Mr. Was Read online

  Andie told me she wanted to travel to China someday.

  “I don’t want to spend my life here, where the most exciting thing around is when somebody shoves a bunch of cherry bombs up a tailpipe.”

  “I couldn’t believe he did that.”

  “Yeah, well, everybody in town knows about it by now. I think Daddy even heard about it, and he don’t know nothin’.”

  “He sure seems to know what you’re doing.”

  Andie grinned. “He didn’t know what me and Scuderoo did last night.”

  All of a sudden my bellyful of banana bread didn’t feel so good. “Whadya mean?” I asked.

  “I sneaked out last night, after you and Daddy went to bed.”

  “Whadya mean?” I said again. I felt awful, both because I still hadn’t made peace with the idea of Andie and Scud together, and because I didn’t like that I hadn’t been included. Of course, whatever they’d been doing was probably something they wouldn’t want me around for. Which made me feel even worse.

  Andie laughed, looking right at me. It wasn’t a mean laugh, and she made it less painful by reaching over and giving me a light sock on the shoulder.

  “We just went for a walk,” she said. “I don’t get to see him no more, you know, since Daddy laid the law down. He says I’m not supposed to go out with Scud till Christmas. Only I don’t think it’ll be that long. Daddy’s a softie at heart, you know.”

  “You like him a lot, don’t you?”

  “He’s my daddy,” she said.

  “I mean Scud.”

  “Oh! I like him okay. We known each other since we was kids. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, Jack. Just you and me. A lot of kids, they don’t like Scud. He’s sort of a wise guy.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s sort of sad, though. I don’t like him as much as he likes me.”

  “He likes you a lot.” I thought about something Scud had said to me one day. “He says he’s gonna marry you.” My voice went weak on those last two words.

  Andie looked away. “I don’t know about that,” she said.

  I waited for her to say more, but just then old man Murphy appeared and stood there looking at us with a sort of nothing expression on his face. Andie winked at me, then picked up the empty Mason jar and the checkered towel and walked past him without a word.

  The old man looked at the wood I’d chopped and stacked. He nodded and said, “You do good work, son. Think how much wood you’d split if you’d keep your mind on it.” He turned and followed Andie back toward the house.

  For the rest of that day, I couldn’t think about much other than what Andie had said. And I wondered what she’d meant by that wink.

  That night after dinner the old man fell asleep listening to the radio. I went back to the kitchen to see if Andie needed help with the dishes. She was standing in the open back door.

  “Come here,” she whispered, stepping out into the night.

  I followed her. The air was like silk, warm and moist.

  “It’s never like this in December,” she said.

  It must have been close to sixty degrees outside.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “We won’t get a chance to feel the air on our skin again for months.”

  We headed down the driveway to the road. The moon was bright enough to cast knife-edged shadows. She took my hand, squeezed it hard.

  “I like you, Jack,” she whispered. In the silence, her voice boomed in my ear. We followed our shadows, saying nothing more. We walked until we came upon a car parked by the side of the road. An old woman sat in the driver’s seat, staring at us.

  “Let’s go back,” I said.

  Andie nodded. We turned and went back the way we had come. As we reached the drive leading to the farm, Andie said, “I wonder who that was?”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the car.”

  “It was an old woman,” I said.

  She laughed and punched me lightly on the shoulder. “You’re such a kidder,” she said.

  The next morning the temperature dropped fifty degrees and the sky fell in. We got the first snowstorm of the season, and it was a big one. There were drifts six feet high in places, and I shoveled more snow in two days than I’d shoveled in my entire life. The worst part was, every time I complained or tried to take a break, the old man, who was shoveling away despite his bad wrist, would start talking about how this wasn’t nothing compared to the big one the year before. To him, this was just a dusting. But there was so much snow that to get anyplace—like from the silo to the barn, for instance—you had to shovel your way there. The farmyard became a maze of shoveled paths—everywhere you walked you’d have a snowbank on each side so high you could hardly see over it. It took me two days to shovel the driveway out as far as the road.

  After that second day of shoveling my hands were like claws and my back felt like a slab of pain. I remember dragging myself back into the house late in the afternoon just as the sun was dropping behind the trees. The old man was sitting in front of the woodstove holding his wrist in a bucket full of snow. He did that to keep it from swelling up too bad. I sat down next to him and stared into the fire.

  “Bet you never got no snow like this in Chicago,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “It’ll get worse,” he said.

  We sat without speaking, listening to Andie clanking pans around in the kitchen. After a while, the old man spoke again. “You remember you was asking about a family named Skoro?”

  My heart thumped. “Yeah?”

  “Well, I was thinking that name was sorta familiar. Finally remembered where I’d heard it before. Was a Skoro family up in Hastings. At least I think that’s where they was. Reason I remember is one of the Skoro gals married a fella here in town. Only she ain’t named Skoro no more, a course.”

  So, I thought, maybe my grandfather was from Hastings, fifty miles to the north. Maybe he’d moved to Memory later on.

  “You should ask your buddy Scudder about it.”

  “Scud? Why?”

  “On account it was his momma was a Skoro. At least I think that was who she was.”

