Ransom

by Jay McInerney

  “I don’t think about it at all. I don’t spar outside the dojo.”

  “Try it.”

  “Not interested.”

  “How about if I start things off? Is that what it takes?”

  Ransom turned away and took a sip of his tea. At the edge of his vision he saw Miles winding through the crowd behind DeVito, then he registered DeVito’s move. He dodged quickly enough so that the blow glanced off his shoulder instead of his temple, and saw Miles bring something down on DeVito’s head. The impact sounded like a bat connecting with a ball. DeVito slumped to the floor as the bar gradually went quiet. Miles was radiant.

  “I didn’t want you to break your priestly vow of non-violence,” he said to Ransom, ax handle in hand, “so I had to drygulch the fucker. It’s my prerogative as owner and proprietor.”

  Ransom nodded—the brief surge of adrenaline beginning to subside. He knelt down and checked DeVito’s scalp and topknot with immense distaste. No blood.

  “Last of the Mohicans,” Miles said, and laughed.

  Together they carried DeVito, now starting to moan, out into the street, depositing him on the sidewalk, followed closely by the two women he’d been sitting with. One of the women cradled DeVito’s head in her lap while the other massaged his shoulders.

  Inside, the music resumed. The Japanese were still stunned by this American display of violence.

  The band started into “Stormy Monday,” one of Ransom’s favorite songs, and did a creditable cover, but there was always a little trouble with the vocals. Kano’s face was red and slick with sweat.

  They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad.

  They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad.

  Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s oh so sad.

  Kano plucked his Gibson and winced as if he were tearing the notes out of his chest. He made it through Friday and Saturday admirably the first time, then fumbled the repetition:

  The eagle fries on Flyday, Sa’day I go out to pray. Sunday morning, he was playing where he should have been praying.

  3

  If you were a tourist coming in from the train station en route from Tokyo, you would be prepared for the winged rooflines of ancient temples and the crabbed enigma of ideographic signs. You would have found Tokyo disappointingly modern, but this is Kyoto, the ancient capital, founded in the eighth century, spared the American bombing. From the taxi window, rolling along broad boulevards laid out a thousand years ago, you would see castles and palaces, temples and shrines. But if your hotel were in the southeastern section of the city, you might be brought up short by the prospect of a billboard almost two stories high: a desert landscape in garish oranges and yellows, cacti and cowskulls, presided over by a mounted, golden-maned cowboy with psychedelic eyes, under the legend:

  HORMONE DERANGE

  Western Goods and Sundries

  Hats, Boots and Everything Between

  Miles Ryder, Owner and Proprietor

  Hormone Derange, sole distributors for Tony Lama boots on the Japanese archipelago, had first opened for business under a more conventional, phonetically similar name. Miles Ryder explained to his friends that he had changed the name to conform with standard Japanese pronunciation. Ryder was the model for the cowboy on the huge billboard atop the storefront, and himself appeared to be based on photographs of Wild Bill Hickok. There was drama in the sweep of his blond hair around his shoulders and in the droop of his mustache on either side of his chin. The black Stetson was habitual. He was something of a legend in Kyoto; besides running two businesses he occasionally appeared on television talk shows and currently was the star of a commercial in which he bellied up to the bar of a saloon and called out for his sake of choice: Even cowboys like it. Either out of loyalty to American engineering or concern that a six-foot-two blond gaijin in cowboy togs was not conspicuous enough in Kyoto, Ryder drove a full-dress 1962 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide complete with buckskin saddle bags which he had imported at great expense.

  Even before the Friday night in the spring of 1977 when he poleaxed Frank DeVito in Buffalo Rome, Ryder had experience coming upside people’s heads with hardwood. In May of 1971—shortly before receiving notice that he had flunked out of the University of Texas, Austin—he had opened a man’s skull with a two-by-four in the parking lot of a vast honky-tonk called the Armadillo World Headquarters. The man had inquired of Ryder’s date whether she would like to perform a certain sexual act upon him. The sexual act was one which happened to be illegal in the state of Texas. The two-by-four was lying in the bed of a pickup in the parking lot. The man turned out to be a heavily connected dope dealer and sent word from the hospital that Miles Ryder’s ass was grass. Miles considered taking his chances with the drug dealer, but the farewell card from the university seemed another good reason to push on.

