End of the Beginning Read online

Sampans weren’t the only fishing contraptions on the water nowadays, either. The Oshima Maru glided past a surfboard with a sail mounted on it to take it farther out to sea than the blond, sun-bronzed haole on it could have gone by paddling alone. He waved to the sampan as it went by. Jiro’s sons waved back.

  “Foolishness,” Jiro said. That wasn’t fair, and he knew it: the sailboard wasn’t foolish, but it sure was funny-looking.

  “I think that haole is the fellow we saw coming out of Eizo Doi’s shop one time,” Kenzo said. “I bet Doi put the mast and sail on his surfboard, the same as he did for the Oshima Maru.”

  “Could be.” Jiro was inclined to think a little better of the white man on the surfboard if he’d visited a Japanese handyman. Before the war, a lot of the haoles on Oahu had tried to pretend the Japanese didn’t exist . . . and had done their best to hold them down, not letting them compete on even terms. Well, that was over and done with now.

  “We’ve got a good wind behind us,” Hiroshi said.

  “Hai.” Jiro nodded. He liked the Oshima Maru better as a sailboat than he had when she was motorized. She was silent now except for the thrum of the wind in the rigging and the slap of waves against her beamy hull. No diesel roar, not now. No diesel vibration felt through the soles of the feet, either—just the undulating motion of the sampan over the chop. And no stinking diesel exhaust; Jiro didn’t miss that at all.

  The one drawback to traveling with the wind was the obvious one: she’d been faster with the diesel. Kenzo said, “We’re liable to be out two or three days finding a decent place to fish.”

  Jiro only grunted, not because his younger son was wrong but because he was right. “It’s not just that we’re slower, either,” Hiroshi said. “Fewer fish close to Oahu these days, I think.” Jiro grunted again; he suspected that was also true. There was a lot more fishing now than there had been before Hawaii changed hands. With American supplies cut off and with people desperate for any kind of food, they took whatever they could get from the sea. Before the war, he and his sons had thrown trash fish back into the Pacific. There were no trash fish, not any more.

  Half a dozen flying fish sprang out of the water and glided through the air for a little ways before splashing into the sea once more. They did that to escape the bigger fish that were trying to catch them. The bigger fish—aku and ahi and mahi-mahi and even barracuda and sharks—were what the Takahashis wanted most. Kenzo dropped a hook into the water. Jiro didn’t stop the sampan. They weren’t far enough out to make this a really good place. But if his son wanted to see if he could snag a fish or two—well, why not?

  And Kenzo did, too. The line jerked. He pulled in the fish. “Ahi!” he said happily, and then, in English, “Albacore.” His gutting knife flashed. He tossed the entrails into the Pacific. The knife flashed again. He cut strips of flesh from the fish’s side and handed them to Jiro and Hiroshi. Then he cut one for himself. They all ate. The flesh was nearly as rich as beef.

  “Not American food, raw fish,” Jiro jeered gently.

  “Still good,” Hiroshi said.

  Kenzo nodded. Jiro couldn’t tease them too hard about that. Even if they’d preferred burgers and fries when they could get them, they’d always eaten sashimi, too. Kenzo said, “And it’s an awful lot better than what we’d get ashore.” That might have been the understatement of the year. Rice and greens and not enough of either . . . No, Jiro couldn’t argue there. Kenzo went on, “And sashimi’s always better the fresher it is, and it just doesn’t get any fresher than this.”

  “People who aren’t fishermen don’t know what really fresh fish tastes like,” Hiroshi said. “Cut me some more, please.”

  “And me,” Jiro said.

  Kenzo did. He cut another strip for himself, too. Before long, there wasn’t much left of the ahi. All three of the Takahashis were smiling. Jiro nodded to his older son. Hiroshi had hit the nail on the head. People who didn’t put to sea had no idea how good fish really could be.

  WAIKIKI BEACH STRAIGHT AHEAD. Oscar van der Kirk decided to put on a show. He had a stringbag full of fish at his feet. He made sure it was closed and tied to a peg he’d set into his sailboard. The peg was new, something he’d thought of only a little while before. Quite a few surf-riders were taking sailboards out to sea these days. Oscar had been first, though. He didn’t begrudge anyone else the use of the idea, even if he might have made a nice chunk of change from it in peacetime. War and hunger had laws of their own, laws sterner and less forgiving than the usual sort.

