CHAPTER 30

過去 Kako

The Past

Jet took her bags from her shoulder, wincing. It had been throbbing for days.

“Let me have a look,” J-Bird said. She let him feel around the joint.

“You’ve dislocated it,” he told her, “but I can put it back for you. It’s going to hurt while I’m doing it, but you’ll feel better after. Up for it?”

“I’d do anything to feel better,” she said, taking a breath in. J-Bird stood behind her and folded his right arm into her back, wrapping his left arm around her shoulder. On the count of three he used his full body weight to put the shoulder back into its socket. It snapped back in place.

“Aaaaaargh!” she cried out.

“Sorry about that,” he winced.

Jet bent over in pain. Aska crept up to her face and began to lick her cheeks. Finally, Jet stood up and braced herself.

“You’re right. It does feel a lot better. Thank you!”

“Let’s get some ice on it.” J-Bird gave her an icepack, turned on the heater next to the small table and made coffee in an old blue enamel pot. Then he cooked oatmeal. Jet put butter and brown sugar on hers. Hiro found some soy sauce, then cracked a raw egg onto his porridge and mixed it together.

“Yuck!” Jet said.

“Same to you,” Hiro retorted. “Americans always make everything so sweet.”

J-Bird laughed, studying Hiro’s dark skin, eyes, and hair.

“If I didn’t know it, I’d think you were one of us, son. You could be Navajo.”

Hiro beamed. No one had called him “son” in a very long time.

“Well, the first Japanese and the Native Americans had the same ancestors,” Hiro said, smiling.

“Really?” J-Bird said, looking at Hiro’s big eyes, with their thick, almond-shaped eyelids.

“Yeah. The first Japanese were part of the ancient Mongolian tribes that lived in Indochina. Before the end of the glacial age, they started to move toward the east. At that time, the Bering Strait was a land bridge. Japan was connected.”

“I see.” J-Bird poured his coffee, eyebrows raised.

“They separated into two groups. One went south, the other continued east. The group that went south became the first indigenous Japanese. The other went to America and became the Native Americans. Ojiisan told me that Japanese and Native Americans still have the same type of immunities.”

“Really?” J-Bird raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed. You sure know a lot for a boy your age, don’t you?”

“Not really,” Hiro said, flashing a shy grin. “Ojiisan taught me everything I know. And I like to read. Especially history.”

“That’s special enough these days.” J-Bird dropped his gaze to his hands, which were folded in his lap. He traced the lines of his left palm with his thumb.

Jet sat at the table. She knew what this gesture meant. It was a kind of signal that he was collecting his thoughts before he spoke. It was time to sit quietly and listen.

“I’m glad you both made it back safely,” he said. “There are some things you need to know, and now’s as good a time as any to tell you.”

Jet put her spoon down. She had always counted on J-Bird to guide her, and she was relieved that he wouldn’t let her and Hiro down.

“Hiro, you might not know it, but I served in Vietnam. Jet’s father Jack was there, too.”

Hiro nodded.

“I never knew him,” J-Bird said. “When the war ended, I returned to the reservation, hoping for the best. But nothing had changed. It was the same miserable place I’d left. I was pretty beaten down. I lost hope. So I started drinking. I drank every day straight for years. Then one day, this incredible woman showed up. I thought God had sent me an angel. She was so kind, so gentle. And very, very hungry.”

“My mom!” Jet laughed.

“You got that. And she was with this beautiful little girl.” J-Bird smiled, remembering.

“Jet!” Hiro exclaimed.

“Right. Jet was about two. I told Satoko they could stay on the reservation until she found a job. Well, she found a job that day and the month turned into many years,” he said, chuckling.

Jet laughed, and for a moment she forgot all that had happened in Japan.

“I stopped drinking and started to put my life back together,” J-Bird looked at Jet, and she returned his gaze, staring at his watery eyes that seemed to absorb everything.

“Anyway, I never asked her much about your father,” J-Bird said, “but just before Satoko died, she told me what she thought I should know.”

Jet listened intently.

“In Vietnam, your father was known as the Rambler. He liked to wander, which is a good thing, as you have no choice but to keep moving on the battlefield. But sometime during his tour, he went AWOL. He was a very good soldier, but he just reached a point where he didn’t want to fight anymore. He walked off into the jungle. Disappeared.”

“Where did he go?” Hiro asked.

“No one knows. He could have fallen sick, or gotten killed, but he survived. He was very strong.”

Jet frowned. She wasn’t impressed. Her father might have had great survival skills, but he hadn’t been very generous in sharing them with his family. He’d left when she was a baby, after all. Where was the virtue in that?

“He made it out of the jungle,” J-Bird continued, “but had nowhere to go. And since he’d gone AWOL, he couldn’t get an honorable discharge. He was wanted by the FBI, so he changed his name and went into hiding. The only work he could get was as a mercenary.”

