Synopsis

Zachary Whitlock knows sheep. He knows farming and knows what it’s like to have his best friend forced into an internment camp for Japanese Americans. What he does not know much about is goats and traveling by sea on cargo ships, yet he makes a decision to go with a group of volunteers to Japan to help deliver a herd of more than two hundred goats, many of which are pregnant, to survivors of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Guest Post

The New Couch

The story begins with a drive to Ellensburg, Washington, where my husband Jimmy and I had traveled to attend the annual Spirit of the West Cowboy Gathering. I loved the festival for the handcrafted music and poetry echoing from my childhood. Piano and vocals in a church sanctuary, yodeling in a milking barn, tunes from a local radio station wafting through windows of farm trucks.

The Spirit of the West Cowboy Gathering draws nationally-renowned bards, balladeers, and western bands. Performances are situated across town in churches and bars, an art museum, and even a furniture store.

The show we wanted to see was in the furniture store. The rows of folding chairs were all full, but the staff had moved into place couches, armchairs, and—our choice—a loveseat. Built for two, the loveseat reclined. It rocked. Deliciously new, it was the most comfortable piece of furniture I had ever known.

The next day, we went back and bought that loveseat. That was fourteen years ago.

Every morning, we piled onto the loveseat to watch the sun rise over the lake in front of our house while we drank coffee and our two pups lounged on our laps. Every evening, we watched our favorite television shows as we sat there jumbled together.

The pups have grown. The loveseat is crowded. Within a tangle of arms, paws, legs, ears, and tails, none of us could easily breathe. The decision was difficult, but one day we realized we had to buy a new couch. Not a loveseat, but a full-sized sofa.

When my brother Larry and I were very young, our family lived in Albany, Oregon, renting a large, awkwardly-designed house. Dad worked in a lumber mill, pulling green chain. Money was always an issue, but Mom wanted a “sectional,” the latest style in home seating. We had a couch, Dad pointed out, and we did. Extra-long, brown, it was probably a hand-me-down from some family who got a new one. Mom sighed noisily but didn’t argue the point.

One day a week later, Larry and I watched Mom cut the long, brown couch right down the middle. She used sturdy scissors to clip the fabric, then wire cutters to sever the coils. We leaned closer, fascinated by the process, but, “Get back!” Mom commanded as a curl of wire sprang free. The frame she sliced with a chainsaw, its rhythmic whine seeming to ask, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” until the couch frame snapped in an explosion of sawdust. Larry whooped, and I coughed.

Arranging the two halves corner-fashion, Mom propped them up where they had no legs with concrete blocks and covered the split with an Afghan and throw pillows. When Dad got home from the mill, he was speechless.

Larry and I were proud of what Mom had accomplished, and the sectional served us for a time. The next payday at the mill, after work, Mom and Dad went shopping. Dad drove a truck back to the store and brought their purchase home. It was maroon, with an artificial gleam, and scratchy. But it was a sectional. We were living, after all, in the 1950s.

I think of that other “new couch” as we pile together on our new leather sofa, Phoenix’s head on Jimmy’s lap, Priscilla drooling on the knee of my jeans, making ourselves at home.

Excerpt

CHAPTER FOUR

Floyd Schmoe and the Big Leaf Maple

Early spring, 1948. An American Friends Service Committee meeting was in progress in our house. Several items of business were being discussed by a team of five members, who sometimes arrived with their children and occasionally a dachshund named Parker.

I sat in our big leaf maple tree, properly termed genus acer macrophyllum, which my older brother Jacob once said was planted as a memorial, although for what or whom, I don’t know. With my back against its trunk, and my feet wedged into the crooks of its limbs, I’d long felt I was a part of that tree. Behind my ear a pencil, on my lap a clipboard and my trigonometry assignment. I could work on assignments and keep an eye on the lambs out in the pasture.

