Hiroshima Boy

by Naomi Hirahara

  Zipping open his suitcase, he pulled out his pajamas and gazed at the sock stuffed with the plastic bag with Haruo’s ashes. Haruo needed to be released from the old, faded sock. He placed the bag next to a vase holding a yellow silk rose on a low table by the television set.

  That night, on the tatami floor, he found it difficult to sleep. It may have been jet lag—what time was it in California? He turned on the light and checked his watch. Eight a.m. in Los Angeles. He had reached his destination, so he should finally be able to relax. But in his gut he felt that something was not right.

  His tiny room had a sink, and he went to it to splash water on his face. Thea had left the water bottle she’d purchased for him by the sink, and he finished it off. He didn’t realize how dehydrated he was. He returned to the futon and may have slept for a few minutes, but then he opened his eyes. Now he needed to go to the restroom.

  He undid the lock on the door and looked both ways in the hallway. A dim light on one end revealed nothing but the large open corridor. He’d forgotten his slippers in his room, and the linoleum floor felt cold against his bare soles. He quickly went into the bathroom, fastened the bolt on the door, and did his business. Maybe now sleep could come.

  The hallway was empty when he reentered his room. As he turned to slide close his door and lock it, he heard a rustling near his futon.

  An old woman, her hair in disarray, stood on the other side of the tatami mat. She was wearing a chanchanko, a Japanese padded vest. For a moment, he thought her eyes were missing but then realized that her sockets were sunken in and obscured by loose flesh.

  “Be careful. It’s dangerous,” she said. “Don’t believe what they say.”

  Mas was so shocked he didn’t know how to respond. There were alarms in the hallway to alert the staff. He took a few steps back and went out to the hallway to find the best way to call for help. But by the time he reached the alarm, he saw the woman leave his room and head for the other side of the hallway.

  “Baka,” he cursed at the disappearing woman. Stupid. She’d shaken him, but obviously she was harmless. He decided not to call anyone in the middle of the night. If he couldn’t deal with a half-witted old resident, his days as an independent man were numbered.

  Hampered by interrupted sleep, he was severely annoyed to be awakened by the intense light from the morning sun. The curtains were opaque, and there was no way to reduce the sunlight. Shikataganai, he thought—nothing can be done about it. His watch read twelve noon, so it was probably only four in the morning here in Hiroshima. He could not go back to sleep, so he decided to wander around outside.

  In the lobby he traded his slippers for his shoes and waved at the worker behind the desk to open the glass doors. He walked up the concrete road, past small oyster-production factories covered in corrugated aluminum. Their operations seemed shuttered for the summer months. Stacks of threaded white scallop shells, resembling giant puka shell necklaces like the ones Mari wore in high school, were placed in piles on their sides. Plastic tubes that probably were used to connect the shells were packed upright in crates.

  He had seen at least one man fishing from a cement platform and wondered what kind of fish could be caught in these waters. He himself was a surf fisherman—at least in his prime—and he loved the pull of the rod in his hands, the constant fight with the caught fish, a dance of release and then a quick reeling in.

  Surprisingly, the surf did not smell as salty as the times he fished the Pacific Ocean from the shores of California. Instead of a polluted brown, the water had a greenish tint. He looked toward a makeshift jetty, which housed a small boat with a motor. What was that floating in the water beside it?

  A red flag? But it seemed attached to something. A knot of seaweed, perhaps? Curious, he walked down to the platform, made of gigantic bamboo poles, now weathered gray, that had been tied together with wire to planks of wood.

  The way the red item bobbed in the water was suspect. It certainly was not from the sea. As he got closer, he almost lost his breath. He could make out a head of black hair about two inches underwater. He should have immediately gone for help, but the floating body was calling out to him.

  He broke loose a deteriorating bamboo pole from the jetty and pulled the body toward him. As the body turned in the water, the face, bloated and fleshy, came to the surface. The eyes were closed, but the mouth was open. A small dark fish darted in and out from the lips. The red that Mas had seen from the hill above had been a T-shirt that the floating body was wearing—with “San Francisco” emblazoned across its chest.

