Alone and feeling very much his aloneness, Ichiro drove the Oldsmobile back into the city proper and found a room in a small, clean hotel where the rates seemed reasonable. Having picked up a newspaper in the lobby, he turned to the classified section and studied the job ads. Most of them were for skilled or technical help, and only after considerable searching was he finally able to encircle with pencil three jobs which he felt he might be able to investigate with some degree of hope. Putting the paper aside, he washed, shaved, and put on a clean shirt.
I mustn’t hesitate, he told himself. If I don’t start right now and make myself look for work, I’ll lose my nerve. There’s no one to help me or give me courage now. All I know is that I’ve just got to find work.
With the folded paper under his arm, he walked the six blocks to the hotel which was advertising for porters. It was a big hotel with a fancy marquee that extended out to the street and, as he walked past it, he noticed a doorman stationed at the entrance. He went down to the end of the block and approached the hotel once more. He paused to light a cigarette. Then, when he saw the doorman watching, he started toward him.
“If it’s a job you want, son, take the employee’s entrance in the alley,” said the doorman before he could speak.
He muttered his thanks a bit unsteadily and proceeded around and through the alley. There was a sign over the door for which he was looking, and he went through it and followed other signs down the corridor to the employment office. Inside, two men and a woman, obviously other job seekers, sat at a long table filling out forms. A white-haired man in a dark suit, sitting behind a desk, looked at him and pointed to the wall. On it was another sign, a large one, instructing applicants to fill out one of the forms stacked on the long table, with pen and ink. He sat opposite the woman and studied the questions on the form. With some relief, he noted that there was nothing on the front that he couldn’t adequately answer. As he turned it over, he saw the questions he couldn’t answer. How was he to account for the past two years of the five for which they wanted such information as name of employer and work experience? What was he to put down as an alternative for military duty? There was no lie big enough to cover the enormity of his mistake. He put the form back on the stack and left without satisfying the questioning look on the face of the white-haired, dark-suited employment manager, because there really was nothing to be said.
Over a cup of coffee at a lunch counter, he examined the other two ads which he had selected for investigation. One was for a draftsman in a small, growing engineering office and the other for a helper in a bakery, the name of which he recognized as being among the larger ones. He figured that the bakery would give him a form to fill out just as the hotel had. As for the engineering office, if it wasn’t a form, there would be questions. No matter how much or how long he thought about it, it seemed hopeless. Still, he could not stop. He had to keep searching until he found work. Somewhere, there was someone who would hire him without probing too deeply into his past. Wherever that someone was, it was essential that he find him.
Before further thought could reduce his determination to bitterness or despair or cowardice or utter discouragement, he boarded a trolley for fear that, if he took the time to walk back to the car, he would find a reason to postpone his efforts. The trolley, a trackless affair which drew its motive power from overhead wires, surged smoothly through the late morning traffic with its handful of riders.
It was a short ride to the new, brick structure which had recently been constructed in an area, once residential, but now giving way to the demands of a growing city. Low, flat, modern clinics and store buildings intermingled with rambling, ugly apartment houses of wood and dirt-ridden brick.
Striding up a path which curved between newly installed landscaping, Ichiro entered the offices of Carrick and Sons. A middle-aged woman was beating furiously upon a typewriter.
He waited until she finished the page and flipped it out expertly. “Mam, I . . .”
“Yes?” She looked up, meanwhile working a new sheet into the machine.
“I’m looking for a job. The one in the paper. I came about the ad.”
“Oh, of course.” Making final adjustments, she typed a couple of lines before she rose and peeked into an inner office. “Mr. Carrick seems to be out just now. He’ll be back shortly. Sit down.” That said, she resumed her typing.
He spotted some magazines on a table and started to leaf through a not-too-old issue of Look. He saw the pictures and read the words and turned the pages methodically without digesting any of it.
A muffled pounding resounded distantly through the building and he glanced at the woman, who met his gaze and smiled sheepishly. He returned to the flipping of the pages, wondering why she had smiled in that funny way, and she bent her head over the typewriter as soon as the pounding stopped and went back to work.
When the pounding noise came again, she muttered impatiently under her breath and went out of the room.
She was gone several minutes, long enough for him to get through the magazine. He was hunting through the pile of magazines in search of another when she stuck her head into the room and beckoned him to follow.
