Dad and Mom in the front, the three of us kids
in the back, hot and cranky in the desert heat

we’re driving from South Dakota to Pasadena
to see our relatives who stayed in California

after they returned from the camps in Arizona
at the end of the second world war

hot air, as if from an oven,
blasts through the open windows

we kids start fighting about something stupid
one of us has just done

Dad yells at us to shut up
and turns and tries to hit us

bakatare, he shouts, as we avoid his swats,
which makes him even angrier

then in the distance ahead
we see the hitchhiker

the tall, blonde young man
with the Army duffel bag

we’ve seen him three days in a row
each time we pass him but

he always gets ahead of us somehow
as we get closer he recognizes us

the Japanese family in the green 1951 Ford coupe
with the water bag on the front of the car

he waves to us and we kids wave back
he knows we don’t have room for him

as he disappears from view behind us,
the three of us get quiet

we can’t remember what it was
we were fighting about