by JP Romney
The man tilted his head to the side, the way a dog does when it looks confused. He raised his hands from the water and shook his palms at me. “Dete ike, suri. Dete ike.”
Why was he calling me a pickpocket? The words sounded muddled and confused. It took me a few seconds to work through what he was saying, but by then it was too late. The stubby man had pushed up from the water. He was walking at me and shaking his hands.
Now, when a naked man starts calling you a thief and waving his fat fingers in your face, that is probably the best time to leave the bathhouse. I looked at my father, whose head was half submerged, and when I turned back, the raccoon-faced man grabbed my hair and shoved me beneath the water. I pushed up, gasping for air, frantically searching for a reason in his crazy eyes. That was the first time I had a cold dream.
I’d never been that freezing before. This wasn’t “winter without your coat on,” this was “winter exploding out of every pore in your body.” The bathhouse had become a glacier. It was so cold that the water should have been a single sheet of ice, but it kept flowing as if it weren’t affected by the temperature at all. The raccoon-faced man—the one who had just been attacking me—was now squatting with me on the banks of Kusaka River.
Reaching down into the water, the stubby man pulled up a handful of leaves. He rolled them in the palm of his hand and set the wad on the earth beside him. When he took his hands away, the leaves weren’t leaves anymore. They were crumpled ichi man bills. Dripping wet, mashed together—there must have been fifty thousand yen just sitting on the edge of the river. A small fortune. Especially to a thirteen-year-old.
The raccoon-faced man reached down and pulled up another handful of leaves and set down another handful of cash. He narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue and said into the air, “Men don’t want wishes anymore. All they want is this.” He held up a hairy fist dripping with paper bills. “With enough money a man can make anything he wants appear. No need for wishes anymore. No need for tanuki.” He threw the bills into the air, but only leaves came tumbling down. “They’re wrong,” he cried. “Money won’t save them. Money won’t save any of us. Not against the Tengu Road and the monster that lives there.” He dropped his hands into the water. “They are infected with it,” the tanuki-man said. “They will bring destruction on us all.”
The next thing I remember was my father kneeling over me, shaking my shoulders. I tried to breathe in, but my lungs were paralyzed. I screamed and only water gurgled out. When I sucked in, it was like inhaling through a coffee stirrer.
The doctors later said that the stress of the stubby man’s attack kicked off my narcolepsy. I’d fallen asleep and slipped below the surface of the water. My father pushed away the strange man and dragged me out of the bath. My attacker disappeared from the bathhouse, though nobody could say in what direction he ran. I never saw him again, but it didn’t matter that much—my life had already changed forever.
“Suiminhossa,” the doctor from the hospital said.
“Narcolepsy? My boy will never sleep again,” my mother said, beginning to cry.
“No,” the doctor said. “No, just the opposite.”
My mother cried some more. “My boy will never wake again.”
“Okay, not the opposite. It just means he might fall asleep in inappropriate places.”
My mother sobbed even louder. “My boy will never be appropriate again.”
My father took my mother by the arm and led her out of the small examination room. And then I was all alone. A thirteen-year-old sitting across from a doctor and three nurses. One of them coughed.
“Do … do you have any questions?” the doctor asked.
I thought for a minute and then said, “Can I still fly airplanes?”
“That’s cute,” the doctor said, smiling to the nurses, who smiled right back. “Sure, you can still fly on airplanes. You can even take a nap on an airplane if your head is feeling especially sleepy.”
“No,” I said. “Not can I ride on an airplane—can I fly the airplane? Can I still be a pilot?”
Everyone laughed, but when they saw I wasn’t laughing, they stopped. One of them coughed again.
“No,” the doctor said. “No, I’m afraid that wouldn’t be safe.”
* * *
A year and a half went by before my second attack. Well, attacks. Very small attacks. Like three of them. In a single day. I really think that should just count as one, though.
Haru and I were sitting in front of Lawson’s watching the cars speed by on Route 33 when this guy on a scooter lost control and jerked into an oncoming truck. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like because it happened so fast, but I do remember the sound. The horrible crumpling of metal and popping of plastic. By the time the police and the paramedics arrived there wasn’t much left. The handlebars were in a rice field nearby. A tire was found in someone’s garden.
As the police cars and the ambulance were pulling away, I saw the scooter’s rearview mirror lying in the parking lot. I wrapped it in a furoshiki to take home. Haru said it was morbid to keep the mirror because the driver was going to die on the way to the hospital.
“I could use it, though,” I told him.
“Use it for what?”
“I could keep it in my bathroom. Make sure the back of my hair is straight.”
Haru kicked a piece of broken glass. “Somewhere that guy’s ancestors are crying because you said that.”
“I’d think of him every time I walk into the bathroom.”
“You don’t even know who ‘him’ is.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The important thing is that as long as I have this mirror, he isn’t really gone. Someone remembers that he was alive and driving down Route 33.”
“Not driving particularly well.”
I ignored him. “And isn’t that what we all want in the end? Someone to remember us? Doesn’t that keep us alive in some small way?”
