Fog Island Mountains

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

  “This isn’t the time to be at the cemetery, you know, look at those telephone lines, look how they’re swaying already…”

  Still she nods, still she doesn’t speak.

  “They say it’s bad, I just had a call on the radio, they say it’s really bad in Miyakonojō, and we’re in for it, I think—the gods aren’t happy.”

  Again Kanae must wonder at this man’s face, at his complete composure and the bored tone of his voice, so at odds with his words, and he’s already looking away from her, looking up into the sky, frowning now. Is he confused? Is he angry? But then he shakes himself a bit and asks her again where she lives and can he take her there.

  “No thank you, I’m just down the street, I’ll go straight home.”

  “Yes, go straight away now, there isn’t much time,” he is saying, looking at the path to the cemetery again. “Don’t worry about your ancestors, they’ll be all right, they’re under the ground, they’re safer than the rest of us. If we could get the whole town up to the temple, we’d have nothing to worry about—the highest ground, and those walls won’t move an inch in this weather.”

  But the temple is too small, she wants to tell him, what a ridiculous thing to say, and all those open spaces, surely the torii gate would fall on them, surely the trees would be a great risk.

  “We’re going to need protection,” he is saying now, speaking more to himself, mumbling and fervent, and Kanae, despite herself, is curious about this man—oh, I could tell her things about him, but not today—and watching his impassable face. “We should be praying, you were right to come out, really, it’s good of you, not many people would do it, but it’s not safe yet, we’re still in it, you see, so best be getting home, say your prayers at home until we can all go back to the temple and thank the gods for sparing us.”

  Kanae is bowing to him now, one last time, disturbed a little at his piety because she is not a religious woman, has never been a religious woman, and it is strange to be taken for one, and the thought strikes her that maybe she should have been more careful with theology, maybe she should not have been so quick to dismiss it all; it’s too late, she is telling herself, pedaling away now, watching the limp tips of the sodden leaves flutter in the mud along the sidewalk and the edge of the street. And then she is stopping hard, braking fast, she is almost falling from her bike—she remembers, she remembers that once in her life she touched religion strongly enough to have it touch her back, and it wasn’t a religion of someone else’s choosing but a private moment when she felt she had earned a blessing, and Alec was there, and now she knows there is one place she has not checked, there is one place where Alec might have gone to find her, and so she is back on her bicycle and pedaling again, pedaling hard, and Alec, she is thinking so hard it becomes an actual sentence, a plea. Alec, wait for me.

  * * *

  It is really no surprise at all that the Chester house has come to ill-fortune—this he dares to think, this neighbor, Mr. Isamu Nishi, as he steps out into the fetid air, holding his nose, surveying the damage in his garden and checking the sky. It appears to be over, he is thinking, and what a mess, and he’ll have to spend the rest of the week righting his flowerbeds and clearing away the debris, and it looks like the creek has risen just enough to threaten his basement, so he’ll have to deal with that, too, because that nasty water will ruin his preserves, but first he must…yes, it really is his job, such a burden really, but he must go next door and make sure his neighbors are all right.

  He is already speaking when one of the daughters—it is Megumi first, and Naomi comes up behind her sister—opens the door, already asking his questions and looking around the door frame, he is asking about their father and checking their faces, and he is thinking that this young woman is quite impertinent, she is rude to him, she has hardly greeted him.

  “But you must be very upset…I’m awfully sorry to trouble you…I just want to see if everything is all right…the storm has really caused a lot of mess…is your power still out…and have you had any news…your father…may I speak with your mother?”

  Oh, these young girls faces are difficult, and Mr. Nishi isn’t sure at all how to speak to them, he chooses to look at the second one, the young woman hiding in the shadows behind this other one, the insolent one, yes, the second woman’s eyes are much kinder, even if she is hiding most of her face behind hands that have gone up over her mouth and nose. And they are thanking him, yes, they are saying the words and telling him not to worry, but they do not mean it, he can tell, and this only makes his teeth hurt a little where he clamps them against each other, biting down on what he would like to say.

  “Now, now, I’m sure the police will find him…and your mother, she is probably resting…well, as long as you have no trouble, as long as you don’t need anything…I say, this storm was a bad one, wasn’t it? We won’t know until the television comes back on, but then it’s always the same thing, isn’t it? All those horrid landslide photos and the rivers, I wonder where it might have flooded in Komachi…”And he is already turning away from the girls, already picturing the high waters and broken bridges, the threatened houses, and already he is feeling rather smug for how well he has prepared, his house is never affected and even if the shops in town cannot get fresh food for a week, even two weeks, he has plenty to eat and even enough to share, if someone asks. There, behind him the click of the door, and he is checking the front of the Chester house, shaking his head now, stepping backward and listing the likely places where the earth will give away because of all the rain.

