As a rule, Mas didn’t like to stay in anyone else’s house but his own. There was a Japanese expression, ki o tsukau, literally “to use up your feelings.” It used up Mas’s feelings to have Minnie waiting on him hand and foot. It used up Mas’s feelings to wear Shug’s old clothes and have Minnie wash his dirty underwear. It used up Mas’s feelings to have her cancel her bridge classes to spend time with him. Pretty soon, Mas wanted to shout, stop using up my feelings, it’s wearing me out!
He determined that he needed to get better as fast as possible before he was all used up.
After a meal of pork roast and sticky rice, Mas and Minnie looked through old photo albums over cups of instant coffee. She gave him a magnifying loop to take a closer look at the faces.
Mas stared at one of the photos. It was a black-and-white image of Shug as a teenager, with another Nisei boy around the same age. In Shug’s hand was a bat marked by unusual writing burned into the wood.
Minnie looked over his shoulder. “Oh, do you know who that is?” she said, pointing to the boy next to Shug.
Mas shook his head.
“Fibber,” she said. “Fibber Hira, Hira. . . .”
“Hirayama,” Mas completed Minnie’s sentence, surprising both her and him. How did he know this? Of course, he was the baseball senshu.
“Yes, that was it. Fibber Hirayama.”
“Bigshot baseball in Japan. For Hiroshima Carps. My hometown.” My Japanese hometown, Mas silently corrected himself. Mas was already in California when Fibber made it big as a Carp, but the news had spread across the Pacfic Ocean onto the pages of the local Japanese newspapers in the 1950s. Fibber had only been an inch taller than Mas, but he was known for his hustle.
“Eventually came back to California. Fresno. Became a teacher, some kind of educator, I think.”
Moving the magnifying loop over the page, Mas stopped at the bat that teenage Shug was holding. There were the familiar markings—it said “Poston,” in both English lettering and Japanese katakana.
“Dis Shug’s daddy’s bat.”
“Yes, that’s the one my father-in-law carved in camp. After the war, he kept it in the greenhouse, used it as his cane. We told him he should get a proper cane—even bought some for him, but he never used them. Too vain. So instead he’d keep the baseball bat in the greenhouse, you know beside the door. He said he carried it around to scare the chickens away, but we all knew that he needed it. To lean on.”
“So datsu why you’zu put it in coffin.”
Frown lines appeared on Minnie’s forehead. “What?”
“Bat right next to Shug.”
“You know, I didn’t even notice it. I know we put in the grandchildren’s drawings and things. Their teddy bears. I haven’t seen that bat in years.”
“Well, the last time I saw that bat was in the greenhouse. . . .” Minnie stopped herself and pulled at her necklace. “Well, anyway, if you say so, Mas.” The light from the living room lamp reflected off her bifocals. Mas knew she didn’t believe him. But he was sure of what he saw.
Later that evening, Mas sat outside on the stoop. It was times like this he wished he hadn’t quit smoking. To hold the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, to inhale that blast of nicotine and let out the smoke—it would cast the whole world in a new light. Instead of the clear, sharp lines that didn’t forgive, the smoke would make everything a bit blurry, somehow more digestible.
Mas didn’t have help from to-ba-co right now. But he did have a bump on the head that made certain details fuzzy, including the pain. The pain had changed from being sharp jabs to a dull ache.
A car roared up the street and parked in front of the neighbor’s curb. Mas saw a line of cars in the driveway—a torn-up camper, a red Toyota truck, and a silver Oldsmobile.
Victor was still wearing the same glasses and hoodie when he noticed Mas sitting on Minnie’s porch.
“Hey, you,” Victor said. “Mister Shug’s cousin. I don’t think I got your name last time.” The teenager jumped over the begonia bush dividing the two properties and walked over to Mas.
“Mas. Mas Arai.”
“Más? Didn’t know you had some Mexican blood in you.”
Mas didn’t respond. The joke was old the first time he heard it.
“So, anyway, Miss Minnie mentioned that you got into an accident. Totaled your truck, huh?”
Mas nodded. He’d forgotten about the Ford for a moment.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Mas gestured to the boy’s sedan. “Me own an Impala. Long, long time ago.”
“For reals?”
Mas nodded. “Same model. Getsu hot in summertime.”
“You bet. You can fry an egg on the hardtop. Actually I’ve tried it.”
Mas laughed. Just what a snot-nosed boy would try to do. “Eat it?”
“Yeah, I ate it. Kind of runny, but I ate it.” Victor looked back at the Impala. “That was my bisabuelito’s first car when he came to Watsonville.”
“Mine was second passenger,” Mas said. “Studebaker first.”
