Hiroshima Boy Read online

  Just then a tabby leapt in their path and disappeared into a growth of tall grasses.

  “Haruo!” Mas called out. He took out a small can of cat food from his plastic bag and popped the tabbed lid open. He clicked his tongue. “Haruo,” he called out again.

  The smell of the food must have enticed the cat, because it tentatively appeared in between some blades of grass. “C’mon,” Mas said in English. “Food.”

  The cat, in its jerky fashion, approached and began devouring the can’s contents.

  “That’s about the most miserable animal I’ve ever seen.” Rei smiled, revealing huge eyeteeth that appeared high on the gums. “And you have a name for him, too.”

  Mas grunted.

  “Haruo, that doesn’t seem like a very cat-like name.” She bent down and examined its backside by the tail. “And I’m sorry to tell you that Haruo is a girl.”

  “Really.” Mas scratched his head.

  “But Haruo. I suppose it could be a female name. That’s what’s popular these days, to name girls with boys’ names.”

  After Haruo finished, she yawned and walked beside them for a while before she got bored and chased after a noise in some bushes.

  When they reached the front of the nursing home, Mas noticed that Gohata’s motorbike was parked outside. Still clutching onto her umbrella, Rei bowed her goodbye. “I’m continuing on to Senbazuru. Thought I’d pay Toshi-kun a surprise visit.”

  That’s not such a good idea, Mas thought. But who was he to interfere?

  “Where have you been?” Thea asked once Mas was inside. She was wearing her work clothes, a white polo shirt with the name of the Hiroshima senior facility embroidered on her sleeve.

  Before Mas could answer, she continued, “Mukai-san hasn’t been well.”

  “What happen?”

  “Some kind of gastrointestinal problem,” she said. “It’s been such a hectic day.”

  Walking in the corridor away from them was Gohata and his mother-in-law, the thieving old lady, Kondo-Obasan. Mas’s eyes grew big and he couldn’t help but to stare. “Sheezu back.”

  Thea nodded. “Kondo-Obasan was so unhappy in Hiroshima. She said she need to see the ocean or she wouldn’t feel right. She kept calling her son-in-law to bring her back here.” The girl focused her attention on Mas. “And you. I heard you’d gone missing. I was afraid you’d fallen into the ocean or something.”

  Was she really that worried?

  “What happened to your clothes?”

  Mas looked down to see dirt splotches from the rain of stones. “Nuttin’,” he said.

  “Anyway,” she said, taking out her phone, “I need to get back to Hiroshima.”

  They said their goodbyes. There was no talk about Haruo’s ashes, because it seemed inconsequential at that particular moment.

  Mas returned to his room, relishing the time to be alone. He took off his clothes, emptied his plastic konbini bag, and stuffed it with his dirty laundry. He changed into a fresh T-shirt and pants and sat on the tatami floor, where he studied the images on his camera. It was difficult to make out exactly, but finally in the right light, Mas understood what had been scratched on the back of the chair on the ferry. The hiragana characters: shi-ne. Die. Did the village boys do that? And did Sora then scratch it out?

  He pulled out the futon and while lying there, snacked on some red-bean pastries he’d purchased in Hiroshima. Sleep came swiftly again; he must have been dozing for maybe an hour when he heard someone knocking on his door. Kondo-Obasan again? he feared. He staggered to his feet and slid open the door about an inch, wide enough for one eye. Instead of her haunted countenance, he saw a head of hair that almost looked platinum white underneath the fluorescent lights.

  “Can I stay with you, Ojisan?” Rei asked. Her voice wavered, and the words came out in fragments.

  How would that look? To share a room with a girl one-third of his age?

  Mas opened the door wider. Rei’s right hand was wrapped in a towel, the kind the nursing home had.

  “I’ve done a dirty thing,” she said, forcing her way in.

  And before Mas could find out more information, she curled herself up on the tatami floor and fell asleep.

  Chapter Six

  When Mas woke up, there was no girl on the tatami floor. But there was a note. He wasn’t sure where she got the paper, but there it was—folded origami-style into a neat envelope with “MR. ARAI” written in capital letters.

