Snow Falling on Cedars

by David Guterson

  She stuck her head around the mudroom door and called loudly for Carl. ‘Someone’s here!’ she added.

  When Carl showed she said to him, ‘You may as well talk about it right here in front of me, I’m a part of this.’

  ‘Hello, Zenhichi,’ said Carl. ‘Why don’t you come on in?’

  Etta pried her boots off. She followed the Jap into the kitchen.

  ‘Sit down, Zenhichi,’ Carl said. ‘Etta will get you some coffee.’

  He stared at her and she nodded. She took a fresh apron from its hook and put it on. She filled the coffeepot.

  ‘We saw the posting,’ said Carl. ‘Eight days just isn’t near enough time. How can a body be ready in eight days? It ain’t right,’ he added. ‘It just ain’t right.’

  ‘What can we do?’ Zenhichi said. ‘We will put boards with nails on our windows. Leave everything. If you will like, Mr. Heine, you can work our fields. We are grateful that you have sold them to us. Good two-year plants now, most. We will have plenty berries. You pick them, please. Sell them to the cannery, keep what money. Otherwise they rot, Mr. Heine. And nobody gets nothing.’

  Carl began to scratch his face. He sat across from Zenhichi scratching. He looked large and coarse, the Japanese man smaller and clear-eyed. They were about the same age, but the Jap looked younger, fifteen years younger at least. Etta put cups and saucers on the table, opened the sugar bowl. Pretty shrewd, for openers, she thought. Offer the berries, they’re worth nothing to him now. Real clever. Then talk about payments.

  ‘I’m obliged,’ said Carl. ‘We’ll pick them, then. I’m much obliged, Zenhichi.’

  The Japanese man nodded. He was always nodding, thought Etta. It was how they got the better of you – they acted small, thought big. Nod, say nothing, keep their faces turned down; it was how they got things like her seven acres. ‘How are you going to make your payments if me and Carl’s picking your berries?’ she asked from her place by the stove. ‘It’s not – ’

  ‘Just hold on now, Etta,’ Carl broke in. ‘We don’t need to talk about that just yet.’ He turned his attention back to the Jap. ‘How is everyone to home?’ he said. ‘How is everyone taking it?’

  ‘Very busy at home,’ said Miyamoto. ‘Packing everything, making ready.’ He smiled; she saw his big teeth.

  ‘Can we help somehow?’ said Carl.

  ‘You pick our berries. That is big help.’

  ‘But can we help? Can we do something else?’

  Etta brought the coffeepot to the table. She saw that Miyamoto had his hat in his lap. Well, Carl was being a real gracious host, but he’d forgotten about that, hadn’t he? The Jap had to sit there with his hat under the table like a man who’d wet his pants.

  ‘Carl will pour,’ she announced. She sat down, smoothed her apron. She folded her hands on the tabletop.

  ‘Let it sit a minute,’ answered Carl. Then we’ll have our coffee.’

  They were sitting there like that when Carl junior barged through the kitchen door. Home from school already. Three thirty-five and home already. Must’ve run or something. Had one book with him – mathematics. His jacket was grass stained, his face ruddy with the wind, a little sweaty, too. She could see he was hungry, like his father that way, ate everything in sight. There’s some apples in the pantry,’ she pointed out.

  ‘You may get one, Carl. Get a glass of milk and go outside. Somebody’s here, we’re talking.’

  ‘I heard about it,’ said Carl junior. ‘I – ’

  ‘Go on and get your apple,’ said Etta. ‘Somebody’s here, Carl.’

  He went. He came back with two apples. Went to the refrigerator, took out the milk pitcher, poured himself a glass of milk. His father reached for the coffeepot and filled Miyamoto’s cup, then Etta’s, then his own. Carl junior looked at them, the apples in one hand, the glass of milk in the other. He went on into the living room.

  ‘You go outside,’ called Etta. ‘Don’t you eat in there.’