Trigonometry is the key to any number of pursuits. Medicine. Engineering. Agricultural science. It was offered at Bainbridge High during the senior year, but I wanted to challenge it. I had enough credits to graduate early, except for a math course, and math was my strong suit.

High school. I felt like I was just marking time, and I wanted to be finished with it.

Then what? I had a part-time job with the island’s newspaper, first as a paper boy. (Of course, not all paper boys are boys. When we were eighth graders, my friend Reyna had a paper route.) Later, I took over what my employers called “the high school beat” and Young Farmers news. But I was nearly seventeen, and I wanted more. Maybe university? Maybe travel? I wanted to expand my horizons, as the phrase goes.

So, I went to the bank, took money from my account, purchased a money order, and mailed it to the American School of Chicago, Illinois. Fully accredited. Trigonometry was tough. And I liked that. It was fun.

From the pasture I heard a quiet mewling. A tiny woolly being, born early and wobble-legged still, was getting some sun and fresh air and an introduction to the big, wide world. I knew the lamb was fine for a while longer. I could continue working and return the lambs to the loafing shed a bit later.

Twigs snapped, footsteps through the grass. “Hello.”

Standing below was a friend of my parents, Mr. Floyd Schmoe. A Quaker. A conscientious objector. Almost a legend.

My brother Jacob was, too. Not a legend, but a conscientious objector. Because he would not carry a gun, some people called him a conchie during the war. That’s rude.

Mr. Floyd Schmoe would not fight against the Central Powers in World War I. Violence all around. He would not kill. In Europe he worked with the Red Cross. Later, in Poland, he helped refugees find shelter, food, medical supplies.

He also worked for the Park Service at Mount Rainier as a naturalist and taught at the university in Seattle. Same as my parents, he and Mrs. Schmoe are American Friends Service Committee Observers. For the cause of fairness. Justice. They make it their business to visit places where people are being harmed for no fault of their own, but out of envy, prejudice, or greed, and they write about it.

“Room up there for one more?” Mr. Schmoe reached for a nearby branch. Long and lean, he levered himself up. “I’m interrupting you.”

“It’s okay. I’m stuck.” I tapped the clipboard with my pencil.

“You’ll figure it out. I asked after you, whether you were off to college.

Your mother said it would be a while. You’re a bit young still, she said.” “These are my trig calculations. I’m studying trigonometry by correspondence, through American Schools.”

“American Schools? I’ve heard of that. Illinois, right? Trigonometry is usually taught in the senior year, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. But graduation? I want to get a jump on it. I feel ready to be done.”

“What courses do you still need, in order to do that?” “Just this—trigonometry.”

“I see! Well, your mother sent me, said I’d probably find you here, and she’s about to serve crumb cake.”

Lambs called from the pasture. “Nice flock.”

“Thank you, sir. They’re Lincolns.”

He braced to swing down. “I’ll be heading inside.”

“You can go back in through the window if you like.”

He grinned. “Thanks, that’s okay. I’ll tell your mother you’ll be in soon.” Leaving my clipboard in the tree, I got the lambs, bleating all the way, into the loafing shed. After climbing back up to retrieve my clipboard, I went in through the window and put away my math lesson. A sweet smell drifted through the hall door. Crumb cake.

One good thing about hosting a Friends Service Committee meeting is the food. Salads and desserts. Easy to pack in a car, handy to eat from a plate on the arm of a chair. Or on a lap. Mother has always kept linen napkins edged in her hand-crocheted lace for those occasions. No one expected me to sit through meetings, but sometimes it was interesting.

About the Author

Shirley Miller Kamada grew up on a farm in northeastern Colorado. She has been an educator in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, a bookstore-espresso café owner in Centralia, Washington, and director of a learning center in Olympia, Washington. Her much-loved first novel, NO QUIET WATER, was a Kirkus recommended title and a finalist for several awards. When not writing, she enjoys casting a fly rod, particularly from the dock at her home on Moses Lake in Central Washington, which she shares with her husband and two spoiled pups.

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