  Inside, the message was in Japanese, again written all in hiragana like for an elementary school student. The note thanked him for allowing her a place to rest, and said she was on her way back to her apartment in Hiroshima. “Arigato for listening to my stories,” she wrote. “Thank you for your kindness.” Her mother had died last year, and there were few people she could really talk to.

  “Sometimes strangers become friends during dark times,” she ended the note. “I will never forget when you became my friend.”

  Mas was stunned by her vulnerability and gratitude. No one in his life—not Mari, not Chizuko, not even Genessee and Haruo—had ever thanked him like this. Mostly because he had never done anything worth thanking.

  He was worried about Rei. Where would she go now? And what was this dirty thing that she had done last night?

  When he stood up, he felt a sharp pain in his back. Those good-for-nothing boys had aggravated an old injury he had sustained more than fifteen years ago. Next time he was at the konbini, he would have to pick up some Salonpas, the menthol pads of relief.

  He plodded over to the sink to wash his face. On the metal counter was a soaked towel, most likely the one that Rei had wrapped around her hand. Judging from the wet basin, the towel had been thoroughly cleaned, except for a red spot on the very corner of it. Mas had gone through enough gardening accidents to know what that redness was from. Blood.

  He quickly changed into his street clothes and went to the front desk. Tatsuo had not yet returned and another clerk, younger and even more nondescript, was there to answer Mas’s questions. “She said that she was your daughter—she is, isn’t she?” The young man showed no outward expression of anxiety, but he began speaking faster, making it difficult for Mas to understand him. “It was okay that I let her in, right? She said that she’d fallen and hurt her hand, so I gave her a towel.”

  Mas merely grunted, failing to reassure the young man. He switched to the outdoor slippers at the genkan, the recessed entryway, and as soon as he arrived in front of the glass automatic doors, they whooshed open, the familiar, oppressive heat hitting his face. Where did she go? Most likely back to the inn, he guessed. There, what was that on the ground? Not scarlet petals of a tropical flower but drops of blood trailing from the north.

  He followed the drops down the concrete road, past a few oyster factories, the jetty, and then the ferry landing, north toward the overgrown green hills of the island. He finally reached a fenced campus with a playground and gray two-story buildings in the distance. A rock statue of an origami crane with an accompanying vertical sign reading, “SENBAZURU” was set into a platform of tiny rocks next to a dark wood building. Mas approached the doorway and pressed his face against the glass. Based on the reception counter and desks behind it, this was obviously the school office. He jiggled the doorknob and checked his watch. It was too early for it to be open.

  Behind the office was a small detached house. Rei’s closed umbrella, most likely forgotten, was leaning by the door frame.

  Mas banged on the door. He heard some kind of movement inside, faint and unsteady. He banged again.

  Finally the door swung open, revealing a shirtless Toshi. He had a bit of a farmer’s tan, dark arms and a chest as pale and smooth as a baby’s behind.

  “Ah, Arai-san, what is wrong—”

  Mas pushed his way into the principal’s modest home. He didn’t bother to take off his shoes. He wanted to be fully gaijin in this moment.

  “Is she here?”

  Toshi’s mouth remained
open for a moment. “Who?”

  “Tani Rei. She told me that she was coming yesterday afternoon. And then in the middle of night, I see her again. She was hurt.”

  Toshi sat down at his kitchen table and exhaled. “Please, Arai-san, sit down. I will explain everything to you.”

  Mas first resisted Toshi’s invitation. He was certainly being more hospitable than at the encounter at the hostess bar, but he was still untrustworthy. But Mas was here for answers, and the only way to get them was to sit at the table.

  Toshi took a deep breath and dove in. “Yes, she came yesterday. I was in the middle of a meeting with my teachers when I was summoned to the office. Embarrassing, to say the least. I didn’t know why she was here.” Toshi picked up a pack of cigarettes that was on the table next to a bottle of whiskey. It certainly seemed like it had been one of those nights. He offered a cigarette to Mas, who declined, reluctantly. After lighting one for himself, Toshi continued. “We never got along. Even when Hideki started going around with her. I didn’t think they made a good fit. Hideki needed a happy, strong person. Not someone so sensitive and needy.”

