by Jeremy Bates
“Nobody hangs themselves while on mushrooms.”
“Apparently they do!”
“It wasn’t the ’shrooms,” he said defiantly.
“So what happened? He decided to give suicide a whirl? See what it felt like?”
John Scott’s brow beetled over storming eyes. He balled his hands into fists, as if he were about to take a swing at me.
I wanted him to.
“You’re going to lay this on me?” he snarled. “You’re really going to try to lay this on me?”
I was too appalled to answer him. I looked at Tomo. “You have to call the police.”
“And say what?” he asked. He was eyeing John Scott apprehensively.
“Tell them our friend is dead. They need to get out here.”
“How they find us?”
It was true, I realized. We’d have to meet them in the parking lot.
John Scott said, “We tell the cops that Ben picked the mushrooms on his own.”
Nina blinked, as if coming out of her stupor. “Stom ta’peh!” she spat. “You picked them.”
“What does it matter? Why do any of us need to get involved in this? There’s nothing that can be changed.”
“You did this to him! You take responsibility!”
“I didn’t do a fucking thing!” He jabbed a finger in Ben’s direction. “He was the one who fucking hanged himself.”
“I will tell the police I saw you pick them. I will tell them I saw you give them to him. He did not even want them. But you told him it was okay. That is manslaughter.”
John Scott took an aggressive step toward Nina. I moved between them and shoved him hard. He lost his footing and fell on his ass. I had little time to enjoy the surprised look on his face because he rolled forward quickly onto his knees and sprang at me. His head rammed my gut, knocking the breath from my lungs. Before I could recover he dragged me to the ground. I couldn’t shake him as he drove elbows into my face. Then one of the wild haymakers I was throwing connected with his jaw and he tumbled off me. I jumped on top of him and raised my fist. His eyes were unfocused, his jaw slack. I wanted to hit him so bad—for sleeping with Mel, for giving Ben the mushrooms, for threatening Nina—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I planted my hand on his head and pushed off, shoving his face into the ground.
Everyone was looking at me. No one seemed to know what to say.
“He was going to hit Nina,” I said.
“The fuck I was,” John Scott mumbled.
“You’re bleeding, Ethan.” Mel pressed her fingertips to a spot near my right temple.
I winced and jerked away. “I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
John Scott pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He glared at me. For a moment I thought he was going to continue the fight. Instead he turned to Nina and said, “It’s my word against yours. You tell the cops I gave Ben the mushrooms, I’ll tell them you gave them to him.”
Nina threw her arms in the air. “Everyone here knows it was you!”
He must have tasted the blood leaking from his lip because he drew the heel of his hand across the cut. “Who was with me?” he said. “Just you and Tomo. And Tomo’s not going to say anything, right dude?”
“Leave me out,” Tomo said, holding up his hands.
“You have admitted you gave them to him!” Nina exploded.
“Bullshit!” He leveled a stare at Tomo, then Mel, then me. He returned to Mel, his best ally. “Mel?”
She wouldn’t look at him. “What?”
“Did I say I gave him the mushrooms?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. I couldn’t tell if she was siding with him or if she was simply in denial that any of this was happening.
“Mel?” he repeated.
“Lord!” She spun away. I rested my hand on her shoulder, telling her not to listen to him.
“Don’t you guys fucking peg this on me!” John Scott roared. “Tomo!” He opened his hands in a gesture of clemency. “Tomo?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
“You killed him!” Nina shrieked. She leapt at John Scott, pounding his chest with her small fists. He raised his arms in a half-assed attempt to block the blows. It was such a pathetic sight—such a humbling sight—I finally found pity for him.
I moved to pull Nina away. She didn’t come easy. I had to lift her off her feet. She continued to swing her arms and kick madly. When I set her down, she glared at me, fury in her eyes, then collapsed on the spot. She pulled her legs to her chest, rested her forehead on her knees, and began to cry again.
Aside from Nina, the rest of us were sullenly quiet. John Scott gave me a brief glance and an even briefer nod, which pissed me off.
“Listen,” I said, deciding that we needed to put blame aside for now. “This isn’t helping any. We need to figure out what to do.”
“We have to get out of here,” Mel said. “We have to get out of here right now.”
“I meant with Ben’s body. Do we leave it here or take it with us?”
“We cannot leave it here,” Nina said sharply.
“But how do we carry it?”
“We can make a litter,” John Scott suggested.
Mel folded her arms across her chest. “Won’t we be, I don’t know, contaminating the scene?” she said.
“We’ve already taken him down,” I said. “I can’t see how moving him will hurt. We’ll bring the police back here later.”
Mel’s lips tightened and her eyes hardened, as if she were just realizing the scope of this, the fallout. Getting Ben out of the forest was just the beginning. There would be interviews, statements, possible detainment until the facts were sorted out, perhaps a trial, all of it happening in a foreign language, in a foreign country.
“Oh God,” she mumbled. “Oh God.”
And that about summed it up.
