Sayonara Slam Page 3

  Mas walked through the exit and past the sculptures of giant numbers, all belonging to the Dodger greats, all retired. Number 42, Jackie Robinson, back in Brooklyn, before the move to Chavez Ravine. Number 39, Roy Campanella, the catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Number 32, Sandy Koufax, the southpaw pitcher. In the hush of emptiness here, were their spirits present?

  Seeing that man die in front of him, the kuso-head Itai, had indeed taken a toll on Mas. Mari knew him better than he would like to admit. One moment, Itai had been bellowing and bragging, and another moment, struggling for air. Mas had seen something like that before, but it was decades earlier, buried and unimaginable.

  One of the first times he stayed over at Genessee’s, his yelling during his sleep had frightened her.

  “You were crying ‘help!’” she said, her eyes shiny with tears. “‘Give us water!’”

  Mas dismissed it as indigestion. “Shoulda neva eat chili and onions.” But in his heart of hearts, he knew what it was about. Chizuko had also spoken about his late-night cries. He decided then that he shouldn’t sleep over at Genessee’s anymore.

  It was a bit indecent anyway, especially when Genessee went to church the next Sunday morning. Marriage would make everything decent, but then what would Mas lose? His freedom, for one, but even more was his identity, and perhaps his late wife’s identity. If he went and got married, he’d no longer be seen as a widower. And if he wasn’t a widower anymore, would Chizuko’s existence be somehow erased?

  He walked faster down the curve of the driveway into the sinkhole of the parking lot. Outside the stadium, which glowed with fluorescent lights, he felt even more alone. If he didn’t belong inside with his family, where did he belong?

  And then he remembered. The Japanese garden. What was it that Smitty had said? That the garden could be found along a line from home base to second. Formerly parking lot 37, close to where a Union 76 station had once pumped gas. Mas walked in between the parked cars to make his way to a hill shaded by ill-shapen pine and cedar trees.

  When he finally reached the edge, he came face to face with a tall, black iron fence with a sign that was menacing in its simplicity: “No Trespassing.” The gate, which was too high for him to scale, had a simple lock that was probably easy to pick. But he didn’t have to go to such lengths, because with one jiggle, the gate opened.

  Did Mas even dare? He looked back at the lit stadium, the vortex of life. Was someone watching him as he made his way down here? Were there secret cameras mounted on those light poles? But he saw nothing. No police, no guards. Everything was focused on the game and the spectators. Not out here in a dirty corner of the parking lot.

  Mas quickly went through the gate and closed it behind him. No sense attracting attention. There was still some light left, so he was able to see the broken cement stairs that took him up the dried-out hill. Did they ever bother to water this area?

  When he finally reached the top, Mas felt weak in the knees. It wasn’t the climb that did it. It was what he saw. Dead, uprooted pine trees. Stones thrown haphazardly like giant dice. Dead grass. If a garden could bleed, this one would be covered in blood.

  A toro, a Japanese stone lantern, was the only evidence that something artful had once lived here. It was large, maybe ten feet tall. These things were not cheap; Mas knew because he’d acquired smaller versions for the “Oriental” gardens some of his customers had requested in the past. With the fallen trees beside it, the toro seemed like a lone survivor in a war zone.

  Sabishii. Mas felt the loneliness creep into his bones. Who had ravaged—or perhaps, more appropriately, ignored—this Japanese garden? He stumbled around the bleak area one more time while the sky quickly lost light. He discovered a cement monument base in a corner and could barely make out the letters on its plaque. Something about the hundred-year anniversary of immigration from Korea. Did the Koreans even know that such a recognition was here?

  Mas then heard the crunch of dead branches up the hill. It wasn’t surprising that creatures invaded this place when the sun went down. And when he saw headlights flash on the cars in the distance, Mas knew his exit was overdue.

  “Grandpa, you should have seen it! Japan won with a sayonara slam!” Takeo, his right hand encased in a blue foam mitt with a giant raised index finger, ran up to Mas.

  “Sayonara nani?” Mas was breathing hard after his illegal trespass of the Japanese garden. He’d barely made it on time to their meeting place.