  Right at that moment, somebody banged on the door, then opened it and stuck his head in.

  It was Scud.

  “You hear? You hear?”

  “Shut that dang door!” the old man shouted.

  Scud quickly stepped in and closed the door. “You had your radio on?” he asked.

  “Does it sound like it’s on? Hear what?”

  “It’s the Japs,” he said.

  Even though I’d known it was coming, it was hard to take it in.

  “They bombed us,” he said. “Some place called Pearl Harbor.”

  THE SECOND NOTEBOOK:

  The Canal

  The followirg account is based on information supplied by Sawako Tsurumi, a Japanese citizen whom I interviewed in Tokyo in 1997. According to Mrs. Tsurumi, these events occurred in July 1981.

  A gray-haired Japanese gentleman and his wife flew into the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport aboard a Boeing 747. They had left Tokyo, Japan, eighteen hours earlier, and they were very tired. The woman wanted to check into a hotel immediately, but the man overrode her objections, insisting that they complete their journey that day. They rented a Ford Escort, then drove out of the airport onto the freeway. The man hunched over the wheel, staring out through his thick, bifocal glasses, staying in the right-hand lane, keeping the speedometer at a sedate forty-five miles per hour, trying to ignore his wife’s chatter, straining to decipher the peculiar American road signs. He made more than one wrong turn, at one point traveling thirty-nine miles in the wrong direction.

  It took them over four hours to drive the seventy-three miles to a small town on the western shore of Lake Pepin, where they made inquiries at the post office. The postmaster, a crabby woman who did not care for strangers, Japanese or otherwise, gruffly directed them up the bluff road to the large, gray house known locally as B
oggs’s End.

  The woman who answered the door was taller than the Japanese gentleman, but not much younger. Her hair was almost entirely gray, with only a few strands of rust remaining. She had the lined and freckled face of a woman who had spent much of her life outdoors, and her hands were rough from years of tending the gardens surrounding her home. The woman’s eyes, however, remained bright and green, with the sparkle of youth.

  In precise but heavily accented English, the Japanese gentleman introduced himself as Tadashi Tsurumi. His wife’s name was Sawako.

  Tadashi Tsurumi complimented the woman on her gardens, which were lush at that time of year. He was particularly impressed by the stand of purple, pink, and bloodred hollyhocks, a plant with which he was unfamiliar.

  In his hands, Tadashi Tsurumi carried a small package wrapped in decorated rice paper. He offered it to the woman. Puzzled, she accepted the gift, then invited the couple in for coffee and banana bread, which she had baked just that morning. Her husband, she said, was not at home. He had driven up to Minneapolis to meet with his stockbroker.

  Once they were settled in the kitchen, the woman opened the package. Inside was a wrinkled and stained clothbound notebook with part of the front cover missing. Many of the pages were partially or completely missing.

  Tadashi Tsurumi explained.

  ”More than forty years ago, during the regrettable conflict between our countries, I was stationed under General Kawaguchi on an island called Guadalcanal, a terrible place for both our peoples. A place not worth the life of a single dog, yet many good men died there.” He clucked his tongue and reached out to touch his wife’s hand. Her face remained still, betraying no emotion.

  ”My Sawako’s brothers, both of them.”

  ”I’m sorry,” said the woman.

  ”It was many years ago. It is not something we think about every day. In our histories it is called The Isle of Death.”

  The woman nodded.

  Tadashi went on. “I was one of the few of my people to leave the island alive. It was a great defeat for us. A terrible time. Sometimes, in my sleep, I am back in that jungle with the rats and the insects—what do you call them? The small ones that suck your blood?”

  ”Mosquitoes.”

  ”Yes. They were everywhere, like fog. But excuse me, please, I am telling you about this notebook. You see, like many young men, I was very proud to be fighting for my emperor. I wished to bring back— how do you say it? Remembrances?”

  ”Souvenirs?”

  ”Yes, souvenirs. One morning my group, my squad, we were fighting very hard against a—a machine gun. Deep in the jungle, where no one should be, death spitted out at us through the leaves. Up in the rocks, very protected, it spitted death. Many of us died, over twenty. I myself was injured. It took many bullets and bombs—mortars— before we were able to destroy it. The American who had attacked us, only one! He died. A bad day for all. Yes, this is when I found this notebook. The lone machine gunner, he died a great hero for your people. Many of my friends died also. There was death everywhere in the jungle that day. The men died and the rats feasted.”

  Tadashi Tsurumi continued. “For many years I have kept this notebook. But I am no longer this young man who collects the memories of dead heroes. I have known for years that the right thing to do was to return his words to his family, to those who respect his memory. Sawako and I, we have always wished to come to America, and now we are here, and I am returning the notebook to you, as he would wish. He has written this place and this town name on the inside cover, you see, and so we have found you.”

  The woman opened the tattered cover of the notebook and read a few words. She looked up, her green eyes suddenly welling with tears. “He was killed?”

  ”As I say, the bullets and mortar shells rained down. He was only one man. The machine gun fell silent. When we reached the rocks that had concealed him, the man was dead, and I found this.” He touched the notebook reverently. “I have returned it to you, now we must go.”