There was a big office beyond the door with a pile of rolled-up blueprints on a corner table and big photographs of buildings on the walls. They went through that and farther into the back, past a small kitchen and a utility room and, finally, came to stop by a stairway leading down into the basement.
“I told Mr. Carrick you were here. He’s down there,” the woman said, slightly exasperated.
As he started down, the same pounding began, only it was clearer now and he thought it sounded like a hammer being struck against a metal object of some kind. The object turned out to be what looked like a small hand-tractor with a dozer blade in front, and a small man with unkempt gray hair was whacking away at it with a claw hammer.
“Mr. Carrick?” It was no use. There was too much noise, so he waited until the man threw the hammer down in disgust and straightened up with a groan.
“Cockeyed,” the man said, rubbing both his hands vigorously over the top of his buttocks. “I guess I’ll have to take her apart and do it over right.” He smiled graciously. “Doesn’t pay to be impatient, but seems I’ll never learn. That there blade isn’t quite level and I thought I could force her. I learned. Yup, I sure did. How does she look to you?”
“What is it?”
Mr. Carrick laughed, naturally and loudly, his small, round stomach shaking convulsively. “I’m Carrick and you’re . . . ?” He extended a soiled hand.
“Yamada, sir. Ichiro Yamada.”
“Know anything about snowplows?”
“No, sir.”
“Name’s Yamada, is it?” The man pronounced the name easily.
“Yes, sir.”
“Nihongo wakarimasu ka?”
“Not too well.”
“How did I say that?”
“You’re pretty good. You speak Japanese?”
“No. I used to have some very good Japanese friends. They taught me a little. You know the Tanakas?”
He shook his head. “Probably not the ones you mean. It’s a pretty common name.”
“They used to rent from me. Fine people. Best tenants I ever had. Shame about the evacuation. You too, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Tanakas didn’t come back. Settled out East someplace. Well, can’t say as I blame them. What brought you back?”
“Folks came back.”
“Of course. Portland’s changed, hasn’t it?”
“I’m from Seattle.”
“That so?” He leaned over the snowplow and tinkered with the bolts holding the blade in place.
Thinking that spring was not far away, Ichiro ventured to ask: “Does it snow that much down here?”
“How much is that?”
“Enough for a plow.”
“No, it doesn’t. I just felt I wanted to make one.”
“Oh.”
Adjusting a crescent wrench to fit the bolts, he grunted them loose and kicked the blade off. “Let’s have some coffee.” He rinsed off his hands at the sink and led the way up the stairs to the kitchen, where he added water to an old pot of coffee and turned on the burner.
“The Tanakas were fine people,” he said, sitting down on a stool. In spite of his protruding belly and gray hair, he seemed a strong and energetic man. As he talked, his face had a way of displaying great feeling and exuberance. “The government made a big mistake when they shoved you people around. There was no reason for it. A big black mark in the annals of American history. I mean that. I’ve always been a big-mouthed, loud-talking, back-slapping American but, when that happened, I lost a little of my wind. I don’t feel as proud as I used to, but, if the mistake has been made, maybe we’ve learned something from it. Let’s hope so. We can still be the best damn nation in the world. I’m sorry things worked out the way they did.”
It was an apology, a sincere apology from a man who had money and position and respectability, made to the Japanese who had been wronged. But it was not an apology to Ichiro and he did not know how to answer this man who might have been a friend and employer, a man who made a snowplow in a place where one had no need for a snowplow because he simply wanted one.
Mr. Carrick set cups on the table and poured the coffee, which was hot but weak. “When do you want to start?” he asked.
The question caught him unprepared. Was that all there was to it? Were there to be no questions? No inquiry about qualifications or salary or experience? He fumbled with his cup and spilled some coffee on the table.
“It pays two-sixty a month. Three hundred after a year.”
“I’ve had two years of college engineering,” he said, trying frantically to adjust himself to the unexpected turn of events.
“Of course. The ad was clear enough. You wouldn’t have followed it up unless you thought you could qualify and, if you did, we’ll soon find out. Don’t worry. You’ll work out. I got a feeling.” He pursed his lips gingerly and sipped his coffee.
All he had to say was “I’ll take it,” and the matter would be settled. It was a stroke of good fortune such as he would never have expected. The pay was good, the employer was surely not to be equaled, and the work would be exactly what he wanted.
He looked at Mr. Carrick and said: “I’d like to think about it.”