  An additional problem was the draft and his sudden eligibility. Ryder’s old man was career Army, and Miles had more than enough military discipline at home. Ryder père was then in Vietnam, safely behind the lines, whence he’d sent a snapshot of himself and several buddies with half-a-dozen Saigon whores. Ryder’s mother was too numbed by this time to be appalled. Miles had no desire to join his father. With the help of an Eastern Religions prof from whom he had taken a survey, about the only course he enjoyed, he managed to get himself enrolled in a dubious program run out of L.A. that sent people abroad for college credit. He was presently in Japan, at a Zen monastery in the mountains north of Kyoto, sweeping cobblestones, washing dishes and sitting lotus-posture on the floor until his knees screamed with pain. After a month he decided he did not have the patience to wait for satori, quit the monastery, moved to Kyoto and supported himself, like all the other gaijin, by teaching English. The Japanese, he discovered, had a kind of mania for learning English. Businessmen, high school girls—they came after English conversation like it was a drug. Ryder set himself the task of learning Japanese, and his crash program of acculturation culminated in marriage to one of his students, Akiko, who seemed to him to embody all of the traditional virtues of Japanese womanhood. When her parents disowned her for marrying a gaijin, Ryder understood that no matter how good his command of Japanese verbs and their tenses, he would always be one.

  His mother, living with a new husband in El Paso, wrote to wish him happiness in his marriage, which was more than she had learned to expect. Wedding presents from friends in Austin included a pair of handmade ostrich-skin boots and a black Stetson with silver and turquoise band. Ryder wore both to the ceremony, and continued to wear them. A year after his marriage he opened the first cowboy supply store in Japan.

  The location he found for the store was nearly ideal, on the street car route a few blocks from a major intersection. Rent was reasonable; in fact, it seemed like a steal. Then Akiko told him that the oyabun—literally, father; colloquially, godfather—of the largest yakuza syndicate in Kyoto lived practically next door, in a walled compound guarded by a large detachment of foot soldiers, latter-day would-be samurai, who lounged around the gate comparing shoe shines and fingering dice. They were under strict orders not to harass the local citizenry, on the principle of not fouling the nest. But so much coiled menace was not easily contained. There were incidents. People got pushed around. Missing finger joints testified to the occasional breaches of discipline. Those who called unnecessary attention to the organization atoned by severing one of their own fingers with a sword in the presence of the aggrieved superior, and presenting it, wrapped in silk, with humble apologies. Starting with the little fingers, violent or very stupid subordinates would lose half a hand learning about discipline.

  The sentries didn’t know what to do when a cowboy appeared at the gate of the compound one day asking to see the boss. Protocol was unclear. There ensued a conference at the gate. Ryder waited, a large gift-wrapped package under his arm. After fifteen minutes he was admitted, and passed through a courtyard of immaculate raked gravel, the kind you saw in the gardens of Zen temples.
The house was elegant and austere. Ryder was disappointed, having expected something spectacularly tacky—statues of nude women, pink flamingos. A brawny thug with a marbled face escorted him along the stone walk. The door was opened by an even larger man, who was alarmed when he saw the package. At his command Ryder opened it, taking care not to tear the wrapping paper. He had been in the country long enough to know that the presentation was as important as the present itself.

  He was shown to a room at the back of the house, where the man told him to wait, closing the sliding screens behind him. Ryder seated himself on the tatami floor. The room was bare except for a scroll, a pen-and-ink landscape, enshrined in the corner alcove. The sliding glass windows on the south wall overlooked a garden with a fish pond. Orange and white carp cruised the murk beneath a canopy of lily pads.

