Today is an exciting day in strawberry history, and I’m glad you can all be here to witness the introduction of two strawberry varieties, varieties that will be our response to strawberry yellows.” The head of the commission was standing at the podium. He was half Jimi’s age and didn’t know squat about strawberries. Yet that didn’t stop him from droning on and on about the business. “Our industry is more than a century old, and we have been at a crossroads. Today will determine the course of our future.”
Jimi’s throat felt dry. He’d been fighting a cold these past few days. He hoped his voice would last throughout the day, enough for him to thank all those who would be congratulating him.
Billy was asked to speak on behalf of Everbears. He came prepared with a computer slide show that was full of strawberry family-tree charts. Jimi actually found it somewhat interesting, but the rest of the crowd apparently did not. The man next to Jimi began tapping his foot on the bottom rung of the folding chair in front of him. One woman even audibly sighed. Another man kept shifting his weight, causing his chair to creak.
It probably didn’t help that Billy was a rotten public speaker. Shug, on the other hand, was a snake-oil salesman able to promise the moon to anyone who was gullible enough to listen. He had no shame, that was for sure. At least his son seemed to have a little more sense.
“We are calling this new berry the ‘Shigeo.’ As some of you know, that was my father’s full name.” Billy’s monotone voice then skipped, as if it was a scratched record on a turntable. And then it skipped again.
Was this grown man going to cry? Jimi couldn’t believe it. He felt like spitting, but he swallowed his disgust instead. In a few minutes, everyone would be on their feet, clapping for Jimi Jabami and his new career and incarnation, the Maker of the Strawberry in the Twenty-first Century.
Billy coughed away his emotion.
Clay Gorman stood up. In his trademark long-sleeved gray t-shirt, he looked ever the pipsqueak that he was. And while Billy was certainly no orator, Clay was even worse. Billy was John F. Kennedy next to his boss.
“The Shigeo is really a great berry. We hope you enjoy it and we brought some for you to try.”
Men and women in polo shirts began passing out clamshell containers of strawberries while Clay posed for photos with Billy. Jimi practically barked at the young man offering him some berries, almost causing an accident. No Shigeos for me. Good riddance.
The head of the commission was back at the dais. He pulled the microphone back up and introduced Sugarberry. “As most of you know, we lost one of our breeding pioneers this month, Shug Arai. He had devoted his life to the development of the best berry, and unbeknown to many of us, had been working on a lifelong project up to the day he died. His associate, Dr. Linus Verborden, will be providing details on this special berry. Dr. Verborden. . . .”
Linus, fingering his suspenders, rose from his seat. Jimi, meanwhile, smoothed down his hair.
“Stop!” a familiar voice called out from the depths of the crowd. The legs of folding chairs squeaked against the floor as people got up and moved to create a pathway for a couple walking toward the front. Minnie and Oily. Someone followed them, a slight figure with a mini Afro.
Whatthe—
Minnie went straight for the microphone. “I am the widow of Shug Arai, and I want to make an important announcement. I am a co-owner of this patent now, and I refuse to let it be licensed to anyone.”
Jimi was confused. Why were the Arais against the Masao now? He scanned the crowd and saw the miserable little gardener, Mas, in the back by the cameramen. His hands on his knees, he looked stunned as well.
The reporters sitting in the front row straightened their backs and leaned forward.
“The Masao, I believe, would prove injurious to the cooperative, and I won’t let it be released.”
The reporters began to pepper Minnie with questions.
“What do you mean, ‘injurious’?” one called out.
“Would it be a financial liability?”
‘What’s wrong with the Masao?”
Linus attempted to talk over the reporters. “You are technically not the co-owner, Minnie. Sugarberry is. And as the co-inventor of the Masao, I’m here to tell you that it is a revolutionary berry.”
Yes, Jimi said silently, because its lineage goes back to the Taro.
“We are part of the cooperative,” Minnie shot back, “and we object to the introduction of the Masao.”
All attention was on Minnie.
“You all have known me and Shug for years, some even decades. Trust me when I say that the release of this berry will endanger the future of our cooperative, not to mention our industry.”
“What’s wrong with it?” the question arose again.
“I can’t say. I’m sorry, but I can’t. If I did, our reputation would be damaged immediately. I cannot let that happen and I won’t let that happen.”
Circles of strawberry growers grew closer together, intensifying with energy. Mini-tornadoes of reactions whipped through the Sugarberry group, dressed in white shirts, and the Everbears members, dressed in red. The room filled with noise.
Jimi tried to make eye contact with Linus, but the breeder himself seemed overwhelmed. His arms were outstretched, his palms facing the ground, as if he was attempting to steady himself in a moving boat.
A hakujin man rose. It was Sperber, a member of Sugarberry. “I object, too.”
A Filipino man got up. Pabalan. “I object.”
Another Japanese grower, Ichida. “I object.”
A hakujin woman. Eisert. “I object.”
The objections continued. Pretty soon at least a dozen growers were standing. All part of the Sugarberry cooperative.
A few of them cast glances toward Jimi, halfway expecting him to join them. But he remained silent. All he cared about was the announcement, “Jimi Jabami, Sugarberry’s new breeder.”
Mas could not believe what he was seeing. Minnie and Oily were trying to prevent the release of the Masao. And how did Genessee get up here? Genessee, wearing a colorful print dress, turned around and searched the crowd. Finally her eyes found Mas’s. She smiled, a slice of dazzling white.