Was it disbelief or surprise that clouded the face of the man who, in his heartfelt desire to atone for the error of a big country which hadn’t been quite big enough, had matter-of-factly said two-sixty a month and three hundred after a year when two hundred a month was what he had in mind when he composed the ad since a lot of draftsmen were getting less but because the one who came for the job was a Japanese and it made a difference to him? “Certainly, Ichiro. Take all the time you need.”
And when he said that, Ichiro knew that the job did not belong to him, but to another Japanese who was equally as American as this man who was attempting in a small way to rectify the wrong he felt to be his own because he was a part of the country which, somehow, had erred in a moment of panic.
“I’m not a veteran,” he said.
Mr. Carrick creased his brow, not understanding what he meant.
“Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry I bothered you.” He pushed himself back off the stool.
“Wait.” His face thoughtfully grave, Mr. Carrick absently drew a clean handkerchief from his trousers pocket and ran it over the coffee which Ichiro had spilled. He straightened up quickly, saying simultaneously: “It’s something I’ve said. God knows I wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt you or anyone. I’m sorry. Can we try again, please?”
“You’ve no apology to make, sir. You’ve been very good. I want the job. The pay is tops. I might say I need the job, but it’s not for me. You see, I’m not a veteran.”
“Hell, son. What’s that got to do with it? Did I ask you? Why do you keep saying that?”
How was he to explain? Surely he couldn’t leave now without some sort of explanation. The man had it coming to him if anyone ever did. He was, above all, an honest and sincere man and he deserved an honest reply.
“Mr. Carrick, I’m not a veteran because I spent two years in jail for refusing the draft.”
The man did not react with surprise or anger or incredulity. His shoulders sagged a bit and he suddenly seemed a very old man whose life’s dream had been to own a snowplow and, when he had finally secured one, it was out of kilter. “I am sorry, Ichiro,” he said, “sorry for you and for the causes behind the reasons which made you do what you did. It wasn’t your fault, really. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know. I just know I did it.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“I haven’t much choice. Sometimes I think my mother is to blame. Sometimes I think it’s bigger than her, more than her refusal to understand that I’m not like her. It didn’t make sense. Not at all. First they jerked us off the Coast and put us in camps to prove to us that we weren’t American enough to be trusted. Then they wanted to draft us into the army. I was bitter—mad and bitter. Still, a lot of them went in, and I didn’t. You figure it out. Thanks again, sir.”
He was in the front room and almost past the woman when Mr. Carrick caught up with him.
“Miss Henry,” he said to the woman at the typewriter, and there was something about his manner that was calm and reassuring, “this is Mr. Yamada. He’s considering the drafting job.”
She nodded, smiling pleasantly. “You’ll like it here,” she said. “It’s crazy, but you’ll like it.”
He walked with Ichiro to the door and drew it open. “Let me know when you decide.”
They shook hands and Ichiro took the bus back to the hotel. He had every reason to be enormously elated and, yet, his thoughts were solemn to the point of brooding. Then, as he thought about Mr. Carrick and their conversation time and time again, its meaning for him evolved into a singularly comforting thought. There was someone who cared. Surely there were others too who understood the suffering of the small and the weak and, yes, even the seemingly treasonous, and offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America. Under the hard, tough cloak of the struggle for existence in which money and enormous white refrigerators and shining, massive, brutally-fast cars and fine, expensive clothing had ostensibly overwhelmed the qualities of men that were good and gentle and just, there still beat a heart of kindness and patience and forgiveness. And in this moment when he thought of Mr. Carrick, the engineer with a yen for a snowplow that would probably never get used, and of what he had said, and, still more, of what he offered to do, he glimpsed the real nature of the country against which he had almost fully turned his back, and saw that its mistake was no less unforgivable than his own.
He blew a stream of smoke into the shaft of sunlight that slanted through the window and watched it lazily curl upward along the brightened path. Stepping to the window, he looked down for a moment upon a parking lot with its multicolored rows of automobile hoods and tops. And beyond was the city, streets and buildings and vehicles and people for as far as the eye could reach.
Then he drew the shade and found himself alone in the darkness, feeling very tired and sleepy because he had been a long time without rest. It was all he could do to remove his clothes before he fell on the bed and let himself succumb to the weariness which was making him dizzy and clumsy.
