A giant stone rolled down a creek, building more and more speed as it came closer. The soft edges of the creek bed were being destroyed, chunks of moss-covered soil flying and hitting Mas’s face and neck. The rock hit the trunks of five cypress trees, almost knocking them over like bowling pins. Smashing against a boulder, the stone cracked open, releasing the severed head of Oily Takei, which then began to float upward, growing larger and larger.
Mas jerked himself awake, finding himself practically mummified in the motel sheet. Could Oily have killed Shug? He worked for a competitor, Everbears. He himself had said strawberry yellows threatened the whole industry. Did he steal Shug’s secrets to save his own company? Or perhaps it was more personal, longtime jealousy plus a desire for Minnie after all these years.
It was eight o’clock, early but not that early. He had already called Mari over the weekend to tell her that he was staying. Now it was time to make another call.
“Hello.”
“Hallo.”
“Mas, it’s good to hear your voice. Mari told me you’d be staying up there a few more days. How’s everything going over there?”
Genessee Howard’s voice was like tiger balm without the overwhelming menthol smell. Her voice literally warmed Mas’s creaky joints, soothing, relaxing.
Mas, as best he could, told Genessee what had happened these past few days. Laila’s dead body. Shug’s mysterious death. Minnie’s call for help. Spying at Sugarberry. Strawberry yellows.
“And now Oily,” he said, concluding with the discovery that it had been their childhood friend who had stolen Shug’s laptop. “I’zu need to come home.”
Genessee was quiet for a while and Mas wished she would fill the silence with “yes, yes, Mas, come home.”
But instead he got this: “You’ve got to stay, Mas. They’re family.”
Family? Genessee never seemed that particularly happy with hers.
“Never underestimate the importance of family,” she reminded him.
Feeling recharged after speaking to Genessee, Mas took a shower, brushed his gums with a new toothbrush he’d purchased from the drugstore, and combed his wet hair. He felt, for once, optimistic. Maybe doctors would find that Shug actually had a weak heart, all along. That Laila’s killing had been a random incident—perhaps a hungry vagrant or drunkard who wanted his way with her. Nothing involving strawberries. Mas knew he was just fooling himself, but it felt good to try.
He watched television for a while, getting recaps of what was happening in basketball and baseball back in Los Angeles.
Then a knock at the door.
Without even looking, Mas knew he wasn’t going to like who was behind the door. Robin Arai, out of her uniform and out of her hair bun. Her shoulder-length hair was in slight disarray, which made her look like an everyday person.
“I won’t blame you if you don’t want to talk to me,” she said.
At least the lieutenant had realistic expectations.
“I’m not here in an official capacity, but a personal one.”
Mas, halfway curious, gestured for her to enter. Closing the door behind her, he turned off the television.
“I’m off the Laila Smith case. Conflict of interest. Arturo Salgado has officially taken over.” She stood awkwardly by the wall air conditioner.
“They fire you?”
“No, no it’s nothing like that. I’m still working at the station.” Although out of her uniform, Robin still stood as straight as pole. “They traced the threatening phone calls to Laila. It came from a landline at a dorm at San Jose State. The dorm where Alyssa lives.”
Mas had to concentrate for a moment. Who was Alyssa again? Sounded familiar.
“My niece. Billy’s daughter.”
Mas knew nothing about her, other than her smooth, shiny face and long hair. Before he could fully absorb what Robin was telling him, she quickly interjected, “She didn’t do it. But sheriff’s detectives are going to question her today and I’m trying to get her a lawyer. I’m not supposed to contact her, but I tried. She’s not answering her phone and she has too many messages in her voice mail. I keep telling her to clean it out.”
“Her motha?”
“Colleen? Well, she’s not quite available. She hasn’t been available for a while. After Billy moved out, she had a nervous breakdown. She’s been in and out of mental facilities. She insisted on coming to Shug’s funeral, but I think seeing Billy was too much for her, and she checked herself in again.”
Robin then swallowed, slowly and deliberately. “So, you see, it has to be someone else to tell her to wait for a lawyer. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Arai?”
Mas did but didn’t want to.
