Peace Is Better

“Here we go again, Barbara,” Bill Williamson said. “Ready to roll?”

Barbara Rasmussen nodded. From the left rear seat of the Mighty Mo, the sasquatch Governor of Jefferson watched his publicist’s blond curls bob up and down above the back of the right front seat. “I sure am,” she said. PR people never lacked for enthusiasm. That sometimes made them scary, but they needed it.

“Then we’ll do it.” Bill stepped on the gas. He stood nine feet two in his stocking feet, though he was much too hairy ever to have put on stockings. The back seat of a car as humongous as his ‘74 Caddy with the extra-long steering column let him drive for himself, which he enjoyed.

Yreka had been a state capital for sixty years now, but it was still a sleepy little place. Anyway, the government office building lay only a couple of blocks from the onramps to the I-5: Jefferson’s backbone and, when you got right down to it, the whole Pacific Coast’s.

He put pedal to the metal as soon as he swung onto the northbound Interstate. He didn’t worry about 55, or about saving gas. Even at 55, the Mighty Mo’s mileage was a joke. The Eldorado’s engine was only a little smaller than a World War II fighter’s. The beast weighed as much as a Messerschmitt-109, too, especially with him in it.

Fifteen minutes out of Yreka, he and Barbara rolled through Hilt, which was two gas stations and a Burger King. A moment later, Barbara said, “The old border between California and Oregon was somewhere right around here.”

“Sure was.” As if on cue, they passed a road sign that said WELCOME TO JACKSON COUNTY. Bill went on, “That was Oregon. Siskiyou, where we were, used to be in California. We don’t miss Sacramento—”

“Or Salem,” Barbara put in.

“Or Salem,” Bill agreed. “And they don’t miss us.”

Another hour put them at Wolf Creek, where they got off the Interstate and onto Jefferson State Highway 71. No one ever called it that, though, not even to make Highway 71 Revisited jokes. “Here we are,” Barbara said as they headed toward the ocean, “on the Gable Memorial Highway.”

Now Bill was the one who nodded his big, shaggy head. Unless in the rear-view mirror, Barbara couldn’t see that, so he said, “You betcha. If ever a politician delivered for his home town, Gilbert Gable was the guy. Without him, Port Orford wouldn’t be much bigger than Hilt back there.”

If not for Gilbert Gable, who became Governor of Jefferson in 1934, miles of the road across the mountains to Port Orford probably would still remain unpaved. If not for Gilbert Gable, the railroad probably wouldn’t have gone through. If not for Gilbert Gable, the big breakwater that turned Port Orford probably would never have been built. If not for Gable and FDR and the WPA and the CCC and the other half-forgotten thickets of Depression-era initials ….

He died in the saddle, three days before Pearl Harbor. The papers called it acute indigestion. Bill had heard from Yreka old-timers that he drank like a fish. Drunk or sober, what he did lived after him. The highway and the railroad and the breakwater let Port Orford play its part in shipping men and weapons across the Pacific to fight Japan.

Thinking about that, Bill chuckled. “If not for Gilbert Gable,” he said, “chances are we wouldn’t be doing this photo op at the Port Orford Datsun dealership.”

“Well, no,” Barbara said. “If not for Gilbert Gable, chances are that Datsun dealership wouldn’t be there. But it’s a good photo op — and Mr. Fujita will be so proud for you to recognize him for all he’s done.”

“This is Jefferson. Everybody gets along here,” Bill said. “That’s what I told the Yeti Lama a month ago, and it’s the truth. Even if we have to work at it sometimes, it is.”

“He knew that before you told him. He wouldn’t have wanted to visit Jefferson if he didn’t.” Barbara paused a moment, then went on in a smaller voice: “He’s impressive, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Bill nodded again. He hadn’t wanted to admit, even to himself, just how much the holy yeti exiled from Tibet had impressed him. “Me, I sold houses, I got a law degree, I went into politics. I shake hands, I slap backs, I twist arms, I make speeches. I’ve got a knack for it, like.”

“You do a lot of good. I wouldn’t want to work for you if you didn’t.”

