Taizo and Jiro’s spines stiffened.
“You once made us an offer, Sheriff,” Jiro said, ignoring Dreesen’s rudeness, “of sixty-five hundred dollars for our land.”
Dreesen nodded. “I did, at that. But that was a long time ago. We find ourselves in a new world today, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Jiro agreed quietly.
“I keep up with local property values. And today I’d judge the value of your land as no more than—five thousand dollars. And I’m being generous.”
Jiro looked to Taizo, who replied for him: “That is a fair appraisal, and we would be agreeable to such a sum in purchase of … ninety acres of land.”
Dreesen raised an eyebrow. “Your spread’s a hundred acres, ain’t it?”
“Yes. We will sell you everything but the house, barn, and the ten acres of land surrounding it, which we would reserve for our own use.”
Dreesen said flatly, “That wasn’t the deal we discussed.”
“As you say: We find ourselves in a new world,” Taizo replied. “Only ten acres, but enough for us to feed our family. How else are we to survive?”
“Ain’t my concern. Go back to Japan, I don’t care. It’s all or nothing.”
Jiro and Taizo called upon every bit of Japanese reserve they possessed. “What you propose,” Taizo said, “is little better than allowing the bank to foreclose on our property. And if that happens, you get nothing.”
“Then the bank will put it up for auction and I can bid on it. Maybe get it for even less.”
“You might not place the winning bid.”
Dreesen smiled his lupine smile. “I’m a gambler. I’ll take my chances.”
Then Jiro suddenly spoke up. “What if I were to suggest a way—in which we all get what we desire?”
Dreesen snorted. “And what might that be, Watanabe-san?”
“We sell you all one hundred acres, buildings included—which you then lease back to us. We work the land for you—we Japanese are good farmers, you said so yourself. We do the work, you get the profits—less a percentage of the harvest you pay for our labor.”
Taizo was as startled by this idea as Dreesen seemed to be. “You talkin’ about sharecropping?”
“Leasing, sharecropping, whatever you wish to call it.”
“Leasing land to Japs is illegal in California.”
“And yet it is still done. You already have such an arrangement with Mr. Ochida, do you not? How did you get around the letter of the law, Sheriff?”—a mild barb sheathed in that last word.
Dreesen frowned. “Mr. Ochida and his son are managers, not tenants. Nothing illegal about it.”
“There you are, then. We will be your managers. You may employ us only as long as the farm is making money. If it does not, you may end our employment and work the land yourself, or sell it for a profit. If it does make money, we work the land in exchange for fifty percent of the harvest.”
Dreesen reflexively countered, “Forty percent.”
“Forty percent, providing you supply us with feed and supplies. I believe that is customary in such arrangements.”
Dreesen looked torn. Taizo judged that his greed had taken up arms against his hatred of the Japanese.
“You wily goddamn Japs,” Dreesen finally spat out. But the expletive was followed by a grudging laugh. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t argue with that. Saves me the trouble of hiring laborers. And forty percent of the harvest is probably less money than I’d pay in salary.”
He stood up, all business now. “All right. I’ll have contracts drawn up and a check cut. As long as you make money for me, you can stay. But the minute that farm goes into the red, I’ll have you evicted faster than you can say sayonara. Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly.” Jiro held out his hand. To Taizo’s surprise, Dreesen took it.
“You’re a damn sight better businessman than I gave you credit for, Watanabe-san,” he said.
Taizo was thinking exactly the same thing.
Outside, Taizo marveled, “It was an inspired idea, Jiro, but—where on earth did it come from?”
“My first job in California was as a laborer on a sharecropper’s farm. I had forgotten all about Ochida-san and his arrangement with Dreesen until the sheriff mentioned him. I gambled that he would not pass up the chance to have us ‘wily Japs’ under his thumb.”
“And you were right,” Taizo said. “Well done, Niisan.”
The honorific touched Jiro, and brought a smile to his face.
* * *
The Depression was terrible, of course, but Ruth was facing an even more implacable enemy: puberty.
She stood in her bedroom, back flat against a wall as if facing a firing squad, keeping her head level. With her left hand she raised a pencil to the top of her head and made a little stroke on the wallpaper behind her.
“Dai?” came her mother’s voice through the door. “Are you ready?”
“Not yet, Okāsan!”
She positioned one end of her mother’s cloth measuring tape by the baseboard, holding it in place with her toe while her fingers raised the tape up to the pencil mark—one of many made in previous years.
The cruel calculus of numbers decreed that Ruth stood sixty-four inches tall, confirming what she already knew.
Angrily she hurled the tape onto her bed, tears welling in her eyes.
“You do not want to be late for your first day at school, butterfly,” her mother called out to her.
“I’m not going to school!”
A sigh from the other side of the door. “And what should I tell your teachers?”
“Tell them I’m dead. Tell them I died of … colossalitis!”
“That is not a real disease, butterfly,” came Etsuko’s amused reply.
“It is and I’m dying of it!”
Ruth—all five feet four inches of her—threw open the door. She was wearing a colorful print dress, knee stockings, and high-top shoes. “Look at me!” she cried. “I’m a circus freak!”
“Dai, you are not a ‘freak.’”
“Look!” She pointed at the height chart on the wall. “I grew an entire inch this summer alone! Three inches since last year!”
Indeed, her mother—petite, like most Japanese women—had to crane her head to address her. “You have gone through a growth spurt, that is all,” Etsuko reassured her. “Your body is still growing.”
“You mean like these?” Fruitlessly she adjusted her bra straps. “I’ve had this thing on for ten minutes and I’m already sweating like a stuck pig.”
“You are overexcited. Calm down.”
“Why is this happening to me? Why won’t I stop growing?”
Etsuko calmly took her hands in hers and squeezed them in the way that always made Ruth less anxious. “As I’ve told you before: it is probably your hapa half, your Hawaiian blood, that makes you a bit taller than most Japanese girls your age.”
“I hate being hapa,” she snapped. “I hate being half Hawaiian! Why can’t I look like everybody else?”
“You are who you are, Dai—a beautiful young girl who will grow up to be a beautiful woman. Every girl your age goes through changes like these. Now put on your ‘outside face’ like a good Japanese girl and go to school.”
“Outside face” meant the face she showed in public—quiet, not boisterous or emotional, to preserve the family honor. Ruth bowed her head, stoically accepting her fate, and went downstairs to get her box lunch and a thermos of tea. Ralph and Stanley, who had moved on to Elk Grove Union High—unlike Florin’s schools, not segregated by race—were already in the kitchen. Ralph smiled at Ruth and said, “Good try, Sis. I’d be happy to take a couple of inches off your hands, if I knew how.”
Ralph was short for a sixteen-year-old Nisei boy, barely five feet tall. Together they looked like Mutt and Jeff. “You’re welcome to them, Niisan.”
“Buck up, Sis. It won’t be so bad.”
“It’ll be worse.”