ike
jogged to his car and sped out of the parking garage, fuming about the
confrontation with his uncle. He shook his head—some confrontation. Heavy
traffic on Nimitz Highway forced him to slow down. Honolulu has some of the worst rush-hour traffic in the nation, he
thought. He either had to take the stop-and-go roads around the shoreline or
line up bumper to bumper on the freeway.
As Mike drove to
Pearl Harbor, he checked himself in the rear-view mirror at the first
stoplight. His curly, coal-black hair had a few uneven patches. Under a wide
forehead, his chocolate-colored eyes and long eyelashes gave him bedroom eyes
that some women admired. He’d let his facial hair grow out to a stubble,
trimming it once every few days. Mike still maintained his swimmer’s build,
broad shoulders and a narrow waist. The rowing machine at home kept him in
shape, along with his bird-like appetite that used to drive Spit crazy.
Turning left inside
the Pearl Harbor Halawa Gate, the sentry ordered him to pull into the parking lot
next to the base’s security office. He walked up a ramp and stepped inside, spotting
his father sitting on a bench on the left. His seventy-eight-year-old father’s boyish
good looks let him get away with a lot, but not today.
A petite warrant
officer banged away on an old typewriter atop a worn desk on the other side of
a long Formica counter that ran the length of the compact office. Bud was calm—too
calm. Normally, he was outgoing and chatting up anyone around him, always flashing
a smile and giving a wink, but not today. He was quiet and ignored Mike as soon
as he strolled in.
Bud stood up,
spread his arms out, and shouted over the counter, “Am I good to go now,
Officer?”
“Sure, Mr.
Brennan. Just need your son to sign off on the release forms. Then you’re good.”
Mike smiled. His
dad glared at him. “You find something amusing about this situation, young man?
You think this is funny?”
Mike held Bud in
a steady gaze. “No, there’s nothing funny about breaking into a federal building
and removing and destroying classified documents.”
His dad stood
and smirked. “Allegedly broke into
the building. They won’t find my fingerprints anywhere. And those papers were
hardly classified.”
Mike opened his mouth
to reply, but the warrant officer had stopped typing and stared at the two of them.
Mike reached for the clipboard she offered and signed where she pointed, returned
it with a “thank you,” before pivoting and heading toward the door.
“Let’s get out
of here, Dad. We can discuss this later.”
Bud cut in front
of him. “There’s nothing to discuss,” he said as he bolted out of the room.
Bud waited as
Mike unlocked his car and they both jumped in. Neither made any attempt at
conversation. On the way home, Mike almost turned up the road to their old
house in Aiea. Bud had chosen that house when they first moved to Hawaii
because it overlooked Pearl Harbor. The view from the house’s lanai sighted
straight in line with the Ford Island Airport runway that sat in the middle of
the harbor.
Bud then sold that
home and got together with Mike’s father-in-law to build a two-story duplex at
the top of Alewa Heights in Kalihi. Both dads split the purchase and construction
costs, giving the ownership as a wedding present to their children. The new unit—a
white with black trim house—offered a two-hundred-seventy-degree panoramic view
from Diamond Head to the plains of west Oahu. It was so high up you could see
inside Punchbowl Crater, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His
mother lay buried there and his dad would join her after he passed.
They pulled off
the freeway in Kalihi and drove up the four-mile meandering climb to the top of
Alewa Heights. It was an old ’50s neighborhood with narrow roads not meant for parking,
and odd-angled street intersections that made it difficult to recall which way
to turn.
Halfway up, at one
stop sign, you mounted a small steep hill. It forced you to trust that anyone driving
up on the other side stayed in their lane. Mike remembered how Spit liked to
recreate the scene in Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade, where Indy steps
out on the invisible ledge to find the chalice across the abyss. Every time,
Spit would place her right hand over her heart as they hit the peak, like Indy
in the movie, before having a fit of giggles. He couldn’t help but smile every
time he drove this way, even now that she was gone.
The Alewa house contained
three residences. Mike lived on the bottom level. The upper level held two
separate apartments; one for his father and one for Spit’s dad, along with a generous
communal area and a compact kitchen shared by both.
Mike parked in the
carport. Bud jumped out and climbed up the stairs to the entrance to the second-level
apartments he shared with Spit’s father, Tadashi Fujimoto. Tadashi ranked as a seventh
dan black belt in aikido, a martial art where the movements are designed around
a total defensive strategy. Everyone addressed him as Sensei.
Early in Mike’s
relationship with Spit, she had told him her dad had been a judo instructor in
Japan to Imperial Japanese Navy officer cadets during WWII. He’d lost most of
the vision in his left eye in a training mishap, which kept him from frontline
battle. After the war, he became absorbed in aikido in the late 1940s, admiring
its smooth defensive movements. He wound up devoting five years to mastering
aikido. In 1955, he’d gained employment at the Osaka Police Department to teach
aikido’s opponent-controlling tactics to new recruits.
