Butterfly's Shadow (24 page)

‘So what do I call you – Sat
?”’

‘That’s my family name. You call me Ichir
.’ He regarded Joey, head cocked. ‘There’s an old Japanese joke. I’ll cut to the punch-line: “funny, you don’t
look
Japanese” . . .’

‘My mother,’ Joey said. ‘I was born in Nagasaki.’

‘Holy shit, you’re worse off than me. At least I was born in Benton County. You were spawned in the devil’s empire.’

‘Think they’ll shoot me?’

‘Only if you run,’ he said. ‘This is America. Home of the free, remember?’

The scar on his cheek was fresh, the jagged line dark with dried blood. He touched it with a fingertip.

‘In case you’re wondering; neighbourly gesture of farewell. Something to remember them by.’

‘What happened to your parents?’

‘They went home on a visit, the annual pilgrimage to the old folks. Planned to be back for
sh
gatsu
.’ He saw Joey’s expression. ‘New Year’s? They always come back loaded with the full traditional shopping basket and we spend the whole holiday stuffing ourselves with
osechi-ryori
and all that jazz. Why not? It makes the grandparents happy.’

He had been going through his pockets absent-mindedly, and now produced a couple of cellophane-wrapped candies. He offered one to Joey, unwrapping the other slowly, following an unspoken trail of thought.

‘Well there won’t have been many pretty postcards sent this year, not really a time for
nengajo
.’

Joe wanted to ask: what city were they in, Ichir
’s parents? How traditional was the family? What was
nengajo
? For the first time he became aware of the extent of his ignorance: the order of names, the celebration of festivals, the food, the customs – all a blank page. There must have been a time, between learning to talk and being carried off to America, when he would have been familiar with these things, would have recognised the New Year dishes, played the traditional games. Now, he stood, stupid as a tourist, lost in a foreign, exotic world.

He unzipped his bag and looked around for shelves, but the walls were bare. The Portland Assembly Center was temporary; till the real camp was ready. But what did temporary mean? A week? A month?

For twenty-four hours they were stunned into shock, paralysis. Then, like a collective mechanism clicking into gear, everything changed. Men drew up duty rosters; everyone got busy: women in the communal laundry, scrubbing, wringing out, hanging up clothes; young men setting up lessons for children, others checking out the kitchens, organising communal latrines. Girls draped stark cubicles with colourful scarves, teams of volunteers washed down walls and floors to try and eradicate the lingering reminder of dung.

Joey offered his services in the clean-up operation and was met by exquisitely polite refusals. Smiling, bowing, one after another they explained they had enough help already . . . so kind, maybe another day, or when they changed shifts perhaps . . .

They didn’t trust him.

‘Do you blame them?’ Ichir
said. ‘The way you look? You could be a government spy.’

There came a day some ten weeks later when everything shone clean; when disinfected livestock stalls had been painted in harmonious colours, children placed in improvised schoolrooms and a handwritten daily news-sheet produced – even though there was, of course, no news in the usual sense.

The inmates had, by a communal act of will, created a village within a steel cavern.

Next morning came the announcement: the relocation camp was now ready; it was deportation time.

When no more bodies could be fitted into the train, when even the corridors were packed solid, the guards opened up a baggage car for the remaining ‘passengers’. Joey climbed in with the others and moved up to make room for Ichir
and his bag.

He thought about cattle travelling like this. At the end of the ride the cattle faced slaughter; for this motley freight-load and others like them, there was a blank. Nobody had felt the need to explain what lay ahead, other than to repeat the now familiar word: detention.

Thinking these thoughts was no way to make the best of a bad journey. And to be locked inside a windowless space was no way to travel.

Back braced against the wall, sitting cross-legged on the floor, swaying shoulder to shoulder with his neighbours, Joey breathed in stale air that grew thicker as the hours passed. The others occupied the body of the train, in compartments whose windows had been blacked out, for fear the occupants might signal to hidden enemy agents or draw dangerous information from the passing scenery.

The wheels turned and from the south-western seaboard a hundred thousand people rattled across an unseen landscape in ramshackle rolling stock brought out of retirement, heading for hastily constructed camps in desolate corners of the land. The sound of this particular train’s metallic rhythm pounded
in Joey’s head. Next to him, Ichir
picked up the beat and improvised his own version of ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’:

‘Pardon me, boy, is this the train for Chattanooga
now?

No, no siree, not this train, no how!

This train’s for Utah, Wyoming, or somewhere not
so near:

Idaho, Nevada. Or could be California out there,

Arizona. Colorado, Arkansas, some hot dam’ camp
somewhere!’

Through a crack in the wall tantalising glimpses of landscape flitted past, flashes of blinding white intermittently cut through the darkness. Hours passed. The train clattered on.