  Mr. Nishi has always paid attention to the news, and Mr. Nishi has memorized the names of the little towns and the small villages that are most likely concerned when it comes to typhoon damage—these places are ticked off a list in his head now, even spoken aloud, one small village after another . . . such unlucky places, and so Mr. Nishi could hardly have expected to see a gulley in his own garden, there, just beside the persimmon tree and right where he usually plants his hyacinth, right at the top of the gentle slope of this small hill where he and the Chesters and a few other families have their homes, and he walks over to inspect it, thinking suddenly of Alec Chester and wondering where his neighbor took himself off to die, and why go out into a storm, why not choose the quiet of your own home, the warmth of your bed, if you must go, and Mr. Nishi is still looking at this gulley when it begins to widen, when it ceases to be a gulley and becomes a deep black crevasse, small fibrous plant roots suddenly exposed as the earth cracks and breaks, and then his eyes are widening and he is yelling out, because the grass beneath his feet is moving too and he must take a few steps backward.

  Yes, the earth is slipping Mr. Nishi, please watch your step, and look up now, yes, now, because it is upon us again, the second eyewall with its vertical winds and heavy rain, and he is looking, good man, he is not oblivious, he sees that the storm was not at all finished, he sees that part of his land is sliding off down the hill and he must move quickly backward, all the way to his steps, and hold on tight, because none of us are expecting the strength of this last push of wind.

  LANDFALL

  He remembers the box of painkillers at a bend in the road and taps the brakes without thinking, skidding now, the rear of the car fishtailing on the wet leaves and the mud and the flat thin sheet of water rushing along the tarmac, but the car rights itself and Alec stops nearly in the middle of the road, there are no other cars, and he reaches into the glove box, and there is no telling how long this box has been in here, there are only four tablets anyway, and he swallows all four of them, choking a little, the tiny hard bumps sticking in his throat until he swallows for a second time, a third time.

  And then again with his foot on the accelerator, pushing forward, pressing down against the remaining amount of time he has been given, and this is a curious idea because although Shingo was helpful with details on the progression of his pain and the options to keep him numb from it, his friend refused to talk time with him, he said it was simply impossi
ble to know and this—Alec clenches the steering wheel now—is extraordinary, perplexing, and he forces himself to think about it, he says to himself in the car, “I will die in three days,” or, “I will die in four weeks,” and he tests out any number of combinations but none of it helps, none of it makes any sense, because the pressure of his body against the driver’s seat, and the tautness of his skin over his knuckles and the dry sting of his eyes despite all this rain and this wet—all of this is too solid, and he cannot imagine himself away.

  He is not afraid of death, he thinks, and here his chin even bobs in defiance, but he is afraid of dying, yes, he admits this, afraid of the pain, of the smell, of knowing his body will betray him, and of no longer having a choice whether to be fastidious or messy. Our Alec has always been careful with his body, has known how shocking it might seem to others, especially here in our little town where everything about his physical person is oversized, and we are sorry but there is no arguing, his death will take this carefulness away from him.

  The blast of wind against the door takes him by surprise and the little car is pushed across the oncoming lane and nearly into the rocks over to the right, he twists the steering wheel as the rain hits and he feels his tires slip, the lurch of the car until the rubber finds a new grip on the road; he flicks on the windshield wipers but they cannot do much, the water is too thick and overhead a tree top bends, snaps, but his car is still moving fast enough and he catches sight of the limb falling down into the road behind him—no going back, only forward, but he slows down now, watching about and fighting to hold the car steady, and for the first time now Alec is afraid.

  Go slowly, she is telling him, keep your eyes open.

  Yes, he agrees, hearing her, just keep moving.

  Something—a rock, a bit of wood, a piece of plastic, it doesn’t matter—smacks against the windshield, cracking the glass, not on the driver’s side but the crack spiders toward him and then there are little drops of water leaking down onto the dashboard. Alec tenses for the burst of this pane of glass, the rumble of these small pieces about him, but the glass remains intact, and he keeps going, slowly, tires rolling along, bumping over the debris, and the water spilling down the hillside to his right is thick and muddy and he is waiting for the road to give out beneath him, speeding up just a little because he is only a few kilometers from the edge of town, only a short distance from sturdier concrete and fewer hillsides, but then he must stop, because there is a sound like a chorus of humans shrieking and he is looking around for injured people, looking and searching the thinning forest to his left, and then he sees that it is only the sound of the trees bending, bending too far, their protest a high-pitched groan.

  He is blocked—a wash of tree debris and rocks and mud has covered the road, Alec is striking the steering wheel now, this cannot be happening, this is not how this day will end, and he is getting out of the car, squinting against the water in his face, feeling stronger now, the edge of his everywhere made blurry with those painkillers, and he surveys the road, there is no way to get the car past, but damn it all, he isn’t so far, he’s actually close now to the small neighborhood where Kanae grew up—isn’t he, yes, he remembers now, all he has to do is walk down the hill a ways and there is a side road that will take him to our street, and so he is tucking his head and shaking the water from his eyes and he is walking, footstep and then another footstep, and he can nearly go quickly now and the road is clear and he is watching the trees, listening for the horrid crack and scream, but nothing else falls, and he must steady himself against the guardrail but the wind will not knock him down, he is too tall, he is still too strong.

