No such luck tonight. In no time, the car is so close behind me that I can hear the gears shift and grind, the engine roaring. No way I’ll get off the road in time. I run zigzag until my lungs are about to burst, knowing they’re just teasing me as they fall behind, only to speed up again. Run! Run! I think. The fence is just up ahead. I get cocky, believe I’m going to make it. A story to tell the grandkids, I think, when the car clips me the first time, a dull thud against my right hip, sending me hard to the ground. Hurts like hell, yeah. I try to get up but the pain shoots straight up my body to my teeth and I can hardly move. I reach down to my boot, the pain so bad I want to puke, relieved when I finally feel the solid weight of my father’s razor in the palm of my hand. I swing it open. The car backs up, idling in the middle of the road. I slowly drag myself toward the side of the road. Not going to make it easy for the bastard, yeah. At least put him into a ditch so deep he can’t get out of it. But the fucker knows what I’m thinking. I hear the car gun its engine and accelerate like a wild animal on the hunt coming straight for me.

I turn back toward the field to see Laki waiting for me just like always, big and gray and howling in the moonlight. Twelve years since I’ve seen him and my heart races at the sight. My eyes burn at the thought. “Almost there, boy. Good boy,” I whisper.

Shooting the Moon: December 27–31, 1935

Shooting the Moon

December 27–31, 1935

41. Blackbirds

41

Blackbirds

“The Alala!”

“The Alala are coming!”

Excited voices drifted into the market from the street. It didn’t take long for the army planes to be nicknamed Alala by the old-timers after the blackbirds they resembled in the sky. “Cawing crows up to no good,” someone added. Koji stopped when a young man paused to shout the news again through the screen door before he ran off down the street. He had just finished helping Samuel clean and filet a large ahi tuna the boys had brought back earlier that morning and was loading it into the icebox when all the commotion began outside.

Word had finally come the day after Christmas that the bombing would take place the following morning, on December 27. Koji touched the tender tracks across his forehead after Daniel had removed his stitches just yesterday under Nori’s watchful eye. In a few more weeks the angry-looking marks would begin to fade, leaving a faint memory. Koji stopped a moment to listen. He finally heard a low drone in the far-off distance.