by T. C. Boyle
For his part, hiro didn’t know what to think. There was a storm coming, it was getting dark and he’d been bitten six or eight times by every last mosquito on earth, not to mention their cousins, the ticks, chiggers, deerflies and gnats. Choking on mud and vomit, carved hollow as a gourd with hunger, he’d staggered out of a bog, scattering birds, reptiles and frogs, and into a stand of trees where the water was shallower, the mud firmer. Hours back, when the sun stood directly overhead, he’d blundered across a raft of bitter purple-black berries and crouched in the ooze, gorging till they came back up like the dregs of a bad bottle of wine. For a long while he lay there enervated, cursing himself, his hakujin father and strong-legged mother, cursing Ruth—she’d betrayed him, the bitch, used him for her story, her fiction, used him on a whim and then discarded him like so much human rubbish. The water cradled him. He closed his eyes on a hail of mosquitoes and slept afloat. And then, as the sun dropped out of the sky and every animate thing in the swamp came to him for its hourly ration of Japanese blood, his senses reawakened. It was a sound that got him going first—a soft lilting incongruous melody weaving in and out of the cacophony of roars and grunts and screeches that tore at him without remit. Was it a flute? Was somebody playing a flute out here in the hind end of nowhere? And then his sense of smell kicked in and the knowledge of cookfire and meat came to him.
The storm broke round him as he lurched out of the trees and up onto the bed of semifirm mud, something like earth beneath his feet once again—a small miracle in itself—but what lay before him was a puzzle. A crude structure, nothing more than a lean-to really, struggled out of the tangle a hundred feet away, and there were people inhabiting it, hakujin, gathered round a fire. Was this a house? Were these hillbillies—or swampbillies? And what was a “billy” anyway—some sort of goat, wasn’t it?—and how could anyone, swampbilly or no, actually live here? But then this was America, and nothing about these people would surprise him. Whether they were buffalo skinners, young Republicans or crack dealers, it was all the same to him—he was dying of the wet and hunger and a despair that was all talons and claws and wouldn’t let go of him, and he needed them.
Still, dying or not, this was nothing to rush into. He recalled the bug-eyed Negro fighting for his oysters, the girl in the Coca-Cola store, Ruth, who’d lulled him into submission only to turn on him and cut his heart out. He smelled the meat, saw the shelter, imagined what it would be like to dry himself, if only for a minute … but how could he approach these billies? What would he say? Pleading hunger was no good, as the Negro had taught him; the Clint Eastwood approach had backfired too, though he’d been satisfied with his curses, proud of them even. The only thing that had worked was dissimulation: Ambly Wooster had believed he was someone called Seiji, and if she’d believed him, maybe these people would too. But he had to be cautious. Living out here—he still couldn’t believe it—they had to be primitive and depraved. What was that movie, with the city dwellers in canoes and the hillbillies attacking them from the cliffs?
But now they’d seen him. The lightning flashed, the rain drove at him. There was a man standing there on the platform, wearing a dazed and frightened expression—it looked bad already—and he was yelling something and the other two—a woman and a boy—froze. What was he saying? Oh, yes. Yes. The hakujin war cry: “Can we help you?”
Hiro stared at them and then glanced round him at the rain-washed swamp. He was beaten, starved, swollen with insect bites, filthy, saturated, anemic with loss of blood—and it seemed as if it had been going on all his life. He took a chance. Let them shoot him, let them string him up and nail him to a cross, flay the skin from his bones, devour him: he didn’t care. Ruth had betrayed him. The City of Brotherly Love was a fraud. There was the swamp, only the swamp. “Toor-ist!” he called, echoing the girl in the store. “Fall out of boat!”
Nothing. No reaction. The two smaller faces flanked the larger and the three pairs of rinsed-out eyes fastened on him like pincers. The wind screamed. The trees danced. “Toor-ist!” Hiro repeated, cupping his hands to his mouth.