Four years
later, Sensei got an opportunity, while on a Japan-sponsored goodwill trip to
Honolulu, to demonstrate his martial art skills to the island police
departments. He caught the attention of several top officers, who realized his
value and offered him employment in their cadet training school. Sensei had
jumped at the chance and moved to Hawaii. Over time, he picked up the basics of
English and, with the help of the police department, became a US citizen.
As he stepped
out of the car, Mike heard Sensei calling him from the curb. To keep in shape,
Sensei often took walks up and down Alewa Heights’ steep hills. Sensei was short,
balding, and slightly stooped, with his head constantly moving to give his good
eye the best view. Mike always marveled at how much Sensei resembled Shintaro Katsu,
the Japanese actor who played the long-standing role of the fictional
character, Zatoichi, a blind masseur, and
secret swordsman during Japan’s feudal period. His three daughters affectionately
called him “Z.”
Sensei marched
up to Mike and put his right hand on his shoulder. “Your dad no come home last
night. Any problems?”
“Yes, he’s got problems.”
Mike hesitated, then asked, “Can you call my cell phone if he’s not in by
midnight next time, please? Just for the next couple of nights? I’m worried
about him.”
His father-in-law
nodded yes, and Mike appreciated that he asked no details. There’d be another time
to ask for advice, which he always gave without judgment. Turning toward the
house, Mike bounced up the stairs ahead of Sensei and stepped inside the communal
area. He walked to his father’s door and lightly knocked.
“Come on in,”
his father mumbled. Bud’s apartment was a two-room suite with a full bath.
Sensei’s setup was the same on the opposite side of the house. Mike strode
through the navy-blue painted living room, which contained an old, dirty-brown La-Z-Boy
facing a twenty-five-inch TV on a flimsy stand. In the center of the room stood
a bulky antique dining table that Bud used to work on the museum plans. Behind
it, a one-of-a-kind rolltop desk sat pushed up against the outside wall, across
from the entry. The Hickam Air Force Base carpenters had built the beast in the
1940s. Made of solid koa wood, it weighed a ton and was worth its weight in
gold. Bud had his connections.
As Mike stepped
into the bedroom, he looked at his dad lying in bed on his back, staring at the
ceiling. At six feet, two inches, Bud seemed to smother his queen-size bed. He
still had a decent physique for his age, but hip problems slowed him down. Bud
didn’t turn to look at Mike. Bright fluorescent lights flooded the room. A faded
mahogany bedroom set—a wedding gift from his mother’s parents—was the only
furniture. Two low nightstands, a highboy dresser, and a four-poster bed.
Whenever he
entered Bud’s room, Mike’s eyes always gravitated to his parents’ wedding
picture, on the dresser in the far corner. They had been married three weeks
after Lieutenant Brennan returned from the Pacific War theater. Mom had worn a
simple off-white dress with a wide square neck, large buttons down the middle
of the front, and delicate lace draping off her shoulders. The photographer had
positioned the newlyweds looking to the left. Their life together had barely
begun.
After the war,
Bud used the GI Bill to enter an Ivy League school—Bucknell University. Because
he didn’t come from a well-bred family, Bucknell wouldn’t have touched him
before the war, but post-war, the government made them take him. In three years
he’d earned his electrical engineering degree and gotten a job at the
Pennsylvania Power and Light Company, where he worked until he moved with Mike
to Hawaii, two years after his mom had passed away.
Mike’s thoughts
returned to the present, and he observed his father exhale loudly and keep
shaking his head.
“I screwed up
royally. All these years. I thought it would never come up. I’m lost about what
to do, really lost.” Bud looked like he might cry.
“Well, things
may not be too bad,” Mike said. He was uncomfortable with his father’s
outburst. They had developed a long-standing unspoken agreement on dealing with
emotions. Both kept their own council. This is what it had evolved into over
the last twenty-plus years since his mom passed. Small talk only, don’t bring
up heavy stuff, and no venting of feelings. Mom had been their heart, their
glue, but she was gone.
“Not today’s
shit,” Bud said. He paused and closed his eyes and whispered, “I thought I’d never
again have to deal with that damn black cat sub.”
Mike leaned over
his dad. “What are you talking about? What sub? The sub that rescued you in the
Pacific at the end of the war?”
“No, not that one.
The first one that saved me.”
His dad rolled
over onto his side, away from him. “Never mind. I’m tired and need to sleep. We’ll
talk later.”
Mike blinked
twice, then roughly ran his fingers through his hair. He stood there, unsure of
what to say or do next. Within a few minutes he heard Bud’s heavy breathing, so
he switched off the overhead lights, closed the bedroom door, and wandered into
the communal area. Sensei sat on the sofa waiting for him.
“Sensei, I need
to go back to work. I hope we can talk later.”
“Sure thing, Mike.
When you ready.”
