Ken's War Read online

  “Damn her!” His father boomed. “Damn it all!”

  Sparks burned through Ken’s veins and he instinctively hunched his shoulders as he turned around in time to see his dad sweep plates, bowls and cups off the table. The dishes crashed on the floor. Together they stared at the broken dishes as if they’d leaped off the table on their own. Ken kneaded his arm, testing for soreness. He’d angered his dad, perhaps by eating sashimi or being cocky or whining about being bored. Paderson balled up the letter from his wife, Tricia, with the Koufax newspaper clipping, slung it against the wall and stomped out the door. No, Ken hadn’t angered his dad. The letter had.

  Ken scooped up the letter and threw it away with the fish skin and coffee grounds. He couldn’t blame his father one little bit for being pissed off at Tricia. Ken and his dad both had a right to be damn mad at her. Mighty damn mad. According to the letter, among other tidbits that she supposed were important news, she’d written that she had a boyfriend and she’d sold Ken’s BB gun to a neighbor boy, since Ken wouldn’t be using it anymore.

  Maeda stooped to collect shards of blue dishes off the floor. Kneeling beside her, picking up the pieces, Ken discovered that even now at close range, he could not read anything in her face, except perhaps that she was thinking of something vaguely sorrowful.

  In the days that passed, he didn’t learn what impact his mom’s letter was going to have on him. Time would give him the answer. He certainly wasn’t going to ask his dad and risk setting off his hair-trigger temper. Instead, he woke up early every morning and made a typical American breakfast for his father. Then after the captain set off for work, Ken ate the Japanese breakfast Maeda painstakingly prepared for him.

  This morning’s breakfast of fish, rice, pickled daikon, miso soup, seaweed and tea had been very much like the previous breakfasts she’d made, and just as enjoyable.

  Ken traipsed along the bulwark separating his house from the rice paddy, but it wasn’t a paddy now really. More of a great pan of cracked mud bristly with dried stubs of rice stalks. Recently harvested rice straw was drying on ricks shaped like African huts. A row of persimmon trees heavy with fruit lined the eastern border of the field. A crow took flight from a leafless persimmon branch. Bright red fruit quivered.

  Ken entered the pine grove and walked past the Quonset hut that was his dad’s warehouse. He heard Wizard talking to his cat, Neko. He continued walking until Wizard’s voice seemed more imagined than real. He climbed onto a black boulder and sat on it for a long time. Perhaps he dozed off a bit, because when he looked up, the sun had become considerably smaller and hotter.

  The village and the ofuro were to his left. He wandered that way kicking gravel over the lip of the ledge and into the valley, also fashioned from pans of cracked mud and rice ricks. Not a living soul could be seen down there, not a dog, not a chicken.

  He heard their footsteps first. A group of boys, five of them, trotted past a narrow alley between two houses. Ken jogged between the houses and saw that the gang of Japanese boys, wearing white martial arts uniforms, was following one boy who wasn’t wearing a uniform. They were probably coming home from the dojo that Wizard had spoken of. Might they know how to play baseball? Could they speak a little English? Well, English wouldn’t really be necessary. He could demonstrate how to throw a curveball without talking.

  The lead boy, the one not wearing a uniform, walked briskly, never glancing back at the other boys to make sure they were still behind him, and they in turn didn’t look back at the gaijin trailing them. They speeded up their pace, plucking up stones, and picking up branches from under trees along the way, forcing the leader to quicken his step to stay ahead of them. Ken was closing the distance between himself and the group when the lead boy stopped in front of a farmhouse and turned to face the gang.

  A thrown stone bloodied the boy’s nose. A large stick audibly arced down onto his shoulder. Ken flinched at each ripe thunk of stick and stone smashing flesh and cracking bone. The boy hadn’t been leading the gang. The gang had been stalking the boy.

  The victim tried to ward off the blows, but his martial art didn’t work against rocks and sticks. The gang huddled around him. An animal-like agonized scream ripped through the air. The boy dropped to the ground. The attackers’ obscene silence and the victim’s diminishing appeals went on until at long last the gang stepped away from the body. Like a doll fallen from the violet sky, the boy was misshapen, neck twisted, limbs angled in the wrong directions. Fresh blood blackened the flat paving stones in front of the farmhouse.