  An hour later the door opened again, and Ryder rose. The man bowed; Miles bowed lower, uncertain if this was the big guy, the oyabun, or just a subordinate. He had a mild, chubby face, wore a dark dress kimono, and looked like someone whose spare time was devoted to calligraphy or stamp collecting. This, Ryder decided, had to be the honcho. An underling would flaunt his authority. They exchanged traditional greetings, Ryder outdoing himself in his employment of polite verb endings and honorifics. His host matched him to a point, finally conceding to Ryder the humbler rung of address. His name was Koyama, Big Mountain. He complimented Miles on his mastery of the language. Ryder protested that he was a rank beginner. He commented on the beauty of the house and garden. Koyama said that the gardener had been sick and apologized for the scruffiness of the grounds. On the contrary, Ryder said, they were immaculate. Koyama took a gold cigarette case from the sleeve of his kimono and offered Ryder a smoke. He accepted. The lighter was also gold, the cigarettes English.

  They were still standing and there was some question as to who would sit down first. Koyama asked if Ryder-san would like a chair brought in. No chair necessary, he was assured. Koyama’s gestures—lifting the skirts of the kimono as he sat down, tapping the ash from his cigarette into a tiny earthenware ashtray—were almost feminine. Although he was probably a killer, his face bore no indication of his vocation. Ryder felt warm and lazy in the yellow afternoon light. He spoke of the beauties of Kyoto and the graciousness of its inhabitants. Koyama spoke warmly about the American people. He was a great admirer of the American cinema, especially Westerns. He had a screening room in the house, and prints of Stagecoach, Red River, High Noon and Shane, among others. Perhaps Ryder-san would be so kind as to view a movie with him someday. Ryder considered telling Koyama how much he liked Japanese gangster flicks, but thought better of it.

  After fifteen minutes of chat Ryder said that, sadly, he had to be leaving. Koyama asked him if he couldn’t possibly stay longer. Ryder answered that he could not conceivably impose even further. As he stood up, Ryder mentioned that he planned to open a business establishment in the neighborhood and that he hoped to have the good will of his neighbors. He then looked down at the box in his hands, which he had held throughout the interview, as if noticing it for the first time and uncertain of its exact nature. He presented Koyama with the box, along with the ritual incantation that it was a trifle unworthy of his attention. A quick study, Ryder had learned that the smallest gift put an obligation on the receiver; a ploy so simple it was hard to believe it worked so well.

  Negotiations for the lease on the store, which had been dragging for weeks, were concluded the next day. The owner of the property fell all over himself when Ryder appeared at his office and enthusiastically conceded on each of the terms that had previously been in dispute.

  Ryder’s operation was in the black within a year, and he branched out into the drinking business—what the Japanese called the water trade. The demand for Western paraphernalia was greater than even he had anticipated, though he often wondered what happened to all of those Tony Lama boots, all of those Stetsons. Not once in two years had he seen any of the merchandise on the street, except for the odd piece of Navaho silver and turquoise jewelry which he imported from Afghanistan. Sometimes he imagined Koyama in his screening room, watching Rio Bravo, aiming his fingers and making shooting noises, his feet kicked up to reveal beneath the kimono his Dan Post lizard-and-antelope hand-tooled cowboy boots, compliments of Hormone Derange.

  Saturday morning, Miles woke up wondering if he had been hit from behind. After he closed up at Buffalo Rome, he and Marilyn went dancing and he got home sometime after four. Akiko was chilly as she served his coffee. He was dimly aware of having behaved badly, stepping out on a seven-months-pregnant wife, but in his present state much of his sympathy was reserved for himself. He wished she would fling out an accusation, just to clear the air. But no, she wasn’t going to dirty herself by naming the stink. Duck-walking around with her pregnancy.

  Finally she said, “Isn’t today your rally?”

  At first he couldn’t make sense of the word rally, which refused to connect with anything out there in the world. Then he remembered. Ryder was a member in good standing of the All-Japan Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Club, composed of some thousand bikers, most of them pillars of the community throughout the working week, who on Saturday mornings dressed up in Los Angeles Police Department uniforms to ride their Harleys en masse. Once a year the local chapters gathered for the annual spring rally, which this year was convening in Kyoto. Even now they would be assembling in the parking lot at the Holiday Inn. The thought of all that two-cylinder racket was painful. On the other hand, the weird celebrity he enjoyed in the organization was gratifying. Also, the carburetor trouble he’d been having would quickly be diagnosed and corrected by a fellow member. Then he realized that he would have to ask Akiko to watch the shop, which, after last night, seemed too much. Miles Ryder was not entirely shameless.