  Toshi blew out some smoke and tapped the end of the cigarette into an ashtray. He left the burning cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and started pacing around his kitchen, avoiding some broken shards of glass that had been swept into the corner.

  “Yesterday, she came over to tell me that it was all my fault. Sora’s death. That I should never have made arrangements for Hideki to work here in May. That nothing good could come out of this island.”

  “She lost her son.” Mas said it not as an excuse but as a fact. What happened to the grace he extended to his friend, Hideki? The same if not more should apply to the mother.

  The bedroom door opened, startling Mas for a moment. “It was unbelievable,” said Thea. “She was just awful. She called Toshi a ‘boy killer.’” Her long, dark hair was tousled and loosely tied back in a ponytail. She had dark smudges underneath her eyes, probably due to her makeup being mussed up in her sleep. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt with the message, “HIROSHIMA CARP,” the region’s professional baseball team. It was clear to Mas: she had stayed the night in Toshi’s bedroom. And based on how they both looked, the relationship was far from platonic.

  Mas honestly didn’t care what these young people did in their private lives. “Is that why you hit her?” he asked Toshi, referring to Rei’s hand injury and the glass on the floor.

  “Of course not. I would never hit a woman.”

  “She was bleeding.”

  Toshi sat back in his chair and poured himself some whiskey, a tonic for breakfast.

  “It was me,” Thea said. “I threw a glass at the wall to make her stop saying such awful things. And no, I didn’t hit her. She went to pick it up and she cut herself. She ran away before I could treat the wound.” She twisted her arms together and leaned against the door frame. She looked both so young and so old at the same time. “I’m sorry Arai-san. I know this all may be a shock.”

  Mas didn’t respond. This whole time he had imagined Thea to be one kind of person, and she was actually two.

  A cell phone on the table began to both vibrate and ring. “Ah, I have to get ready for work,” Toshi announced, going back into the bedroom. A few minutes later he emerged with an armful of clothing and disappeared through a door opposite the kitchen. Soon they heard the hum of water traveling through pipes.

  Mas awkwardly remained in his chair. He should go, but he was still a bit shaken from all that he had just discovered.

  “Let me at least make you breakfast, Arai-san,” Thea offered. “Hot coffee?”

  How could Mas refuse?

  After not only coffee, but scrambled eggs and thick toasted Japanese bread with ample amounts of butter, they finally began to talk again.

  “How long dis goin’ on?”

  Thea covered her mouth as she chewed her last corner of bread. “About nine months. We met on a ferry ride.”

  Of course, Mas thought. The ferry.

  “He’s a good man. He devotes himself to the children here.”

  Even Mas had to admit that it was commendable that a vibrant young man was committing his life to help abandoned children.

  She began to clear the table of the dirty dishes. Before taking Mas’s, she said, “Listen, I do have a request. You’re not going to tell Mukai-san about us, are you? She’s actually my sponsor here. She’ll tell my mother, and my parents will probably tell me to return to the Philippines.”

  This mess was her business, and Mas had no desire to spill the beans. What was it to him whether or not she was having a relationship with the Children’s Home director? He shook his head. He would say nothing.

  Toshi, perhaps his ears burning from this topic of conversation, appeared from the bathroom looking somewhat respectable in a suit and tie. “Saa—,” he said, indicating that he was ready to go. “I will be off.” Thankfully, he and Thea refrained from any public displays of affection, but based on the look they exchanged, the couple seemed serious. Mas stretched out his fingers in a weak wave of goodbye. Message received. The two men weren’t friends and probably wouldn’t be in the future, either. But for now, they could exchange basic pleasantries.

  The door opened and closed. “I’zu leave Japan soon,” Mas informed Thea. “Need to go home.”

  The girl nodded. She seemed relieved that her secrets would remain on the island.

