Cherry Blossom Baseball Read online

  “But that was years ago, and it was just politics,” she said in a low voice.

  Kaz put his hands to her face and traced her cheek with his thumb. “Don’t you understand? Instead of being part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution.”

  “I want things to go back to the way they were,” Sadie said with a crackle of tears in her voice. “I want my old life back.”

  Kaz looked into Sadie’s eyes. “We have to plan our life on what we have,” he said, “not on what we are missing.”

  “But we have nothing, and I’m tired of building a life around nothing.”

  “Just remember,” Kaz said, “better to bend than break.” Then he pulled her into his arms.

  Michiko, not wanting to see them kiss, went up the stairs with feet of velvet just as her grandfather had taught her.

  The next day, her father left for his new job in Ontario. The force of the pelting rain scattered the last of the blossoms of the rose bush her mother had nurtured into bloom. Bruised, broken petals littered the ground as her father got into the RCMP car. Even though he had permission to leave the camp, it was too much like the last time, when the RCMP escorted the Japanese men to the train station and they hadn’t seen him for a long, long time.

  GOODBYE, GHOST TOWN

  The fat white cat, sitting in the sun with its tail wrapped about its feet, looked at Michiko and Hiro with its one green eye and one blue eye. Michiko put out her hand. The cat licked it with her rough tongue. Then it rose and waddled into the barn. Hiro followed.

  “Don’t go far,” Mrs. Morrison said, making her way to the compost heap with a bucket of vegetable peels. “Your mother will be back soon.”

  Michiko bent to kiss the tiny forehead of her baby sister lying in her carriage. She loved the smell of her powdered skin. Hannah’s face crumpled, and she gave out a small cry. “I’ll walk her around,” Michiko said. “That will keep her happy until Mother returns.” And when she does, Michiko’s heart gave a small leap of joy, she will have our train tickets. Her father’s latest letter told them they were ready for them in Ontario. The whole family, except for Sadie and Kaz.

  Hiro had left the barn by the time she pushed the baby carriage down the lane and back. Knowing her little brother was fond of hide-and-seek, she went inside Mrs. Morrison’s house and looked behind the curtains, under the dining room table. Then she went upstairs to his usual places, but he wasn’t to be found. He’s probably climbing the fence that keeps the cows from the road, Michiko thought. From the moment her little brother could crawl, he had climbed stairs, chairs, and along the backs of settees. Then he climbed the trees in Mrs. Morrison’s orchard.

  “He wouldn’t have gone far,” Mrs. Morrison said when Michiko entered the kitchen, calling his name. “He hasn’t had lunch yet.” She wiped her hands on her apron and lifted Hannah from the carriage. The tiny dark-haired baby looked even smaller in Mrs. Morrison’s large, work-worn hands. “I know how to get his attention,” she suggested. “Just call him for lunch, and hungry Hiro will come.”

  Michiko smiled. Mrs. Morrison was right. In the orchard she yelled out, “Lunch time!”

  Two small bare legs dangled down from one of the lower tree branches. “Here I am,” Hiro called out. “I was watching my baby,” he said as he landed on the grass with a soft plump and pointed to the small black-and-white ball of fur nestled into one of Hannah’s blankets. “I found it in the barn.”

  Michiko looked down. There was only one kind of black-and-white furry animal that she knew, and they weren’t to be bothered. She backed up and looked around the field. Where there is a baby, there is a mother nearby. She had learned that with bears on the road last year. Michiko took her brother’s hand. “Let’s run,” she said.

  Her mother sat with Mrs. Morrison at the kitchen table, sipping tea from china cups.

  “There was a baby skunk in your barn,” Michiko blurted out.

  “Pardon me?” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “Hiro picked it up and made a bed for it.”

  “That’s odd,” Mrs. Morrison said. “Skunks don’t nest this close to town. Did you see it?”

  “No, I just saw the baby. It’s a tiny black-and-white thing, curled up in a ball.”

  “Did you shut the barn door?” Eiko asked Hiro.

  Hiro gazed up and shook his head.