  “That’s a grand slam. That’s what Uncle Tug calls it,” Takeo explained.

  Sure enough, the large and sturdy body of Tug Yamada followed behind Takeo. A slap on Mas’s back. “Hey, old man. We heard about the incident. You okay?”

  Mas nodded. Just hearing the baritone voice of his most stable friend made his stomach churn. Just from Tug asking, Mas realized that he wasn’t that okay. “Orai, orai,” he lied. Desperate to change the subject, he gestured toward the overgrown thatch of diseased trees. “You knowsu there a Japanese garden ova there?”

  “What? A Japanese garden? I don’t think so.”

  “He’s right, Dad,” responded Joe, a font of sports trivia. “It was built in the sixties. I think a Japanese sportswriter gave some kind of stone lantern or something to Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers.”

  “Never heard of such a thing,” said Tug. “Why don’t they show it off or something?”

  Mas moved with the group and the rest of the crowd. “Nuttin’ to show off. Saw it with my own eyes. Evertin’ dead.”

  “You don’t say.” Tug slowed his pace. “They let you in there?”

  “Where were you, Dad?” Why did Mari always pop out of nowhere?

  “No place.”

  “Our car is over in Lot L. We’ll see you guys later,” Mari said to Tug and Joe.

  As they began to separate in their different directions, Tug called out to Mas. “So you’re going to come over to my place tomorrow, right? Lil says I need to fix the washer pronto. Haruo said he’s coming, too.”

  Mas lifted his hand in acknowledgment. Ah, shikataganai. He couldn’t refuse. With only one customer these days, it’s not like he could say he was working.

  “So what were you saying? Something about a Japanese garden?” Mari, like their old dog, could never let anything go.

  “Just that I heard one is out there. Back in parkin’ lot.” Mas got an idea. “Maybe you can make a movie about it or sumptin?”

  “I don’t think a Japanese garden at Dodger Stadium will really interest anyone, Dad. These days it’s all about platform and crowdfunding. Remember when I tried to pitch a project about Japanese Peruvians based on Juanita’s parents’ experience? How they were taken from Peru and locked up in Texas to be part of a prisoner exchange program? If I can’t get that off the ground, who’ll want to fund a documentary on an old garden in a baseball stadium?”

  Mas didn’t catch everything that his daughter said, but he got the general message. Gardens, not to mention gardeners, were definitely out of fashion.

  As Takeo usually liked to ride shotgun with his mother, Mas was only too happy to ride alone in the back seat. They sat for some time in the darkness, frozen in place by the never-ending line of cars waiting for release from the stadium. Mari put on some music, a woman singing along with a simple tune played on a piano. Mas wasn’t much of a music person, but he preferred this to talking. Soon they heard the short breaths of Takeo sleeping, and finally the car jerked forward as the logjam cleared. As they flowed through the stadium’s gates, Mas silently said goodbye to the lone toro.

  Takeo was too heavy to carry anymore, so Mari jostled him awake and led him through the house to the back room connected to the kitchen.

  Mas, on the other hand, headed straight for the kitchen. He was famished, since he didn’t have a chance to eat a Dodger dog because of the Itai incident. He found a fistful of rice in Mari’s high-tech cooker that used something called fuzzy logic. Squirts of hot water from an electric carafe into a porcelain teapot hold
ing day-old tea leaves. A crunchy red pickled plum from a bottle in the refrigerator. Put all that in a Japanese bowl and stir with the ends of chopsticks.

  As he was slurping down his ochazuke in the blessed silence of the kitchen, the back door opened. Well, that didn’t last long, he thought. And while Lloyd usually headed to the bathroom to take a shower after work, he instead—unfortunately for Mas—took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “What a mess,” he said, taking off his cap, the sunglasses still propped on top of it. “Those reporters are maniacs. They make the paparazzi here seem like lap dogs.”

  Mas got up with his empty bowl and rinsed it in the sink. He wasn’t in the mood to hear about his son-in-law’s long day. He went to the living room and clicked the remote for the television set, which was tuned to Japanese programming. Sinking into his easy chair, he was again none too happy to see Lloyd getting comfortable in the chair next to him.