  For that matter, Oscar seldom begrudged anybody anything. He was a big, good-natured fellow at the very end of his twenties. The sun and the ocean had bleached his already blond hair somewhere between the color of straw and snow. His hide, by contrast, had tanned such a dark brown that a lot of people wondered if he was part Hawaiian in spite of that blond hair.

  He could hear the waves crashing on the shore now. Soon they would lift the board—and him. They would slam him down in the Pacific and make him look like a prize chump if he wasn’t careful, too. But he commonly was careful, and skillful to boot. He’d scratched out a living as a surf-riding instructor—a surf-riding show-off, if you like—for years before the Japs came, and even for a while afterwards.

  The wave he rode, as tall as a man, started to lean toward the beach ahead. He stood atop the sailboard like a Hawaiian god, one hand on the mast, the other arm outflung for balance. Speed built as he skimmed along the crest. Wind in his face, shifting water under the shifting board . . . There was no sensation in the world like this. Nothing else even came close.

  He knew quite a bit about other sensations, too. He’d given surf-riding lessons to a lot of wahines over from the mainland who were trying to recover from a broken heart or just looking for a romance that would be fun but wouldn’t mean anything once they sailed away. His good looks, his strength, and his aw-shucks attitude meant he’d also given a lot of them lessons in things besides surf-riding.

  Here came the beach. The wave was played out, mastered. The surfboard scraped against sand. Some of the men fishing in the surf clapped their hands. One of them tossed Oscar a shiny silver coin, as if he were a trained seal getting a sardine. He dug the coin out of the soft white sand. It was a half-dollar. That was real money. “Thanks, pal,” he said as he stuck it in the small pocket on his swim trunks.

  He took down the sailboard’s mast and boom and rolled up the small sail that propelled it. Farther from the sea than the surf fishermen, a couple of Japanese Army officers watched him. Oscar muttered to himself. He wouldn’t have come in so spectacularly had he known he was under their cold stare. He felt like a rabbit hopping around while hawks soared overhead.

  Then one of them tossed him a coin. The one-yen silverpiece was about the size of a quarter, and worth about as much. When he picked it up, he had to remember to bow to the Jap. The officer returned the bow, much more elegantly than he’d given it. “Ichi-ban,” the Jap said. “Wakarimasu-ka?”

  Oscar nodded to show he did understand. Ichi-ban was part of the local pidgin a kamaaina—an old-timer in Hawaii—picked up. It meant A number one, or something like that.

  “Thanks,” Oscar said, as politely as he could. You never knew when one of these monkeys turned out to speak English. “Thanks very much.”

  And sure as hell, this one answered, “You are welcome.” If he hadn’t gone to school in the States, Oscar would have been surprised. They might even have been at Stanford at the same time; they weren’t far apart in age.

  Oscar carried the surfboard, mast, and rigging under one arm and the stringbag full of fish in his other hand. He hoped these Japs wouldn’t give him a hard time about that. Just about all food was supposed to go into community kitchens, share and share alike. They allowed sampan fishermen enough for what they called “personal use”; the rest of the catch they bought at a fixed price, so much per pound regardless of what kind of fish it was. So far, the Japs hadn’t harried the men who fished from sailboards—they didn’t
catch enough to make a fuss over. But the occupiers could harass them if they wanted to. They could do almost anything they wanted to.

  To his relief, this pair just nodded to him as he walked by. Maybe they admired the show he’d put on, and didn’t bother him because of that. Maybe . . . Who the hell knew for sure with Japs? All he knew for sure was, they weren’t going to worry about his fish. That was all he needed to know, too.

  He had an apartment not far from Waikiki Beach—a perfect place for a fellow who made his living surf-riding. The man who owned the building was a local Japanese who lived on the ground floor. Oscar knocked on his door. When the man answered, Oscar presented him with a couple of fat mackerel. “Here you go, Mr. Fukumoto,” he said. “Another week, eh?”

  His landlord examined the fish. “Okay. Another week,” he said in accented English. Oscar went upstairs to his own place. He would have bet more business got done by barter than with cash these days. Money, very often, couldn’t buy food.