“Here’s a map to her dormitory. It’s on campus.” She took out a folded computer printout from her purse and handed to Mas. He accepted it, begrudgingly. He didn’t want to drive anyplace within Watsonville, not to mention fifty miles away. In order to hit the 101, he’d have to travel through the twists and turns of Hecker Pass.
“Please, Mas, as a favor to the family.”
Ah, shikataganai, Mas thought to himself. This all could not be helped. All he knew was the next time he talked to Genessee, he’d tell her that she was very wrong. Family is very overrated.
After Robin left, Mas put on his work boots and wind-breaker. In all honesty, he doubted he’d be able to find Billy’s daughter. Young people rarely stayed in one place; they were always on the go. But he saw something in Robin Arai’s eyes that he had seen before: fear. She was scared for her niece, and she was most likely scared because she cared for her so much. That sentiment Mas actually understood.
So he’d go to San Jose, because he said he would. Other than that, no guarantees, that’s what he told the police-woman. As he started the Ford’s rattling engine, another truck started as well.
Where was this Arai going? First he’d been visited in the early morning by the other Arai, the police officer who was out of uniform. What were they conspiring about?
Jimi’s eyes were red, his eyelashes crusted with yellow sleep. He had spent the night there at the side of the parking lot, with Mas’s strange-looking monster of a truck in plain view. He’d brought a thermos of coffee, as well as a fresh coffee cake that he’d made. The caretaker was with Ats; he made some excuse that he had to go out of town on business.
He followed Mas from Green Valley Road to Airport Boulevard to finally the 152, Hecker Pass. Heading east—maybe Gilroy or San Jose? Jimi drove past strawberry fields, past the cemetery where most of Jimi’s father’s ashes were buried. The remaining ashes had been released in the hot winds of Arizona, sixty years ago.
Jimi remembered his last conversation with his father. “No, da-me. Don’t come too close,” Goro said from his hospital bed in Poston.
Jimi didn’t care what his father said. He wasn’t afraid of tuberculosis. He wasn’t afraid to die. In fact, he wanted to enlist in the Army like some of the other young men in camp. When his mother, Itsuko, found out, she just turned her head toward the barracks wall.
“Nagakunai,” Goro said. It won’t be long. He had been placed in the Poston Hospital a month ago.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen.” Goro wasn’t one to say much, but he spoke now. He spoke about how he dreamt of strawberries. Red colors of all different shades, scarlet, blood red, wine-colored. The minuscule seeds pleating their plump skins.
“I have a special strawberry, one that I was experimenting with Wataru Arai,” he said in Japanese. “It is a strawberry like no other. But we cannot let the Arais have it all. Part of it belongs to us, the Jabamis.”
What can I do? Jimi asked. They were in camp, locked away. He had seen Wataru Arai working in the victory gardens, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his skin tanned and weathered like tortoise legs. There were no strawberries in that desert garden. Strawberries needed the coastal air. Wataru Arai had not brought strawberries to Poston.
“No, no,” Goro whispered. He tugged at Jimi’s elbow. His breath smelled strange, like unripe bananas. “We hid the plants. Wrapped them up, special barerooted. Stem House, basement.”
That had been two years ago. Barerooted strawberry plants stored in a cool place could last one, two months, at best. Jimi squeezed his father’s hand. “Papa, it’s okay,” he said.
“No, no.” Goro was more adamant this time. “The strawberries were saved. They were saved.” Before he could say more, a nurse, originally from San Juan Bautista, stopped by.
“Your father should not be so agitated.”
Jimi tried to argue with her, and Goro even attempted fruitlessly to get up.
“It’s okay, Papa. You can tell me tomorrow.”
“I named it Taro,” he said. “After you. Remember? Strawberry Boy.”
Mas circled the dense streets of downtown San Jose. Oneway streets everywhere, lined with older multilevel office buildings. Mas felt like he was traveling in a maze with no ending point.
Mayotta. Hopelessly lost.
He felt himself grow angrier and angrier. Why had the woman police officer sent him to do this work?