  Chapter Two

  The sun continued to beat down on the asphalt road. Mas wanted to run, but he forced himself to take measured, steady steps. He thought he saw a cut rope on the concrete, but it was a huge, thick worm, searching for an escape from the heat.

  “There’s a boy out there in the ocean,” he told Tatsuo behind the desk in Japanese. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Tatsuo sprang into action. He called another employee, and they rushed from the office into the lobby. Sliding into sandals lined up at the genkan, they ran outside. Mas followed and watched as they headed down the slope toward the rickety jetty.

  A small crowd had formed along the hill overlooking the water. News spread quickly on this island, even a little after sunrise.

  “I think it’s a boy,” someone said.

  “Is he from the Children’s Home?”

  A man who looked as if he could be in his thirties shook his head. He had thick, pitch-black hair and the beginning of a goatee. “All our children are accounted for. He’s not one of ours.”

  None of the villagers claimed him as one of theirs, either. It was too hard to see the body from this position, anyway.

  Mas heard the zoom of a motorbike, and then saw it stop on the side of the road. The rider removed his helmet, revealing short-cropped graying hair and wire-rimmed sunglasses.

  “Ah, Gohata-san has arrived,” the man from the Children’s Home commented dryly. By the tone of his voice, Mas knew that this Gohata was not well thought of, at least by this man, who was presumably the head of the home.

  “What happened?” Gohata asked, adjusting his sunglasses. He was wearing a heavy silver ring set with an opal stone.

  Then a chorus of villagers.

  “It’s a boy.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “This one discovered him.” One of them gestured toward Mas.

  “Who are you?” Gohata asked.

  “Arai. Arai Mas.” Surnames were always said first in Japan. The family name was more important than any name made up at birth.

  “Gohata Bunpei. I am the district representative here.” He looked Mas up and down. “Are you Japanese?” he asked with all condescension possible.

  “He’s Mukai-san’s guest. From America,” the same villager said. Mas was surprised to hear that so much was known about his situation. After all, he was a complete stranger and had not met any of them before.

  “Shouldn’t someone call the police?” Mas asked in Japanese.

  “No police here,” the villager said.

  Gohata glared at Mas, perhaps annoyed that his authority was considered inadequate in this situation. He took out his cell phone from his shirt pocket and went to the side of the road to make his call.

  “Arai-san, I am Ikeda Toshi. Nice to meet you.” The man from the Children’s Home took this opportunity to introduce himself. He was about a head taller than Mas, and his eyebrows were as dark as his hair. Mas bowed back in response.

  “Sorry about Gohata. He thinks that he runs the place,” Toshi said.

  “He does run the place,” one of the villagers said.

  “But he’s not even originally from Ino,” another chimed in. “He’s an Okayama man who married an Ino woman.”

  “But I guess when his granddaughter marries that high-tone Kyoto man, he’ll be on an even higher level.”

  “Anyway, he retired here and can’t keep himself from mischief,” T
oshi said.

  Mas found the young man’s attitude refreshing. He spoke as though he might have been a yogore, a dirty troublemaker, himself when he was young. “What’s Children’s Home?”

  “Its official name is Senbazuru—you know, like the thousand cranes for atomic-bomb survivors? It’s an institution for boys who don’t have parents—either by death or because they are unavailable for one reason or another. I grew up at Senbazuru. Went to Hiroshima for my education and returned to run the place. Trying to make sure that they have some kind of future.”

  Glancing across the road, Mas noticed a couple of the boys who had been on the ferry, paused on their bicycles. “Are those kids from your home?” he asked.

  As soon as Toshi looked in their direction, they pedaled away.

  “No, they’re from the village on the other side of the island. Why do you ask?”

  Before Mas could respond, Gohata had returned, his cell phone peeking out from his front pocket. “The police from the mainland will be coming later today.” He turned his attention to Tatsuo and the other nursing-home employees, who were struggling to bring the body up onto the landing. “Leave it right there!” he called out. “And come right back up. The police will want the area to be as undisturbed as possible.”

