Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury

with him as far as diamond grass. We couldn’t stop talking about Lucky’s puppies. I was going to train one to shake hands, and Billy was going to teach Red to catch tennis balls.
    “Good luck,” I said. “If Red is anything like Lucky, all he’s going to do is sleep and chew those balls to rags.”
    Just then, the night sky exploded into rays of light. Searchlights. The mountains behind us looked flat and close in the beams that crawled along the ridges.
    Billy read my mind. We took off for the banyan tree, stumbling through the ghostly jungle half-lit by the glowing clouds. I followed Billy up the massive trunk into the branches. We clawed our way to the top, where there was an opening in the leaves. My legs felt rubbery, I’d climbed so fast.
    “Holy moly,” Billy said, gawking out toward the horizon. From where we were you could see the whole side of the island and miles and miles of ocean. There must have been fifty searchlights, some shining into the sky, some running along the mountains, and some blasting out to sea, scanning the water.
    “Maneuvers,” Billy said.
    “Yeah … incredible.”
    Long, straight beams of blue-white light crisscrossed each other, back and forth, slicing through the black night. And far out on the ocean, you could see dots of ships caught like roaches in the powerful beams.
    A breeze whisked up from the town below, bringingwith it the night smell of seawater and honeysuckle mixed together. I leaned closer to the branch, gripping it tighter, its sandpapery bark pinching my palms.
    Then the lights went out.
    The island turned black. Only small yellow lights from the city sparkled below, like distant camphires. Far away in the hills on the west end of the island, red flashes flickered in the sky, followed seconds later by rumbling sounds, like thunder on the moon.
    “Those army guys never stop,” Billy said.
    Night maneuvers. I listened to the eerie, muffled explosions. Strange. Kind of scary … like it was all happening in outer space somewhere.
    I lay awake for more than an hour that night. You hardly ever thought about the army, and then you were suddenly reminded it was still there, like somebody’s grumpy watchdog. I kept seeing the boats caught in the searchlights out on the horizon. Maybe one of them was Papa’s. I tried to put myself out there, out on the
Taiyo Maru
, looking back at those blasts of light. The boat was so small, just a leaf on the sea. A plane could bomb it out of the water in a second.
    •   •   •
    When Papa came home early the next morning, I showed him the story about the
Reuben James
. He sat down at the kitchen table and studied the picture. Grampa was next to the window, sitting as straight as a stop sign.
    Papa couldn’t read English either, so he handed the paper back and asked me to read it to him.
    “What does it mean, Papa?” I asked, when I’d finished.
    Lines of worry stood between his eyes. “Hard to say, Tomi …”
    But I knew what he worried about—the Japanese, who were making war with China and arguing with the U.S. about it, making war like the Germans were. And though the U.S. wasn’t at war with anyone, maybe it was only a matter of time until it would be.
    “Lot of people in Honolulu starting to point finger,” Papa said. “They wondering whose side us Hawaii-Japanee going take, and what we going do if Japan and U.S. got into a fight.”
    Maybe that was what Mr. Wilson was wondering too.
    For a few minutes no one spoke. I felt kind of queasy. Under the house Lucky barked, and made me jump. I watched Papa study the picture of the
Reuben James
. Had the men on it drowned, or gotten blown up? I wanted to ask Papa if he’d seen the searchlights, and I wanted to tell him about Mr. Wilson, and what he’d said. And I hadn’t even told him about Lucky’s puppies.
    But I didn’t say a word.

The Butcher
    “Gentlemen … and I use that term loosely,” Mr. Ramos said. “Remember the science project? Well, this is