What followed was as astonishing as anything that had happened since he’d taken the plunge from the wingdeck of the Tokachi-maru: they believed him. “Hold on!” the man called as he might have called to a drowning child, and in the next moment he was down off the platform and splashing toward him through the mire. It was nothing short of a rescue. The man threw Hiro’s arm over his shoulder as if he were a casualty of war, as if the rain were a shower of bullets and hot shrapnel, and scuttled back with him to the shelter, where the woman and boy were in motion too, hastily hanging some sort of dropcloth as a protection against the elements. Within minutes the fire was snapping, he was toweling his hair dry and the man was offering him a sleeping bag to wrap himself up in. Then the kettle sang out and a Styrofoam cup of hot instant noodles was thrust into his hand and he was eating while the three fed the fire, stopped the holes in the roof and watched him with bleeding eyes. “More?” the man asked after Hiro had finished, and when he nodded yes, a second Cup O’Noodles appeared as if he’d conjured it.
“You’ll need dry clothes,” the man said, and before he could even communicate the need to the woman, she was digging through a backpack crammed with shirts, shorts, towels and socks. Backpack? Were they campers, then? And if they were, why weren’t they camping out on the clean sweet dry expanse of the open prairie instead of in this sewer? Gaijin: he would never understand them, not if he lived to be a hundred and four. They offered him clothing—a T-shirt that bore a huge childish drawing of a smiling face and the legend WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, a pair of too-tight underwear and cut-off blue jeans that would never have fit him if he hadn’t suffered so much privation of the hara. Hiro went off into the far corner to dress, all the while bowing and asserting his gratitude, calculating on and giving thanks so profuse he could have raised a shrine to them. Did he want more to eat? He did. And then it was meat snapping on the grill, potato chips, hard-boiled eggs, carrot sticks, cabbage salad and pound cake. “Dōmo” he said, over and over, “dōmo arigatō.”
They were watching him. Sitting there in a semicircle before him, hands clasped to their knees, eyes aglow with charity and fellow-feeling. They watched him eat as a doting young mother might watch her baby spooning up his mashed peas and carrots, hanging on every bite. Inevitably, though, now that they’d rescued and fed him, the questions began. “You’re a Filipino?” the man asked as Hiro fed a wedge of pound cake into his mouth.
Careful, careful. He’d decided that the best policy—the only policy—was to lie. “Chinese,” he said.
Their faces showed nothing. The smoke swirled. Hiro reached for the last piece of pound cake. “And you were out here on a day trip?” the man persisted.
Day trip, day trip: what was he talking about? “Excuse and forgive me, but what is this ’day trip’?”
“In the swamp. As a tourist—like us.” For some reason the man laughed at this, a hearty, beautifully formed laugh that bespoke ease and health and success in business, and which burst from an orthodontic marvel of a mouth. “I mean, did your boat overturn, was anyone hurt? Were you alone?”
“Alone,” Hiro said, leaping at the answer provided for him. He felt that a smile would be helpful at this juncture, and so he gave them one, misaligned teeth and all. This lying business wasn’t so hard really. It was the American way, he saw that now. He was amazed that he’d had such trouble with it at Ambly Wooster’s.
They were the Jeffcoats, from Atlanta, Georgia. From New York, actually. Jeff, Julie and Jeff Jr. (The boy blushed when his father introduced him.) Hiro bowed to each in turn. And then they were watching him again, but with a look of expectation now. What? he wanted to ask them. What is it?
“And you are—?” the man prompted.
“Oh!” Hiro let a little gasp of embarrassed surprise escape him. “How silly. Forgetful. I am—” and then he stopped cold. Who was he? He’d told them he was Chinese, hadn’t he? Chinese, Chinese: what did the Chines
e call themselves? Lee, Chan, Wong? There was a place called Yee Mee Loo two blocks from his obā san’s apartment, but the name was ridiculous—he, Hiro Tanaka, standard-bearer for Mishima and Jōchō before him, couldn’t be a Yee Mee Loo. Never.
“Yes?” They were leaning forward, smiling like zombies, all three of them, absolutely delighted to be out here in this drizzling hellhole exchanging pleasantries with a mud-smeared Chinaman. Rain dripped from the timbers overhead, fell like shot on the surface of the water before them.
“I am called … Seiji,” he decided finally—what would they know, Americans; how would they know a Chinese from an Ugandan?—“Seiji … Chiba.”
And then, feeling expansive, dry and warm and wrapped in a down blanket, his stomach full for the first time in days, he told them the pathetic story of his misadventures in the swamp. His boat had overturned, yes, two days ago—it was a crocodile that attacked him. It dropped from the trees on him and he wresded with it, but the boat went under and he lost everything, all his bags of meat, his Cracker Jack, his Levi’s and his surfboard. And so he wandered, on the verge of death, eating berries and drinking from the swamp, until they rescued him—and he ended by praising them for a full five minutes, in English and Japanese both.