“Hey, you want to meet my great-grandpops?” Victor said abruptly, as if it just occurred to him.
Whatthehell, Mas thought. Did he have anything better to do?
The Duran house felt familiar. It was a house with no women, just like Mas’s. The few pictures on the walls were edged with dust. A couple of posters, either featuring men with guitars or women in bikinis, were taped haphazardly, motivated by impulse more than aesthetics.
The elder Duran was sitting in a wheelchair at the kitchen table, filling out a sudoku grid. Mas had tried sudoku a couple of times and found it unsatisfactory. So what if you got all the numbers arranged in the right slot? Unlike poker, blackjack, or even solitaire, you could always change your answers. No self-respecting gambler would go for those rules.
“Bisabuelito, this is Shug’s cousin, Mas. He’s from L.A.” He then identified the old man Duran as Miguel.
Miguel pulled out the other chair in the kitchen and motioned Mas to sit. He faced was as pockmarked as the moon and he wore a neatly trimmed mustache. Victor remained standing but didn’t leave.
“Shug’s cousin, huh?” Miguel finally said.
“Second cousin.”
“Where you from??
“Born here. Watsonville.”
Miguel narrowed his eyes. “I never seen you before.”
“Papa and mama take me ova to Japan as soon as I could walk. Two older brotha, too. Came back afta World War Two.”
“He lived in the Stem House, bisabuelito,” Victor interjected.
Miguel seemed to almost jump in his chair. “When?”
“Coupla year. Til 1950.”
“No kidding. We probably passed each other in the streets. Do any farm work?”
“My family took care of the Stem House at first during World War Two. My father don’t write, so I was writing the family all the time.”
Mas had always wondered who had taken care of the house during the war. He had figured a hakujin lawyer, not a farmworker whose roots were most likely in Mexico.
“Osewaninatta,” Mas couldn’t help but to say, bowing his head. “Thanks so much.” We Arais are in your debt.
“No, that’s not necessary. Heard it all years ago. We did the best we could. Paid the property tax, but it was late one year. That was the year that the bank took it away from the Arais and sold the property to the highest bidder. Browning Gorman.”
“Everbears,” Mas murmured.
Miguel shook his head. “Same family, different generation. Clay Gorman’s grandfather. He was the head of the bank, so he had an inside connection. We felt terrible but we did what we could. The Arais got themselves a lawyer. My father, even with his broken English, testified in court. The Arais were the early ones to come back to Watsonville, and in a matter of months, they got their house and greenhouses back.”
Mas remembered talk of a lawyer and courts but never knew the whole story.
“You Japanese keep your feelings and thoughts to yourself, I know. Strong people. I went with my father to Salinas Fairgrounds right in the beginning, before they were shipped out to Arizona. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This was a place for horses, but my classmates were there, sleeping and eating.” Mas detected some moisture in Miguel’s eyes. “All old man Arai wanted to talk about was those berries of his. The ones in his basement. He’d tell us to go down and plant them. So we did. Beautiful, beautiful sweet strawberries. I don’t know what they crossed it with.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Victor interrupted.
“Kids.” Miguel threw up his arm as if he were ready to throw down some dice. “They know nothing about growing. Strawberries have a mother and father. Just like people. You take a berry with something special and pollinate with another berry with something special. That’s why you call it ‘birds and bees’—it’s all about combining and making love.”
Victor’s face colored slightly. “Okay, I get the ‘bee’ part, but why do they say ‘birds’?”
“I don’t need to explain everything, do I? Anyway, these breeders act like the bees, spreading the pollen on the other thing on the strawberry plant.”
Victor covered his ears. “I don’t think that I want to hear this.” He left for the front door.
“Going for his cigarette fix,” Miguel said. “Terrible habit. Smoked two packs a day and see what happened to me. Triple bypass and my legs aren’t worth a damn.”
Mas was actually thankful to be alone with Miguel Duran, old man to old man. He had things he wanted to discuss, namely Jimi Jabami. “Whatchu think about Jabami?”
“Something happen to Jabami. Not sure exactly what. I think what happened to the Japanese just crushed him. And the mother. Oh, was she depressed. Lost the husband in that Arizona camp. I think it was tuberculosis. Now that was sad. Just think if he were over here. Maybe he wouldn’t have died.
“Anyway, Jabami always had a chip on his shoulder about those strawberries that we planted for the Arais. Always claimed they were his.”
Mas’s ears perked up. This was the first for him to hear this.
“Oh, those strawberries, sweetest things you’d ever eat, I’m telling you. Sweet, sweet, sweet. But didn’t last. Fragile. Just like a mistress.”