“I’ll tell you what, Koda. If I die, keep a picture of me somewhere. Don’t make a comb out of my hand. If that’s my only choice, I’d rather not be remembered for running my dead fingers through your hair each morning.”
“Gross,” I said. “And you won’t die. At least not anytime soon.”
I smiled, but Haru wasn’t looking at me. He was staring off in the direction of his uncle’s house. “Just keep a picture of me somewhere,” he said again.
When I got home, I unwrapped the rearview mirror and set it on my bathroom sink. Tried to, anyway. As soon as I touched the plastic my world went ice cold. I dreamed of the accident Haru and I had just seen, only this time from the scooter driver’s point of view. Because I didn’t know what really happened, my imagination filled in all sorts of details. The man lost control of the scooter because he’d been drinking. He’d been drinking because he knew he was going to get fired from his job at Daimaru Department Store in Kōchi City and he didn’t know how to tell his elderly mother. He lost his balance and swerved into the oncoming truck. That’s where the dream stopped. I woke up with a mean bruise on my head from the edge of the bathroom sink.
I pushed myself up from the floor. My face was throbbing. I picked up the rearview mirror and the world went ice cold again. The dream was the same as before. Drinking. Going to get fired. Shame. Losing balance. Oncoming truck.
I opened my eyes. There was blood on the floor. I must have split that bruise when I fell for the second time.
“Koda,” my mother called upstairs. “Koda, are you all right? Do you want me to come up there? I’ll get my cane and walk up there if you need me.”
“No,” I called back. “Don’t do that. I just … I just dropped something.” I propped myself up against the side of the door and made it carefully to my feet. Head wounds bleed way more than they need to, I remember thinking. Having learned absolutely nothing, I reached down for the rearview mirror and blacked out a third time. My mother sent my father upstairs after me.
“It’s just a nick on his fore
head,” my father said.
“It’s a giant gash! He could have died!” my mother cried. “He could have fainted, stumbled into the toilet, and drowned.”
Which seems like the absolute worst way to go, if you ask me.
“He’d just seen a bad accident,” my father said. “He was stressed. Our boy is not strong in the conventional use of the term.”
Hey.
“We should be watching him every day,” my mother said, continuing her freak-out. “He should never leave our sight. We’ll get the old truck running and take him to school every single day.”
“And who’s going to do the driving?” my father asked. “You haven’t driven that truck in thirty years. The boy just needs a bicycle helmet or something.”
“What if he falls asleep and a car hits him?” my mother shot back.
“Give him a helmet and forbid him from riding on Route 33. He’ll be fine.”
My father and I don’t usually see eye to eye on, like, anything, but I’m glad he was there that day.
“Fine.” My mother surrendered, tossing the rearview mirror into the trash can. “But only if the helmet is custom-made. None of those stylish motorcycle helmets for my son, no. It has to be three times the size of a normal helmet. With ear protection. Like a batter’s helmet that covers his entire skull. It’s very important that any person in the same town as our child instantly sees that he poses a danger to himself and everyone around him. Also, this will make sure no girl ever dates him. Ever.”
I may be adding a little bit to that last part. Anyway, that’s when I was supposed to start wearing my helmet during “high-risk” situations like bike riding, combing the back of my hair, and talking to girls.
“He can’t wear the helmet everywhere. You’ll make an outcast of him,” my father said. “Besides, he’ll probably do something odd like decorate it with Pokémon stickers.”
“I won’t do that,” I protested.
But yes, I did.
* * *
The day after the funeral I was standing in the parking lot of Lawson’s, downing the last of an energy drink and waiting for Haru’s shift to end. Tomorrow all the students would return to Kusaka High School and try not to talk about Aiko. There was nothing left to say. We’d exhausted the hows and the whys. No one really knew what Aiko was thinking that night. She never told us. Sometimes terrible things just happen. Isn’t that what they say? The only thing we can do is try to stop those terrible things from happening again.
But guess what? We’d already failed.
I threw the empty can into the recycling bin and looked through the window. Haru was ringing someone up at the counter. When I turned back to Route 33, I thought I saw a white cat dart across the street and disappear under a parked van.
No, it wasn’t a cat. Too big to be a cat. I took a few steps forward. It might have been a fox.
Foxes are rare in Japan. I guess. I’ve only seen a couple of them in Kusaka, so I suppose that means they’re rare. I think people say it’s good luck to see a fox. Don’t they? Well, if they do, they’re wrong. I bent over and peered under the van. Nothing. Foxes are not good luck. You can see it in their eyes. And their sharp little teeth. Never trust an animal that can bite off your kneecap. That’s what people should really say.
* * *
Ichiro, star pitcher of the baseball team, walked to school, jimmied open the window to the teachers’ lounge, and made his way to the math teacher’s classroom. He apparently knocked over a can of pencils on Ikeda-sensei’s desk. People made a big deal out of that. I don’t know why. Especially considering what he was about to do. “Ichiro was the kind of student who would pick up a friend if he accidentally knocked him down,” they’d say. “It’s strange he left the pencils on the floor like that.”
No, it’s strange that he was upstairs in Ikeda-sensei’s classroom, kneeling in the dark with a kitchen knife. That was strange.