  Mas took his exit, picking up the collapsed umbrella on the porch. He doubted that Rei would return here again. Walking back to the office, he noticed a small gate that had been left ajar. As there was a lock on it, the door was meant to be closed to outsiders. Perhaps Toshi had accidentally left it open in his rush to go to his meeting? Mas was curious to see the residents of Senbazuru, at least from a distance.

  The gate opened onto a dirt baseball diamond. In the early morning hush, he heard the ring of an aluminum bat making contact with a ball. Two boys dressed in shorts and T-shirts were on the diamond practicing pitching and hitting. Mas picked up about five of the balls that had landed in the outfield and walked them to the pitcher’s mound.

  “Ah, domo,” the pitcher thanked Mas.

  “Are you looking for Ikeda-sensei?” The batter approached the mound. He was slightly older than the pitcher. Maybe about fifteen.

  “I was just with him,” Mas explained.

  “Relative?” asked the pitcher.

  Mas chose not to answer the question directly. “I am from America.”

  “America?” The two boys’ interest was immediately piqued. “Where?”

  “Los Angeles,” Mas replied. “Rosu.” No Japanese would know where Altadena was.

  “Rosu! Sugoi!” Again the two baseball players seemed delighted to meet someone from overseas.

  “That is my dream to go to Rosu. Dodgers, right?” the pitcher said.

  Mas nodded. “Actually my—” he had forgotten how to say son-in-law in Japanese, so he just substituted son for it—“my son works for the Dodgers. He takes care of the grass.”

  “Hehhhhhh. Sugoi,” the boys said in unison. They certainly seemed easily impressed.

  “I heard that baseball players can join the pros right from high school,” the batter interjected.

  It was true, but they still had to go through the farm teams and prove themselves. Mas tried to explain it to the boys, but somehow he couldn’t find the words.

  They didn’t seem bothered by his limited Japanese. “I heard in America that you can do something wrong, but they won’t hold it against you.” The batter was definitely an observer of American culture.

  “Second chance, right?” the other one added.

  The boys’ faces, free of blemishes and scars, held so much optimism that it was breaking Mas’s heart. For their sake, he took his time in answering. He thought of all the times that he was not given a second chance, just cast aside and ignored. He had to find his own ways to reinvent himself and it had not been easy. He answered a
s honestly as he could. “Yes, it can happen.”

  “Yes, America,” both of them said joyously as they returned to their positions.

  Mas returned to the gate and closed it behind him firmly to make sure that no other outsiders would make their way in.

  When Mas returned to the nursing home, the older detective with the hedgehog hair was sitting in the lobby by himself. Mas considered staying outside and hiding in the trees in the back, but what purpose would that serve? It was getting hotter than hell out there, and if the detective wanted to skin his hide, he’d get it sooner or later.

  Making sure to leave Rei’s umbrella outside, he entered the building, causing the detective to immediately rise. Sonofagun, Mas said to himself. I was right. This guy’s coming for me.

  “Hello, Arai-san, I need a moment of your time.”

  Mas swallowed the spit that had accumulated in the back of his throat. They both took a seat in the lobby. Nobody was visible in the office, and Mas was glad to have at least some degree of privacy.

  “We heard you were at a game and manga shop in Hondori. And you were asking questions about Tani Sora.”

  Mas nodded, his heart racing. “He had a friend there. At least that’s what I heard.”

  “Why did you feel that you had to interfere in our investigation? I know that you are a gaijin, but that is highly irregular here in Japan.”

  Mas’s hands began to shake; he sat on them so that his nervousness wouldn’t be so obvious. The tone of the detective’s voice reminded him of the military police who had hounded him and his childhood friends like him: Kibei Nisei, born in America but raised in Japan. “I didn’t know you were still looking into Sora’s death.”

  “The case is not yet closed, Arai-san. In fact, it’s very much open.”

  Mas lowered his head as if to apologize.

  “And the director of Senbazuru, Ikeda Toshi. How well do you know him?”

  Mas considered the detective’s question. Why was he asking about Toshi? “I don’t know him,” he said. “I mean, I met him when the body was found.”