The trees and foliage along the highway thinned out visibly as the car sped closer to the village and, as always, the signs began to appear. “Approaching Midvale, Lower Speed to 40. Speed Laws Strictly Enforced.” “You Are Now Entering Midvale. Population 367.” “20 MPH. Street Patrolled.” He had almost traversed the eight or ten blocks which comprised the village and was looking for the sign which would tell him that he was leaving Midvale and thank you for observing the law and come back again, when he became aware of the siren building up to an awful scream in the night.
“Damn,” he uttered, “lousy bastards.”
“Slow down,” said Kenji, suddenly coming alive. He moved to the middle of the seat. “When he pulls up ahead, switch places.”
The plain, black Ford sedan with the blinking red light on its roof passed and cut in ahead of them. Just before they came to a halt, Ichiro rose and let Kenji slide in behind him.
They saw the big, uniformed cop get out of the Ford and lumber toward them. Pointing a long flashlight into the car, he played it mercilessly on their faces. “Going pretty fast,” he said.
They didn’t answer, knowing that whatever they said would be wrongly construed.
“What were you doing?” the cop demanded.
“Forty-five, maybe fifty,” said Kenji, blinking into the light.
“Seventy,” said the cop. “You were doing seventy.” He walked around the car and got in beside Ichiro. “Drive back through town.”
Kenji made a U-turn and drove slowly to the sign which said “20 MPH. Street Patrolled.”
“You Japs can read, can’t you?”
“Sure,” said Kenji.
“Read what it says there,” he ordered as he shined his light on the sign.
“Twenty M-P-H. Street Patrolled,” read Kenji in a flat, low voice.
Then they drove back to where the Ford was parked.
Even sitting down, the cop towered over them, his broad, heavy features set into an uncompromising grimace. “Well?” he said.
“We’re guilty. Put us in jail,” answered Kenji. “We’re in no hurry.”
The cop laughed. “Funny. You got a sense of humor.” He reared back and, when he settled down, his manner was obviously more friendly. “Tell you what. Next court won’t be until the day after tomorrow. Now, you don’t want to come all the way back here and get fined fifty bucks. That’s what it’s going to be, you know. You haven’t got a chance.”
“No, I guess we haven’t.” Kenji was not going to accept the cordiality of the cop.
“You might just happen to go over to my car and accidentally drop ten bucks on the seat. Simple?”
“We haven’t got ten bucks between us.”
“Five? I’m not hard to please.” He was grinning openly now.
“Give me the ticket. I’ll show up for court.” There was no mistaking the enmity in his voice.
“All right, smart guy, let’s have your license.” The cop pulled out his pad furiously and began scribbling out a ticket.
Hurtling over the road again, with Kenji driving intently as if trying to flee as quickly as possible from the infuriating incident, Ichiro picked up the ticket and studied it under the illumination from the dash. “Son of a bitch,” he groaned, “he’s got us down for eighty, drunk driving, and attempting to bribe.”
Before he could say more of what was seething through his mind, Kenji grabbed the piece of paper out of his hand and, crumpling it hatefully, flung it out of the window.
Not until they got into Portland two hours later and were having breakfast did they feel the necessity to talk. Ichiro was watching an individual in overalls, with a lunch box under one arm, pounding determinedly on a pinball machine.
“What will you do?” he asked Ichiro.
Waiting until the waitress had set their plates down, Ichiro replied: “I’m not sure. I’ll be all right.”
“When you get ready to go, take the car.”
Sensing something in the way Kenji had spoken, Ichiro looked up uncomfortably. “I’ll wait for you. I might even look for a job down here.”
“Fine. You ought to do something.”
“When will you know about the leg?”
“A day or two.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m worried. I get a feeling that this is it.”
Shocked for a moment by the implication of his friend’s words, Ichiro fiddled uneasily with his fork. When he spoke it was with too much eagerness. “That’s no way to talk,” he said confidently, but feeling inside his own terror. “They’ll fix you up. I know they will. Hell, in a few days, we’ll go back to Seattle together.”
“Just before I left last night, I told my pop about it. I told him it was different this time. I told him I was scared. I’ve never lied to him.”
“But you can be wrong. You’ve got to be wrong. A fellow just doesn’t say this is it, I’m going to die. Things never turn out the way you think. You’re going to be okay.”
“Sure, maybe I will. Maybe I am wrong,” he said, but, in the way he said it, he might just as well have said this is one time when I know that, no matter how much I wish I were wrong, I don’t think I am.
The waitress came back with a silex pot and poured coffee into their cups. The overalled man at the pinball machine sighted his bus coming down the street and, shooting three balls in quick succession, dashed out of the café.
Ichiro buttered a half-slice of toast and chewed off a piece almost reluctantly. When they had finished he picked up the bill for a dollar-eighty and noticed that Kenji left a half dollar on the table.
Driving through town to the hospital, they ran into the morning traffic and it was nearly nine o’clock or almost an hour after leaving the café when they reached their destination. It was a big, new hospital with plenty of glass and neat, green lawns on all sides.
They walked up the steps together and halted in front of the doorway. Kenji was smiling.
Ichiro gazed at him wonderingly. “You seem to be all right.”
“I was thinking about that cop. I bet he can’t wait to see me in court and get the book thrown at me. He’ll have to come a long ways to catch up with this Jap.” He stuck out his hand stiffly.
Grabbing it but not shaking, Ichiro managed with some distinctness: “I’ll be in to see you.”
“Don’t wait too long.” Avoiding the revolving door, he stepped to the side and entered the hospital through a swinging glass door.