  The woman’s face was slick with tears, but she forced a smile and said, “Won’t you stay for lunch?”

  Tadashi Tsurumi stood and bowed. “We thank you, but we must drive back to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have tickets to see your great Minnesota Twins play the Yankees of New York.”

  The two visitors bowed again and left.

  The woman stared down at the open notebook, then began to read.

  The original eight-by-ten-inch clothbound notebook was in extremely poor condition. Many of the pages were missing, partially missing, or unreadable due to bloodstains, water damage, or illegible handwriting. I have not attempted to fill in the gaps in the writer’s narrative. What you are about to read is an accurate transcription of the notebook kept by Jack Lund, CpL, U.S.M.C.

  —P.H.

  U.S. Navy Transport Alexander

  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere

  July 30, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  They got us packed in here like sardines. The only way a guy can get a breath of air that doesn’t smell like some other guy’s sweat or vomit or worse is to sneak up on deck after lights out and find a spot on the leeward side of this rust bucket they call a ship. It’s the middle of the night right now and they don’t want us to show any lights, so I’m under a canvas with a flashlight, leaning up against one of the big guns.

  The waves are as high as a house. About three quarters of the guys are seasick. As I write this, I can hear somebody a few yards away from me puking out over the rail. It’s night now, but in the day you can see these schools of little silver fish that follow the ship. I think they live on the half-digested remains of our dinners, only they seem to enjoy it more.

  I’m one of the lucky ones who isn’t bothered by the waves. But it will sure feel good to walk on solid ground. They’ve finally told us where we are headed—some place called the Solomon Islands, wherever that is. Scud thinks it will be like paradise, with coconuts and native girls in grass skirts! Only somehow I don’t think so and even if I do see a girl in a grass skirt, I’m sure she won’t be nothing compared to you. I miss you a lot.

  Probably you’ll never read this, but it feels good to be writing anyway. Maybe someday I’ll get a chance to send it. I can’t believe how far away from Memory I’ve traveled. I wish sometimes I’d never let Scud talk me into joining up. I could be working with you in the munitions plant. We could see each other every day. This isn’t my war anyways. But of course you wouldn’t have respected that, would you, Andie? Even though I know we’re going to win this war, anyway, and nothing I do or don’t do is going to change that. No matter what happens to me.

  Scud talks about you a lot. I have to tell you, Andie, I feel like a rat sometimes.

  Love,

  Jack

  P.S. Today is my seventeenth birthday. Happy birthday to me.

  U.S. Navy Transport Alexander

  August 12, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  This ocean is so big, and we’ve been on it for so long, I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to stand on a surface that is not constantly moving. Even when the sea is dead calm, the deck vibrates and echoes with the turning of the engines. The propellers that drive this ship are as wide as your corncrib is high.

  We’re getting pretty itchy after two weeks at sea. There’s not much to do here except try to stay out of the way and try not to think about what is to come. Our platoon leader, a guy named Williams who is all of twenty-three, tells us in no uncertain terms that some of us aren’t going to make it back. Most of the guys on board don’t believe him, but I do. I don’t remember much about what happened in the South Pacific, but I do know that a lot of soldiers died. I’m starting to wonder if it was such a good idea to lie about my age and join the Marines. What’s done is done, I guess.

  Scud has been killing time by playing in the poker game that seems to be going on twenty-four hours a day. So far he’s lost all his money and most of mine. I don’t mind, t
hough, since I figure we’re either going to make it back, or not. How much cash I’ve got in my pocket won’t make a bit of difference.

  I’ll never forget what you said to me that day last February, the day I told you that Scud and I had signed up with the Marines.

  You said, “Don’t die, Jack. I want you to come back.”

  I said, “Don’t worry. Me and Scud, we’ll be back.”

  I remember we were standing in the kitchen. You said, “You just make sure you come back.” You pressed your palm against my chest. You said, “Scud will take care of himself. It’s all he cares about.”

  That was the first time I knew I had a chance with you. I’d always thought you were Scud’s girl, the way he talked about you, the way you let him talk. Then you clasped my hand in yours. You had been washing dishes, your hand was red and hot with little soap bubbles still on your knuckles. You pulled my hand to your breast, and then you kissed me, your father sitting in his chair just around the corner not ten feet away. If I close my eyes I can still feel your breast beneath my hand, your lips touching mine.

  Andie, the feeling I get, remembering those last weeks with you, it’s like it hurts but at the same time it feels so good.

  I still think we should have told Scud. You said it wouldn’t be right to send him off to war that way, but like you said, Scud can take care of himself. What about me? I’m the one who has to live a lie, listening to him tell all the guys about this great gal he has back home, winking at me, and me not able to say a word.

  There I go again, feeling sorry for myself.

  Love,

  Jack

  U.S. Navy Transport Alexander

  August 15, 1942

  Dear Andie,

  Remember last winter just before we shipped out, that day we stayed up late with your father drinking his home brew, and he fell asleep, and we were talking and I told you I was from the future. I keep wondering, did you believe me? Or were you just being polite? I’ve told almost nothing about my history because, frankly, I was afraid you’d think me insane. And I wouldn’t blame you.