“Dr. Verdorben, can you tell us why you think your new berry is revolutionary?” a reporter asked.
A ring tone from Minnie’s cell phone rang out.
“Of course.” Linus gathered himself together, smoothing down his shirt. He was approaching the podium when Minnie, getting off the phone, took control of the microphone again.
“There is no Masao. The Masaos have been destroyed,” Minnie reported. She shook her phone in the air to express her glee.
Linus glared and pulled the microphone from Minnie. “Yes, there was a mishap in my test fields in Castroville. But I still have the mothers in storage up in Northern California.”
Another tussle for the microphone.
“No, sir, you do not. I just got confirmation that the Masaos were destroyed as of 11:17 a.m. today.”
“What’s going on?” one of the cameramen said, removing his earphones.
Mas tried to let the news settle in his head. The Masaos had been destroyed. Mas knew that strawberry farmers needed to store the runners, or additional growth of the mothers, in a cold area. Back in the late 1940s, Sugarberry was using a storage facility near the Sierra Nevadas that was owned by a Nisei who’d been in the same Poston block as the Arais. Minnie must have ordered the execution of the Masaos, and the word was in—the deed was done.
Linus’s face darkened. “You had no right,” he said to Minnie.
“According to our living trust, it’s legally my storage facility now.”
Dazed, Linus reached for the edge of the podium so he wouldn’t lose his balance.
The strawberry commission spokesman spoke into the microphone. “Well, this concludes our press conference for today.”
The reality of what just transpired was starting to sink into Mas’s chest. Was it over? Was it really over?
Jimi bumped into other growers as he rushed the stage. What just happened? Here he’d spent so much time trying to squash the Masao, and now technically it was dead. But what about him? What about his new position?
“The announcement,” Jimi said to Linus, “what about the announcement about me becoming a Sugarberry breeder?”
Linus stumbled from the platform, almost falling to his knees. “The Masao is dead. Dead. How can that be?”
The cameramen began to disassemble their equipment.
“Why the hell did we come here?”
“I have to get over to Silicon Valley now.”
“I know a great taco place around the corner.”
“Great, I’ll follow you.”
Mas felt someone tugging on his suit jacket.
“What’s going on, Mas?” Now a completely different style and color, Evelyn’s hair looked like strips of fried bacon. “Someone at my hairdresser’s said something was happening here.”
Mas ignored Evelyn, going in the opposite direction of the crowd.
“Genessee,” he called out.
Finally, she was in front of him. Her cotton dress made out of an Indian print accentuated her tiny waist. “I spoke to Minnie this morning, and she thought I should get up here. I was on the next plane for San Jose. Oily was able to connect her with a patent attorney, and we figured it was worth a try. I’m so happy for you, Mas.”
A ring of white-shirted Sugarberry members had surrounded Minnie, while Oily attempted to insert himself in some last-minute photographs with Clay and Billy, who proudly held a bowlful of Shigeos.
Evelyn, meanwhile, had caught up to Mas. “Hi, you must be Genessee,” She extended her hand. “I’m an old friend of Mas’s. We are all part of the same gang.”
Genessee, returning Evelyn’s smile, accepted the handshake.
Mas felt his face grow hot. What was Evelyn going to do, say?
“Mas has spoken very highly about you,” Evelyn said. “You must be a special lady.”
The world had turned upside down in an instant. No more Masaos. No public humiliation. And now here was Evelyn, being buddy-buddy with Genessee.
Minnie had somehow extracted herself from her Sugarberry coop partners to join them. “Jimi Jabami was here,” she told Mas. “Where did he go?”
Mas’s eyes scanned the room. Jimi was nowhere to be found.
He dismissed the caretaker and went to check in Ats’s room. She had been apparently very quiet that morning.
“Ats,” he murmured, collapsing in the recliner opposite her bed.
Her eyes were closed. The shape of her face had changed, Jimi noticed. Her cheeks had lost all their fullness, and even the sagging skin underneath her jowls had disappeared. She resembled the queen of spades, just eyes, nose, and barely a mouth visible.
How he wished he could speak to her. And she to him. Perhaps she would have tried to stopped his scheme to poison Shug. She would have told him that bygones were bygones. That the Arais were forced into camps just like the Jabamis were. In terms of the loss of the house and farm, it was shikataganai. It could not be helped. She might have blamed herself, her illness. But not enough to give up. She didn’t know how to give up. That’s one reason he loved her so much.
Without her counsel, he tried not to give up, either. Getting away with Shug’s murder was a sign. A sign that he could do more in this world.
Ats stirred, and her eyes seemed to be fluttering open.
“Ats,” he said, “the Arais did it to us again. But I’m going to have a strawberry of my own. I’m going to be a breeder, thanks to Linus Verdorben.”
Ats’s eyes were pools of black, reminding Jimi of her cat’s when it went blind.
Both her hands were underneath her comforter. She slowly pulled out her left hand and extended it toward her husband.
Yes, yes, my sweetheart. My wife.
Jimi got up and clasped the hand that was being offered. All delicate bones barely held together by almost transparent skin.
The comforter moved again. What was that? On the right side, something black and metallic.
A blast and Jimi felt a force go through his chest, his rib cage, his heart. The pain stunned him but soon, thankfully, he couldn’t feel a thing.
His body slipped to the ground. His hands padded the front of his shirt. It was slippery, like the first rain falling on a dirt road. His eyes were closing, and before they were completely shut, he heard another blast in the room.