Fat Man says, “This is just like in the movie.”
“How is this just like in the movie?”
“They found a beautiful woman on the ground in a park.”
“Who did?”
“Able Hanway. Or Baker. They were playing the same man again.” He kneels, touches the silk, and sniffs his fingers. “I think it was Baker. Anyway, they carry her back to their apartment. She wakes up in their bed and screams. It turns out she has amnesia. That’s the premise of the film.”
“Did the beautiful amnesiac turn out to be a fraud who made the brothers foul themselves on stage in front of an audience of hundreds?”
“No,” says Fat Man. “She turned out to be an angel. The main character helped her remember who she was, but the more she remembered the more distant she grew, until finally she had this sort of mile-long gaze, and a strange, almost creepy smile. Finally she had to leave and go to heaven. She said she would see them again someday. But of course it wasn’t ‘them,’ it was him, because there was only one of them on camera, weeping. I think it was Able. I think he’s the one who cries for them. He’s good at it.”
“Maybe we should get Masumi,” says Little Boy.
“Let’s take her home to him,” says Fat Man. “Maybe she’ll be grateful and decide not to hate us anymore, and she’ll convince him of the same.”
It’s strange to see the Oriental spirit medium outside, especially in daylight. Little Boy claimed to have made sightings in the night, when the medium was said to walk among the cabins and the trees, always alone. When pressed, however, Little Boy had to admit the figure he had seen was only that: a figure. It had always been possible that this medium, though Japanese, was not that medium. Many must have left Japan, Fat Man figured—there would be too many ghosts. Masumi still walked and ate and studied language among the hotel’s guests and staff, though he often left on trips for weeks at a time, under cover of darkness, when no one could see him go—and indeed, none did. He, unlike his wife, known only as “the medium,” did not like speaking with the other guests outside the library and the occasional comment during meals. He had come to quite like Fat Man’s cooking. He had not threatened anyone in some time, though Fat Man caught him, at least once a week, boring holes into Fat Man’s skull with his eyes: a steady, focused glare. His wife’s leadership was essential to the health of the hotel, both as a community and in terms of finance, which led Rosie to accept the Oriental spirit medium, as well as the unstable, alcoholic Masumi.
Fat Man gathers the medium in his arms. She is light, but not as light as she looks. Very slack. Warm. She shifts in his arms, going taut for just a second, long enough to curl against his body, warming his gut. He wants to kiss her cheek.
“Here,” says Little Boy, and he takes several of her peacock feather-needles from among the grass and roots. He pricks his finger. He says it doesn’t hurt very much, though as a drop of blood squeezes through his skin and out, he notes that he can feel his own heart beating.
“How does it feel?” says Fat Man.
“Slow,” says Little Boy. “Like tides.”
Masumi is not home. The brothers knock and knock and knock until they are sure. Little Boy takes out his key and lets them in. Fat Man goes first, and drops the medium on the bed, where her hair fans out beautiful and black, and her feet tangle themselves at once in the sheets. She pulls the sheets up over her breasts, though not her midsection or hips. Her eyes flutter open and closed. She resolves to sleep a little longer.
Masumi’s clothes are scattered on the floor in the shape of a flattened man. The white suit jacket, the white slacks, the socks laid out beneath the cuffs, one balled up, the other in the shape of a hockey stick—the shoes, laces still tied. A shirt, an undershirt, in two wads side by side on top of the jacket, like weird linen breasts. Little Boy prods one with his toe.
Masumi’s gun is on the dresser. Fat Man toys with it. He runs his hand over the barrel, feels the back end of the handle, all its fancy inlays. The gun is very cold. It makes his skin rise up in goose bumps. He scrapes his arm gently with his left hand’s nails, feeling them catch and stutter like phonograph needles on the scabby, gummy little caps that dot his skin.
Fat Man aims the gun at the door and squeezes the trigger. To his horror, it fires. The sound is nothing like he imagined. The bullet lodges in the door, which puckers all around it, a black quarter in a wooden kiss. The medium sits up like a mousetrap sprung, lifting bodily from the bed, hovering a second, hair rising like the tree’s weeping, lifted branches.
She falls into place, her hair collapses, clapping. “What the hell did you do? Get the fuck out of my cabin!”
“I didn’t know it was loaded.”
“Then why did you pull the trigger?”
“I assumed it wasn’t loaded.”
“Why would you ever assume that?”
Fat Man flails with the gun, now pointing it at the medium, not quite recognizing what he’s doing, not quite understanding that he means it as a threat. He means shut up. The medium growls and throws herself down on the pillow. She says to get out. She says, “Let me sleep.”
“Public drunkenness is a crime,” says Fat Man. “We’re here to keep you in until you’re sober. What would your husband think if he saw you this way?”
“He’d probably join her,” says Little Boy, who is meanwhile prying the squashed bullet from the door with one of his keys. His thumb touches it briefly. “Still hot,” he hisses.
Fat Man sits down at the table. He makes himself a drink, mixing lemon juice, sugar, and whiskey. The lemon is a little dry but it still squeezes nicely. He says, “Where is your husband anyway?”
“He’s on a trip. Go away. I don’t like you.”