When he was finished, there was a silence. The storm had let up and insects had begun to whine through the fevered air; something bellowed in the night. “Well,” the man said, clapping his hands together like a referee, “I guess we all better turn in, huh? It’s been quite a day.”
Sometime in the deep still vibrating hub of that night, when the chittering and hooting and screeching had subsided to a muted roar and the new generation of mosquitoes lay waiting to be born, Hiro awoke shivering and discovered that the rain had started up again. He knew where he was at once and knew too that the insulated blanket they’d given him—these Amerikajin seemed to have two of everything—was soaked through. The wind had shifted to the north and there was the unmistakable scent of autumn on it. But what month was it? August? September? October? He had no idea. He’d been gone so long, living like a bum on the street, like a barbarian in a cave, that he didn’t even know what month it was, let alone what day or hour. Shivering, he thought about that, and began to feel very sorry for himself indeed.
They would be after him soon, he knew that. The bōifurendo would go to the police and the tired pointy-nosed little sheriff would round up his Negroes and dogs and take a flotilla into the swamp, speedboats and pontoon boats, canoes and dinghies and floating jail cells. The spatterface and his hard little companion would be there, Ruth, Captain Nishizawa—they’d batter the trees with helicopters, tear open the sky with their sirens and the long-drawn-out bloodthirsty howls of the dogs. If they hated him two days ago, they loathed him now to the depths of their being. He’d made fools of them. And they would come after him with everything they had.
It was a shame. It was. If that Mercedes had belonged to anyone but the chief butter-stinker himself, if it had belonged to an itinerant peddler, an encyclopedia salesman, a hit man, Hiro could have been a thousand miles away by now—in the Big Sky Country, in Motown or at the Golden Gate. But it hadn’t, and he wasn’t. What he needed, he realized with a jolt of intuition, was a boat. If he had a boat he could paddle his way to the edge of the swamp, strike out cross-country and find a road, and then—then what? More double-dealing? More hate? More hakujin backstabbing and Negro viciousness? Yes, and what choice did he have—they were going to hunt him down like an animal. He lay there, wet and miserable, wrapped in his sheet of lies, and he hardened his heart. He knew where there was a boat. A canoe. Sleek and quick and provisioned for an army.
The Jeffcoats slept as one, the gentle stertor of their breathing synchronized, sleep a reward, their goods spread out round them like an emperor’s ransom. The canoe lay there in the shadows at the edge of the platform, blackly bobbing. He could have spat in it from where he lay. But what was he thinking? They’d been kind to him, like Ambly Wooster. There was no hate in their eyes, only health and confidence. How could he steal from them, how could he abandon them to their fate out here in the howling wilderness?
How? Easily. They were hakujin, after all, hakujin like all the others, and after they found out who he was they’d lock him up themselves, twist the handcuffs tight with the cracked porcelain gleam of righteousness in their eyes. He was a Japanese. A samurai. To be ruthless was his only hope.
He was about to make his move, about to slip out of the wet blanket and stir himself to betrayal, when the boy began to moan in his sleep. The sound was incongruous and devastating in the dead black night. “Uhhhhhh,” the boy groaned, swallowed up in his dreams, “uhhhhhh.” In the space of that groan Hiro was plunged back into his own boyhood, awakened to the demons that haunted his nights and the birdlike embrace of his grandfather, and then a figure rose up in the dark—the father, the boy’s father—and Hiro heard the gentle shushing, the susurras of comfort and security. Father, mother, son: this was a family. He let the apprehension wash over him until it became palpable, undeniable, until he knew that the canoe, his only hope, would stay where it was.
He woke to the smell of corned beef hash and eggs. It was an unusual smell—aside from the slop Chiba concocted, he’d had little experience of foreign foods—but he recognized the habitual hakujin odor of incinerated meat. “Seiji!” a voice chirped at him the moment he opened his eyes. It was Julie Jeffcoat. She was in shorts and a shell top that emphasized her breasts, motherly and sexy all at once. “Sleep well?” she asked, crossing the platform to hand him a cup of simmering black coffee. The sun was up. It was hot already. Jeff Jr. perched at the edge of the platform, methodically flicking a lure from the tip of his rod to the far edge of the pond and then drawing it back again, while his father bent over the canoe, stowing away their gear in tight precise little bundles. He whistled while he worked. “Well,” he boomed, glancing over his shoulder at Hiro, “ready for some breakfast, pardner?”