  Once back in his apartment, Oscar put some of the fish in the little icebox in the cramped kitchenette. That would feed him and his lady friend for a bit. The rest of the catch stayed in the stringbag. Out he went, bound for Honolulu, and especially for the Oriental district there, the section west of Nuuanu Avenue.

  The markets in that part of town were fluctuating things, popping up now here, now there. They were, at best, marginally legal. Oscar suspected—no, he was sure—some Japanese palms got greased to make sure some Japanese eyes looked the other way. People who caught things and people who grew things traded and sold what they had. Money could buy food there, all right—if you had enough of it.

  With fish in hand, Oscar could almost name his own price for it. But he wasn’t out for cash, or not primarily. He traded some of his catch for tomatoes, some for potatoes, some for string beans, and some for a small, squat jug. What he had left after that . . . well, greenbacks would do.

  He could have got a ride back to Waikiki, but rickshaws and pedicabs stuck in his craw. Just because you paid a man to act like a beast of burden, that didn’t mean he ought to be one. While there’d been gasoline—and diesel fuel for buses—such contraptions hadn’t existed in Honolulu. They did now. His own Chevy was long since hors de combat.

  But Oscar didn’t mind shank’s mare. He got back to the apartment a little before Susie Higgins came in. Susie was a cute strawberry blonde, a divorcée from Pittsburgh. Oscar had taught her to ride the surf. She’d taught him a few things, too. She had both a temper and an eye for the main chance. They’d quarreled, broken up, and come back together a few weeks before.

  Her eyes, as blue as a Siamese cat’s, lit up when she saw the potatoes. “Spuds! Oscar, I could kiss you!” she said, and she did. “I’m so goddamn sick of rice, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Rice is a lot better than empty,” Oscar observed.

  “My boss says the same thing,” Susie answered. Though just a tourist, she’d landed a secretary’s job after she and Oscar parted the first time. She’d done it with talent, too, not with her fair tanned body. As if to prove as much, she added, “Of course, his wife’s Chinese, so he’s used to the stuff.”

  “Long as my belly doesn’t growl too loud, I’m not fussy,” Oscar said. “I don’t mind rice. As many Japanese and Chinese places as I’ve been to, I’d better not.”

  “It’s not American,” Susie said. “Once in a while is okay, I guess, but all the time?” She shook her head. “I feel like my eyes are getting slanty.”

  “Forget it, babe,” Oscar told her. “You can eat rice till everything turns blue, and you still won’t look like a Jap.”

  “Oh, Oscar, you say the sweetest things.” Was that sarcasm? With Susie, it was sometimes hard to tell.

  These days, she and Oscar cooked on a hot plate. He’d got that before the fighting ended, and it was one of the smarter things he’d done. You couldn’t lay your hands on one for love or money these days. Gas was as kaput as gasoline or diesel fuel, but Honolulu still had electricity. A hot plate wasn’t the ideal cooking tool—far from it—but it beat the hell out of a stove that didn’t work.

  “Now for another exciting evening,” Susie said after she washed the dishes and he dried them. “We can’t go out dancing because there’s a curfew. We can’t listen to the radio because the Japs confiscated all the sets. So what does that leave? Cribbage?” She made a face.

  There was, of course, another possibility, but Oscar didn’t name it. Susie was, or could be, a holy terror between the sheets, but she always liked to think it was her idea, not that she was being pushed into it. But then Oscar snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot!” he said, and showed off the jug he’d got that afternoon.

  “What’s that?” Susie suddenly sounded hopeful.

  “It’s okolehao,” Oscar answered.

  “Holy cow?” Susie frowned in confusion.

  Oscar laughed, but maybe she wasn’t so far wrong. “It’s Hawaii hooch, Maui moonshine. They make the genuine article from ti root, and it’ll put hair on anybody’s chest.” Hair would not have improved Susie’s, but he didn’t feel like editing himself. Instead, he went on, “God only knows how good this batch is, but it’s booze. Want a slug?”

  “You bet I do,” she said. He poured her a knock, and one for himself, too. They clinked mismatched glasses, then sipped. Susie’s eyes got enormous. She coughed a couple of times. “Holy cow!” she wheezed, and looked respectfully at the glass. “I don’t think it’s very good, but it’s sure as hell strong.”