“Thanks,” Bill said, more because she sounded as if she meant it than for her words themselves. “But the Yeti Lama . . . When he says something, he means it. He means it all the way down. He’s not a politician, talking to hear himself talk. You have to take him seriously. I don’t know that I ever met anybody like that before.”

“Gravitas,” Barbara said.

“Huh?”

“Gravitas,” she repeated. “It’s a Latin word that means what you just said. I learned it a few years ago, watching the Nixon impeachment hearings. Barbara Jordan has it, too, and I’m not saying so because we’ve got the same name.”

“No, you’re not. And you’re right. She does,” Bill said.

On they went. A lot of the cars they shared the road with were little Japanese machines: Datsuns and Toyotas, Hondas and Mazdas. Their sales had boomed since gas went through the roof after the first oil embargo. To Bill, they all seemed the size of roller skates. If he hit one with the Mighty Mo, he could bring it home on his fender like a moose — if he noticed the accident at all.

Also on the road heading for Port Orford were smoke-spewing eighteen-wheelers hauling this, that, and the other thing to the harbor for export. More big trucks heading east carried what came into Port Orford, as well as lumber from the nearby mountainsides and fish and crabs pulled out of the Pacific. Gilbert Gable would have been proud had he lived to see it.

Once they came out of the mountains, the land fell swiftly toward the sea. The Mighty Mo’s temperature gauge dropped, too. Bill watched it with relief. The massive car had been working hard. The Gable Memorial Highway joined US 101 a mile or so north of Port Orford. Bill drove south on the 101 almost to the breakwater-protected harbor. He turned left on Seventh and went a couple of blocks to Jackson.

At the corner there, an enormous American flag flew on a tall aluminum pole topped by a gilded eagle. An equally huge flag of Jefferson, pine-green with the gold-pan state seal in the middle, waved beneath it. They fluttered over the land of the free, the home of the brave, and an auto dealership whose sign proclaimed it FUJITA DATSUN OF PORT ORFORD in big red neon letters.

“We’re here,” Bill announced, pulling onto the lot. A local TV news van had already parked there. The cameraman was checking something on his equipment. The reporter, his hair sprayed so the breeze couldn’t get playful, gabbed with a couple of newspapermen Bill recognized. He asked, “What time you got, Barbara?”

His publicist was left-handed, so she wore her watch on her right wrist. She raised it to her face to read the tiny women’s-style dial. “It’s a quarter to twelve, Governor,” she answered.

“Good. Thanks. We aren’t late.” Bill parked two spaces from the news van. Not showing up on time here would have been embarrassing but not unforgivable. He’d really worried when he went to Eureka to meet the Yeti Lama. He’d made it — and the Heiwa Maru, the holy yeti’s ship, came into port an hour late. Well, it let him and Barbara grab lunch.

He got out of the car and stretched. The Mighty Mo was as comfortable for a sasquatch as any car was likely to be, but standing up felt good just the same. He smiled at the shiny new Datsuns on the lot, mileage proudly painted on their windshields. He might have been able to drive some of the bigger ones from the trunk. A sleek little 280ZX? Not even that way — not a chance.

The hairsprayed reporter waved to him. “How’s it going, Governor?”

“Not bad, Stu,” Bill answered easily. “Always good to get out and let the people take a look at me.”

“I guess it is,” Stu said. “And there’s a lot of you to look at.” In a different tone of voice, that would have pissed Bill off. But the TV guy didn’t mean anything by it. He was just talking to hear himself talk. Bill let it slide.

A car salesman walked up. He might have come right from Central Casting. Hair sprayed even stiffer than Stu’s. Porn-actor mustache. Loud wide tie straight out of 1973. Gold Qiana shirt. Plaid jacket made from what looked like the hide of a particularly ugly furnished-apartment sofa. Polyester pants with white belt. White shoes. There he stood, a gladhanding cliché.

“Welcome to Fujita Datsun, Governor Williamson. Welcome to Port Orford. I’m Dave Jenkins.” He stuck out his hand. As Bill carefully shook it, Jenkins went on, “Shall I tell Nobuo you’re here?”

Like many of his kind, he had a gift for the obvious. But Bill had the politician’s gift for putting up with such people. “That would be good,” he said, and left it right there.