  The boy came back and stood in the doorway. There was a bite taken out of one of the apples. The milk was gone from his glass. He was already near as big as his father. He was eighteen. It was hard to believe how big he was. He took another bite from the apple. ‘Is Kabuo home?’ he asked.

  ‘Kabuo just home,’ replied Miyamoto. ‘Yes, he is there.’ He smiled.

  ‘I’m going over,’ said Carl junior. He walked across the kitchen and put his glass in the sink. He banged out through the kitchen door.

  ‘Come back for your schoolbook!’ Etta called.

  The boy came back and took his book up the stairs. He went into the pantry, got another apple, waved as he went by them. ‘I’ll be back,’ he announced.

  Carl pushed the sugar bowl toward the Japanese man. ‘Take some,’ he said. ‘Cream, too, if you like.’

  Miyamoto nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Very good. Sugar only, please.’

  He stirred in half a spoon of sugar. He used his spoon carefully, set it in his saucer. He waited until Carl picked up his cup, then picked up his own and sipped. ‘Very good,’ he said. He looked over at Etta and smiled her way – a little smile, that was all he ever gave.

  ‘Your boy is very big now,’ he said. He was still smiling. And then he lowered his head. ‘I want to make payment. Two more payment, everything done. Today I have one hundred twenty dollar. I – ’

  Carl senior was shaking his head. He put his coffee down, shook his head some more. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Absolutely not, Zenhichi. We’ll get your harvest in, see what comes of that July. Maybe then we can work out something. Maybe, where you’re going, they’ll have work for you to do. Who knows? It’ll turn out. Point is, though, no way am I going to take your savings off your hands at a time like this, Zenhichi. Don’t even talk about that now.’

  The Jap put his one hundred and twenty dollars on the table – a lot of tens, some fives, ten ones; he spread them out in a fan. ‘You take this, please,’ he said. ‘I send more from where I am going. Make payment. Maybe payment is not enough, you still have seven acres strawberries this year. Then, December, there is one more payment. You see? One more.’

  Etta folded her arms across her chest; she knew he wasn’t giving his strawberries for nothing! ‘Your berries,’ she said. ‘What can we figure? After all, nobody sets the price ’til June. All right, say you’ve got good plants, two-year plants, like you say you do. Everything goes right. We get people in there weeding. No spit bugs, good sun, everything comes out right, berries come in, good crop. All right, after labor and what we put into fertilizer maybe you’ve got two hundred worth of berries? In a good year? If the price is good? If everything goes right? But let’s just say it’s a bad year. An average year. Fungus gets ’em, too much rain, any one of a dozen things – now we’re talking about a hundred, maybe a hundred twenty worth of berries. Okay? What then? I’ll tell you what. It won’t be enough to cover your payment, two hundred and fifty dollars.’

  ‘You take this,’ said Zenhichi. He made a stack of the bills, moved them toward her. ‘This one hundred and twenty dollar. Strawberries bring one hundred and thirty, next payment is made.’

  ‘Thought you was giving the berries,’ said Etta. ‘Didn’t you come in here giving them away? Didn’t you tell us to sell them to the cannery and keep whatever comes from that? Now what you want is one hundred thirty.’ She reached out and took his neat stack of bills, counted the money while she spoke. ‘One hundred and thirty on the risk they bring it, plus this here as an early payment, the risk in exchange for getting this March instead of us waiting on all of it ’til June? Is that what you came here hoping on?’

  The Japanese man blinked at her steadily. He said nothing, didn’t touch his coffee either. He’d gone rigid, gone cold. She could see that he was angry, that he was holding it in, not exposing his rage. He’s proud, she thought. I just spit on him, he’s pretending it didn’t happen that way. Blink away, she thought.

  Etta finished counting his money, set the stack of bill
s back on the table, and folded her arms across her chest again. ‘More coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ the Jap replied. ‘You take money, please.’

  Carl’s big hand slid across the table. His fingers covered the stack of bills and pushed it in front of the Jap’s coffee. ‘Zenhichi,’ he said. ‘We won’t take this. Don’t matter what Etta says, we won’t. She’s been rude to you and I apologize for that.’ He looked at her then and she looked right back. She knew how he felt, but it didn’t matter very much – she wanted Carl to know what was up, how he was being duped. She wasn’t going to hang her head. She stared back at him.