  One of the boys’ eyes clicked on Ken, who was too stunned to try to look fierce or to run. The gang departed, melting into the darkening maze of the village.

  The ululating sounds of large mammals baying rang out through the chilling air. He shuddered and raced home, feeling more like an animal with an acute sense of sight and great speed than like a person who’d witnessed a brutal beating and had done nothing to stop it.

  He crashed through the door, dove onto his futon, and hugged his knees to his chest. Maeda followed him into the room.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He not tell me,” Maeda said.

  Maeda laid a thick goose down comforter on him. The weight of it barred the gruesome images from escaping the theater of his imagination. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t stop hearing the boy’s screams, seeing the limp corpse bleeding on the paving stones, feeling the murderers’ eyes crawling over him.

  Maeda stroked his hair and made hissing noises meant to soothe him. He tried to still himself, for her sake.

  “We have old story,” she began, “about old times when only one road between two villages.” She named two villages he’d never heard of and described a lord who suspected that a rival was plotting to assassinate him and claim the lord’s land for himself.

  “The lord send a man to the village to learn if the plan real. Because only one road between villages, the man can meet the assassin and kill him first. The man like to drink rice wine. He go in nomiya and drink too much sake. While he sleeping the killer travel to the lord and kill him. The lord’s mama very sad. Every day she cut her arm, make blood get out and let cat drink blood. This is her custom. She so heart break one day she die. She can join with her son the lord. The cat also die and be ghost. The ghost cat walk at night and make awful cry. Sometime you can hear cat.”

  Like a blind man, he tried to feel the contours of meaning behind her story, but nothing useful came to his mind.

  “Listen,” she said. “Sometime you can hear ghost cat.” She cupped her palm beside her ear.

  The dry buckwheat that filled his pillow instead of feathers protested in his ear. His frustration festered. “What’d you tell me that stupid story for?”

  “That lord’s mama miss son. Your mama miss you too. Every day she bleed in her heart.” She patted his sweaty hair.

  He batted her hand, and rolled away from her. He held his breath until he heard the rice paper door slide closed. She was Japanese. She didn’t understand anything about Americans. She’d misinterpreted his distress as homesickness for his mom. Maeda was, for all intents and purposes, also unknowable, as unknowable as that Jap gang who’d killed the boy.

  Lying there, eyes wide open in the dark, even the smell of his bed was foreign to him. He fought falling asleep, but finally drifted off. Maeda returned to kneel, patiently, at the foot of his futon. Or had he dreamed she was there?

  Chapter Five

  ~ The Fight ~

  Ken’s fight with the officer’s kid back in PA wasn’t the first time they’d gone at it. It was, though, the first time Ken had won a battle against David Marshall. He was proud of that.

  This battle had escalated after a spit wad skirmish during a boring history class.

  In the hall, the school principal had said, “Slow down, cowboy. Where's the fire?”

  “Sorry,” Ken said. He rushed toward the boys’ lav.

  “You know the rules.”

  “Sorry
.”

  “How's your new teacher this year?”

  “He teaches history funny.”

  “Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?”

  “Dunno.”

  Ken Paderson did know this: Life was dull without enemies.

  In the boys’ lav relief came so forcefully it was pleasantly painful. He stepped out of the stall and tripped, falling onto the hard floor. Stunned, he looked up. Something smacked his face. He didn't know what had hit him. Wet. Cool. He swiped wads of wet toilet paper off his face.

  David Marshall stood over him, armed with more dripping toilet paper.

  Disoriented with the aftershock of thinking he’d been blinded by urine-soaked paper, Ken gripped the windowsill and pulled himself up. His right kneecap was singing with pain where he’d banged it on the floor when David tripped him. His saliva tasted strange. Metallic.

  “Bombs away!” David flung a wet wad at Ken. Unfortunately, David was off-limits to serious counterstrikes, because Lord help you if you pissed off David's dad, Lieutenant Colonel Marshall. Lord help you more, though, if David thought you were a sissy.