Finally finding a place for the Ford in a parking structure, Mas followed the signs to San Jose State University. He had been here once before, to see one of Shug’s friends participate in a judo tournament. But that was more than half a century ago, and much—but not everything—had changed. He saw the same redwood trees, looking a little worn after all this time, as well as palms stretching above the red-tile slanted roofs of Tower Hall. Dark-haired young people were swarming all over the campus like ants seeking to conquer their landscape.
Robin had been good enough to include a computer printout of the map to Alyssa’s dormitory, a twelve-story building that looked like it could hold at least five hundred people. How could he find Alyssa amid all the other long-haired Asian coeds?
After he made a couple of missteps, a student who seemed to have pity for Mas pointed him toward a desk on the second floor of the building.
“Alyssa,” he said. “Lookin’ for Alyssa Arai.”
A young woman who could have been Alyssa’s twin, aside from wearing oversize red-framed glasses, furrowed her eyebrows.
“I’zu relative. Mas Arai. Family emergency.”
The girl bit the end of a pen and then dialed a number on the desk phone.
“Alyssa, there’s someone’s here for you. A relative. He says it’s an emergency.”
Within five minutes, Alyssa appeared from a long hallway. She didn’t even bother to say hello. She pulled Mas into a corner away from her bespectacled twin. “What are you doing here? Did something happen to my grandmother?”
Mas took Alyssa to the other side of the lobby. The student receptionist continued to keep an eye on them, but at least they were far enough that she couldn’t overhear their conversation.
“Robin tole me to come ova. Police comin’ to talksu to you. Don’t say nuttin’ to them. Robin gettin’ you a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? But why?”
“Police knowsu all about the te-le-phone calls you make to Laila.”
Alyssa began to blink furiously. “I had my boyfriend call. I wanted to scare Laila off. To tell her to move out of Watsonville. But we only did it a couple of times. Then my boyfriend said he didn’t want to be a part of it. We aren’t together anymore.”
Mas was ready to leave, but the girl apparently wanted to continue talking.
“I didn’t do anything to Laila. I didn’t bash her head in. I was sleeping over my aunt’s house when she was killed. The police can ask Robin and my brother.”
Why did Alyssa feel the need to spout out her alibi to me? Mas wondered.
“You don’t think the police will want to talk to my ex-boyfriend?”
Naturally they will, Mas thought.
Alyssa quickly read his face. “No, that won’t be any good. He’s really pissed at me. I don’t know what he’ll say to the police.”
Apparently more frightened by the prospect of dealing with her ex-lover than with a murder charge, Alyssa started to tremble.
“Wait for lawyer,” he said, and she nodded.
“It’s all his fault, you know. My dad. If he had his midlife crisis or whatever by just buying a sports car, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
They then heard voices from the courtesy desk—a couple of men in bad suits were talking to the receptionist with the red glasses.
“Rememba, don’t say nuttin’,” Mas repeated to Alyssa before going out a side door.
Jimi got back in his truck. He placed his wrench back in the glove compartment. He was a stickler about returning things to their proper place. The nut that he’d removed from a screw, he could have tossed it away, but he instead put it in his jeans pocket. Maybe he’d place it in a jar when he got home. A souvenir, at least before Jimi and Ats’s last days.
It had been easy with an old Ford truck from the 1950s. No electronics or computer circuit boards to deal with. Being a farmer, Jimi had serviced more tractors and pickup trucks than he cared to remember. But in this case, he wasn’t fixing a vehicle, but breaking it down.
He didn’t know whether he should follow the Ford on its way through Hecker Pass. Hecker Pass was winding like an angry snake on the side of a cliff. He wondered how the truck would crash. Over the ledge, falling, falling hundreds of feet below. Or perhaps it would be like that winter Olympics game, the bobsled. The truck would shoot down the winding road at record speeds and then crash into the side of a mountain, maybe even bursting into flames.
Jimi remembered traveling on Hecker Pass when he and his mother Itsuko returned from Poston. The loss of his father had been devastating enough in camp, but somehow it felt worse after they were released. At least inside, all the people seemed to prop them up, whether they liked it or not. But now free, they were unanchored, untethered. It was as if their small family was floating away from each other, never to meet again.
