Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [113]
‘When they’re small, you have small worries – scraped knees, bullying at school. When they grow up . . .’ a vague gesture of helpless anxiety.
He had two daughters. ‘One’s a Land Girl – helping with the war effort. The other’s a nurse. Nice girls.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘I don’t think I know them very well.’ A longer silence.
‘Their mother . . .’ Nancy noted it was ‘their mother’ rather than ‘my wife’. ‘I don’t think I know her very well either. It didn’t seem to matter too much; we jog along – jogged along, pretty well. I’d say a lot of marriages are like that, a case of jogging along.’
If she were truthful, she and Ben had pretty much jogged along, the brightness of young love tarnished by events.
Charles handed her the tiny box the day he left. He said, ‘Read the words. Trust the words.’
Il buon tempo verrà. He could have meant the good times would come when Joey was home from the war. Or he could have meant something quite different.
She made coffee and carried it up the stairs.
Next morning, early, Joe walked down the street and retraced the neighbourhood of his memories. The shadow of a tree that fell across the sidewalk, where as a boy he had jumped the phantom log. The corner where two houses met, their rooftops jostling in ungainly angles, unplanned rivalry. He used to imagine them quarrelling, like Disney cartoon houses, in high, sharp voices, all scowls and sharp elbows.
People passed him, on their way to work, preoccupied, hurrying. The number of cars surprised him, all so shiny. This was a place where the earth was masked by tarmac and concrete. No mud here; even the flower beds looked sifted and clean, composed of some salubrious material. In the morning sunlight plants glowed, washed down by yesterday’s rain. Everything looked fresh, unbroken, new. He walked on, easy-paced.
Now and then he came to a halt, stared at a shopfront or a house window, frowning. At an intersection he passed a news-stand and a front-page story caught his eye. He paused to read a few lines before buying the paper. Then he stood by the door and read the story, slowly, to the end. When he finished, he turned back, away from home, heading for the old town.
The slam of the front door shook the building. He strode into the kitchen, startling Nancy.
‘Joey?’
He flung down the newspaper with a force that sent it sliding across the tabletop to land on the floor at her feet. She stooped and picked it up.
‘What the flaming fuck—’ He took a deep breath.
‘Sorry.’
His face was pale, the bones standing out sharply.
‘What in hell is going on here? There are signs in shops – “No Japs served” and rooming-house windows with “Move on Japs”. The newspaper says State House representatives are trying to stop Japanese Americans from returning to Oregon.’ He paused; slowed down.
‘I took a walk to the river, to Japan town—’
‘Oh!’ Nancy broke in, ‘it’s not—’
‘I know: it has a different name now. I called on a couple of families I knew from Tule. One of the sons was with me in France. Their homes had been vandalised, their stuff stolen, smashed up. One of them found their cat hanging from a tree by the front door. Neighbours asked when they planned to move on.’
Distraught, Nancy said, ‘It’s not just this town, Joey. People read the stories – the papers were full of how the Japanese treated their prisoners of war: the torture, the brutality, death marches, executions. There were pictures of a Japanese soldier about to cut off an American boy’s head with a Samurai sword. That’s what being Japanese means to Americans.’
‘But not these Japanese; they’d spent their lives here. Why do you think the boys from the camps volunteered? To defend an America that says “No Japs served?”’
‘I promise you it’s only a few people who feel like that. A minority.’
‘But not an alien minority.’
He had reflected more than once on why his battalion had been chosen to rescue the trapped Texans in France.
‘I thought, maybe they sent us in because they knew we wouldn’t let anything