Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

Here came the beach. The wave was played out, mastered. The surfboard scraped against sand. Some of the men fishing in the surf clapped their hands. One of them tossed Oscar a shiny silver coin, as if he were a trained seal getting a sardine. He dug the coin out of the soft white sand. It was a half-dollar. That was real money. “Thanks, pal,” he said as he stuck it in the small pocket on his swim trunks.

He took down the sailboard’s mast and boom and rolled up the small sail that propelled it. Farther from the sea than the surf fishermen, a couple of Japanese Army officers watched him. Oscar muttered to himself. He wouldn’t have come in so spectacularly had he known he was under their cold stare. He felt like a rabbit hopping around while hawks soared overhead.

Then one of them tossed him a coin. The one-yen silverpiece was about the size of a quarter, and worth about as much. When he picked it up, he had to remember to bow to the Jap. The officer returned the bow, much more elegantly than he’d given it. “Ichi-ban,” the Jap said. “Wakarimasu-ka?”

Oscar nodded to show he did understand. Ichi-ban was part of the local pidgin a kamaaina -an old-timer in Hawaii-picked up. It meant A number one, or something like that.

“Thanks,” Oscar said, as politely as he could. You never knew when one of these monkeys turned out to speak English. “Thanks very much.”

And sure as hell, this one answered, “You are welcome.” If he hadn’t gone to school in the States, Oscar would have been surprised. They might even have been at Stanford at the same time; they weren’t far apart in age.

Oscar carried the surfboard, mast, and rigging under one arm and the stringbag full of fish in his other hand. He hoped these Japs wouldn’t give him a hard time about that. Just about all food was supposed to go into community kitchens, share and share alike. They allowed sampan fishermen enough for what they called “personal use”; the rest of the catch they bought at a fixed price, so much per pound regardless of what kind of fish it was. So far, the Japs hadn’t harried the men who fished from sailboards-they didn’t catch enough to make a fuss over. But the occupiers could harass them if they wanted to. They could do almost anything they wanted to.

To his relief, this pair just nodded to him as he walked by. Maybe they admired the show he’d put on, and didn’t bother him because of that. Maybe… Who the hell knew for sure with Japs? All he knew for sure was, they weren’t going to worry about his fish. That was all he needed to know, too.

He had an apartment not far from Waikiki Beach-a perfect place for a fellow who made his living surf-riding. The man who owned the building was a local Japanese who lived on the ground floor. Oscar knocked on his door. When the man answered, Oscar presented him with a couple of fat mackerel.

“Here you go, Mr. Fukumoto,” he said. “Another week, eh?”

His landlord examined the fish. “Okay. Another week,” he said in accented English. Oscar went upstairs to his own place. He would have bet more business got done by barter than with cash these days. Money, very often, couldn’t buy food.

Once back in his apartment, Oscar put some of the fish in the little icebox in the cramped kitchenette. That would feed him and his lady friend for a bit. The rest of the catch stayed in the stringbag. Out he went, bound for Honolulu, and especially for the Oriental district there, the section west of Nuuanu Avenue.

The markets in that part of town were fluctuating things, popping up now here, now there. They were, at best, marginally legal. Oscar suspected-no, he was sure-some Japanese palms got greased to make sure some Japanese eyes looked the other way. People who caught things and people who grew things traded and sold what they had. Money could buy food there, all right-if you had enough of it.

With fish in hand, Oscar could almost name his own price for it. But he wasn’t out for cash, or not primarily. He traded some of his catch for tomatoes, some for potatoes, some for string beans, and some for a small, squat jug. What he had left after that… well, greenbacks would do.

He could have got a ride back to Waikiki, but rickshaws and pedicabs stuck in his craw. Just because you paid a man to act like a beast of burden, that didn’t mean he ought to be one. While there’d been gasoline-and diesel fuel for buses-such contraptions hadn’t existed in Honolulu. They did now. His own Chevy was long since hors de combat .

But Oscar didn’t mind shank’s mare. He got back to the apartment a little before Susie Higgins came in. Susie was a cute strawberry blonde, a divorcee from Pittsburgh. Oscar had taught her to ride the surf. She’d taught him a few things, too. She had both a temper and an eye for the main chance. They’d quarreled, broken up, and come back together a few weeks before.

Her eyes, as blue as a Siamese cat’s, lit up when she saw the potatoes. “Spuds! Oscar, I could kiss you!” she said, and she did. “I’m so goddamn sick of rice, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Rice is a lot better than empty,” Oscar observed.

“My boss says the same thing,” Susie answered. Though just a tourist, she’d landed a secretary’s job after she and Oscar parted the first time. She’d done it with talent, too, not with her fair tanned body. As if to prove as much, she added, “Of course, his wife’s Chinese, so he’s used to the stuff.”

“Long as my belly doesn’t growl too loud, I’m not fussy,” Oscar said. “I don’t mind rice. As many Japanese and Chinese places as I’ve been to, I’d better not.”

“It’s not American,” Susie said. “Once in a while is okay, I guess, but all the time?” She shook her head.

“I feel like my eyes are getting slanty.”

“Forget it, babe,” Oscar told her. “You can eat rice till everything turns blue, and you still won’t look like a Jap.”

“Oh, Oscar, you say the sweetest things.” Was that sarcasm? With Susie, it was sometimes hard to tell. These days, she and Oscar cooked on a hot plate. He’d got that before the fighting ended, and it was one of the smarter things he’d done. You couldn’t lay your hands on one for love or money these days. Gas was as kaput as gasoline or diesel fuel, but Honolulu still had electricity. A hot plate wasn’t the ideal cooking tool-far from it-but it beat the hell out of a stove that didn’t work.

“Now for another exciting evening,” Susie said after she washed the dishes and he dried them. “We can’t go out dancing because there’s a curfew. We can’t listen to the radio because the Japs confiscated all the sets. So what does that leave? Cribbage?” She made a face.

There was, of course, another possibility, but Oscar didn’t name it. Susie was, or could be, a holy terror between the sheets, but she always liked to think it was her idea, not that she was being pushed into it. But then Oscar snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot!” he said, and showed off the jug he’d got that afternoon.

“What’s that?” Susie suddenly sounded hopeful.

“It’s okolehao, ” Oscar answered.

“Holy cow?” Susie frowned in confusion.

Oscar laughed, but maybe she wasn’t so far wrong. “It’s Hawaii hooch, Maui moonshine. They make the genuine article from ti root, and it’ll put hair on anybody’s chest.” Hair would not have improved Susie’s, but he didn’t feel like editing himself. Instead, he went on, “God only knows how good this batch is, but it’s booze. Want a slug?”

“You bet I do,” she said. He poured her a knock, and one for himself, too. They clinked mismatched glasses, then sipped. Susie’s eyes got enormous. She coughed a couple of times. “Holy cow!” she wheezed, and looked respectfully at the glass. “I don’t think it’s very good, but it’s sure as hell strong.”