Itsuko never recovered from Poston. She spent her days outside beside her four stones. It was as if she felt every loss in her life, over and over again.
“It was harvest time, the fields full of red strawberries. We had to leave them all. I wonder if anyone picked the strawberries,” she said, remembering when they were forced to leave their Watsonville land. Luckily they had an attorney who had taken care of the property taxes during their absence. But nobody was there for the strawberries.
The Taro, Jimi wondered. What had happened to the Taro strawberry?
One summer night, the night of Watsonville’s first Obon festival after camp, he could not sleep. Most of the Japanese, at least the Buddhist ones, were at the temple, dressed in cotton yukata, clutching and waving fans and cutting into the hot, humid night air with their sharp hand movements. Even though they lived miles away from the temple, Jimi swore he could hear the beat of the large drum, the taiko, with wooden sticks, pounding, pounding. He told his mother he was tired. Which he was, but there was also something else.
The Stem House was completely dark, the window shades down like closed square eyelids. The Arais, cornerstones of the temple, would be at the dance, which meant Jimi could finally pay the Stem House a visit. Armed with his flashlight and a leftover spare rib, he went through the unlocked front door.
The Arais’ black poodle, Kuro, started his insane barking, but as Jimi thought, the spare rib was a perfect bribe for the dog’s silence. Jimi himself was a dog lover, with two miniature collies at their farm house, but he had no affection for Kuro. Anything that the Arais cared for, he could not.
He swept the walls and furnishings with the beam of his flashlight. Their family portraits, their smiling faces seemed unending. In Jimi’s case, there were more family members in the ground than above it.
What had Jimi’s father said? The plants had been hidden in the basement. A couple of turns around the house and he spied a door cut into the side of the back stairs. He turned the glass doorknob and yes, found the steps leading to complete lower darkness. A perfect place for hibernating strawberry plants. He descended and circled the floor with the flashlight. He saw a dirt outline of squares and a lone crate, an old-fashioned one hammered together by hand. Jimi kicked it to the side and noticed the label. Jabami Farms, it read, with the painted image of a juicy strawberry adorning the label’s right side. He knelt down and picked up something on the ground that spilled out from the old crate. Strawberry roots, shriveled up like dead spiders, on the verge of disintegrating to dust. There must have been crates full of them at one time. And now they were gone.
Mas noticed something okashii, again funny peculiar, with the Ford right before he got on the highway. The truck lurched forward, and the front brake squeaked louder than usual.
Okashii.
But then, there were a lot of okashii things with the truck. Although it was built in 1956, Mas had squeezed in a 1970 dashboard, compliments of a junkyard in Monrovia. It was a neon-yellow Chevrolet set, sawed off to fit the Ford and fastened together with black duct tape. Mas steadied the truck onto Hecker Pass. Driving over the pass on his way to San Jose had been a bit of an ordeal; the truck shook and jerked like it was on drugs. Now, he figured that coming back to Watsonville would be a little easier. He’d be going downhill. Steep inclines, sharp, angled turns, fun for billiard players, but a challenge for old-man drivers. Mas knew he would have to pay attention.
The sun was starting to go down and the diffused light bothered his eyes. Beyond the two-lane highway, beyond the clumps of giant redwood trees, was a ledge to nothingness. The sky, a glowing gray, filled with the rolling fog.
Mas pulled at the steering wheel at an almost ninety-degree turn and pumped on the brakes. Another pump and another pump. Instead of slowing, the Ford seemed to be picking up speed. Mas fought with the old truck and leaned forward to put all his weight on the brake pedal. But the pedal was on the floor and there were no signs of deceleration.
In spite of the high speed, everything inside seemed to go in slow motion as the Ford went off the road. The crumpled coffee cup on the floor floated up as if it were in outer space. The pens and mini-flashlight jumped up from the cemented coffee cup, the makeshift ashtray danced in the air. The car visor flapped like the wings of a seagull. And then the truck rolled once or maybe twice. Mas felt the cinching of the seat belt around his belly and then he was flying, flying. An awful roar of the Ford’s exterior scraping against asphalt and rock. And then everything went black.