Yoshio stared at the dead pilot and the old woman who stood over him. Her expression was blank, her face flecked with blood. Her mouth was opening and closing, but he couldn’t hear what she said. It occurred to him that Nishikaichi would not have wanted to die like this, at the hands of a woman. An old woman, at that. It would be, in his mind, dishonorable.
Everything was over.
He put the butt of the shotgun on the ground and leaned his belly into the barrel. It was a long reach, but he was a big man and he thought, How nice it is to be tall, to have long arms to reach with. He had never before appreciated it enough.
The sun burned on his neck as he flexed it downward. Something in this posture, its acquiescence, the way the heat pushed on him like a hand, triggered again, for the last time, that terrible day in California. It came in pictures, as it always did. First, the lopsided grins of the three white men. The smell of bad whiskey. The way the long alleyway that had, a few moments earlier, seemed like a good shortcut narrowed into a black void behind them. The first few punches thrown like leisurely pitches from a baseball mound in a warm-up game. The laughing curses spat his way. Put your hands together and beg, they’d finally said. And he hadn’t at first but widened his fingers and spread his arms back, as if the farther apart they were the more chance he had. The cement grated against his cheek and he saw one man, tired of punching and kicking perhaps, go down on one knee and lean toward him. The man reached for one of Yoshio’s wrists and whispered, C’mon, a yellow sissy like you knows how to beg. With his other hand he grabbed the back of his belt. Didya hear me? I said beg. He lifted him up, and propped him on his knees, and then delivered a hard punch to his stomach. Yoshio’s breath had whooshed from him, and as he struggled to regain it, he thought, This is what it’s like to die. Beg, the man commanded again, landing another blow, and the breath that had begun to return was whisked away one more time. Yoshio tried to speak, to tell them to stop, he’d had enough, but no words came out. Maybe he’s just stupid, another man said. But he wasn’t stupid. He put his hands together and begged. He begged and begged and begged, his fingers clasped so tightly that he wondered if they would ever let go. Beg, you yellow sissy. And he had.
There’s something about begging that diminishes you, once and for all. The other insults that America hurled at him daily for being a nisei were nicks and cuts; this was a large, gaping wound. It wasn’t just that they had made him say, I’m a yellow sissy, over and over, though that had hurt too. It was that he’d had to put his hands together on command and put them up beseechingly, so that they no longer could defend his stomach or his head or anything else. He had to trust that his assailants wouldn’t hit him, and that if they did, he would be partly to blame, because there he was, arms raised in supplication, in utter and total defenselessness. Begging like that, he was as helpless as a child. He really was what they said he was, a yellow sissy. Something in him was lost that day, speeding out with his breath, never to return. Whatever was left in its place was merely the frame and joists of a person, not the essential spirit. All that remained was someone who could not tell a luna that his first child was in danger, who could not be at his wife’s side when she needed him most.
He had never told anybody, and sometimes he thought that he himself would forget it, especially here, on Niihau. It was certainly as close as he ever came to it. All he’d ever wanted was to prove to Irene, and to himself, that he was still a man. And finally, a week ago, he’d had his chance in the unlikely form of a Zero whose gas tank had been hit. It was as if it had appeared bearing everything he had lost. It had brought a man with pride, with a mission, and with a sense of self. The Zero had said, Here, I’ve kept all this for you since that day. The pilot, he is who you were. Now, come. Follow him and you will have it back. That’s all Yoshio had wanted, really. To regain what was once his. And now even that had gone awry, as if everything he touched was cursed. Finally, he must do the only thing left for him.
-Taeko, he murmured. Forgive me.
The first blast threw him to the ground. He lay looking at the sky, which still had its purple glow and the faint wisp of a cloud. It’s going to rain, he thought. That’s good.
He reached for the gun again and staggered to his feet. The shot had only grazed him, and he was determined to do at least this one thing right. He felt the sharp tip of the muzzle under his rib cage and pressed harder so as to lodge it there. The pain felt comforting. In the ensuing explosion, as he pulled the trigger, he saw Irene. Her eyes shone and her arms were wide.
-Come, she said to him, pulling a chair forward. Your hair needs cutting.
-Aren’t I handsome enough for you yet? he whispered.
Her mouth broke open in long rays of light. She stepped forward and embraced him fiercely.
-Of course you are, she said. You always have been.