her legs apart.
“Shoot it in between my legs,” she said.
“He shoots, he scores!” a tall boy called out as he walked toward them. He had a nose full of freckles and bright blue-green eyes with lashes that were almost invisible. Tufts of golden hair stuck out from his green toque.
Kiko clutched Michiko’s arm as he approached. Her eyes filled with anxiety.
“Hi, Clarence,” Michiko said to the tall lanky boy. She wasn’t surprised to see him. He often walked into town along the railroad tracks. Michiko gave him a big smile.
Hiro grinned and put his arms up in the air when the boy approached. Clarence picked him up and swung him around. “You should be playing baseball,” he said putting him down.
Clarence searched the ground for a thick stick. He showed Hiro how to toss a rock in the air and hit it. Hiro gave it a swipe but missed.
Michiko turned to Kiko. “This is Clarence,” she said. Clarence was the only kid in town who made friends with her when she arrived. “Clarence, this is Kiko Sagara.”
“Where are you going?” Kiko asked.
“Your place,” Clarence responded. “Ma sent me out for soap.” His face puckered, making all his freckles mash together. “She’s dragged out the tin tub and is making everyone take a bath, now that the weather is nice.”
“My father will be happy to sell you soap,” Michiko told him. “You’ll be the one person who doesn’t want soya sauce.”
“Doesn’t your house have a bathtub?” Kiko asked as she looked him up and down. “I thought everyone in town had a bathtub.”
Michiko knew that Clarence lived in a small wooden house with a corrugated iron roof and a little grey shed out back for a toilet, like the houses in the orchard. She was grateful she no longer had to follow the hard-packed path to the outhouse they had to use on the farm. She remembered what it was like sitting on the cold porcelain seat, fighting off spiders.
Clarence shook his head. “I don’t live in town.”
“Me neither,” said Kiko. “Our tub is so small you can only put one foot in at a time.”
Michiko changed the subject. She couldn’t help feeling guilty that she had a toilet with a pull handle, bathtub, and plenty of hot water. “What we need,” she said, “is a swim. Then we can all get clean at the same time.”
“That’s so funny you said that,” Kiko said, clapping her hands together. “That’s my secret. The men in the orchard are going to build an ofuro!”
Chapter Three
THE GARDEN
“There won’t be any work done on a bathhouse until everyone has put in their garden,” Sam told the family when Michiko shared the news at dinner.
He was right. Everyone in the orchard hoped to harvest a few vegetables before the next winter. They spent April slashing away the crabgrass and thistles in order to plant their small patch of land. From dawn to dusk they bent over the hard soil hoeing. Then they carted water from the ground tap at the end of each street.
Geechan spent the mild spring days wandering the lakeshore, creek bed, and forest paths collecting rocks. He especially liked the ones with rainbow colours.
“Ashi o kiosukete kudasai,” he muttered every time a rock thudded to the ground at the back of the drugstore. Michiko heard him say it often as she took the sheets from the line.
“Why does Geechan tell the rocks to take care of their feet?” she asked her mother when she took a basket of dry linen inside. “Doesn’t he mean watch out for his toes?”
Her mother lifted a sheet from the basket. “He’s speaking to his invisible plant,” Eiko said with a smile. “Once he has a large circle of stones he will fill it with soil and make a garden.” She folded the sheet. “He knows if you plant by rocks, vegetables will grow faster. The rocks catch the sun and keep plant roots warm.”
A sound like a giant knife scraping across toast made Michiko hop out of bed and look out her bedroom window. The early morning sun spilled across the yard. As usual, Geechan was up and working before anyone else. Michiko watched him drag his hoe across the ground. Then he lifted it in the air and brought it down hard. The ground broke. He scraped, lifted, and broke the ground a second time. In this rhythmic pattern, Geechan worked his way from the back of the garden to the front. Then he paused, removed a handkerchief from his back pocket, leaned on the hoe, and mopped his brow.
Michiko put on knee socks that no longer came up to her knee, blue drill pants that had been let down twice, and a navy sweater with patches across the elbows. By the time she ate breakfast and pulled on her rubber boots, the first long furrow of broken soil waited. She watched a robin land. He cocked his head to the ground. Then he pulled a soft worm from the ground and flew away.
“What’s this row going to be?” Michiko asked.
Geechan shrugged and made his way to the back of the garden to start again.
“I hope we are putting in potatoes,” Clarence announced, appearing from the side of the building. A burlap sack swung at his side as he walked. He wore a flannel shirt and denim pants with a small hole in one of the knees. Thick striped socks topped his scuffed hobnailed boots. “I just love potatoes.”
“What’s in the bag?” Michiko asked. She was pleased Clarence remembered to come.
“I made three of them,” Clarence announced proudly, “one for you, Hiro, and me.” He placed the sack at Michiko’s feet.
“They just look like cans to me,” Michiko said, opening the sack and peering inside.
“They are cans.” Clarence pulled one out and showed her the rows of small holes in the bottom. “They’re watering cans. You dip it in the bucket and move it along the row.”
“Good thinking,” Ted commented, striding into the yard. He shouldered a shovel, pickaxe, and hoe, his strong carpenter hands clamped over their wooden handles. His open shirt revealed a snow-white undershirt. His deep black eyes sparkled.
“Something for each of us,” Ted said, letting the tools clatter to the ground. “You pick.”
“I pick the pick,” Clarence said. “I’ve always wanted to strike gold like a prospector.”
“You mean silver,” Michiko corrected. “This used to be silver town, not gold.”
“This town is nothing but a ghost town now,” Ted said as he lifted the shovel.
“Don’t forget to plant peonies for prosperity,” Michiko’s Aunt Sadie called out to them from the back door. She put the red-painted tips of her long straight fingers to her lips and blew Michiko a kiss. Hiro, in her arms, played with the pompons dangling from her sweater.
Looking at her mother’s elegant sister, most people would think Sadie was too haikara for hard work. But when they first arrived she had chopped wood, hauled water, and scrubbed clothes just like everyone else. If anyone needed help, she would be the first