  ‘I am sorry,’ the Jap said. ‘Very sorry.’

  ‘We’ll worry about this come picking season,’ said Carl. ‘You get where you’re going, you write to us. We’ll get your berries in, write back, we’ll go from there. We’ll just play this by ear a little bit, far as I’m concerned. One way or another you get your payments finished, maybe down the road somewhere, everything comes out like it should in the long run. Everything comes out satisfactory. But right now you got deeper things to think about. You don’t need us bending your ear about payments. You got plenty to do ’thout that. And anything I can do, help you get your things all ready, you let me know, Zenhichi.’

  ‘I make payments,’ Zenhichi answered. ‘I find a way, I send you.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Carl and put his hand out. The Japanese man took it.

  ‘Thank you, Carl,’ he said. ‘I make payments. No worry.’

  Etta watched Zenhichi. It occurred to her that he had not grown old – she noticed this more clearly than ever. For ten years he’d been working these very same fields, his eyes were still clear, his back was straight, his skin was taut, his belly remained lean and hard. Ten years he had worked in the same fields she had, and yet he hadn’t aged a day. His clothes were clean, his head erect, his complexion brown and healthy. And all of this was part of his mystery, his distance from what she was. Something he knew about kept him from aging while she, Etta, grew worn and weary – something he knew about yet kept to himself, bottled up behind his face. Maybe it was Jap religion, she thought, or maybe it was in his blood. There didn’t seem any way to know.

  She remembered, on the witness stand, that Carl junior had returned that evening with a bamboo fishing rod. How he had looked to her coming through the door with his hair rumpled by the wind. How big and young, like a Great Dane puppy, bounding into her kitchen. Her son, a big young man.

  ‘Look at this,’ he’d said to her. ‘Kabuo loaned it to me.’

  He began to explain it to her. She’d been at the sink peeling supper potatoes. He said it was a good rod for sea-run cutthroat. Split bamboo, made by a Mr. Nishi, the ferrules smooth, silk wrapped. Figured he’d go trolling with it, get Erik Everts or somebody, one of his friends, to take him out in a canoe. Rig it up with light tackle, see how it played. Where was Dad? He’d go show it to him.

  Etta didn’t stop peeling her potatoes while she said to her son what she had to say: take the fishing rod back to the Japs, they owed them money, the rod confused that.

  She remembered how the boy had looked at her. Hurt and trying to hide it. Wanted to argue, didn’t want to argue – wouldn’t win and already knew it. The look of the defeated – his father’s look – big, plodding strawberry farmer. Subdued, pinned to the earth. The boy spoke like his father and moved like his father, but he had a broad brow, small ears, there was a set to his eyes, some of her in him. The boy was not all Carl’s. Her son, too, she felt that.

  ‘You turn around and take it right on back,’ she’d said again, and pointed with the peeler. And in this, she saw now, on the witness stand, her feelings had not been wrong. He’d taken the rod back, some months had passed, he’d gone to the war, he’d come on home, that Japanese boy had killed him. She’d been right about them all along; Carl, her husband, had been wrong.

  They didn’t meet their payments, she told Alvin Hooks. Simple as that. Didn’t meet them. She sold the place off to Ole Jurgensen, sent their equity on down to them in California, didn’t try to hold back their money. Gave every penny back. She moved into Amity Harbor Christmastime ’44. That was that, she’d figured. Looked, now, like she was wrong about one thing: you were never shut of people where money was concerned. One way or another, they wanted. And on account of that, she told the court, her son had been murdered by Kabuo Miyamoto. Her son was dead and gone.

  10

  Alvin Hooks skirted the edge of his table and resumed the slow, fluid pacing of the floorboards that had been part of his strategy all morning. ‘Mrs. Heine,’ he said. ‘In December of ’44 you moved to Amity Harbor?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Your husband had recently passed away?’