Dazed by the assault of cheer and energy, Hiro could only nod his assent. He was feeling a bit queasy—but then why wouldn’t he, with all he’d been through—and he hoped the food would help steady him.
Jeff Jeffcoat turned back to his work. Jeff Jr.’s line sizzled through the guys and there was a distant splash. Hiro sat up to blow at his coffee and Julie Jeffcoat presented him with a plastic plate heaped with eggs, hashed meat, puffed potatoes and fruit cocktail from a can. It looked like something Chiba would whip up for one of his western-style lunches. “Ketchup?” Julie asked, and when he nodded, she squirted a red paste over everything.
“Denver omelet, yes?” Hiro said.
Julie Jeffcoat smiled, and it was a beautiful Amerikajin smile, uncomplicated and frank, a smile that belonged on the cover of a magazine. “Sort of,” she said.
Half an hour later, Hiro watched Jeff Jeffcoat steady the canoe as first Jeff Jr. and then Julie eased themselves into the narrow trembling envelope of the vessel. It was heaped to the gunwales with the neatly stowed paraphernalia of their adventure in the wilderness, with their cooler, their charcoal and starter fluid, their binoculars and fishing rods and mess kit, their tents and sleeping bags and changes of clothing, their paperback books, flashlights, lip balm and licorice. There was no room for Hiro. Jeff Jeffcoat had assured him that they would paddle straight back to the boat launch and get a ranger to come rescue him. He looked pained—he was pained—because they couldn’t take Hiro with them. But Hiro—or Seiji, as they knew him—wouldn’t be forgotten, he had Jeff’s word on that.
Before he shoved off, Jeff Jeffcoat had impulsively sprung from the canoe to shuck his loafers and hand them to Hiro. “Here,” he said, “I’ve got another two pairs in my backpack, and you’re going to need these more than I do.” Hiro accepted the shoes with a bow. They were Top-Siders, the sort of shoes the blond surfers wore in the beer commercials on Japanese television. Hiro slipped them on, feeling like a surfer himself in the cutoffs and oversized T-shirt, as Jeff Jeffcoat eased bac
k into the canoe and shoved off with a mighty thrust of the paddle. “So long,” he called, “and don’t worry: they’ll be here to get you by noon. I promise.”
“ ’Bye!” Jeff Jr. cried, shrill as a bird.
Julie turned to wave. “Bye-bye,” she called, and her voice was like Ruth’s, and for a moment it stirred him. “You take care now.”
They’d left him food, of course—six sandwiches, a Ziploc bag crammed with marshmallows, three plums, two pears and a sack of tortilla chips the size of a laundry bag, not to mention the two-liter bottle of orange soda with which to wash it all down. “Sank you,” Hiro called, “sank you so much,” wondering if on could be calculated in the negative, for what wasn’t done as well as what was. He owed them a debt, an enormous debt—but then they owed him too. He hadn’t bludgeoned them to death, hadn’t stolen their food, their canoe, their paddles and fishing rods and charcoal briquettes. When you came right down to it, he’d sacrificed himself for them—and wasn’t that something?
He stood there on the platform a long while, watching them as they threaded their way up the narrow channel, paddles flashing in perfect harmony, father, mother, son.
Tender Sproats
There were two motels in ciceroville, “gateway to the Okefenokee Wilderness,” and both were on the order of refugee camps as far as Detlef Abercorn was concerned. The first, Lila’s Sleepy Z, featured a miniature golf course in the middle of the parking lot and a café with a hand-lettered sign in the window offering breakfast for 990, with unlimited refills of coffee and grits. It was booked solid. The other place, the Tender Sproats, enticed the weary traveler with a swimming pool filled to the coping with what appeared to be split pea soup. Abercorn thought of all those billboards along Interstate 80 touting homemade split pea soup, as if anyone in any condition would ever actually want split pea soup beyond the first spoonful. This was an improvement: here you got to swim in it. He shrugged and pulled into the lot.