“A mercy-mary?” Hiro repeated the strange words.

Jet laughed despite herself. J-Bird shot her a sideways glance.

“Mercenary–a soldier for hire. Corporations, governments, the military, even the CIA hire them,” he explained.

Hiro took out a piece of paper and wrote the word down.

“Anyway,” J-Bird continued, “he did that work for a few years, and eventually wound up in the Japanese countryside, working on a mission with some other combat vets who could navigate jungles. They were looking for some kind of treasure.”

Hiro almost jumped out of his seat. “Was he after our family treasure?”

J-Bird looked over at Jet soberly. “Yes, I think he was. He must have been following the Kuroi family to get information about the whereabouts. But then he met your mom on the mountain. She was out picking mushrooms.”

Jet gasped. Ojiisan had said that Satoko was a good hunter of nameko.

“He almost attacked her. But then she looked up, and well,” J-Bird told her, “they fell in love pretty much on the spot.”

Jet’s mouth fell open. Was that what her mother had meant when she’d said, Don’t let yourself fall—like me?

“And then what happened?” Hiro leaned forward.

“Well, your Ojiisan would have been furious if he found out. And Jack’s boss would have killed him, so he and Satoko met secretly in Sendai, where she worked at a restaurant.”

“What happened next?” Jet prompted.

“Well your mom got pregnant, and your dad started to think about the baby. You.” He looked at Jet with a gaze full of quiet insight, the kind of understanding that only someone who has accepted his fate could have.

Jet looked down. She’d never had much goodwill towards the man who had abandoned her, and it was hard to start now.

“Anyway,” J-Bird cleared his throat, “Jack decided to quit the operation, move in with your mom, and work the land, growing buckwheat. The problem was he knew too much, and his boss didn’t want that information to get out. And he didn’t trust your dad to keep quiet.”

“Why not?” Jet asked, biting her lip.

“In that line of work, you trust someone, you wind up six feet under. And like I said, your dad was a strong soldier.”

“What happened then?” Hiro asked.

“Sure enough, Kanabe was attacked that winter.”

“Who attacked it? The people working for my father’s ex-boss?” Jet asked.

“Seems so, but they made a mistake. They thought it would be easy to steal a treasure from a mountain village, but they overlooked two things. One is that the Kuroi family are descendants of ninja.”

“And the other?” Hiro asked, leaning forward in his swivel chair.

“Snow. They didn’t know the power of snow in Northern Japan. Even though they were well armed, they didn’t know how to fight in snow well.”

“But the villagers did!” Hiro added proudly.

“Right.” J-Bird closed his eyes. “Your grandmother Momoko died, and Masakichi was heartbroken. So was Satoko. She believed it was all her fault.”

“How horrible,” Jet said. The image of Ojiisan cooking dinner in Kanabe flashed in her mind. She couldn’t believe how much he’d suffered, how many of his loved ones he’d lost. What treasure was worth that much?

“Most of the attackers died, too,” Hiro said quickly, swinging his feet under the table nervously. “Ojiisan told me about that battle. The village fought hard.”

“I wish none of this had ever happened,” she said.

“Jet, listen to me,” J-Bird said resolutely. “You can’t help who you fall in love with. Satoko fell in love with your father, he fell in love with her. If he’d known what would happen to Kanabe, he wouldn’t have stayed with her, no matter how much he loved her. I’m sure of that.”

“I don’t know,” Jet said, trying to quell the bitterness in her heart, and the fear that she was more like her mother than she’d ever known.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“Could you imagine knowing all of this when you met Ojiisan? Would you have gone to Japan if you’d known?”

Jet took a spoonful of oatmeal, hoping the warmth and sweetness of the maple syrup would comfort her.

“You’re right,” she said. “I might not have.”

After all, she’d gone back because she’d promised Satoko, and it had seemed important. But now she wondered… Had her mother kept so many secrets because she’d been afraid Jet would reveal them, endangering them all?

“Your dad was trying to protect Satoko. That’s why they came to America,” J-Bird said, finally.

“It was his idea?” Jet asked, astounded. “All this time, I thought Ojiisan was against my mom’s marriage! But he wasn’t, was he?”

“Well, he was… At first. But then he saw how hard Jack defended the village against his own people to protect Kanabe. Masakichi wanted to save what was left of the family. Jack did, too. That was you. You were born in July of that year.

“After that, your mom made three decisions. The first was to protect her daughter. The second was to avenge the attack.”

“And the third?” Hiro asked.

“The third was to keep the Kuroi family treasure away from them at all costs. Jet’s father agreed. So they went underground in America. They lived for a year under different names, but your father realized they were being followed.”

J-Bird hesitated. “By then, they were tired of running.”

Jet sighed. She understood the feeling of being on the run all too well.

“So what did they do then?” she asked.

