by Jeremy Bates
I stiffened. “Don’t tell me he did it here?”
Mel shook her head. “In his apartment. He wasn’t discovered for a week. Nobody bothered to check on him.”
“Why…?”
“I don’t know. He was lonely probably. Anyway, seeing the grave, it made me think of him.”
I wanted to say something about Yumi right then, about the ritual she’d performed before killing herself. Instead I said, “Are you okay being here?”
“Camping in the forest?”
I nodded.
“It’s just one night.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Yes.” She paused, then asked, “Are you?”
I was about to tell her I was fine, but there was something in her question, a subtext, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. “You mean because of Gary?”
“Seeing the grave…”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s depressing here.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“You’re sure?”
I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to talk about Gary. I never talked about Gary to anyone. At least, not in any real depth. Even after spending four years with me, all Mel knew was that he was my older brother, he was a hockey player, and he was shot. That’s how I wanted to keep it.
“Yeah, Mel,” I said. “I’m sure.”
“Okay.”
I lay back down and tried to picture Degawa’s face, but it stubbornly refused to reveal itself. All I could remember about him was his van. It was compact, like Honda’s, a Mitsubishi maybe, with curtains covering the side and back windows. He’d honked at Mel and me one day while we were walking home from work together. Mel had said, “That’s Degawa.” And I had replied, “The pervert?”
A loud peal of thunder sounded overhead, followed by another, both still distant but closer than I would have liked.
“Guess it might rain after all,” I said.
Mel sighed. “And I was having such a lovely day.”
9
I didn’t know who instigated it—Mel rolling against me, me placing a hand on her backside—but soon we were half naked, making love in Suicide Forest. It was risky, considering Tomo and Neil could have come back at any moment, but I didn’t care, and I guess Mel didn’t either. Given the dismal environment, and the hard ground, I was surprised the sex had gone off without a hitch. Well, almost. Halfway through Mel complained about a piece of bark rubbing against her back. We moved, but then it was a stick. Then something else. Regardless, I didn’t have any regrets, and I didn’t think Mel did either.
I began to drift into a light afternoon siesta when Mel, lying next to me, jerked into a sitting position, crying out.
I sat up immediately. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
She was taking deep breaths, her hand against her chest.
“Mel?” I pressed, getting worried.
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. A dream.”
“More like a nightmare. You’re wired. What was it about?”
“I fell down that crater again. Actually, you pushed me.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. Just a dream thing. I don’t think you meant to. But I didn’t land on the ledge this time. I kept falling and falling and splashed into a huge, cold lake. It was completely dark. And for some reason I couldn’t swim. I started sinking. There was something in the water with me.” She shivered. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what it was. It kept brushing against my legs.”
“Did you get out?”
“I was drowning. I could see you and John looking down into the hole. I was trying to yell, but water filled my mouth. You guys didn’t do anything. You were just watching. Then I sank to the bottom of the lake—and woke up.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She turned her face away from me.
“Hey,” I said, “it was just a dream.”
She looked at me again, and I saw tears in her eyes.
“What if back then, for real, I missed that ledge?”
“I told you…it wasn’t that deep.”
“I could have died.”
“You wouldn’t have died.”
“I could have. It was a matter of inches.”
“Yeah, and you could have walked straight past the hole without stepping in it. Everything in life is a matter of inches. Jaywalking across the street is a matter of inches. Don’t think about it.” I wiped away one of her tears with my finger. “Okay?”
She nodded.
In the distance I heard John Scott’s voice. A few moments later I saw him and Ben and Nina moving through the vegetation, following the ribbon, toward the gravesite. Ben noticed the scattered belongings first and cried out excitedly. They began whispering in hushed, reverent tones. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Mel rubbed her eyes and called to them.
“Mel!” John Scott said. He came over and crouched in front of her. “Holy shit, Mel. We passed that hole you fell in. It went to fucking China.” He took her hands and examined them. “You don’t have any cuts or anything?”
I almost told him to stop touching my girlfriend, but I held my tongue.
“Ethan said it wasn’t very deep—”
John Scott stared at me like I was insane. “Do you need glasses, dude? There was no bottom.”
Mel frowned. “No bottom?”
I willed him to shut up.
“Even with the flashlight,” he went on, “we saw zip. It just kept going and going. I dropped a rock but didn’t hear it land.”
Mel turned on me. “You said—”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Hey, it doesn’t matter,” John Scott told her. “Neil saved your ass. You’re all good now.”
I glared at him. Neil? Just Neil? I recalled Mel explaining to him over the phone how we’d used Neil’s guy ropes, but he obviously knew Tomo and I were there as well. Was he purposely trying to piss me off?
“Ethan and Tomo helped too,” Mel said.
John Scott nodded, but it didn’t seem like he was listening. He hooked his thumb toward the grave. “How cool is this shit? And it was a chick. Where’s Tomo and Neil?”
“They went for a walk,” Mel said.
“Looking for the body?”
“They’re right over there.”
She pointed past us to where Tomo and Neil were emerging from the trees. John Scott strode over to them and began backslapping and congratulating and high fiving.