  “Marshall, you're nothing but a sissy,” Ken said.

  “You're a shit heel like your dad,” David shot back.

  “Am not.” But he wasn't so sure about that.

  “Shit heel, shit heel, shit heel,” David chanted, and ran out, hyena laughter ricocheting off the walls.

  In the mirror, Ken’s reflected lip dripped blood. The glossy red liquid on his face spurred him on. He liked how he looked.

  “How many stitches?” His father backed the Chevy out of the barracks health clinic parking lot.

  “Only four.” His reply came out as on nee four. Ken’s numb bottom lip was a pink blur in his lower peripheral vision.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Dunno.” Ken shrugged theatrically. You don’t have to do anything in particular to rile David Marshall.

  “What did you do to defend yourself?” Paderson slowed down to let a group of war college students cross the street. He saluted. “I asked you a question.” When they pulled into the driveway, Ken and Paderson saw Tricia hanging towels on the backyard laundry line. She grinned questioningly around a clothespin clamped between her teeth.

  “I asked you,” Paderson said, “'What did you do to defend yourself?'” A sharp twist on the ignition key. Silence replaced the car engine's murmur. The moment was drawn out for an eternity. Until his dad said:

  “You just took it! Didn’t you? You just took it! What'd I tell you?”

  “Thand up for mythelf.”

  “You're damn right. Stand up for yourself.” The captain turned in his seat. Ken braced himself for a wallop, but instead his dad said, “When I was your age, I was smaller than most of the other boys. In gym class I was the second to last when we lined up by height. A kid named Donny Funkhauser and his goons picked on me.”

  “They did?” He was lightheaded with this idea that goons picked on his dad. Why, they must've just walked up behind him on the ball field, tapped his right shoulder and when he turned to the right, they flew in from the left and socked him in the jaw. Ken could see it as clear as day, what he didn't get was why his dad was telling him this embarrassing detail from his childhood, especially since he didn’t tell other stories, even self-flattering stories about the old days.

  “Those goons picked on me until I learned how to fight back. Don't stand around like a dumb ox waiting to see what they'll do to you next. Next time, stand up for yourself. Defend yourself. If you don’t, you’ll be fair game for anybody and his sister to pick on. Knock the bastard’s block off and he’ll think twice about bothering you again. You gotta defend yourself. That’s an order, soldier.”

  “Yeth.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yeth, thir.”

  “Yes, sir what?”

  “Yeth, thir. Defend mythelf.”

  The next day, with a stack of schoolbooks wedged between his arm and hip, Ken leaped off the bus. The school bus pulled away. The air smelled of diesel, ozone and earthworms. It had rained on and off the whole day, drops streaming like tears down the schoolroom windows. The clouds were filling up to rain again. A premature dusk had descended, smothering wet black tree branches and glossy leaves that released tiny showers with the slightest breeze. The barracks’ red brick buildings were drenched a darker shade of old blood.

  Timmy and Tommy, twins, both two grades behind Ken, walked with him from the bus stop. Timmy's face was rounder than Tommy's, and he was a better outfielder, but that didn't mean Ken wanted to be seen hanging around with these two doofusses.

  “Hey, Red!” The festive voice calling someone's nickname came from the top of the library fire escape.

  “Bombs away!”

  An orange orb hurtled downwards. A balloon filled with mud burst on Ken’s chest, splattering brown muck on his yellow shirt and schoolbooks and on the twins.

  David Marshall folded over with exaggerated laughter. He stomped his feet making the third-story iron fire escape clatter. Three more near-misses burst with sloppy, heavy plops on the road.

  “Your dad eats your mother with a spoon!” David hollered. He ducked into the building.

  “You gonna chase 'em?” Tommy asked.

  “Nah,” Ken said, “I’d only end up killing him.”

  “He'll just be hair, teeth and bones when you're done with him,” Timmy said. “Won't he?”

  “What happened to your lip?” Tommy asked. “I heard David decked you.”

  “Bullshit. It's a football injury.”

  “Hurt much? Looks like it hurts.”

  “Nah.”