  “Hey,” Lloyd pointed to the screen. “It’s that reporter at the game.”

  The woman was wearing the same blue dotted blouse. Her hair was cleaned up and her lipstick more red than Mas remembered.

  Mas listened for a moment. The reporter introduced herself as Amika Hadashi. In her rhythmic Japanese, she described how the Japanese team had beaten Korea and how Uno-san had hit the winning grand slam in the ninth inning.

  “Nuttin’ about the dead man. Itai,” he reported to his son-in-law.

  “You know his name?”

  Itai was easy to remember. Although the name’s kanji was probably written differently in Japanese, itai usually meant pain. And judging from his colleagues’ reaction to him, Itai was indeed the biggest pain around.

  “She looks pretty sweet on TV, but she’s quite another thing in person,” said Lloyd. “I saw her during the game in the hallway outside the Tommy Lasorda room. I think it was when you were being interviewed. She was totally laying into April Sue, saying that she was incompetent. She made the girl cry.”

  Mas bit down on his dentures. He wasn’t a fan of the skinny blonde, but she didn’t deserve being yelled at in public.

  “And after the game, she was on the field for a long time doing her interviews. I wanted to turn off the lights, but she kept talking to one of the players for what seemed like an hour.”

  “Catcha, huh?”

  “No, actually, that was the strange thing. It was with one of the Korean players. The knuckleball pitcher.”

  What? That didn’t make sense. Why would a Japanese reporter want to spend so much time with a player from the losing team?

  “Everyone in bed?” Lloyd asked, taking his cap off and rubbing his shaved head.

  Mas nodded, and then announced, “I see dat Japanese garden.”

  “What Japanese garden?”

  “One ova in parkin’ lot.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard something about that.”

  Mas was mystified. At one time, Lloyd would have been all over anything Japanese, especially a garden. Now he was obsessed with grass, fertilizing turf, and drawing perfectly straight lines in chalk.

  “You change,” Mas declared.

  “What do you mean, I’ve changed?”

  Mas dragged himself out of his chair. He didn’t need to repeat himself. He knew what he saw. Uragirimono. A turncoat who hid his true colors inside. Yes, Mas’s only son-in-law had officially become a sellout.

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t wake you, did I?” It was Genessee’s voice, warm and cozy, in his ear.

  Mas straightened the telephone receiver. “No,” he lied. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but based on the dim light hitting his crooked blinds, it must not yet be six o’clock in the morning.

  “How was the baseball game?”

  Mas could have told Genessee all about Itai, but there was no reason to worry her.

  “Orai,” Mas said.

  “Just checking if you can still pick me up tonight. I know it’s late. I can ask my son—”

  “No, I come, no trouble,” Mas lied again.

  Even with the Steve McQueen glasses, Mas’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. Going to LAX in the middle of the night wasn’t his idea of a good time. But at least it should be late enough for traffic to have eased and maybe early enough for the drunkards to still be inside drinking.

  “Howsu convention?”

  “It’s amazing. Some professors are here from Okinawa, and they brought musical instruments—some of them are a hundred years old.” As Genessee prattled on, energized by her adventures, Mas couldn’t help but let his mind wander. The terrible death of Itai hadn’t been a dream. Did the police have more information on the cause of his demise?

  “So what are your plans for today?” That was Genessee’s favorite question. She was into planning because she was fully in charge of her life, while Mas instead often let life happen to him. But he did have one plan.

  “Helping Tug fix his washer. Haruo comin’ along, too.”

  “Well, you know, there are professionals for those things.”

  Mas chose to ignore her comment. To call any of them amateurs was beyond insulting.

  “Gotsu go. Bye-bye.”

  “Bye, Mas.” Genessee hesitated, and he worried that she’d add something to her farewell. Before she could, he hung up.

  “Missed you last night, Mas,” Haruo said as Mas walked through Tug’s open garage. As he aged, Haruo’s scar on the left side of his face seemed to lose its elasticity. It lay on his face like something foreign, like the surface of a rubber chicken.