He slept soundly, hardly stirring until he awoke in the quiet which was the quiet of the night, disturbed only by the infrequent hum of an automobile in the streets below. As the drowsiness faded reluctantly, he waited for the sense of calm elation which he rather expected. It did not come. He found that his thoughts were of his family. They were not to be ignored, to be cast out of mind and life and rendered eternally nothing. It was well that Kenji wished him to take the Oldsmobile back to Seattle. A man does not start totally anew because he is already old by virtue of having lived and laughed and cried for twenty or thirty or fifty years and there is no way to destroy them without destroying life itself. That he understood. He also understood that the past had been shared with a mother and father and, whatever they were, he too was a part of them and they a part of him and one did not say this is as far as we go together, I am stepping out of your lives, without rendering himself only part of a man. If he was to find his way back to that point of wholeness and belonging, he must do so in the place where he had begun to lose it. Mr. Carrick had shown him that there was a chance and, for that, he would be ever grateful.
Crawling out of the bed, he switched on the light and started to search through the drawers of the dresser. In the third one he found a Gideon Bible, a drinking glass in a cellophane bag, and two picture postcards. Lacking a desk, he stood at the dresser and penned a few lines to Mr. Carrick informing him that, grateful as he was, he found it necessary to turn down the job. He paused with pen in hand, wanting to add words which would adequately express the warmth and depth of gratitude he felt. What could he say to this man whom he had met but once and probably would never see again? What words would transmit the bigness of his feelings to match the bigness of the heart of this American who, in the manner of his living, was continually nursing and worrying the infant America into the greatness of its inheritance? Knowing, finally, that the unsaid would be understood, he merely affixed his signature to the postcard and dressed so that he could go out to mail it and get something to eat.
Outside, he walked along the almost deserted streets. It was only a little after ten o’clock but there were few pedestrians and traffic was extremely light. He came to a corner with a mailbox and paused to drop the card. Lifting his eyes upward along the lamppost, he saw that he was on Burnside Street. In a small way, Burnside was to Portland what Jackson Street was to Seattle or, at least, he remembered that it used to be so before the war when the Japanese did little traveling and Portland seemed a long way off instead of just two hundred miles and the fellows who had been to Portland used to rave about the waitresses they had in the café on Burnside. He could almost hear them: “Burnside Café. Remember that. Boy, what sweet babes! Nothing like them in Seattle. Sharp. Sharp. Sharp.”
He ambled up the walk past a tavern, a drugstore, a café, a vacant store space, a cigar stand, a laundromat, a secondhand store, another tavern, and there it was. Just as they said it would be, Burnside Café in huge, shameless letters plastered across two big windows with the door in between.
A young fellow in a white apron with one leg propped up on the inside ledge smoked his cigarette and looked out on the world, waiting for business to walk in. When he saw Ichiro, his eyes widened perceptibly. He followed the stranger through the door and said familiarly: “Hi.”
Ichiro nodded and walked to the rear end of the counter where a middle-aged woman was standing on a milk box and pouring hot water into the top of a large coffee urn.
The young fellow pursued him from the other side of the counter and greeted him with a too-friendly grin: “Hungry, I bet.” He plucked a menu wedged between the napkin holder and sugar dispenser and held it forth.
“Ham and eggs. Coffee now,” he said, ignoring the menu.
“Turn the eggs over?”
“No.”
“Ma, ham and eggs sunny side up.” He got the coffee himself and set it in front of Ichiro. He didn’t go away.
Thick as flies, thought Ichiro to himself with disgust. A Jap can spot another Jap a mile away. Pouring the sugar, he solemnly regarded the still-grinning face of the waiter and saw the clean white shirt with the collar open and the bronze discharge pin obtrusively displayed where the ribbons might have been if the fellow had been wearing a uniform.
“You’re Japanese, huh? Where you from?”
He could have said yes and they would have been friends. The Chinese were like that too, only more so. He had heard how a Chinese from China by the name of Eng could go to Jacksonville, Florida, or any other place, and look up another Chinese family by the same name of Eng and be taken in like one of the family with no questions asked. There was nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, it was a fine thing in some ways. Still, how much finer it would be if Smith would do the same for Eng and Sato would do the same for Wotynski and Laverghetti would do likewise for whoever happened by. Eng for Eng, Jap for Jap, Pole for Pole, and like for like meant classes and distinctions and hatred and prejudice and wars and misery, and that wasn’t what Mr. Carrick would want at all, and he was on the right track.
“I’ve got two Purple Hearts and five Battle Stars,” Ichiro said. “What does that make me?”