  “Then how come you talk like this?” Timmy asked with clenched teeth and minimal lip action.

  “Buzz off.”

  “He got you but good,” Timmy said.

  “It’s nothing.” Ken dashed to the creek at the bottom of the hill behind the library. He stripped off his muddy shirt, dunked it in the chilly water and slapped it against a large, flat rock the way pioneers washed clothes in the movies. The wet smacking sound was the only noise he could hear.

  Ken wiped mud off his books with maple leaves. Under the cold, clingy shirt, goose bumps rose on his chest and arms. He selected a round, flat stone from the creek side, threw it across the water, and counted six skips. “Act natural,” he said.

  Tommy and Timmy, through telepathic consultation, agreed that skipping stones was the most natural activity to pursue here at the creek. The twins were on the alert for an attack, but engrossed in finding perfectly shaped skipping stones, probably forgot about David Marshall.

  Ken did not forget. He did not want to be dilly dallying at the creek with the doofuss twins as a tactic to delay confrontation. He did not want a fight. Nor did he want the word to get out that he was chicken, a sissy who runs from battle.

  “Did you see that?” Tommy cried. “Five skips! Five skips that time!”

  “David’s coming! He’s coming to get you!” Morbid excitement pitched Timmy's voice high. David sped down the hill on his bike propelled by gravity and maliciousness.

  Ken gathered his textbooks. His father’s command resounded: Knock the bastard’s block off and he’ll think twice about bothering you again. If he went home with battle scars, his dad would grill him until he found out if and how Ken had defended himself. If he lost this fight, he’d have to bear his father's heavy disappointment and bow to David's supremacy. If he won, the retribution would be doubled, because David’s daddy outranked Ken’s dad. He could run for it. Yeah, across the creek, through the thrift store, around the old guard house and then home.

  “Ah! High karate kick!” David’s black sneaker knocked Ken's books out of his hands and into an oil-slicked puddle. The books splayed in the puddle like injured birds. In a freak moment of silence they watched the pages soak up scummy water. “What are you going to do about it?” David asked, his lips a mean slit.

  Ken said that David didn't even want to think about what
he was going to do. Adrenaline, not confidence, was his ally.

  Out on Route 11 or possibly as far away as the turnpike, the grumble of a tractor trailer shifting through its gears sounded like a beast chomping at the bit. In response, a rumble, felt more than heard, reverberated through the heavy air. Thunder.

  David lunged at Ken. The twins jabbed their fists in the air and cheered. Ken broke out of the tussle and stood facing David. He held his arms loosely at his sides, ready for David to tackle him.

  David grabbed a weathered gray board; rusty nails protruded from the end. He swung mightily. Ken twirled, trying to spin out of range of David’s weapon. The board hit his forearm solidly. A nail hooked his forearm, ripping shirt and skin. A chain of blood blossomed on Ken’s yellow shirtsleeve. He slipped his hand into his pants pocket and, for good luck, touched the quartz stone he'd found in Grandpap's garden.

  David dropped the cudgel and wiggling his fingers, urged in a girlish voice, “Come on, come on. Come on, Red.”

  The twins screamed, “Get ‘em, Ken! Get ‘em.” The rumbling noise crept closer, but it wasn't originating from the highway. The rumbling surrounded them.

  Using a similar arm action he used to strike out the townies' baseball team, Ken swung at his enemy. The exquisite sensation of his arm whirling in an arc, the smack of his fist on David’s cheekbone intoxicated him, churned his stomach. David’s head jerked back violently. His hand flew to his cheek. Seeing blood on his fingers, David wailed, dropped to his knees and rolled his eyes up at Ken. His expression was of questioning intimacy seen in a mutt's eyes after its owner has delivered a boot in the rump. Blood, surprisingly cherry-intense against ashen skin, trickled into David’s ear. Ken wasn't sure if he was the victor, or in some bass ackwards way, the victim.

  The twins turned tail and ran.

  “You’ll pay for this, Red.” David sobbed. He made no moves to carry out his threat. He dragged himself upright with a queer, cautious articulation of arms and legs, like an old man.