  When Mas returned to the nursing home, he was surprised to see Ayako sitting at a table in the lobby. Her hair looked freshly combed and styled. Someone had meticulously groomed her, and Mas doubted Queen Ayako had done it herself.

  “Good morning,” she said, as if the morning was indeed good. Even though she had not been outside, Mas realized full well that she knew exactly what had transpired.

  “Ohayo,” Mas said in return. He bowed ever so slightly and felt obliged to take the other seat at the table. When his stomach growled, he realized that in spite of this morning’s tragic events, he was terribly hungry.

  Ayako must have heard the rumbling from his belly. “The food here is for those of us who can barely swallow. It’s mush. If you want some real food, Tatsuo will have to take you back into town. No restaurants, but there’s a konbini, at least.” Mas had figured out that konbini was short for convenience store. In the airport, he had seen one that sold random items ranging from stationery to ham sandwiches to disposable razors.

  “Orai.” The sooner, the better, but Mas knew that Ayako was not going to release him yet.

  “I heard that you saw the body.”

  Mas swallowed, his tongue clicking against his dentures. “Yah.”

  “What did it look like?”

  Mas frowned. What a bizarre question. He must have misunderstood her.

  “Itsu a boy. Teenager.”

  “Did it still have a face?”

  Again, Mas was shocked. Haruo’s big sister was going kuru-kuru-pa, like the rest of the crazy women in this place.

  “Yah. I see him before. On the ferry.”

  “Really? I wonder if he was a villager? Or perhaps one of those troublemakers in the Children’s Home.”

  “I dunno,” Mas said.

  “Toshi’s boys run rampant.”

  As Ayako kept talking and bad-mouthing all the people around her, Mas fell into a trance. He always had this inclination when someone was saying something disagreeable, but it seemed to happen more frequently in his mid-eighties. And now sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, and yes, perhaps shell-shocked, he began to actually slip out of his seat. Fortunately Tatsuo was nearby and steadied Mas in place. “Arai-san, maybe you should rest,” he said, and Mas gratefully agreed. The walls and even the floor seemed to be moving.

  Ayako seemed a bit put out. “Go then. But remember to deliver my brother’s ashes to me later today.”

  By the time Mas reached the sliding door of his room, he thought he might collapse right then and there. Tatsuo eased him down to his futon and from there, sleep came easily. He dreamed of riding dolphins in the sea, clams and octopi at his side. His daughter, Mari, was there, too, probably only six years of age, judging from her missing front teeth. “Isn’t this wonderful, Dad-dy,” she called out from one of the dolphins. She was waving her arms and hands and laughing. Mas wanted to respond, but found that no sound would come out of his mouth. Something kept hitting the back of his leg, first a faint bump and then harder, so hard that the contact stung. When he looked down, it was some kind of creature—the head of a boy attached to a mini cable car.

  He jerked himself awake. A dream, he told himself, with full knowledge that the discovery of a boy’s dead body was far worse. He figured that it might be around noon, Japan time. He got up and went into the bathroom across the way to take a shower. Everything in there felt institutional to him, clinical and utilitarian like a hospital. His shower was a short one.

  He was now absolutely famished and had to eat as soon as possible. Closing the sliding door, he returned to the lobby and flagged down Tatsuo, who nodded.

  “Arai-san, I was on my way to get you. I have some errands to run in town. Let’s go now.”

  In his driver’s seat on the right-hand side of the car, Tatsuo blinked repeatedly, and Mas wondered if this was a tic that he’d had all along. They rode in silence for a little while before Tatsuo finally said, “Shock. Really a shock. Nothing like this has ever happened here. I mean, we have our residents die all the time. But they are old. Not a child.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Tatsuo was quiet for a moment. “I might have seen him before. It’s hard to tell with the body being in the water. But he looked familiar.”

  “I saw him on the ferry,” Mas announced. He didn’t know why he was sharing this information so readily. Tatsuo, in his unassuming state, was easy to talk to.

  “Really. You don’t say. The day you arrived?”