20
According to John Scott we needed two tent poles and two jackets to make a litter. You turn the jackets inside out and zip them up, leaving the sleeves on the inside. Next you tear out the shoulders, slip the poles through the holes you made, through the sleeves, and out the bottom, one jacket after the other, like a skewer through a kebab.
I handed him my jacket. It was chilly out, but I knew I would warm up quickly once we started moving.
“Okay,” he said, “we need one more.”
“All right.” I looked at him expectantly.
“Dude, you can’t tear a hole through this leather without a knife.”
“I’m sure I could.”
“You can take mine.” Nina slipped off her jacket. She only had on a thin T-shirt beneath.
“You’re going to get cold,” I told her.
“I brought a sweater with me.”
“Use mine,” Mel said.
“No, Mel, keep it,” I said. “We’re using John Scott’s.”
“I told you—”
“Bullshit! I’ll rip the shoulders.”
“What’s your problem?”
“What’s the deal with you and that jacket?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That leather fucking jacket.” I reached for a lapel.
“Get your dickskinners off me.” He swatted my hand away.
“Give me it!” I said, grabbing the front and tugging.
He punched me in the face. My knees went weak. Still, as I went down I managed to grab an inside pocket and heard a loud tear.
I landed hard on my tailbone. The impact cleared the stars from my vision, and to my satisfaction John Scott was holding the jacket open, staring with incredulity at the huge swath of lining I’d torn nearly free.
“Told you,” I said, though my jaw was numb, the words blubbery.
“You fuck stick,” he sneered.
He might have come after me, but Tomo, Mel, and Nina held him back.
I spat the blood out of my mouth and saw a tooth exi
t as well.
Mel tended to my injury while John Scott got to work on the litter. He ended up using my jacket and Ben’s, considering Ben would no longer need his. Tomo and Nina kept to themselves. Neil went to the trees to take another shit.
“What is it with you and his jacket?” Mel said as she dabbed the blood away from my split lip. Her hands were shaky, her complexion pale.
“It wasn’t his jacket. It was the fact he’d let you and Nina sacrifice yours before he would his.”
“You mentioned something about his jacket yesterday.”
“Whatever. It’s him. Not his jacket.”
“You’re upset over Ben. Your anger spilled over to John.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re in denial.”
“Denial that Ben’s dead?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged. I didn’t think I was. But I wanted to get off the topic; I didn’t like Mel playing shrink. Given how visibly rattled she was over Ben’s death, she was the last person who should be dishing out post-traumatic advice.
“Okay,” she said with a final rub to get the last of the blood from my chin. “That’s the best I can do. Just bite on this until it stops bleeding.” She gave me the T-shirt she’d been using.
“Thanks.”
“Now I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Apologize to John Scott.”
I was incredulous. “For what?”
“Ripping his jacket.”
“Are you kidding?”
“We don’t need this right now, hon. We need to put everything behind us. We all need to be on the same team.”
“He punched me.”
“You started it.”
“Jesus, how old are we?”
“Exactly, Ethan.”
“Tell him to apologize to me.”
“Will you accept it if he does?”
I hesitated.
“Good,” she said.
John Scott sauntered over to me just before we were ready to leave. “Hey, Ethos,” he said, “sorry for punching your face in.”
I glanced past him to Mel. She silently urged me on.
“Sorry about ripping your jacket.” I paused. “Looks like you’ll probably have to get it relined. Expensive.”
“Won’t be as expensive as fixing your tooth.”
My tongue probed the spot where my left incisor had been. “Yeah, well.”
“So we cool?”
“Yeah, cool.”
“Shake,” Mel told us.
John Scott stuck his hand out. I shook. He used a rock-hard grip, as I knew he would, holding my hand for longer than comfortable, squeezing tighter and tighter, as I also knew he would.
Then he let go.
Best friends again.
John Scott and I returned to Ben’s body and set the litter down on the ground.
“Take his shoulders,” he told me. “I’ll take his legs.”
“Wait. What about the rope?” The ligature still encircled Ben’s neck.
“What about it?”
“Shouldn’t we take it off him?”
“I don’t think we should mess with it. We’ll put the rest on his chest—”
“Hey,” I said in a sudden epiphany. “Where the hell did he get the rope from?”
“It’s the string.”
“The string?”
“That we followed in.”
I realized he was right. The string was a thick twine, made with woven coir fiber, easily strong enough to support a person’s weight.
“Tomo and I couldn’t find it when we went looking for the body.”
“It’s gone? All of it?”
John Scott nodded.
“It was hundreds of feet long. Where’s the rest of it?”
“Maybe some of it’s still lying around. We didn’t have time to look. Now let’s do this. On the count of three.”
We lifted Ben off the ground, stepped sideways, and set him on the litter. Then we piled the string on top of him and covered him with his sleeping bag. We carried him back to camp, John Scott at the front, facing forward, me at the back. Tomo, Mel, and Nina were waiting for us, their backpacks on. Neil, however, was slumped against a tree, holding his belly.