  Eiko looked at Mrs. Morrison. “If he left the door open, maybe it will wander away.”

  “Not if she’s got babies,” Mrs. Morrison said. “Mother skunk will be searching for it, and she will not be happy.” She put on her canvas gardening gloves, a pair of rubber boots, and picked up her stiff corn broom. “If I yell, break out the tomato juice.”

  Michiko looked at her mother and raised her brows, but her mother just smiled.

  No sooner had she left than Mrs. Morrison was back.

  “Hiro,” she said as she stepped out of her boots, “show me where you put the baby cat.”

  “Cat,” Michiko repeated. “It’s a cat?” She jumped from her chair, ran out the kitchen door to the foot of the apple tree, and scooped up the tiny kitten.

  In a shaft of afternoon sun the white cat prowled the earth floor of the barn, mewing.

  “Here,” she said, extending the small bundle to Mrs. Morrison.

  “Just put it down,” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “Here you are!” Michiko whispered as she lowered the tiny body to the floor. Completely black, except for its tail, the kitten had a small drop of white on its nose like a splash of milk. Three other kittens, all white, lay on a pile of newspapers inside the wooden box.

  The mother cat licked her baby from head to toe, and then, taking the scruff of its neck in her mouth, placed it next to its brothers and sisters.

  Michiko reached out to stroke the mamma cat’s back. “We’ll have to help you raise your family,” she said. “That’s what good friends do.”

  When she looked up at Mrs. Morrison, the woman’s eyes were filled with tears.

  That night, Sadie and Kaz joined them for a farewell banquet of roast pork, vegetables, and mashed potatoes. An enormous loaf of bread with a buttered furrow along the top stood beside a dish of homemade pickles. In their honour, Mrs. Morrison had opened her last jar of red currant jelly. She followed the meal with a deep dish of apple crisp slathered with heavy cream and cups of strong black tea.

  Michiko and Sadie did the dishes while their stout and generous friend rocked Hannah in the wooden chair in her kitchen.

  “Why didn’t George King’s father go off to war?” Michiko asked in a voice low enough for her mother not to hear from the living room, where Kaz and Hiro played “horsie.” George King talked a lot about fighting and taking sides. She wondered why his father was one of the few men in town.

  Edna Morrison shifted the sleeping baby into Sadie’s arms, poured herself a fresh cup of tea, and sank back into the rocking chair. Michiko listened to the wooden rockers thud against the hardwood floor for a few moments before Mrs. Morrison spoke. “You know George’s mother was my best friend all through school.”

  “She was?’ Michiko couldn’t suppress her surprise.

  “When she told me Robert King wanted to marry her, I tried to look pleased,” she said. “That man was nothing but charm, hair grease, and a thin-lipped smile. But he always got what he wanted. After one year of marriage, my best friend became a woman who had to look at her husband before she could even ask the price of potatoes. I never liked that man.”

  Michiko looked up at Sadie, and they both grinned.

  “He saw himself being far too important a man to enlist,” Edna whispered. She chuckled. “I’ll never forget the day my chickens came at him. Animals know who not to trust, you know.”

  Michiko wished they could take the upright concert piano, but it wasn’t theirs to take. Even though her mother had reupholstered the threadbare stool, it had come with the apartment.

  The security truck was making a special trip to the train station that next morning.
Mr. Hayashi, the security officer, invited Mrs. Morrison to accompany Michiko’s family, but she declined, which left space for Clarence. She had already said her goodbyes.

  Sadie hung on to Michiko for so long, she hardly breathed, and then she released her and took Hannah into her arms. “You could leave her here with me,” she said, nuzzling the little girl’s head.

  “You are welcome to keep Hiro,” Michiko offered, which earned her a kick on the shins from the angry little boy.

  Her mother took Hiro by the hand and led him over to Clarence. She took Hannah from Sadie’s arms and placed her in their wicker laundry basket. “We don’t want to miss our train,” she said sharply.

  Kaz loaded their possessions into the back of the truck, stood at Sadie’s side, and put his arm around her.

  They all waved until they were out of sight. As they passed the RCMP guardhouse, Michiko wondered if there would be one like it on the road of their new home.