  Haruo had been a repeat married man for some time now. More than five years. This was his second go-round, and this union seemed to suit him. While his ex-wife, Yasuko, was sharp edged, Spoon was, both physically and emotionally, softer. The two wives were both Japanese, but Yasuko was born in Japan, while Spoon was a Nisei who had spent her teen years in camp during World War II. She had low expectations of America and apparently of family as well. Certainly good ingredients for a successful marriage with Haruo.

  “Youzu have a good time?” Mas asked, which he knew was a ridiculous question the minute he said it. With Haruo, life was always good, even if he was mere steps from calamity.

  “Grand slam, Mas! Too bad you miss it. Hey, the ball almost go outta the park.”

  “I’ve only seen seven of those in my whole life,” Tug added. “It was a beautiful thing.” Tug and his son were the types to bring blank scorecards and record the stats of who pitched, who hit, and who made errors.

  “Sorry to hear about dead guy,” Haruo said. “Youzu hear anytin’ new?”

  Mas shook his head, not making eye contact. Haruo instantly understood that the conversation was closed.

  They worked silently, methodically.

  Mas had the best hands for the job. Tug’s were too meaty—plus, he was missing part of his forefinger. Haruo had only one good eye, and that eye wasn’t even so good anymore. Luckily Tug’s washer was at least ten years old and basic—no fancy electronic equipment to dismantle. Just a lot of tiny screws, which Tug was in charge of keeping track of, which he did with snack-size plastic bags and Post-Its. Finally, with the turn of a nut screw, they were able to get the washer bucket loose and clean out the strings of fabric that had gotten caught in it.

  About two hours into their work, Lil came out with a tray of cold barley tea and homemade cookies. She’d had hip replacement surgery a few years back and now apparently had a new lease on life. Even her face, despite the lines around the eyes and neck, seemed younger and more alert.

  “You all deserve a break,” she said, setting the tray down on an old metal trunk—maybe even Tug’s old footlocker from fighting in Europe in World War II. “I told Tug that we could call the handyman, but he insisted in doing it himself. Which, of course, included you two.”

  They didn’t waste any time in glugging down the tea but practiced more restraint when it came to the cookies.

  “How’s Genessee? Haven’t seen her in a while.” Lil, who was obviously d
elighted that Mas had a “lady friend,” always kept tabs to see if she was still in the picture.

  “Sheezu in San Francisco. For a conference with other erai people,” Haruo piped up. Erai meant smart, which obviously didn’t include Mas.

  “Comin’ home tonight.” Mas finished the last sip of tea and finally grabbed a cookie after Tug helped himself to one. “Sah, back to work?”

  They silently resumed their positions. They secured the washer tub and put the whole basket back into its frame. They were on their fifth screw when Haruo reluctantly excused himself. His wife, Spoon, had retired their flower business, but Dee had started a wholesale business in Hawaiian tropical flowers, specializing in leis for special occasions like graduations and anniversaries. There was a golden anniversary that night, and Haruo had agreed to do the delivery to El Monte.

  That left Mas alone with Tug, which was just as well. Tug didn’t talk as much as Haruo, which made the reassembly go faster. After they’d fastened the last screw, Mas sat back in one of the Yamadas’ lawn chairs while Tug wiped the sweat off of his forehead with an old towel.

  “We may be going to Toronto next week,” Tug announced. “Or we may not.”

  Mas looked up, curious. Usually the Yamadas planned their international trips months in advance.

  Tug’s voice became thin and deliberate. “You see, Joy’s getting married.”

  “Toronto, thatsu Canada, desho? Who wiz?” Last Mas heard, Joy had a lady friend of her own, a Latina whose roots were in Puerto Rico. Her name was a flower, Mas thought he remembered.

  “Iris. Didn’t you meet her last Christmas?”

  Mas nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He knew that Tug and Lil were stalwart members of Sunrise Baptist Church in Little Tokyo. He had no idea about the church’s position on same-sex marriage, but he figured it wasn’t too open.

  “Thatsu good,” Mas said, more in the tone of a question than a statement. “Omedetou,” he offered his congratulations in Japanese.