Free When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka Page A

empty. The boy marked them off one by one on the calendar with giant red X’s. He practiced fancy tricks on the yo-yo: Around the World, Walk the Dog, the Turkish Army. He received a letter from his father written on thin lined sheets of paper.
Of
course
we have toothpaste
in Lordsburg. How else do you expect us to brush our teeth?
His father thanked him for the postcard of the Mormon Tabernacle. He said he was fine. Everything was fine. He was sure they would see each other one day soon. Be good to your mother, he wrote. Be patient.
And remember, it’s better to bend than to break.
    Not once did he mention the war.
    HIS FATHER HAD PROMISED to show him the world. They’d go to Egypt, he’d said, and climb the Pyramids. They’d go to China and take a nice long stroll along that Great Wall. They’d see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they’d glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola.
    â€œThe moon above,” he sang, “is yours and mine. . . .”
    THE DAY AFTER THE FBI had come to the house he had found a few strands of his father’s hair in the bathtub. He had put them into an envelope and placed the envelope beneath the loose floorboard under his bed and promised himself that as long as he did not check to make sure that the envelope was still there—
no peeking,
was his rule—his father would be all right. But lately he had begun waking up every night in the barracks, convinced that the envelope was gone. “I should have taken it with me,” he said to himself. He worried that there were large messy people now living in his old room who played cards night and day and spilled sticky brown drinks all over the floor. He worried that the FBI had returned to the house to search one more time for contraband.
We forgot to check under the floorboards.
He worried that when he saw his father again after the war his father would be too tired to play catch with him under the trees. He worried that his father would be bald.
    FROM TIME TO TIME they heard rumors of spies. Takizawa, people whispered, was a government informer. Possibly a Korean. Not to be trusted.
So be
careful what you say.
Yamaguchi had close ties to the administration. Ishimoto had been attacked late one night behind the latrines by three masked men carrying lead pipes.
They say he was providing the FBI with the names
of pro-Japan disloyals.
    â€œWHAT DO I miss the most? The sound of the trees at night . . . also, chocolate.”
    â€œAnd plums, Mama. You miss plums.”
    â€œThat’s right, I miss plums. I’ll
always
miss plums.”
    â€œMaybe not always.”
    â€œTrue, maybe not. There’s something that’s been bothering me, though.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œDid I leave the porch light on or off?”
    â€œOn.”
    â€œAnd the stove. Did I remember to turn off the stove?”
    â€œYou always turned off the stove.”
    â€œDid I?”
    â€œEvery time.”
    â€œDid we even
have
a stove?”
    â€œOf course we had a stove.”
    â€œThat’s right. The Wedgewood. I used to be quite the cook once, you know.”
    SLOWLY THE BOY SPUN the dial. He heard organ music playing on the Salt Lake City station. Then rhumba music. A swing band. An ad for Dr. Fisher’s tablets for intestinal sluggishness. “Folks,” a man asked, “do you feel headachy and pepless in the morning?” “Nope,” said the boy. Then the news came on, and the Western Task Force was landing in Morocco, and the Central, at Oran, and in the Pacific Islands the American forces were dying all over the place.
    He closed his eyes and imagined himself fighting with Hank and the Raiders down in the Solomon Islands. Or flying reconnaissance over Mindanao. Maybe he’d take a direct hit over Leyte and he’d have to eject. He’d float slowly down to earth beneath a flaming silk parachute