I gritted my teeth.
Why did I care?
Then I heard him asking about a body, saw them shaking their heads. Nevertheless, Tomo started talking excitedly about something. From what I could make out it sounded as if he’d found several more ribbons. Ben and Nina went to them.
“Come on,” Mel said to me, getting up and going over.
“Coming,” I said.
Tomo went on about his discovery, then John Scott started talking about the dog kennel, holding everyone’s interest. Deciding I had brooded long enough, I got up and joined them.
“Tomo and Neil found another ribbon,” Mel said, filling me in.
“Ribbon and string,” Tomo said.
“Did you follow them?”
“We followed the ribbon to the string,” Neil said, “then we came back.”
John Scott asked, “So who’s up for checking them out?”
“Nina and I will continue,” Ben said. “Definitely.”
“I’ve had my adventure,” Neil said. “I reckon I’ll wait here.”
“But I forget way,” Tomo said.
“Bugger off, Tomo,” Neil retorted.
“It’s true.”
“We need you, dude,” John Scott told Neil, giving him a shit-eating grin and patting him heartily on the shoulder. “Mel?”
“We agreed only one more hour,” she stated. “I—I think I want to leave.”
“The forest?” John Scott said, surprised. �
�You can’t. You’ll never make it all the way out before it gets dark.”
“Why don’t we just stay here then?”
“Beside that gravesite? You want to sleep next to that?”
Mel frowned.
“Listen,” John Scott added, seeing he’d scored a point, “it’s not like we can get lost. We simply stick to the ribbon and the string.”
“We need to find firewood if we want a fire.”
“We’ll collect it on the way.”
Mel shook her head, biting her lower lip. She was clearly distressed. The buzz from escaping the crevice had long since dissipated, and it seemed the experience had shaken her more than I’d suspected. Once again, I regretted bringing her out here. It had been selfish of me. I’d been focused only on what I’d wanted.
“I’ll head back with you, Mel,” I said, taking her hand. “We’ll get a room somewhere—”
“Didn’t you hear me?” John Scott said. “You’re not getting out before dark.”
“We’ll manage.”
“And fall in another fucking hole—”
“Why don’t you fuck off—”
“Stop it!” Mel shouted. “You two—stop fighting!” She exhaled loudly. “We’re not leaving. Not in the dark. And we’re not staying here either. Not by that grave. So we’ll go a little farther. Then we’ll make camp. We’ll make a fire, it will be fine.”
John Scott issued another one of those stupid army hooahs.
And that, it seemed, was that.
Convenience stores in Japan offered much healthier and fresher food choices in comparison to their counterparts in other countries, especially the US. I thought this once again as I watched everyone chow down on what they’d bought earlier at the train station. Mel had a bowl of thick wheat noodles; Neil, a rectangular tray of chilled buckwheat noodles served in a soy-based broth; John Scott, sushi and a salad. Tomo, Ben, and Nina each had a bento box. And I’d opted for a single onigiri, a triangle-shaped rice ball wrapped in seaweed. I was hoping I’d chosen one filled with tuna fish or salmon, but because I couldn’t read the kanji on the plastic packaging, I’d inadvertently ended up with umeboshi, a type of pickled plum. It wasn’t very appetizing.
“I don’t get it,” John Scott said with a philosophical look on his face as he poked at his salad. “Suicide, you know.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked.
“Why people kill themselves. Can life really get that bad you want to blow your brains out? I mean, someone is always going to have it worse than you. You think you have it bad because you can’t pay your mortgage? Well, a pal of mine lost both his legs in a training accident, and he’s one of the most go-happy motherfuckers I know.”
Ben shrugged. “I think it depends on the person. Everyone reacts to circumstances differently. It is in your…how do you say...constitution.”
John Scott nodded and said, “You just got to deal with what your problems are. Move on. There was this guy, true story, I shit you not. Growing up, he was always the shortest kid in his class. Like tiny. He also had this whiney, womanly voice, and he used all these effeminate gestures. You would have sworn he was gay, but he wasn’t. And you’d laugh if you knew what his name was. Insult to injury, you know? But I can’t tell you that yet. Anyway, you wouldn’t think it could get much worse for the poor sucker, right? A weak dick who could never get any chicks? Well, get this. On top of everything else he was a black dude in some white hick town in Minnesota. So when the guy wasn’t getting the shit kicked out of him by the homophobes, the racists were doing it. Bottom line is, he knew he wasn’t going to get any taller or whiter or less gay, so if anyone’s going to kill themselves, it’s going to be this guy, right? You know what he did?”
We looked at him blankly.
“He buys a guitar and practices the shit out of it. Then, when he’s seventeen or eighteen, he signs his first record contract. A few years later he releases Purple Rain.”
There was a moment of silence.
“The guy was Prince?” Mel said.
“Symbol Man?” Tomo said.
“Is this story for real?” Ben asked.
John Scott grinned. “Real as rain, brother. That’s my point. You never know what life’s going to throw at you. So why take yourself out of the game early before you know how it ends?”