“They decided to meet their fate head-on. Your mom and dad wanted to get to the source. You see, when Jack worked in the field, he’d been hired by a secret agent, so he never knew the identity of his real boss. But he made up his mind to find out. Jack began doing research, going undercover. He was sure he’d found out who was after them, but one day in February he disappeared. He was almost certainly… J-Bird stopped, unable to say the word.

“Killed?” Jet asked, swallowing hard.

J-Bird looked down, nodding.

Jet didn’t know what to say. All her life she’d assumed that her father had left them because he didn’t want to be with them. Now there was more to the story. He had left to protect them. She had a hard time accepting this.

“Jack might have made a lot of mistakes,” J-Bird told her, “but he was only human. I believe he loved your mom, and she loved him. And I know he loved you, too.”

Jet’s eyes began to water. “Thanks for saying that,” she said, swallowing hard. She finally understood the dark cloud that hung over her mother’s life. And hers.

J-Bird looked down at his hands. “There’s more,” he said. “You see, your mother and I avenged the deaths of Jack and the Kanabe villagers.”

Jet felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

“Avenged? How?” she asked, not sure if she really wanted to know.

“We used the information that Jack had gathered to track down a man named Harter, a treasure collector and smuggler who ran a ring of mercenaries. We did it because Satoko wanted a normal life for you. She thought if he were gone, it would finally be possible.”

Jet swallowed, choosing her words. “So if Harter is dead, who’s after us now?”

J-Bird glanced from Hiro to Jet. “His son. We never knew he had one. He runs a military technology company…”

“NLS! New Language Systems,” Hiro exclaimed, jumping up from his chair.

“Right,” J-Bird said, “and he vowed not only to get revenge but to find the treasure once and for all. He’ll stop at nothing.”

“Uncle Soji told us about them,” Hiro said. “He’s been researching them for years, trying to figure out what they’re up to.”

“Yes. And even though Satoko took Harter out, she never went back to Japan because there were reports of people spying on Kanabe. She knew they were still searching for the treasure, but she didn’t want to bring any more trouble to the village.”

“So what changed?” Jet asked, holding her breath.

“I think you know by now that only the Kuroi family women knew the location of the treasure, and she believed that the secret was safer here. But then she got sick, and she knew she didn’t have much time left. So she made a plan. She decided to send you back to Japan to draw them out. She hoped to end things once and for all.”

Jet closed her eyes, feeling the weight of all she was learning. Only she could avenge her entire family and set things right. She was their last chance. If they didn’t succeed, the village of Kanabe and the history of her people would vanish.

Jet shook in anguish. It was too much to bear.

J-Bird steadied her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Jet, your mother made a promise you would never have to fear for your life the way she’d feared for hers. She loved you more than she loved herself. That’s why she trained you so hard. She knew that only by learning where you came from could you go safely into your future.”

Jet shook her head. “That’s what the itako—female shaman—said on Osore-zan, too. But maybe I would have been more at peace if I had known the truth from the beginning.”

“I know you think that now, but if she had told you, what would you have done?” J-Bird’s eyes locked on hers.

Jet bit her lip. “I don’t know. But that was my choice to make. I had a right to know!”

“Listen,” he said slowly. “You’re right. But just imagine if she’d told you about the treasure. Wouldn’t you have run away to try to find it?”

“Who knows?” Jet shrugged.

J-Bird laid a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I know,” he said. “I know you, and I can tell you that you were safer not knowing. If you were captured and knew more than you already do, it would have put everyone at risk. That’s a chance we couldn’t afford to take,” J-Bird insisted.

“If there really is a treasure, why didn’t Mom claim it? We were so poor. You know that, J-Bird!” Jet sighed.

“The Kuroi family treasure exists. It is real, and it is very well hidden,” he said emphatically.

“So well hidden that no one can find it!” Jet exclaimed.

“Exactly. Only the Kuroi family women knew where it was and why it’s important.”

“Great. There’s just one problem. They’re all gone,” Jet said, dejected.

“Not all of them,” Hiro said, looking at her meaningfully.

Jet brushed him off. “I didn’t even know the treasure existed until last month. How can I know where it’s hidden?” She looked intently at J-Bird. “Well?”

J-Bird didn’t answer. He just looked at her intently before speaking. “I know it sounds backwards, but you—you had to shine light on your shadow self to let it emerge. You had to uncover your warrior nature so that someday you—and the Kuroi clan—could live a peaceful life.”

“I really wish people would stop saying things like that,” Jet said. “It makes no sense at all.”

“Not now. But it will later,” J-Bird promised.

Jet closed her eyes and sighed. Why is my life so strange?

“You’ve done everything your mother had hoped you would. I know it’s been treacherous, and dangerous. But here we are. And I know your mother—and father—would be very proud of you,” he said. “I know I am.”

Jet turned away. She didn’t know how much more of this cat and mouse game she could take. She hoped it would end soon.