Dave Jenkins hurried away. He came back a deferential pace and a half behind the dealership’s founder and owner. Nobuo Fujita was in his late sixties, short and skinny. His close-cropped gray hair receded at the temples. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, a white shirt, and a sober navy tie.

He looked more like a dentist than someone who sold cars. A dentist, though, wasn’t likely to be carrying a sheathed samurai sword. Well, neither were most automobile dealers.

“Thank you for coming, Governor,” he said in fluent but accented English. “You do this simple businessman too much honor.”

Bill paused a moment to make sure the reporters and cameramen were in place. Seeing they were, he answered, “I don’t think so, sir. After all, this is the tenth anniversary of the opening of Fujita Datsun. And you first visited Port Orford a lot longer ago than 1969.”

“Oh, yes. That is true.” Fujita’s smile seemed embarrassed, even rueful. “It was thirty-seven years ago this month: September 9, 1942. I was warrant flying officer in Japanese Navy. The submarine I-25 surfaces off coast of Jefferson at six in morning, just as it gets light. We have in watertight container on deck a Yokosuka E14Y1 — a small floatplane. We assemble pieces from container. We fuel. We put on two 77-kilo incendiaries — big load on small plane. I am pilot. I get in with Petty Officer Shoji Okuda. We take off, fly east to America.”

“And you came to Port Orford,” Bill said.

Nobuo Fujita nodded, looking back across the years. “I came to Port Orford, yes,” he said. “I saw harbor. I saw town. I dropped my bombs. I flew away as fast as I could. Antiaircraft guns started shooting. I was lucky. Only one small hole in left wing before I am out of range. I flew back to submarine. It picked up Okuda and me and plane and got away.”

“I remember that. I was seven or eight then,” the Governor said. “You set a ship on fire and burned down a warehouse. Everybody started hopping around like fleas on a hot griddle.”

“It was small thing, nuisance thing,” Fujita answered with a shrug. “On twenty-ninth of September, I-25 came back. We took off again with more incendiaries. This time, orders were to start forest fire. I dropped bombs in Siskiyou National Forest, flew back, and escaped again.”

“It must have been wet. No fires that time,” Bill said. “No one here even knew about the second raid till you told us.”

The old Japanese man shrugged once more. “It was war. You try what you can. But after war was over, I felt sad — Port Orford beautiful town. In 1962, I ask American embassy in Tokyo if I could see it in peace without being treated as war criminal. They graciously say yes.”

“I should hope so!” Bill exclaimed. “Plenty of Americans who bombed Japan and Germany have visited those places.” He thought of Hyman Apfelbaum, the Attorney General of Jefferson. He’d flown thirty-one missions over Europe in 1944. After the war, he toured Germany, getting by with his Yiddish. He got by so well, a local asked him if he’d been there before. He told the man no, that seeming preferable to Only in a B-17.

Nobuo Fujita shrugged yet again. “You won. We lost,” he said bleakly. But then his smile returned. “When I came, everyone was so kind.” He hefted the samurai sword. While the reporters scribbled shorthand in their notebooks, the TV cameraman swung in for a closeup. Fujita went on, “This was in my family four hundred years. I gave it to mayor of Port Orford to show I was sorry to attack town.”

“But now you have it back again,” Bill said.

“Now I have it back again, yes,” Fujita said. “I worked for Nissan — parent company of Datsun cars. I learned English. When they told me they wanted dealership in Port Orford, I remembered friendly people and lovely country. I came in 1969. When I got here, kind mayor returned sword to me. I will be here for rest of my life. I am U.S. citizen since year before last.”

“That’s wonderful, Mr. Fujita. That’s an American story. That’s a Jefferson story,” Bill said, looking into the TV camera. “You bombed Port Orford a long time ago, but now everybody here’s glad to have you for a neighbor. A month ago, the Yeti Lama told me he wanted to see Jefferson because this is where everyone gets along, regardless of race or size.”

“Yeti Lama very holy personage,” Nobuo Fujita murmured.

“He was right,” Bill said. “I’m nine feet-something, you’re five feet-something, but so what? Once our countries were at war, but so what? Now we’re at peace. And we’ll stay that way, too, because peace is better.”

“Peace is better,” Fujita agreed. Bill Williamson draped a large, companionable arm over his shoulder. The still photographers snapped away.