The next morning, Kusaka High School locked and chained its doors. Most of the teachers and staff stood outside with their faces in their hands. They told the kids to ride their bikes back home. They flagged the drivers to turn around. They sat on the steps, close to one another, and waited for the sirens to come.
Again.
5
Kusaka High School closed for the last week of September. Eventually the cars and the trucks and the flashing lights pulled away, leaving the building chained up and draped in shadow. As I rode by on my way to deliver mushrooms, the school rose slowly from the rice fields. Yes, Kusaka is that kind of Japanese mountain town. The kind where we have to build our schools in the middle of rice fields. It always reminded me of a daimyō castle surrounded by bridges and moats and narrow dirt paths.
And just like a real daimyō castle, the school was built to last centuries. There were heavy metal doors and thick panes of glass with iron-plated storm shutters. Every surface was painted white to reflect the sun and keep out the salty sea air. For eighty years the school had stood up against everything Japan could throw at it: earthquakes, typhoons, flash floods, mudslides. But it couldn’t keep Aiko out. And five days later it couldn’t keep Ichiro out either.
Oddly enough, things were quieter at school after the second suicide. We’d spent all the words we carried around when Aiko died.
Ichiro Kobayashi had moved to Kusaka late last year to live with his uncle. He transferred from a school in Matsuyama and no one really knew why. Some kids on the baseball team said his parents died in a car accident. Others said he woke up one morning and they were just gone. Whatever happened, Ichiro was quiet about it. He was nice to the kids who asked, but you knew he couldn’t say anything. Not wouldn’t say anything. Couldn’t.
After the transfer to Kusaka, Ichiro was immediately promoted to starting pitcher on the baseball team. He made the other students look like the idea of hitting a ball with a bat was so difficult that we should all just give up and do something easier, like calculus or astrophysics. That was Ichiro. Tall, fit, popular. But then he broke into the high school at night and went all feudal Japan on us.
Back in the olden days, long before we settled our differences with celebrity game shows, insane obstacle courses, and Dance Dance Revolution, hara-kiri was how a samurai purged himself of a great dishonor. The warrior would dress up in a ceremonial kimono and cut open his stomach with a short sword. I guess they figured his shame would spill out onto the floor. I don’t know who first came up with the idea that shame is something that can actually be cut from your insides, but I bet it was a process of trial and error. Is this the shame? Nope. Okay, how about this squiggly thing? Still feeling shame. Well, this thing is beating, how about this? Yep. Yep. Feeling less shame already. Feeling less of everything, actually.
The disgraced samurai could choose a friend to stand over him with a long katana blade. When the samurai finished cutting himself, the friend would bring down his sword and end the samurai’s suffering with a single stroke to his neck. That was considered an act of mercy, by the way. I’d sure hate to be that one samurai who had no friends in the village. Who am I kidding? I would have been that one samurai.
But Ichiro wouldn’t have. He had plenty of friends at Kusaka High School. None were with him that night, though. He knelt on the math room floor, alone, a kitchen knife in hand, and bled out in the darkness.
Using his hand as a shodō brush, Ichiro had painted a kanji symbol on the floor. The only ink he had was draining out between his fingers.
烏
Karasu.
Crow.
The blood seeped into the floor. So deep, in fact, that the more the teachers scrubbed the strokes, the more permanently they etched the kanji into the tile. When they stood back and saw what they’d done—how the ghostly word would not be removed—they just abandoned the room. They turned off the lights and shut the math room door and tried to keep Ichiro’s last kanji a secret from the rest of us.
The school remained chained and bolted during the next week. Teachers were assigned to
drive by at night to check for broken windows. That probably wouldn’t have stopped anything, but it made everyone feel a little safer.
“Name seven things that make people in this town feel safe.” Haru took a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke. Somewhere behind us the television in Lawson’s blared colorful commercials at no one.
“Seven things?” I said, leaning back on the curb.
“Yep.”
“Disposable face masks. That would have to be number one.”
“Of course.”
“Kōban police boxes.”
“Easy.”
“Crossing guards.”
“Okay.”
“Delicately wrapped fruit, a bowl of miso soup, braided rope.”
“From a shrine?”
“Yes.”
“And the last one?”
“I’ll go with a bā-chan pushing a baby carriage.”
“What?” Haru laughed. “No way, that’s totally creepy, and not safe. Seriously, why would a little old lady buy a baby carriage in the first place? Where’s the baby that should be inside? What exactly is inside it now? Is it a doll? A broken picture frame? A human head?”
“Baka,” I said, kicking Haru’s shoe. “You know why they push them around. Some women work in fields and get their spines jacked up from sporing mushrooms all day. Some women lean on baby carriages for proper back support. Some women fill those carriages with groceries because they don’t drive anymore, and when they finally push the stupid thing home again, some women have treats for their sons if they’ve finished their homework.”
Haru crushed his cigarette butt on the asphalt. “Right. Sorry about that. Your parents are old.”
“They’re freakishly old! And my mother pushes around an empty baby carriage. So what? You work at an empty convenience store!”