“Your husband says he knows who we are.”
“He hates you too. He’s a proud Japanese.”
“I want to know who you are.”
She says, “My name is Masumi.”
“Like your husband?”
Little Boy says, “I got the bullet loose.” It lies steaming on the floor. He crouches over it, hands out as if he is trying to warm them.
The medium says, “It’s a neuter name. Both men and women have it. So my name is also Wakahisa Masumi. You should leave. Things are much easier for everyone when we don’t see each other.”
“What’s your problem?” says Little Boy. “What do you have against us?” He nudges the bullet with the toe of his shoe.
“He forgot?” says Masumi.
Fat Man shrugs, sipping his drink. “I can’t tell what he knows.”
“I know your names,” says the medium. “You’re Little Boy. You’re Fat Man. Why do you call yourself Matthew?”
“Other people call me Matthew,” says Little Boy. “That’s how a name works.” He looks from one face to the other, awaiting explanation. His eyes are fogged. “Quit staring at me.”
Masumi comes to the table. She invites Little Boy up as well, patting the third seat. She makes herself a drink and pours him one too.
“I’m not allowed,” says Little Boy.
Fat Man says it’s okay.
Masumi says, “My husband and I came here with plans to kill you both. We found, though, that you’d changed. You were calmed. The vortex of spirits centered on your bodies has become a much more contemplative swirl. We did not know what it meant. I still don’t know what it means. You still glow inside with Japanese, your body swollen with their love and need. It is a measure of your selfishness the way you bloat with them. He tried to kill you both. He didn’t try very hard, I guess. He couldn’t do it. You’ve grown.” She holds up her hands parallel and then extends her arms to spread them, illustrating growth. “He has come to see you both as Japanese.”
“Japan is not our home. We were born there,” says Fat Man, “but that’s all.”
“That’s usually all it takes,” says M
asumi. “But it’s more than that. You define us.”
Little Boy looks down at the still-steaming bullet.
“We define America,” says Fat Man.
“I’ve never been,” says Masumi. “I can’t say what defines them. The hamburger?” She lights a cigarette and offers one to Fat Man, who takes it happily, trading the gun without a second thought. She gives Little Boy one as well—at Fat Man’s insistence, he smokes it.
“As long as you’re here and you stay calm, I can guide more ghosts into the world in human bodies, fully formed, good as the ones you took from them before, if perhaps a little whiter. Think of it as an underground railroad. In return, you get to stay in your hotel, with your widow, and enjoy this strange peace that you’ve made. You get to hold the babies.”
“The babies frighten me,” says Fat Man.
“Because you know what they are?” asks the medium.
“Their love.”
Little Boy says, “I’m getting sleepy.”
He takes a short drag, coughs harshly. His smoke bleeds into their smoke. Tendrils and teeth in a haze.
“Tell me,” says Masumi, “who was the tree before? It reaches out for you. It knows you, as the children do. But it isn’t Japanese. It will not speak to me.” Masumi cocks the gun. “Tell me where the tree comes from.”
“Little Boy will tell you,” says Fat Man. “Point your gun at him. I’m tired of being the target.”
THE SEED
“She was a tramp that Fat Man found by the well. She said her name was Anne once, but she never answered to it after. She stayed in his secret cabin all the time, where he keeps all the Jew stuff. Not the museum but the secret museum. She was very thin. She was dying. When I was being a baby he would lay me down beside her bed. She would sprout things. Molds, blades of grass, flowers. Fat Man fed her what he could get her to swallow. He was very kind to her.
“She smelled terrible. We couldn’t bathe her. One time Fat Man tried. He wrapped towels around his arms to protect her from his closeness, and tried to carry her to a big bucket full of soapy water. He had a sponge and wash cloth as well. He was saying he would take care of her. He was saying he would make the itching stop. She would scratch herself when she could find the strength, opening sores. The blood would mold if he was anywhere nearby.”
“If Little Boy was near,” says Fat Man, “it would become a stream of marching fire ants as it left her body. They would walk down the blankets, off the bed, and out the door.”
“We understood she wasn’t going to get better,” says Little Boy. “I didn’t ask—I still wasn’t talking—but Fat Man said he wouldn’t take her to a doctor because he couldn’t afford to pay for the treatment. When she spent more of the day asleep than awake, when she stopped shivering, when she stopped scratching, when she no longer took any notice of the things that grew on her, we knew she would die soon. We gave her so many blankets and pillows. Well, he did. I watched him do it. I still wasn’t moving.
“There was a dim spark left in her when it started. We couldn’t get far enough away to stop the growth. At first it was mold. It covered her all over like a cocoon, green and white and black, the air around her thick with spores. We could see her moving a little inside it. Fat Man tried to peel it away from her, he tried to tear it open. It grew around his hands. He tore them out. It stuck to him, and grew, and grew. He scraped it off himself and backed away. It changed colors and the surface roiled with familiar shapes. They changed quickly. I thought I saw faces. So did Fat Man.
“We saw each other. We saw the police. We saw Rosie. We saw you. We saw my nurse. We sat to watch. It shed warmth on our faces.”
“She struggled then,” says Fat Man.
