Under the Blood-Red Sun Read Online Free

fight downtown. “That’s a good idea, Tomi, but what’s so special about pigeons?” He smiled.
    “You ever seen a tumbler fly?”
    “Never even heard of a tumbler.”
    “So, there. That’s a pigeon. Not many people have seen those kind. They do somersaults in the air … while they are flying. You wouldn’t believe it. They go around and around and flip. It’s crazy. Someone must have bred that into them hundreds of years ago. I’d like to research that and—”
    “Okay, okay,” Mr. Ramos said, putting his hands up. “How could I turn away that kind of enthusiasm? So … what about the rest of those juvenile delinquents you run around with? Are they even
thinking about
it?”
    “Sure,” I said. “But they don’t want to talk about it. Someone might steal their ideas.”
    “I should have thought of that,” Mr. Ramos said. “Well, get them to tell
me
. I won’t steal them.”
    He was okay, Mr. Ramos.
    And he was smart too. Mose told me that out of all his hundreds of relatives, Mr. Ramos was the only one who’d ever gotten a scholarship to college. And not only that,he got it from the famous University of Notre Dame. On the mainland.
    Mose said Mr. Ramos was actually a lawyer, but he gave it up after his sixteen-year-old brother got arrested and sent to reform school for robbing a store. “It really got to him,” Mose said. “He blamed himself, you know. He said he should have spent more time with his little brother. Maybe he could have prevented it.”
    So Mr. Ramos quit being a lawyer and went back to school to become a teacher. “Those boys out there need somebody
before
, not
after
, they get into trouble,” Mr. Ramos told Rico’s father. Rico’s father said he was crazy, he’d make a lot more money as a lawyer. But Mr. Ramos said he would make enough as a teacher, and besides, money wasn’t the reason he was doing it.
    I didn’t know anyone in school who wasn’t glad he’d made that change.
    “Shoot, you going be president of the U.S. someday,” Rico said as I dropped down in the shade. “You just keep on kissing up to Mr. Uncle Ramos like that.”
    I shoved him with my elbow, and he shoved back, then we settled down into our usual talk about nothing important.
    But something was bothering Billy. He leaned against the stucco building with his knees up and his elbows resting on them.
    After a few minutes Mose nudged him. “You pretty quiet today, Billy. Something wrong?”
    “Naw …”
    “Come on, I can tell.”
    Billy glanced at Mose, then looked away. “I just hate to think I can’t go to Roosevelt next year, that’s all.”
    We were all quiet a moment. It was a junk thought. The four of us had been together a long time. It would sure be different when Billy was gone, even if we still saw each other after school.
    “It’s expensive, you know, that school,” Rico said.
    “Yeah,” Mose added, “but
haoles
got the money.”
    “Some do,” Billy said. “But
haoles
are just like anyone else—some poor, some rich, but most are just regular.”
    “No kidding,” Rico said, shaking his head. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if it was really news to him.
    Billy practically rubbed his hands raw, working the newness off the baseball, like he was mad at it, or something. After a while, he stopped rubbing and put the ball to his nose to smell it. “You guys ever heard of the
Greer?”
    Rico shrugged. “What’s that?”
    “A U.S. destroyer. Yesterday a German submarine shot at it. They didn’t sink it, but they
shot
at it somewhere in the Atlantic.”
    Billy tossed the ball from hand to hand, frowning at it. “Do any of you …” He thought for a second, then went on. “Do any of you think we’re going to get dragged into the war?”
    Nobody said anything for a minute.
    We all knew there was a war going on, but far away—between Japan and China. And also between Germany and France. Germany was winning and taking over all the countries around it. It was pretty bad, I