  “I should mind the store.”

  “I will take care of the store,” Akiko said, and he loved her for not saying it in a bitchy way, and for her precise, uncontracted English.

  “I’ll be back by supper,” he said. “We can go out for dinner and then catch a movie. I’ll leave the bar to Sato.”

  “On Saturday?” she said. “It will be very busy.”

  “We’ll have dinner, anyway.”

  If she was skeptical, she didn’t say anything. Serving up a plate of scrambled eggs and rice, she demonstrated the calm resignation that was the heritage of her race and sex and that had sustained her once she realized her husband had no desire to return to the United States of America, as she had once hoped.

  Because the house they rented in this quiet residential block had no garage, Miles parked his bike in a shed adjoining the store, which was a short walk from the house. Akiko handed him a box lunch and said she would be down shortly to open the shop.

  When he saw the door of the shed lying flat in the small lot behind the store he thought it was strange. He tried to remember if last night was especially windy. Then, as he came closer, he saw the chrome pipes, twisted into shapes which made them difficult to recognize at first, and after that, the handlebars. His first thought was, Who threw the junk into my lot? Catching sight of the saddlebags, slashed into rawhide strips, he stopped. Then he began to run.

  4

  When the water boiled, Ransom removed the kettle from the gas and filled his teapot, pouring the rest into the tin basin in the sink. Made of soapstone, the sink tended to turn green around the edges in summer. He topped the basin with cold water from the tap, then lathered up his shaving brush. With a clean bathtowel he wiped the mirror over the sink. He shaved his upper lip first and poured a cup of tea. When he was done, he rinsed out the basin and hung it on the nail over the sink, then poured out another cup of tea. He went into the other room, folded up his futon and stashed it in the closet, from which he took a broom. He opened the sliding doors onto the terrace and swept the tatami, which glowed yellow in the patch of sun. Dust teemed in the light. The sweeping didn’t take long. That was one of the advantages of small quarters.

&n
bsp; As he was donning his gi, Ransom heard the drone of the monks from Daitokuji, a nearby temple. He searched the pockets of his jeans and found a couple of coins. Downstairs, he opened the gate and stepped out into the narrow, unpaved and unnamed lane. Several houses up, the monks were waiting beside an open gate. Presently, Mrs. Miti came out and gave them something. They bowed, thanked her and proceeded, picking up their chant, their broad, squashed-cone coolie hats rocking from side to side. Ransom threw the coins in the wooden bowl the lead man held against his chest. The man bowed. After they had passed, Ransom began his run.

  The packed dirt of the back streets was dark and damp where housewives had sprinkled it to keep the dust down in front of their doors. Moving between sunlight and the shadowed cool of the narrower lanes, he passed women with babies and the tofu man on his three-wheeled cart. At the Karasuma intersection he waited for the light. A cop with a cauliflower ear, probably from judo, looked him over. On his rusty three-speed bicycle he looked quaint enough, but he could break your arm for you. Ransom gave him a nod, which was returned almost imperceptibly.

  The sky opened up as he approached the Kamo river, the swampy smell reaching him before he could see it. Kites hung in the sky over the trees along the outer levee. He jumped the first levee and ran across the broad, grassy flood plain. The kite flyers were scattered along the river bank, facing north. In the keen light the strings were invisible; it appeared that some cult had gathered to worship, hands clasped as if in prayer, eyes raised to the northern sky. To the northeast was Mt. Hiei, the highest in the horseshoe-shaped ridge of peaks that nearly enclosed the city. In the ninth century, to protect the new capital, the Emperor Kwannon sponsored a monastery on the peak, with monks on duty twenty-four hours a day to watch for evil spirits coming down from the northeast, the sector from which evil spirits were known to descend. They were to ring a large gong if they spotted anything suspicious. Ransom wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. The monks eventually tired of the vigil and began periodically descending the mountain to rape, pillage and burn, incidentally confirming Kwannon’s conviction about the direction from which trouble comes. Today a thin banner of cloud flew from the southern face, like a shred from a passing spirit’s robe. Ransom thought it fortunate that from here you could not see the fantasy-amusement park which had been built beside the temple grounds.