I told John Scott to set the litter down, then I went over to Neil and crouched next to him. “Neil? You okay?”
“Hurts like a son of a whore.”
“Can you walk?”
“Don’t know. Help me up.”
I pulled him to his feet. He swayed, then lurched off into the trees. He doubled over, placing a hand against a tree trunk for balance. A moment later he vomited. I saw the first bit of brownish sick gush from his mouth and turned quickly away. He vomited again and again. I could do nothing to block out the wet, splashing sounds or the putrid stench, which made my own stomach queasy.
He returned, wobbly, but looking a little better.
“We’re leaving now,” I told him. “Can you make it?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“You can wait here. We’re going to bring the police back.”
He shook his head and reached for his backpack.
“Leave it,” I said. “We’ll get it later.”
“No, mate…”
“No one’s going to touch it.”
He reached for it again.
“I’ll take it,” I told him, since I no longer had mine to carry. I slipped it onto my back. “You just focus on walking.”
I returned to where John Scott was waiting for me. We lifted the litter again—it was heavier than I’d hoped it would be—and led the way to where the string had once been.
“Hey!” Mel said, sounding panicked. “Where’s the string?”
I explained.
“He took it?” She was incredulous. “But how will we find our way out?”
“We know the general direction. We’ll come to the red ribbon eventually.”
“What if we get lost?”
“We won’t.”
“You don’t know that for sure—”
“Mel, there’s no other option.”
I pushed forward, shunting John Scott with the litter, and we began to walk.
It was impossible not to think of Ben, of course. I had only known him for a very short time, less than twenty-four hours, but his sudden death made me feel as if we were much closer. It bonded us in some way. And it left an ache inside me. He’d been so young, so full of alacrity and life. I recalled the way he’d greeted us outside the train station. Open, friendly, displaying none of the automatic suspicion most people harbor toward strangers. Kissing Tomo in the parking lot. How excited he’d been upon discovering the Nike shoe and the painted arrows, like a kid on Christmas morning. The way he’d affectionately talked about his parents and grandparents. It was almost surreal to glance down now and see his body in front of me, covered by the sleeping bag, inert, something that would soon begin to atrophy and rot. It didn’t seem right.
My mind skipped to his relationship with Nina. At first I’d assumed the two of them had been together for a long time. They came across that way. The familiar touches, the knowing looks, the conversations in Hebrew, which no one else could understand. Not to mention the fact they simply seemed good as a couple. Then came the first revelation that he and Nina had only met last month in Thailand, and the second, that the attraction between them was not as mutual as it appeared.
Hearing the latter had admittedly given me a thrill. Nina was available. I could get with her if I wanted, or it was likely I could get with her, given the way she’d been flirting with me. This was pure fantasy. Despite the Shelly/John Scott fiascos, Mel and I were near perfect together, I would never cheat on her. Still, it was nonetheless an ego boost to know I could get with Nina if the circumstances were different. It made me feel attractive and vital.
Not anymore.
In fact, I wished Nina had never revealed any of her Ben woes to me. Because now I not only fel
t guilty about coveting a dead guy’s girlfriend, but my memory of them had become tainted. I would have preferred to remember Ben and Nina as happy and in love, not Ben foolishly courting someone who would not or could not reciprocate his sentiments.
I flexed my fingers around the tent poles. We’d been walking for twenty minutes. The blisters on my right hand stung, and I guessed they had ruptured. But I wasn’t going to stop for a rest; there’d be time enough for that when we reached the ribbon.
I began to think in the here and now, particularly what was going to happen when we got out of Aokigahara and rang the police. They would meet us in the parking lot. We would be questioned—no, interrogated. The police in Japan were extra thorough when it came to the petty crimes often associated with foreigners. This never made sense to me, especially given the blind eye they turn toward the yakuza, which performs all kinds of illegal activities on an epic scale.
I’d been arrested in the country before, or at least detained, so I knew what I was talking about. After a night out with a friend, I caught the last train heading to my side of the city—or I thought I had—because it ended its service at what appeared to me to be an arbitrarily chosen station miles and miles from where I wanted to be.
I began walking in the direction I thought my place was, and along the way I came upon an unlocked bicycle propped against a utility pole. I hopped on it, telling myself I would return it the next day. The bike only had one speed, but the streets were flat, and soon I was zipping right along—straight into a dragnet. I would later learn that the police often erected these traffic stops specifically to curb the number of bicycles borrowed by one-way joyriders like me, which, not so surprising, is a common occurrence in a city with ten million bikes that all look alike and are rarely locked up.
The officer asked me if the bicycle was mine. I told him it was. He checked the registration sticker. This was something else I didn’t know then. It was compulsory for cyclists to register their bikes and attach a sticker to the frame. The officer called in the number on his radio. My ride turned out to belong to a woman named Kimiko Kashiwa. He asked me if I was Kimiko Kashiwa. I told him, no, I wasn’t.