“As much as she could. For a moment one of her hands pierced the growth, grasping at the air, and it cast a talon shadow on the ceiling and another, paler shadow on the wall. Then it grew over. Her elbow collapsed inside the mold and her arm fell back in.”
“Her body tightened, curling inward,” says Fat Man. “A sound like a cicada, but more musical, came from inside as the body in there trembled and shook.”
“The mold gave way to maggots. She was beaded with the maggots, the same as the Japanese soldier’s body, and others. They squirmed out, and writhed on her, and then there were more, and then there were more, and as their bodies piled up they tried to eat more but already there were others eating through where they had eaten, emerging underneath them, and beneath those more, so the pile rose.
“Soon the maggots were like a fire and because the maggots were alive they could not eat each other or themselves. They did though begin to wilt as they heaped up near the ceiling, turning ashen and then shriveling inward, blackening, like cigarette ends, and crumbling into themselves.
“They would crumble, and come apart, and the ashes fell on the floor and the Jew things. When they burst they made a sound like fire spitting sparks. Their ashes fell and turned around the pile, revolving. At the base of the pile, where more were always coming out, pink and white and gray, becoming grayer, there was what was left of the tramp, some skin and muscle, a lot of bones. The maggots slowed as her flesh dwindled. The pile became a small, wavering flame, and then it was nothing. The air was hung with ash. My face was very warm. We were sweating. I took off my clothes. So did Fat Man. Our sweat dripped on the floor. The drops made big, shiny circles, at first separate, and then overlapping, growing a puddle.
“The light came from in the bones, or between them, a glow, which was rich and thick inside, and thinned as it bled out on us.”
“The bones grew flowers,” says Fat Man.
“White ones, red ones, yellow, budding from the bones themselves—no stems, at first. Lilies and daisies, roses, even dandelions, only the blooms, opening all over the bones, spitting pollen up among the ashes. Then stems grew from between the blooms, and these came to flowers, and stems grew from among them, and these became flowers, and grass grew out between the blooms, and clover grew. These too took a shape like a fire, and as they rose and swelled they seemed to burn, and the warmth grew warmer. The light from inside it grew brighter.
“A smell like wet grass clippings wafted. It was also like a dog’s breath. It was a hot smell as much as it was a green one. It was alive as it was dead. With everything that grew from the body we felt more calm, and as each one extinguished, calmer still. The weight came off me. My heart cooled,” says Little Boy.
“All the flowers, grass and clover, everything, twisted into one fat stem, thick as a torso, stained with all the colors of the flowers in green shapes like burns through paper. As its center twisted tightest the stem’s top twisted outward, loose, and this made the bed of a very large red rose with some orange petals and some blue swirled inside it, growing and growing until it crushed the stem.”
“Thousands of little baby spiders crawled out,” says Fat Man.
“They crawled out and down the bed and over the Jew things, growing as they walked, and when they came to us they were large and bristling with hairs, which grew to inches long. They walked up on us and became fat, then died and fell away. The flowers wilted and turned brown, like a kernel or a shell. The spiders stopped coming and the shell wrinkled and closed in all around her.”
Fat Man said, “She’s becoming a seed.”
Little Boy said, “We should take her outside.”
“What do you think she’ll become?”
They didn’t know. They decided to plant her. They laid her on the ground. The seed had a knot at its center that looked like a person. A person curled up.
Fat Man said, “You did this to her!”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did, you did this, you killed her.”
Little Boy punched Fat Man in his knee. Fat Man fell on him on purpose. Little Boy bit Fat Man’s cheek. Fat Man barked and punched Little Boy’s head. They kicked and kneed one another. Fat
Man was smothering Little Boy with his bulk. Little Boy couldn’t breathe. Little Boy passed out.
When Little Boy woke, the fat man was lifting him up on his shoulders. Little Boy sat still; he didn’t want to hurt his brother anymore. He wanted to be good. They watched the tree grow. It came up from the ground very fast. Fat Man apologized.
He said, “Not just for this. For everything.”
Little Boy said, “I love you so much.”
Fat Man said, “I love you too.”
HIDEKI AND MASUMI
“I told you you could be a good speaker,” says Fat Man. He twists out his cigarette in an ashtray surrounded by empty liquor bottles. There are a dozen butts, some very old, lining the edge of the tray, their ash ends collapsed into a pile. The orange bits of his own cigarette burn out quickly.
Little Boy shrugs. “Throat hurts.”
“You exhausted the ghosts,” says Masumi. “I see how it was now. They were molds, then maggots, then flowers, then spiders, and so on. Most gave up on following you after that. Many of the rest helped make a tree. There are only a few left.”
“What do you think it’s like being a tree?” asks Fat Man.
“I don’t think it’s like much of anything,” says Masumi. “Which makes it very close to nirvana.”
“They still come to us, if we wait long enough. If I touch the wick of a candle and wait, there will be fire. If I am careless in my eating, the food will rot. When I’m agitated, it can be as bad as it ever was. I want them to leave me alone,” says Fat Man. “You could still kill me. I wouldn’t mind very much as long as you don’t hurt Little Boy.”
Fat Man and Little Boy Page 25