Under the Blood-Red Sun Read Online Free Page A

knew that much. But I didn’t really think about it. Not like Papa, anyway,who was very interested in it. And over at Billy’s house I saw magazines that had war pictures in them—burned cars and trucks, and busted-up towns, and tired, beaten soldiers. They even showed pictures of dead people. I couldn’t stop looking at those. But who wanted to think about it?
    “Naah,” Rico finally said. “Why us? The U.S. not bothering nobody.”
    “Keet Wilson told my brother that we’d be in the war before next summer,” Billy said. “And he said we’re all going to end up dead before we’re twenty-one.”
    “Dead from what?” Mose asked.
    “The Germans.”
    “Stupit,” Rico said, shaking his head. “Why?” Billy asked.
    “Listen.” Rico tapped Billy’s arm with the back of his hand. “Even if we got in the war, look—just on this island we got the stupit army, we got the navy, we got the air force and even the marines. No Germans are going to last long against those guys. And we got soldiers all over the mainland, too, I bet.”
    Billy stared at his baseball, running the tip of his finger over the lacing. Rico was probably right. Army guys were all over the place. They had maneuvers all the time. Down on the west end of the island you could sometimes see smoke rising into the sky, with pursuit fighters above, circling like flies.
    And last summer, Mr. Davis drove me and Billy up toward Wheeler Field and Schofield Barracks. You could see convoys of green trucks and jeeps raising dust on the red-dirt roads past the cane fields. We stopped to watch.When Mr. Davis turned off the engine, you could hear shooting in the hills, little popping sounds and the rattle of machine-gun fire. It was strange to think of that going on while the rest of us went fishing and played baseball.
    “Yeah,” Billy said. “You’re right … I guess it just feels funny that the Germans shot at one of
our
ships, that’s all.”
    “Hey,” Rico said to Billy. “I know what you can tell that guy … what’s his name?”
    “Keet.”
    “Anyway, tell him to go down to Pearl Harbor and look at one of those new aircraft carriers.
Big
, man, and they got plenty planes. All that guy has to do is see one of those things and his worries will be over.”
    “Yeah,” Mose said, nodding. “And the army got howitzers and bazookas and more guns like that too.”
    “Shhh,” Rico said. “Forget the stupit army. They just Boy Scouts.”
    “And what about the pursuit fighters?” I added. “They’d shoot any German ships before they could even get close to us.”
    Billy thought for a minute, holding the ball in the knuckle-ball grip. “I don’t think Keet is worried about the war.”
    “Why not?” Rico asked.
    Billy shrugged. “He likes that kind of stuff.”
    “What stuff?”
    “Guns. Shooting things.”
    I wanted to add that if he liked it so much he should join the army. That would solve a lot of problems. But I kept my mouth shut. Papa might hear about it.

The Emperor
    After school , Mose and Rico walked with me and Billy to the bus stop.
    “Hey,” Billy said, “thanks again for the ball.”
    “You earned it,” Mose said. I think he was pleased that the ball had meant so much to Billy.
    Rico flicked his eyebrows like that Groucho guy in the movies, then he and Mose continued on down the road to where they lived.
    Tough Boy Gary Ferris, who was third baseman on the Rats, caught up and joined them. Tough Boy was built like a garbage can. He was short and had big muscles, and was held in high esteem by Rico, because he was the younger brother of Tina, who lived in Rico’s dreams as his future girlfriend. The three of them walked away like they were on a rocking boat, bumping into each other with their shoulders.
    I followed Billy onto the bus, the last two in line. We squeezed our way to the back. Everyone knew our seat, so nobody was sitting there. Billy stared out the window and tossed his new baseball from one hand to the