  The Kootenay Mountains came into view as they left town. In some places the pine trees marched right down the side of the mountain to the edge of the road, as if waiting to cross. Their branches grew right to the ground. Hiro would have climbed them like a ladder.

  A sign for Arrow Lake Loggers pointed down a dirt road. “That’s where your Uncle Ted works,” her mother said, pointing it out to Hiro.

  A white peak touched the only cloudless piece of sky. Michiko looked up to see a rectangular patch of ground carved out of its side, as if a giant had shaved a patch of beard. “See, Hiro,” she said. “Uncle Ted is way, way up that mountain.”

  Bleached driftwood littered the white sandy shores of the deep green lake that appeared before them. Not a ripple, not a boat, not a person in sight; it was totally untouched.

  “That water is real cold,” Clarence said. “That’s why there’s no one swimming.”

  “Too cold for fishing?” Michiko asked.

  “No lake is too cold for fishing,” Clarence said, nudging Michiko.

  Michiko gave a secret smile, thinking about the telephone conversation she had with her Uncle Ted when he called to say goodbye.

  “What about your fishing equipment?” she had asked him, careful not to alert anyone on their party line to what was hidden in the branches of the fallen willow tree beside the creek.

  “My old fishing rods, the ones I never use?” he asked, just as cautious.

  “And that thing you keep them in,” she said, “the apple crate?” That was the code name they used for the little red boat her uncle had named The Apple.

  “Oh, that old thing,” Ted said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s no good to me now. It’s yours to give to whoever you want.”

  Clouds parted, and the sun lit the snow on the mountains. Michiko watched the cascading water along the roadside, wondering if the stream would follow them all the way to the station.

  “Look down,” Clarence told her when they saw the sign for Deep Creek.

  Michiko couldn’t see the bottom of the gorge.

  The poker-straight pines that rocketed to the sky gave way to bush. Michiko wondered if Ontario had lots of trees. How big were their mountains?

  After a few zigzags in the road, she spotted a faded sign for Frank’s General Store on the side of a barn. They twisted and turned farther and farther from the ghost town, into the valley.

  Willow trees appeared with jet-black cows munching grass beneath them. Soon Michiko could see low wooden houses with sheds. More cows dotted the foothills, and then the road turned from dust to gravel. They were in the town of Nelson.

  Michiko placed her grandfather’s old cardboard suitcase on the station platform. His letters lay inside Clarence’s blue box. She had rescued them from the bin of materials her father was burning at the back of the drugstore.

  The tough little bushes growing by the railway station were loaded with fat blueberries. Clarence ambled off and was soon back with a capful.

  Michiko popped one into her mouth. “About your going away gift …” she said.

  Clarence furrowed his brows. “I thought you said you were making something.”

  “I did,” Michiko replied. “But it didn’t work out, so I’m going to give you something that someone else made. It was just too big to carry.”

  Hiro sat on the edge of the wooden platform, watching a trail of ants crawl in and out of their sandy hill. “Look,” he said with a smile. Michiko crouched beside him and pointed to a large black ant carrying a seed. “That is what Clarence will look like when he has to carry his present home,” she said.

  “I don’t get it,” Clarence said. “How come you think I’m going to be an ant?”

  “I just hope you don’t mind second-hand presents,” Michiko said, getting up and dusting off the back of her dress.

  “You are driving me crazy,” Clarence said.

  “Well,” Michiko whispered, looking around to make sure no one was listening. “You remember the day we spent fishing with Kiko and George?”

  Clarence nodded and opened his eyes wide. Who would forget the day George King almost drowned trying to spy on their fishing expedition?

  “Mrs. King plans to inform the authorities about someone in the orchard owning a boat.”

  “I’m going to fix him,” Clarence vowed, holding up a clenched fist, “as soon as I get back to town.”

  “When you get back to town, you are going to go to the King house and ask his mother if George can go fishing with you.”

  “Why am I going to do that?” Clarence curled back his lips and sucked through his teeth. “I’m going to punch him right in the face for squealing about your uncle’s boat.”