Come to think of it, the Masao did taste pretty sweet, but as Billy confirmed, the meat didn’t retain its firmness.
“We kept growing the crop, because I promised I would. And then Shug came back, so I gave him back every single strawberry plant. His father was crazy about the plants, too. But they didn’t say anything to Jabami. I kept my mouth shut, too.”
“Shug and his family owe you one, for sure. Oh, everytin’ you did.”
“Why do you think we’re next door to each other? Not a coincidence. This was Arai land. Bought when Shug started making some real money.”
Makes sense, Mas thought. The two families were now forever tied together.
“Minnie and Shug, they finally sold it to me in the sixties. Gave me a deal.”
Mas had been wondering about a question from the beginning, but in no way could he ask the Arai family. But here, with an outsider with insider information, Mas found that he had the perfect opportunity. “What happen to the Stem House?”
“Well, if you didn’t figure it out, Shug and Minnie’s son has an anger problem. Kind of like Shug, only Shug hid it better.”
That was true, thought Mas. Shug’s anger was buried deep, a sleeping dragon underneath the dunes. But if you poked the sand too much, the dragon, its mouth full of fire, would emerge.
“Shug and Billy were always at it. Kind of helped that Shug was doing all that traveling, moving around with his work. But Billy was still under him. One day, they were fighting—actually here, outside the house. My older son heard them. Billy yelling that Shug never let him grow and experiment, and Shug saying that Billy was a disgrace for leaving Sugarberry. I guess this was the time Billy told Shug he was moving on to Everbears. Because of everything that happened during the war, Shug was no fan of Everbears, or more specifically the Gorman family. I know you Japanese, you don’t forget anything.
“So Billy takes off in his truck. Mad as hell, he was. I don’t know where he was going. He didn’t know himself, I think. So he was speeding right there on Beach Street—there was a car at a stop in front of him. He goes into the other lane and he didn’t see it—a farmworker’s kid on a bike with training wheels.”
Mas felt numb. “Nobody say.”
“I’ve never heard Shug or Minnie say anything of it. Billy was not arrested. It was accidental. The family was devastated, of course. The little girl had died by the time she got to the hospital.
“So the Arais decided to give the little girl’s family the Stem House. Not a payoff, mind you. But just, I don’t know, an apology, a symbol that Billy had done wrong.”
Mas’s head started pounding again, and it had nothing to do with the accident.
“It didn’t end there, however. Through all the publicity, it was found out that the family of the little girl was not only undocumented, but the father was a wanted man. Had gotten in some trouble with the police some years back. So the father was deported back to Mexico and the wife followed.” Miguel traced the margins of his sudoku grid with his pencil. “So the house still stands, the property of this deported Mexican family.”
Is that why Billy had taken Mas on the midnight trip down memory lane? That for at least a few hours, he could recreate what the Stem House had meant to Shug and the rest of the gang?
“But nuttin’ happening to house.”
“Some folks—at least the farmworkers—think that’s the punishment for what Billy did. That it stands there, ruined, so no one will ever forget.”
All this disclosure was obviously taking a toll on Miguel. His speaking became slurred, and his eyes were starting to droop. Mas usually knew when he overstayed his welcome and that was probably a half hour ago.
“Come over again,” Miguel told Mas as he headed for the front door. “It’s always good to talk about old times.”
Victor, the end of his cigarette glowing orange, was on the driveway washing the Impala. Soap suds made the pavement slippery, and Mas almost lost his footing.
“Hey, be careful,” Victor admonished.
Mas took a few seconds to admire the boy’s handiwork.
“Too bad about your wheels, man,” Victor said. “The brakes just stopped working, huh? I heard that happens with old Ford trucks sometime.”
Mas nodded. That is why he spent extra time checking the brakes before he left for Watsonville.
“You ever need to borrow one of our extra cars, just let us know.”
The boy was obviously not offering his Impala, but the rickety, rusty Toyota and the trailer with two flat tires. It wasn’t much of an offer, but Mas was still touched. He gave Victor a hand with drying the car’s body.
“I’m actually thinking about selling this car.”
“Oh, yah?” Mas was surprised. He knew firsthand how difficult it was to decide to abandon your vehicle for another.
“Thinking about going more professional, you know. Maybe a Lexus. BMW.”
“Bizness must be good.” Mas wrung the excess moisture out of his rag.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
Mas never imagined that spying in farm country could afford a teenager a luxury car. Growing fruits and vegetables had definitely graduated to being a big business.
“Well, see ya.” Before getting into his car, Victor exhaled a trail of smoke. Mas breathed in the nicotine remnants, remembering what it felt like when a young man thought he could conquer the world.