The young Japanese with the clean white shirt and the ruptured duck to prove he wasn’t Japanese flinched, then flushed and stammered: “Yeah—you know what I meant—that is, I didn’t mean what you think. Hell, I’m a vet too . . .”
“I’m glad you told me.”
“Jeezuz, all I said was are you Japanese. Is that wrong?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, of course not.”
“Why’d you ask?”
“Just to be asking. Make conversation and so on. You know.”
“I don’t. My name happens to be Wong. I’m Chinese.”
Frustrated and panicky, the waiter leaned forward earnestly and blurted out: “Good. It makes no difference to me what you are. I like Chinese.”
“Any reason why you shouldn’t?”
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean that. I was just trying to . . .” He did a harried right face and fled back toward the window grumbling: “Crissake, crissake . . .”
A moment later, the woman emerged from the kitchen with his plate and inquired in Japanese if he would like some toast and jam. She did it very naturally, seeing that he was obviously Japanese and gracefully using the tongue which came more easily to her lips.
He said that would be fine and noticed that the son was glaring out of the window at a world which probably seemed less friendly and more complicated than it had been a few minutes previously. The woman brought the toast and jam and left him alone, and he cleaned the plate swiftly. He would have liked another cup of coffee but the greater need was to get out and away from the place and the young Japanese who had to wear a discharge button on his shirt to prove to everyone who came in that he was a top-flight American. Having the proper change in his pocket, he laid it and the slip on the little rubber mat by the cash register and hurried out without seeing the relief-mixed-with-shame look on the waiter’s face.
From the café he walked the few steps to the tavern next door and ordered a double shot of whisky with a beer chaser. He downed both, standing up, by the time the bartender came back with his change, and then he was out on the street once more. On top of the ham and eggs and toast with jam, the liquor didn’t hit him hard, but he felt woozy by the time he got back to the hotel. He had to wait in the elevator for a while because the old fellow who ran it also watched the desk and was presently on the telephone.
On the way up, the old man regarded his slightly flushed face and smiled knowingly. “Want a girl?” he asked.
“I want six,” he said, hating the man.
“All at one time?” the old man questioned unbelievingly.
“The sixth floor, pop.” The hotness in his face was hotter still with the anger inside of him.
“Sure,” he said, bringing the elevator to an abrupt halt, “that’s good. I thought you meant you wanted six of them. That is good.”
The old man was chuckling as Ichiro stepped out of the elevator and headed toward his room.
“Filthy-minded old bastard,” he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world’s such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and describe in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red-brick church with the clean, white steeple, where the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it’s not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn’t enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn’t do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can’t find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They’re on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn’t he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damned country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into someplace that doesn’t exist, because they don’t know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven’t got enough sense to realize that. That makes sense. I’ve got the answer all figured out, simple and neat and sensible.
And then he thought about Kenji in the hospital and of Emi in bed with a stranger who reminded her of her husband and of his mother waiting for the ship from Japan, and there was no more answer. If he were in the tavern, he would drink another double with a beer for a chaser and another and still another but he wasn’t in the tavern because he didn’t have the courage to step out of his room and be seen by people who would know him for what he was. There was nothing for him to do but roll over and try to sleep. Somewhere, sometime, he had even forgotten how to cry.
In the morning he checked out of the hotel and drove to the hospital. Visiting hours were plainly indicated on a sign at the entrance as being in the afternoons and evenings. Feeling he had nothing to lose by trying, he walked in and stood by the registration desk until the girl working the switchboard got a chance to help him.
“What can I do for you?” she asked sweetly enough and then, prodded into action by the buzzing of the board, pulled and inserted a number of brass plugs which were attached to extendable wire cords. Tiny lights bristled actively as if to give evidence to the urgency of the calls being carried by the board.
“I’ve got a friend here. I’d like to find out what room he’s in.”
“Sure. His name?”
“Kanno.”
“Kanno what?”
“Kenji. Kanno is the last name.”
“How do you spell it?” She consulted the K’s on the cardex.
“K-A-N—”
“Never mind. I’ve got it.” Looking up, she continued: “He’s in four-ten but you’ll have to come back this afternoon. Visiting hours are posted at the entrance. Sorry.”
“I’m on my way out of town. I won’t be here this afternoon.”
“Hospital rules, sir.”
“Sure,” he said, noticing the stairway off toward the right, “I understand.”