  “You mean your boat.”

  “That’s right,” Clarence said, caught up in his anger. “First thing I am going to do is punch him in the face for squealing about my boat.” He was just about to smack the palm of his hand with his fist when he stopped and looked at her in surprise. “My boat?” He turned red about the ears.

  “That’s why it’s a second-hand gift,” Michiko explained. “My Uncle Ted told me before we left it was mine. Now I am telling you before I leave that it is yours.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Clarence said. He plunked his hat down on top of his head with a face full of surprise. “I can’t believe it,” he said, slamming it down with his hand.

  Hiro jumped up and clapped his hands. “Funny Clarence,” he said as the blue juice from the berries dripped down his face and off the tip of his chin.

  The pebbles along the tracks jumped and rattled as the locomotive pulled into the station. The train’s shrill whistle startled Hannah into a cry as the white steam filled the platform. “Oh!” Eiko said, waving her hands back and forth in front of her face. “Hiro, do you feel the hot breath of that kaibutsu?”

  She took her young son’s hand as they mounted the metal steps. Michiko carried Hannah in their wicker laundry basket. Clarence and Mr. Hayashi helped with their luggage.

  Their travelling space for the next three and a half days would be a sleeping compartment with its own toilet and sink. The maroon velvet curtains matched the plush covers of the wide, comfortable seats. The little dark-panelled drawing room was more expensive than the sleeping cars, but here they could keep to themselves.

  Clarence pulled the upper berth down from the ceiling and whistled. He opened the door to the small washroom and smiled. “This would be perfect for my place.”

  Michiko bit her bottom lip and then said, “If I write to you, will you write back?”

  “I guess,” Clarence said, pulling his cap down over his eyes. “Not much good at it, though.”

  Mr. Hayashi stowed their belongings on the shelves designated for luggage. He shook her mother’s hand and then reached into his pocket. “For the children,” he said, placing two candies wrapped in gold foil into Eiko’s hand.

  Eiko touched his arm. “You have always been a great help,” she said. “We will miss you.”

  From the window, Michiko watched the c
onductor pick up his little wooden step and put it inside the car. As the train lurched forward, she swung her arms as if she was hitting a ball. Clarence pretended to catch it. Then she waved until Clarence and Mr. Hayashi were out of sight.

  Hiro squirmed all over the compartment as the train clattered out of the station. He wasn’t interested in waving or looking at the dog that lay in the shade of a great tree oak beside the tracks. Michiko put her hands together and crossed her fingers, attempting to distract him. “These are mother’s knives and forks,” she recited, “and this is mother’s table.”

  Hiro pushed away her hands. He turned to his mother’s lap and pushed at the baby. “No more Hannah,” he said.

  “No, Hiro,” Eiko said. “Hannah will stay in my lap for a while. You have your own seat.”

  Hiro threw himself at his mother’s legs and then slid to the floor and rolled at her feet, wailing.

  Michiko bent to lift him off the floor.

  “Let him be,” Eiko said. “He’s just acting the way we all feel.”

  Michiko felt a cold clutch in her stomach watching her little brother shake with sobs.

  After Hannah was fed, Eiko changed her diaper and put her back into her basket. “Now would you like to come up on my lap?” she asked her sad little son. Hiro crawled up onto the seat and laid his dark head on his mother’s lap. The gentle rocking of the train finally put him to sleep.

  The train moved out of the small town, past a sagging barn where a woman stood in front of a clothesline of billowing sheets, shading her eyes. She reminded Michiko of Mrs. Morrison, and she waved at her.

  The woman waved back.

  At first Michiko enjoyed looking out of the large window at white daisies that scattered the rough grass at the mountain edge. But before long the scenery became monotonous, nothing but towering rocks with pines in their crevices.

  After the sun set, Michiko’s mother pulled down the window shades and opened the hamper Mrs. Morrison had placed in the back of the truck. Her mother hadn’t planned for them to eat in the car with tables set with white cloths and silver. Michiko was disappointed. She wanted to see the waiters hold the trays over their heads as they slid down the aisles, the way Sadie had described.