House of the Red Fish by Graham Salisbury Page B

John.”
    Mama hurried after Grampa and Kimi.
    I shook my head. That’s my grampa. Just go off, like nobody else is here.
    Billy glanced at me, grinning. I knew he was thinking the same thing.
    Charlie put his hand on my shoulder. “You folks need anything, you come get me, okay?”
    “Thanks, Charlie.”
    “It’s great to have him home,” Mr. Davis said.
    I grabbed Mr. Davis’s hand in both of mine and shook it again and again. “Thank you, Mr. Davis, thank you,
thank you
!”
    I ran off after Mama, thinking about that goat.
    Little Bruiser was right there by the chickens with his legs planted, head slightly down, staring at Grampa. “Watch out,” I called. “When he stares like that you know he’s going to charge.”
    Grampa Joji stared back at Little Bruiser.
    The goat kept his eyes fixed on Grampa, his head swaying slightly.
    Any second now, I thought, trying to get between them.
    Little Bruiser and Grampa stood there checking each other out. A moment passed, then the goat loped off to chew on a piece of wood.
    What did I just see? Two old goats coming to a mutual understanding to leave each other alone?
    Well, good grief.
    That night we sat around the table in the blacked-out kitchen, me and Mama on one side and Kimi leaning up against Grampa across from us. Tea steamed from three cups. Mama had cooked him her best hot
udon,
which he slurped up like a thirsty dog.
    “So, Ojii-chan,” I said, then waited for him to look up.
    He just gazed at his steaming teacup. But he wasn’t dismissing me with one of his annoyed looks. That was good.
    “So,” I went on. “What was it like at that camp? Where was it?”
    He frowned, and his eyes flicked up and touched mine, for a second. “Kauai,” he said. “Wet … mosquitoes …
plenny
mosquitoes … mud all over.”
    “How … how’d they treat you? Good or what?”
    He thought, then shrugged. “No problem.”
    “They treated you okay, then?”
    “Jus’ those mosquitoes … bad, those buggahs, confon-nit. Bad food, too. No more squid.” He half grinned, then replaced it with his usual frown.
    “Did you see anybody you know there? So many people from Honolulu got taken away. I thought—”
    He shook his head. “Nuff … talk something else now.”
    “Okay, Ojii-chan, fine. I understand.”
    I glanced at Mama, who sat with both hands around her teacup. She was probably thinking what I was thinking: if they treated Grampa okay, then they were probably treating Papa okay too.
    “Ojii-chan, wait!” I said, suddenly remembering the two postcards we’d gotten from Papa. I’d stuck them between the pages of one of our few books. The first one had come not long after he was arrested. All it said was that he was okay and that he wanted me to take care of things while he was away. Then there were months of silence. I figured the army probably wasn’t letting a lot of mail go out of the camps. Anyway, Papa couldn’t read or write English.
    But a second card arrived a year later, and it made Mamafall onto the couch and cry—not because of what it said, but because it proved Papa was all right. Like the first card, its postmark had been blackened by a censor.
    “We got this one about three months ago, Ojii-chan,” I said. “Listen!”
    To my family:
    My good friend Dr. Watanabe is writing this for me. He was a dentist in Long Beach, California, before he came here. He has a wife and one son, nineteen years old. Last week the U.S. Army came to the camp looking for volunteers to fight in the war. They have formed an all-Japanese unit. Some of our young men refused to go. They are still angry about having been arrested and imprisoned. But Mr. Watanabe’s son was quick to join. These were his parting words to his family: “If I don’t prove that I am innocent, then I will always be thought of as guilty, and I am not guilty. I am an American.” We were all sad and proud when he and seventeen other boys left the camp. Tomi, I am telling this for you. Have