The board buzzed busily and the operator turned her attention to the plugs and cords once more. Ichiro walked to the stairs and started up. Between the second and third floors he encountered two nurses coming down. When they saw him they cut short their chattering and one of them seemed on the point of questioning him. Quickening his pace, he rushed past them purposefully and was relieved when he heard them resume their talking.
Up on the fourth floor, no one bothered him as he set out to locate Kenji’s room. Four-ten wasn’t far from the stairway. A screen was placed inside the doorway so that he couldn’t look directly in. He went around it and saw the slight figure of his friend up on the high bed with the handle of the crank poking out at the foot.
“Ken,” he said in almost a whisper though he hadn’t deliberately intended to speak so.
“Ichiro?” His head lay on the pillow with its top toward the door and Ichiro noted with a vague sense of alarm that his hair was beginning to thin.
He waited for Kenji to face him and was disappointed when he did not move. “How’s it been with you?”
“Fine. Sit down.” He kept looking toward the window.
Ichiro walked past the bed, noticing where the sheet fell over the stump beneath. It seemed to be frighteningly close to the torso. His own legs felt stiff and awkward as he approached the chair and settled into it.
Kenji was looking at him, a smile, weak yet warm, on his mouth.
“How’s it going?” he asked, and he hardly heard his own voice, for Kenji had aged a lifetime during the two days they had been apart. Exactly what it was he couldn’t say, but it was all there, the fear, the pain, the madness, and the exhaustion of mind and body.
“About as I expected, Ichiro. I should have been a doctor.”
Kenji had said he was going to die.
“You could be wrong. Have they said so?”
“Not in so many words, but they know it and I know it and they know that I do.”
“Why don’t they do something?”
“Nothing to be done.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, not knowing why except that it suddenly seemed important to explain. “They told me to come back this afternoon but I came up anyway. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe you’re supposed to rest.”
“Hell with them,” said Kenji. “You’re here, stay.”
It was quiet in the hospital. He’d heard someplace a long time ago that visitors were not allowed in the morning in hospitals because that’s when all the cleaning and changing of beds and mopping of floors were done. There wasn’t a sound to be heard. “Quiet here,” he said.
“Good for thinking,” said Kenji.
“Sure, I guess it is.” He wished Kenji would move, roll his head a little or wiggle his arm, but he lay there just as he was.
“Go back to Seattle.”
“What?”
“Go back. Later on you might want to come to Portland to stay, but go back for now. It’ll turn out for the best in the long run. The kind of trouble you’ve got, you can’t run from it. Stick it through. Let them call you names. They don’t mean it. What I mean is, they don’t know what they’re doing. The way I see it, they pick on you because they’re vulnerable. They think just because they went and packed a rifle they’re different but they aren’t and they know it. They’re still Japs. You weren’t here when they first started to move back to the Coast. There was a great deal of opposition—name-calling, busted windows, dirty words painted on houses. People haven’t changed a helluva lot. The guys who make it tough on you probably do so out of a misbegotten idea that maybe you’re to blame because the good that they thought they were doing by getting killed and shot up doesn’t amount to a pot of beans. They just need a little time to get cut down to their own size. Then they’ll be the same as you, a bunch of Japs.”
He paused for a long time, just looking and smiling at Ichiro, his face wan and tired. “There were a lot of them pouring into Seattle about the time I got back there. It made me sick. I’d heard about some of them scattering out all over the country. I read about a girl who’s doing pretty good in the fashion business in New York and a guy that’s principal of a school in Arkansas, and a lot of others in different places making out pretty good. I got to thinking that the Japs were wising up, that they had learned that living in big bunches and talking Jap and feeling Jap and doing Jap was just inviting trouble. But my dad came back. There was really no reason why he should have. I asked him about it once and he gave me some kind of an answer. Whatever it was, a lot of others did the same thing. I hear there’s almost as many in Seattle now as there were before the war. It’s a shame, a dirty rotten shame. Pretty soon it’ll be just like it was before the war. A bunch of Japs with a fence around them, not the kind you can see, but it’ll hurt them just as much. They bitched and hollered when the government put them in camps and put real fences around them, but now they’re doing the same damn thing to themselves. They screamed because the government said they were Japs and, when they finally got out, they couldn’t wait to rush together and prove that they were.”
“They’re not alone, Ken. The Jews, the Italians, the Poles, the Armenians, they’ve all got their communities.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s wrong. I don’t blame the old ones so much. They don’t know any better. They don’t want any better. It’s me I’m talking about and all the rest of the young ones who know and want better.”