  The side road is calmer, at a different angle to the drive of the wind and Alec picks up his pace a little, trying to remember who still lives along this road, what was the name of the family that bought Kanae’s parents old house? And doesn’t Kitauchi-san still live next door? And that other family, with the teenage daughters, didn’t they speak together last month about the older one enrolling at The Language Lab? Step, Alec, step, step, step, surely someone will help him, surely someone will know just what he needs to do.

  He has reached the top of our street, he can see the houses, there aren’t so many and we are all boarded up because of the storm, and the water is running down his face and his body is shivering what with his fever and the wind pushing at him, but there, just a few hundred meters away, is Kanae’s old house and he is walking toward it, remembering all those times he came here courting, and he remembers Kanae’s father and how his lips trembled when he was being severe, and how Alec knew the man was a little afraid of his future son-in-law . . . but then he sees the bicycle, coming in his direction, and my God what is a person doing out on a bicycle, but it’s someone who will help him, and he tries running now, but no, no, oh no, that won’t work, dear Alec, each footfall an agony up his back and side.

  * * *

  The apartment building is swaying in the wind, and Etsuko is not afraid, she even places a hand on the wall, a simple thank you to the architect and contractors whom she is certain have done their job, because this building is meant to sway, meant to give, just enough, to the violence of the storm—boom, the windows shake; but she will step away from these sounds because there, just there, a few centimeters in from her hip bone, at the place where the skin has begun to stretch a little tighter than usual, this is where she feels it, this brief rolling pressure, a tiny foot or elbow pressing back against the soft wall of her uterus, even if her doctor has said it is too early, yes, he said, the baby is moving, but Etsuko shouldn’t be able to feel it, not for almost two more months.

  Never mind the doctor, Etsuko is certain of what she feels, and she’s told Ken’ichi about it—she is not afraid to see his mild disbelief, his gentle shrug, he would not contradict her openly, but she knows he does not believe her, he believes the doctor and the scientists and everyone who has documented the timing of these things, everyone who follows their charts and tells her that in a few weeks she will stop feeling so unwell (she has not really felt unwell at all), tells her that in one month her own heart will be working almost 50 percent harder to support this pregnancy (her heart has been working double since she first started wanting this baby), and tells her that in six weeks they will know whether they are having a boy or a girl (Etsuko knows they are having a girl).

  Another gust of wind rattles the windows and the room shifts beneath her feet, and she calculates the distance from where she is standing here in Kagoshima to where Ken’ichi will be standing in Komachi, if he’s still at the hospital, and she estimates 103 kilometers between them, and the baby flutters against her again, and she places a hand against her skin, and then she is turning on the news and watching reports of the damage done to Kagoshima Harbor, and she is waiting for the newscaster and his team to turn their attention further up the island but she can only get the local news and so there is no word about flooding in the mountains, no word about Ken’ichi’s missing father—the windows are shaking again so Etsuko moves into the bathroom, there are no windows in this room and only the gentle swaying of the floor. She sits now on top of the closed toilet seat and breathes in. Her lungs are greedy and the air in this room always feels stale to her, so she is breathing and rejecting it at the same time, and what she would really like to do is go to the kitchen and open the window and breathe in the wind and the rain.

  “You should go to your parents’ house.” Ken’ichi was standing there at the door of their apartment, his overnight bag on his shoulder, his dying father a twitch of the muscle beneath his eye.

  “Our apartment is safer.”

  “Then invite them over.”

  “They cannot leave Grandfather, you know that.”

  His frown grew longer, he came back inside then, even if he was supposed to already be in their car, even if it was not exactly safe to be driving north in the storm that was already strong, but Ken’ichi came back inside and sat down to think about what she should do and Etsuko counte
d up to ten in her head, then to twenty, then to thirty—keep calm, do not shout, she told herself, he is only trying to love you as he knows best.

  He nodded then, decided. “Then I’ll call Mariko to come sit with you.”

  Count to five. Speak gently. “She has her own family.”

  “Well, go to their house.”

  “I can be here on my own.”

  “It’s a big storm, what if the power goes out?”

  Counting again in her head, then, “I have candles and flashlights and food. The power will come back on.”

  Ken was shaking his head, an arm on her arm, his face quiet in thinking.

  “Listen, why don’t I go with you to Komachi. I can help your mother.”

  “She’s far too upset, she will upset you. And what if we find . . . No, I won’t have you shaken by this. And it’s better if you rest . . .” A long pause. “Well, there is nothing to do about it. Please do not go anywhere. You must take care of yourself.”

  And she agreed, and they said a quiet good-bye, and Ken’ichi placed his hand on her stomach but much too high, it was not for the baby, it was a touch for her, and he made her promise one last time that she would stay put, and she nodded at him and closed the door quickly, much too quickly, nearly in his face, but her heart was pounding and the thought in her mind that what she really wanted to do was go to the midwife and ask if it was still possible to take this baby from her body. But no, she didn’t mean it, not really, she wants this baby, and it is too late for that, too late for the baby and too late for her, she loves this baby, she is insanely in love with the little girl who will be her daughter in a few months, she is already calling her Momoka-chan, the name that came to her one night in the first few days before the storm.