  Mas nodded.

  “Maybe that’s why I thought I’d seen him before.” More blinking, more ferociously now. “Did he seem troubled to you?”

  Mas knew what Tatsuo was asking. Did he seem like a boy who could commit suicide or hurt himself? Mas didn’t want to jump to conclusions, at least not out loud. “I had no contact with him,” he merely replied.

  “I wonder why he was here. And why he didn’t go back to where he came from by nightfall? He had to be a Hiroshima boy, I imagine.”

  Tatsuo continued driving south, the tops of the oyster racks now barely visible in the water. “Maybe he couldn’t see properly. Fell into the water by accident.”

  Mas shrugged his shoulders. He appreciated Tatsuo trying to make sense of the tragedy, but in his own experience, life many times did not make sense. They finally reached the main village, and Tatsuo found a parking spot near the Shinto shrine with the patina roof. Tatsuo pointed to the konbini and told Mas to meet back at the car. “If I’m not here, wait in there.” He gestured to an enclosed glass waiting area, which Mas assumed was air-conditioned.

  While many of the homes in the area looked ramshackle and aged, aside from the satellite dishes positioned on wood balconies, the konbini seemed rather on the new side. It wasn’t one of those chains visible from the train station, but it replicated their layout and general ambience. It had white walls with a line of shelves filled with random sundries.

  As Mas approached the automatic glass doors, two cats chased a third one into his path, almost causing him to trip. They were pitiful animals, true alley cats with kuso coming out of their eyes and bite marks on their ears. The one being chased, a tabby that reminded Mas of his daughter’s childhood pet, was in terrible shape. It was missing an eye, and, probably as a result of its compromised sight, moved in a jerky fashion. The one-eyed cat finally hid in the center of some stacked abandoned tires.

  Mas entered the konbini, enjoying the coolness as the air conditioning enveloped his skin. He picked up a couple of sandwiches—one filled with a fried pork cutlet and the other with noodles. Genessee would not be happy with his choices, but on Ino, choices were limited. He brought his sandwiches and a couple of bottles of cold green tea to the register.

  The cashier’s fac
e was ruddy with deep lines. She had a cotton scarf tied around her head, so Mas couldn’t see the color of her hair. But judging from the condition of her skin, she had left her forties decades ago.

  She dispensed with all niceties—no “welcome” or “ohayo.” In fact, she glared at Mas with suspicion as if he was inconveniencing her by frequenting her business. Well, he could certainly stare back with the same level of intensity. So he did.

  The doors opened with the entrance of Tatsuo, apparently a more welcome figure. “Ah, ohayo,” she called out—was there even singsong in her voice? The one-eyed cat slipped in behind Tatsuo, perhaps seeking refuge from the heat or maybe the bullies.

  “Kora!” she yelled, while grabbing hold of a broom. To make her position perfectly clear, she swiped the cat with the bristles. The cat let out a cry as it was being pushed back into the outdoor heat.

  “I’ll wait for you outside,” Mas told Tatsuo. Carrying his bag of food, he went into the glass waiting area and began eating his breakfast. Outside he could see the placid surface of the sea. He realized he hadn’t seen any signs of life in the water; no joyful flying fish or mischievous sea lions as he saw along the coast of California on the other side of the Pacific. Was life here extinguished as soon as it was dragged below? What was that boy doing here on the island?

  A shriek rang out behind the waiting area; the bully cats were at it again by the Shinto shrine. The tabby cowered in a corner by some long concrete memorial tablets and the edge of a house. The black cat was on its hind legs, snarling and challenging the one-eyed feline to a duel.

  Mas was not a cat lover, but Haruo definitely was. At the Flower Market where he had worked, Haruo had befriended alley cats, especially the most miserable-looking ones, plying them with treats that Spoon purchased from the market with discount coupons. After he retired, both he and Spoon fed all the stray cats in their neighborhood, much to the consternation of their neighbors. When Haruo got sick with cancer, their attention to homeless animals declined, and soon only a pitiful blind cat, black with white paws, remained on their porch.