“You just got through telling me to go back to Seattle.”
“I still say it. Go back and stay there until they have enough sense to leave you alone. Then get out. It may take a year or two or even five, but the time will come when they’ll be feeling too sorry for themselves to pick on you. After that, head out. Go someplace where there isn’t another Jap within a thousand miles. Marry a white girl or a Negro or an Italian or even a Chinese. Anything but a Japanese. After a few generations of that, you’ve got the thing beat. Am I making sense?”
“It’s a fine dream, but you’re not the first.”
“No,” he uttered and it seemed as if he might cry, “it’s just a dream, a big balloon. I wonder if there’s a Jackson Street wherever it is I’m going to. That would make dying tough.”
Ichiro stood and, walking to his friend, placed his hand on the little shoulder and held it firmly.
“I’m going to write to Ralph,” said Kenji.
“Ralph?”
“Emi’s husband. I’m going to write him about how you and Emi are hitting it off.”
“Why? It’s not true.” He felt the heat of indignation warm around his collar.
“No, it isn’t true, but what they’re doing to each other is not right. They should be together or split up. If I tell him about you and how you’re hot for her, it might make him mad enough to come back.”
Understanding what Kenji meant, Ichiro worked up a smile. “Seems like I’m not so useless after all.”
“Tell her I’ve been thinking about her.”
“Sure.”
“And I’m thinking about you. All the time.”
“Sure.”
“Have a drink for me. Drink to wherever it is I’m headed, and don’t let there be any Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people. I think about that too. I think about that most of all. You know why?”
He shook his head and Kenji seemed to know he would even though he was still staring out the window. “He was up on the roof of the barn and I shot him, killed him. He wasn’t the only German I killed, but I remember him. I see him rolling down the roof. I see him all the time now and that’s why I want this other place to have only people because if I’m still a Jap there and this guy’s still a German, I’ll have to shoot him again and I don’t want to have to do that. Then maybe there is no someplace else. Maybe dying is it. The finish. The end. Nothing. I’d like that too. Better an absolute nothing than half a meaning. The living have it tough. It’s like a coat rack without pegs, only you think there are. Hang it up, drop, pick it up, hang it again, drop again . . . Tell my dad I’ll miss him like mad.”
“I will.”
“Crazy talk?”
“No, it makes a lot of sense.”
“Goodbye, Ichiro.”
His hand slipped off his friend’s shoulder and brushed along the white sheet and dropped to his side. The things he wanted to say would not be said. He said “Bye” and no sound came out because the word got caught far down inside his throat and he felt his mouth open and shut against the empty silence. At the door he turned and looked back and, as Kenji had still not moved, he saw again the spot on the head where the hair was thinning out so that the sickly white of the scalp filtered between the strands of black. A few more years and he’ll be bald, he thought, and then he started to smile inwardly because there wouldn’t be a few more years and as quickly the smile vanished because the towering, choking grief was suddenly upon him.
It was almost seven hours later when Ichiro, nearing the outskirts of Seattle, turned off the highway and drove to Emi’s house.
He pressed the doorbell and waited and pressed it again. When no one appeared, he pounded on the door. Thinking, hoping that she must be nearby, he walked around to the back. With a sense of relief, he noted that the shed which served as a garage housed a pre-war Ford that looked fairly new. It probably meant that she hadn’t driven to town. He tried the back door without any luck and made his way around to the front once more.
Tired and hungry, he sat on the step and lit a cigarette. It was then that he saw her, walking toward the house from out in the fields about where the man had been stooped over his labors a few mornings previously. Looking carefully, he saw that he was still there, still stooped over, still working.
Emi covered the ground with long, sure strides. Occasionally she broke into a run, picking her way agilely over the loose dirt and leaping over mounds and the carefully tended rows of vegetables. He stood and waved and got no response, so he waited until she was closer before he raised his arm again. Still she did not wave back. Seeming deliberately to avoid looking at him, she approached the gate. Once there, she jerked her head up, her face alive and expectantly tense.
“Hello, Emi.”
“I saw the Oldsmobile. I thought . . .” She didn’t hide her disappointment.
He felt embarrassed and unwanted. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She grasped the gate, which he had left open, and slammed it fiercely. With chin lowered, she pouted, her face swollen and defiant. Then she came up the walk, moving her legs reluctantly, and dropped on the step.