As soon as everyone had finished eating we set out. I thought the rest and the food would have dispelled some of the heaviness that had settled inside me after discovering Yumi’s gravesite. It didn’t. In fact, I felt grimmer than ever, and again I began to worry about the possibility of getting lost in Aokigahara. If we couldn’t find this new ribbon, and we couldn’t find our way back to the white one, we would be in serious trouble. We had limited food and water. If we failed to make it back to the main trail, and it didn’t rain, we likely wouldn’t survive more than a few days. I believed we were heading south, but that was a guess at best, because the forest never seemed to change. Just more malformed trees and zigzagging roots and teeth-like rocks. The white ribbon could have meandered southeast or southwest. Hell, for all I knew, it could have looped back upon itself, taking us north. The forest was that disorienting, that deceptive.
Sometime later, just as I was beginning to believe we had indeed gotten lost, we spotted the ribbon. It was red and fifty feet to the right and continued in the same direction we’d been heading.
“Looks like we strayed a little,” Neil said, scratching the stubble on his chin. “No matter. We’re not far now.”
He marched toward the ribbon. The rest of us fell into line behind him. For his age Neil was in good shape, showing little signs of fatigue. Nina, Ben, and Tomo also seemed to be doing okay, and the four of them gradually pulled away, so soon there was a thirty-foot gap between them and Mel, John Scott, and me.
Mel was thin and sprightly looking. You would think she went to the gym several times a week, but the most exercise she got was her once-a-week salsa lessons. Her muscles would be rusty for this kind of continuous exertion. It was part of the reason I’d originally planned to climb Mt. Fuji in two stages; I knew it would be difficult for her to climb the mountain in one continuous trek.
Like most soldiers, John Scott was fit and muscular. You could see this in his gait, the roll of his shoulders, his bullish neck. But he was a smoker. I could hear his labored breathing. It was wheezy, and every so often he would cough, hawking up a large amount of phlegm.
And me? What was my excuse for lagging behind? I was simply a big guy. I had a lot of weight to move. At six foot four I weighed two hundred ten pounds, which put me roughly twenty pounds overweight. Fortunately, because of my large frame, this was not very noticeable, though Mel often cautioned me about something called invisible fat.
When had I begun to put on the weight? I wondered. Growing up, Gary and I had been equally athletic. We both played center for top-tier hockey teams in our respective age groups. We both scored similar numbers of goals, had similar numbers of assists. Gary won the MVP trophy while in Bantam AAA; I won it in Peewee AAA. Then sometime in high school, grade ten I believe, I began slowing down, losing my edge. Soon I was no longer the fastest skater or the best stick handler. In Midget Minor I was moved to left wing. In Midget Major my coach suggested I try defense. Still big and strong, I performed adequately in the new position, but I had become a mediocre player at best.
Gary, on the other hand, continued to excel, continued to score, continued to attract all the attention of the scouts. Then he was signed by the Capitals. He met Cheryl the same year. She was the friend of a teammates’ girlfriend. They got married six months later at the church that Gary and I had attended since we were kids. I was his best man. Cheryl fell pregnant almost immediately, and Lisa was born.
Cheryl called me late one evening a few weeks after Gary’s funeral. This was during my suicide stage when I rarely left my apartment. I had classes the next day, but I wasn’t sleeping. I never went to sleep early then. People say when you get depressed all you wa
nt to do is sleep, but that wasn’t true for me. Sleep was the last thing I wanted, largely because of the nightmares. Instead I would watch TV or movies until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
I checked the call display, saw Cheryl’s number, and didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. There was nothing to say. I didn’t want to console or be consoled. I wanted to feel my grief. I wanted it to be mine.
Nevertheless, Cheryl called back ten minutes later, then ten minutes after that. Realizing something bad might have happened, I picked up. As soon as Cheryl greeted me I knew I had made a mistake. Although she sounded somber, unsure, there was no panic in her voice. She spent the first several minutes asking me questions about college, my classes, campus, like we were friends, but we had never been friends. She had been my brother’s wife. I saw her at birthdays and on other special occasions. I didn’t feel comfortable talking to her like we were friends. I didn’t even know why she was calling. Comfort, I imagined. She was lonely. I was too. Gary connected our lonelinesses.
I interrupted her and told her I had to go. She didn’t ask me why, didn’t protest, didn’t start talking about Gary, for which I was grateful.
We hung up and have never spoken again.
She was seeing someone else now. My parents told me this. Initially the revelation made me angry, which was unjustified. Gary was gone. Cheryl had to move on with her life. Still, it felt like a betrayal. If things worked out with this guy, this stranger, he would one day become Cheryl’s husband, Lisa’s father.
Lisa had just started grade three. She sent me a Christmas card every year I’ve been in Japan. I wondered how long this would continue for, how long Cheryl would feel obligated to help Lisa to write them—
“Hey,” Mel said, poking me in the side to get my attention. “We’re here.”
The string bisected the red ribbon at perhaps a sixty-degree angle, heading southwest, or at least what I believed to be southwest.
“This is where Tomo and I stopped,” Neil said.
“So which way should we go?” Ben asked.