That morning Taizo was tasked with picking hot chili peppers and was provided with gloves to prevent any contact with the capsacin oil, which burned like a firebrand if it touched the skin, mouth, or eyes. Harvesting peppers also required a delicate touch, since the branches were fragile and liable to break if tugged too hard. Taizo used hand pruners to snip the ripe peppers from the branch, then deposited them into a basket. By ten o’clock the temperature had climbed to ninety degrees, and Taizo had to stop himself from using his gloved hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. He remembered to drink water and take his salt pills, which seemed to be working: by midday he hadn’t experienced much muscle cramping.
The crew ate lunch in the cool shadow of Mount Williamson and then it was on to the cornfield. Taizo was told how to judge whether an ear was ready to be harvested—the end of the ear should be rounded and blunt, not pointed—but it took him a few tries to find the right angle to twist the ear off the stalk, then toss it into the wagon following alongside. He had to find his rhythm quickly to keep up with the wagon—a fast look, twist, snap off the ear, toss it into the wagon, then repeat the process for the next ear of corn. After ten minutes he hit a good pace—look, twist, snap, toss—and used his sleeve to wipe away the sweat that was dripping from his brow.
After an hour Taizo began to tire but—seeing the Nisei workers around him not slackening their pace—he pushed on.
* * *
Ralph came by that afternoon and was as surprised and charmed by Snowball as the kids and Etsuko had been. But it didn’t take long for him to turn to Ruth and Frank and suggest, “You two want to take a little walk?” At Manzanar, walking the camp was the closest thing to privacy you could find. Etsuko agreed to stay with the children and Snowball, who was now rambunctiously jumping from cot to cot as if they were trampolines.
They walked down to B Street and, safely out of earshot, Ralph said, “Sorry, Sis, about cutting you off with Chiye this morning. But trust me, you don’t want to spill a lot of loose talk around reporters.”
“What’s this about?” Frank asked. Ruth told Frank about her close brush with the Black Dragons as well as her experience with the woman at the post office.
“Yeah, I can believe that,” Ralph said, nodding. “There’s a ton of anger and resentment in this place. Grievances against the administration over living conditions, shortages of meat and sugar … and Christ, there are more political factions than at an anarchists’ convention!”
“No kidding,” said Frank. “On my first day I had to choose between two different kitchen worker unions.”
“Yeah, a surprising amount of dissension comes out of the mess halls. Harry Ueno, the head chef at Mess Hall 22, founded the Mess Hall Workers’ Union, while Fred Tayama at Mess Hall 24 started a competing group that’s very pro-administration. Fred also belongs to the Japanese American Citizens League—they’re so gung-ho America they probably shit red, white, and blue turds.” Ruth and Frank laughed. “And you’ve met the Blood Brothers, a.k.a. the Black Dragons. They hate the JACL because they claim JACL leaders in Los Angeles like Tayama were working with the FBI, ratting out innocent Issei to the Feds. They claim he’s still informing at Manzanar.”
“How do you know all this?” Ruth wanted to know.
“Because with my usual half-assed luck, I find myself smack in the middle of another faction—many of the Free Press staff are Communists, but they’re rabidly antifascist and pro-America Communists. How do you like them apples?”
“It sounds,” Frank said, “like what you get when you rip ten thousand innocent people out of their homes, put them all in one square mile of desert, and surround them with a barbed-wire fence.”
“Is there anything we can do about any of this?” Ruth asked.
“Not a damn thing, Sis. Just keep your head low and watch your step. You never know when you’ll step on a goddamn landmine.”
* * *
By midafternoon Taizo was still keeping up the bruising pace—look, twist, snap, toss—but was breathing harder, his pulse pounding in his temples. His skin felt hot, but at least he wasn’t sweating as much. None of the younger workers seemed to be having any difficulty, so he refused to betray his own. Look, twist, snap, toss. The sun was too damned bright, it was giving him a throbbing headache, and … Suddenly he felt nauseous and dizzy, as if he were seasick; he struggled to keep his balance. Twist—snap—
He stopped, the ear of corn still in his hand, momentarily disoriented.
“Pop!”
Horace’s voice. He turned toward it. Horace was running toward him and Taizo’s head was suddenly spinning on some new, terrible axis—
And then night covered him like a black tarpaulin.
* * *
Ruth, Etsuko, and Ralph hurried into the hospital, a two-story, 250-bed facility in the northeast corner of the camp. At the nurses’ station in the men’s ward, they were told that Taizo was in Room 3—but the room was empty. They returned to the nurses’ station and this time a different nurse—a pretty young woman with a warm smile whose nametag identified her as NURSE ETO—told them, “I know where he is, come with me.”
They followed her to the bathroom, where a young, handsome Nisei doctor was bent over a bathtub—the first bathtub Ruth had seen in four months!—with a stethoscope pressed against her father’s chest. Next to him stood another nurse—and Horace. “Mom!” he called out. “Come on in!”
Etsuko went to him as Ruth and Jiro watched from the doorway. All but Taizo’s head was immersed in water, a damp cloth covering his forehead.
“Is he all right?” Etsuko asked anxiously.
“He’s suffering from heatstroke,” Nurse Eto explained. “He’s being immersed in cool water in order to lower his body temperature.”
The doctor took away the stethoscope and said, “Heartbeat is back to normal, and his temp is down to a hundred and one.” He stood, held out his hand instinctively to Etsuko. “Mrs. Watanabe, I take it?”
“Yes. Will he be all right?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’m Dr. Goto, chief of medical services. Your son says Mr. Watanabe had heat cramps yesterday. It’s not unusual to see that progress to heat exhaustion or heatstroke.” As he spoke, the second nurse gently dabbed Taizo’s face with a wet sponge. “We see this especially with older patients who aren’t used to temperatures in the high desert.”
“Is he awake?” Etsuko asked. “May we speak with him?”
“Sure, for a couple of minutes.”
Etsuko went to her husband’s side at the bathtub, sat down on a stool. “Otōsan? Can you hear me?”
His eyes half opened. He took in the sight of his family with mild alarm. “Have I awakened at my own funeral?” he said weakly.
Everyone laughed. “You are going to be fine,” Etsuko said. “It was too hot out there for you, that’s all.”
Taizo nodded. His eyes drooped closed as he drifted back to sleep.
“I think that’s all for now,” Dr. Goto said. “Nurse Eto, will you assist Nurse Sasaki?” He took the Watanabes into the ward and told them, “We’re going to keep him for a day or two to make sure the sunstroke hasn’t done any damage to his brain or other organs. Then after he’s discharged, he needs to stay inside, rest, and avoid the sun and further exertion for at least a week…”
“Doc,” Ralph said, “should a man his age really be out there working the fields in this kind of heat?”
“If he were my father, I’d advise against it.” Ruth’s heart sank at the doctor’s words. “I know how much pride Issei men take in working, but … that’s a conversation you might have with him once he’s recovered.”
* * *
Taizo was discharged two days later and had no objection to resting at home for the rest of that week. When Ruth brought Snowball over to meet him, her father seemed quite taken with her; as a cat lover he heartily approved of the new addition to the family.
When Ruth and Horace gingerly brought up the subject of whether Taizo should stop working in the fields, he was surprisingly unresistant. “Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose that might be for the best.” He did not tell his family of the intense shame he felt, having fainted in front of all the younger workers. Surely they must have thought him a weak old man, unfit for hard labor. He could not bear the thought of going back among them, of seeing the naked pity in their eyes.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.