Unnerved by her reaction, Ichiro fidgeted uneasily, thinking of something to say. At length, he too sat down beside her and remained silent. Without looking at her, he could sense that she was struggling to keep the tears from starting. There was a streak of brown dirt clinging across the toe of her shoe and he restrained the urge to brush it off.
“It’s just that I wanted so much for him to come back.” She started speaking, almost in a whisper. “It somehow seemed more important for him to come back this time than the other times he went down there. He’s not coming back, is he?”
“No, I think not. He told me to tell you that he’s thinking about you.”
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry I made you feel bad just now.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did and I’m sorry.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll make you something to eat,” she said and before he could refuse, rose and went into the house.
In the kitchen, he watched as she moved from the refrigerator to the sink to the stove, fussing longer than necessary with each little thing that had to be done.
He got the dishes and utensils from the cupboard and set them on the table. “Were you in love with him?” he asked.
She turned and, apparently neither startled nor hurt, softly smiled. “In a way. Not the way I love Ralph. Not the way I might love you, but I loved him—no, he’s not gone yet—I love him too much but not enough.”
“Any other time I might not understand the way you put that, but I do.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m glad if you do, but it really doesn’t matter. Love is not something you save and hoard. You’re born with it and you spend it when you have to and there’s always more because you’re a woman and there’s always suffering and pain and gentleness and sadness to make it grow.”
“He said he was thinking about you.”
“You already said that. Besides, it doesn’t need to be said.” She put the meat and potatoes in his plate and urged him to eat. For herself she poured a cup of coffee and stirred it absent-mindedly without adding cream or sugar.
Hungry as he had thought himself to be, he found himself chewing lengthily on each little mouthful.
“And you?”
He looked at her, not quite understanding the intention of her words.
“What will you do now?”
“I haven’t decided,” he said honestly. “Strangely enough, I had a wonderful job offer in Portland, but I turned it down.”
“Tell me about it.”
He did so, dwelling at great length on his admiration for Mr. Carrick and the reasons for his final decision to refuse the job. Somehow, he had expected her to be impatient with what he had done, but when he finished she merely said: “It’s good.”
“That I turned down the job?”
“No, it’s good that you found out things aren’t as hopeless as you thought.”
“Just like you said.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” She looked pleased. “This Mr. Carrick you speak of sounds like the kind of American that Americans always profess themselves to be.”
“One in a million,” he added.
“Less than that,” she said quickly. “If a lot more people were like him, there wouldn’t have been an evacuation.”
“No, and one might even go farther and say there might not have been a war.”
“And no problems for you and me and everybody else.”
“Nothing for God to do either,” he said, without knowing why and, as soon as he had, he knew that they had just been talking. What it amounted to was that there was a Mr. Carrick in Portland, which did not necessarily mean that there were others like him. The world was pretty much the same except, perhaps, that Emi and he were both sadder.
“Mr. Maeno will give you work, if you wish. I was speaking to him about you just before you came.”
Rising, he went to the stove to get the coffeepot and did not answer until he sat down again. “That would be nice, but I can’t. Thanks anyway.”
“Why?”
“It won’t do any good. It’ll be like hiding. He’s Japanese. Probably admires me for what I did, I suppose. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference to him what I’ve done, but it does to me.”
“What will you do then?”
“Find a girl that’s not Japanese that’ll marry me.” Seeing the incredulous look in her face, he rapidly explained what Kenji had said to him.
“He didn’t really mean it,” she replied. “He only meant that things ought to be that way, but I think he knew he was only dreaming.”
“He did. It’s probably what makes him so unhappy and kind of brooding underneath.”
“Is he really going to die?” She looked at him pleadingly, as if beseeching him to say that it was not true.
All he could do was nod his head.
Emi pushed her cup away abruptly, splashing some of the coffee onto the table. Then she cupped her face with her hands and began to sob, scarcely making a sound.
“I have to go now,” he said. “I may not come to see you again and, then, I might. I like you a lot already and, in time, I’ll surely love you very deeply. That mustn’t happen because Ralph will probably come back.”
“He won’t,” she cried, without taking her hands away.
“I think he will. Ken said he was writing to Ralph. He’s got something in mind that’ll jolt him hard enough to make him see what he’s doing. He’ll come back. Soon.”
He stood beside her a moment, wanting to comfort her. Slowly, he raised his arms, only to let them drop without touching her. Quickly he brushed his lips against her head and ran out of the house.