  “Yeah.” Oscar was also wheezing a little, or more than a little. A Territorial Senator from Maui had once said that proper okolehao burned with a clear blue flame. Oscar didn’t know about that. He did know this stuff burned all the way down. He took another sip. Maybe the first one had numbed him, because it hurt a lot less this time.

  Susie Higgins drank some more, too. “Wow!” she said, and then, “How do you really say it?” Oscar gave her the name again. “Okolehao,” she repeated, and nodded to herself. “Well, you’re right—that beats the dickens out of cribbage.”

  He poured himself some more, then held out the jug and raised a questioning eyebrow. Susie nodded again. “Here you go,” he said, and gave her a hefty dose.

  “If I drink all that, I’ll go, all right—I’ll go out like a light,” she said, which didn’t keep her from attacking the stuff. She smiled at Oscar—a slightly slack-lipped smile. “Doesn’t taste so bad once you get used to it, does it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think maybe the first knock put my tongue to sleep.”

  Susie waggled a finger at him. “Oh, it better not have, sweetheart, or I’m gonna be real disappointed in you.” She exploded into gales of laughter. Oscar grinned back. He gave himself a mental pat on the back. Yeah, Susie could be as raunchy as all get-out . . . as long as she was doing the leading. If he’d said something like that to her, it would have chilled her faster than a cold shower.

  Oscar’s bed was crowded for two, but not too crowded, as long as they were friendly. His tongue, he discovered in due course, still worked fine. So did Susie’s. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, happy and more than a little sloshed.

  FLETCHER ARMITAGE WAS AN OFFICER and a gentleman. That’s what they told him when he graduated from West Point. He’d gone right on believing it when he got assigned to the Twenty-fourth Division’s Thirteenth Field Artillery Battalion, based at Schofield Barracks. Of course, officers in Hawaii were something like sahibs in British India, with plenty of natives to do the scutwork for them. If a gentleman was someone who seldom got his hands dirty, Fletch had qualified.

  Even before the fighting started, things hadn’t been perfect for him. He’d been sleeping in the base BOQ; Jane had the apartment they’d shared in Wahiawa. The divorce hadn’t been final when the Japs hit. He didn’t suppose it had gone forward since the occupation, but so what? He wasn’t married any more, and he knew it.

  So what was he, then? Another slowly sta
rving POW, that was all. He wasn’t too far from Wahiawa himself right now. Some of the men in his gun crew had tried disappearing when the order to surrender went out. Fletch didn’t know what had happened to them. Maybe they’d blended in among the civilians. Maybe the Japs had caught them and shot them. Either way, they were liable to be better off than he was.

  “Work!” a Japanese sergeant shouted, one of the handful of English words the man knew. The POWs under his eye moved a little faster. They were digging tank traps and antitank ditches. Putting prisoners to work on war-related projects like that violated the Geneva Convention. Putting officers to work at all without their agreement also violated the Convention.

  Fletch laughed, not that it was funny. The Japs hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention, and didn’t give two whoops in hell about it. They figured the USA might try to invade Oahu again, and they were damn well going to be ready if the Americans did. They’d had God only knew how many thousands of POWs sitting around in Kapiolani Park at the edge of Waikiki, and they’d sent out an order—work or don’t eat. Nobody’d been eating much, but nobody had any doubts the Japs would be as good, or as bad, as their word.

  Up went the pickaxe. Fletch had learned to let gravity do most of the work as it fell. He still wore the shirt and trousers in which he’d surrendered. They hadn’t been in good shape then, and they were rags now. He hung on to them even so. A lot of the Americans in the gang worked stripped to the waist. He didn’t want to do that; with his red hair and fair skin, he burned and burned, and hardly tanned at all.

  Raise the pick. Let it fall. Raise the pick. Let it fall. A scrawny PFC with a shovel cleared the dirt Fletch loosened. Neither of them moved any faster than he had to. Slaves in the South must have found a pace like this: just enough to satisfy the overseer, and not a bit more.

  Every so often, of course, the slaves would have slacked off too much. Then Simon Legree would have cracked his bullwhip, and things would have picked up again—till he turned his back, anyhow. The Jap sergeant didn’t have a bullwhip. He had a four-foot length of bamboo instead. He would swing it like a baseball bat whenever he felt the need. It left welts at least as bad as a bullwhip’s, and could knock a man off his feet.