  ‘That’s right, too.’

  ‘You felt that without him you could not work your land?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you moved to Amity Harbor,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Where exactly, Mrs. Heine?’

  ‘On Main Street,’ said Etta. ‘Up above Lottie Opsvig’s shop.’

  ‘Lottie Opsvig’s? An apparel shop?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘In an apartment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A big apartment?’

  ‘No,’ said Etta. ‘Just one bedroom.’

  ‘One bedroom above an apparel shop,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘So you took a one-bedroom apartment then. And may I ask about your monthly rent?’

  ‘Twenty-five dollars,’ said Etta.

  ‘A twenty-five-dollar-a-month apartment,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘You’re still living there? You currently reside there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still paying twenty-five dollars?’

  ‘No,’ said Etta. ‘Thirty-five. Price has gone up since ’44.’

  ‘Forty-four,’ Alvin Hooks repeated. ‘The year you moved in? The year you sent the Miyamotos their equity and came to live in Amity Harbor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Etta.

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ said Alvin Hooks, and stopped pacing. ‘Did you hear again from the Miyamotos after that? After you sent them their money?’

  ‘I heard from them,’ said Etta.

  ‘When was that?’ Alvin Hooks asked.

  Etta bit her lip and thought it over, she squeezed her cheeks between her fingers. ‘It was July of ’45,’ she answered finally. ‘That one there showed up at my door.’ And she pointed at Kabuo Miyamoto.

  ‘The defendant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He came to your door in 1945? To your apartment door in Amity Harbor?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did he call ahead? Were you expecting him?’

  ‘No. Just showed up. Just like that.’

  ‘Just showed up unannounced? Out of nowhere, as it were?’

  ‘That’s right,’ replied Etta. ‘Out of nowhere.’

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ said the prosecutor. ‘What did the defendant indicate was the nature of his business with you?’

  ‘He wanted to talk about land, he said. Had a few things to say about my land I sold to Ole.’

  ‘Exactly what did he say, Mrs. Heine? Can you remember? For the benefit of the court?’

  Etta folded her hands in her lap and glanced at Kabuo Miyamoto. She could see in his eyes – they didn’t fool her – that he remembered everything. He’d stood in her doorway, neatly dressed, his hands clasped, unblinking. It was July and the heat in her apartment was unbearable; the doorway felt much cooler. They’d stared at each other, and then Etta had folded her arms across her chest and asked him what he wanted.

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ he’d said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘’Course I do,’ Etta had answered.

  She hadn’t seen him since the day the Japs left – more than three years before, in ’42 – but she recollected him clearly enough. He was the boy who’d tried to give Carl a fishing rod, the boy she used to see from her kitchen window practicing in the fields wit
h his wooden sword. He was the oldest of the Miyamoto children – she knew his face but didn’t remember his name – the one her son used to hang around with.

  ‘I’ve been back home three days,’ he’d said. ‘I guess Carl isn’t home yet.’

  ‘Carl’s passed on,’ replied Etta. ‘Carl junior’s fighting the Japs.’ She stared at the man in the doorway. ‘They’re just about licked,’ she added.

  ‘Just about,’ Kabuo had replied. He unclasped his hands and put them at his back. ‘I was sorry to hear about Mr. Heine,’ he said. ‘I heard about it in Italy. My mother sent me a letter.’

  ‘Well, I told you people about it when I sent on down the equity,’ returned Etta. ‘Said in my letter Carl’d passed on and that I’d had to go and sell the place.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kabuo. ‘But Mrs. Heine, my father had an agreement with Mr. Heine, didn’t he? Didn’t – ’

  ‘Mr. Heine was passed away,’ Etta interrupted. ‘I had to make a decision. Couldn’t farm the place myself, could I? I sold to Ole and that’s that,’ she said. ‘You want to talk about that piece of land, you’re going to have to talk to Ole. I don’t have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Please,’ replied Kabuo. ‘I talked to Mr. Jurgensen already. I got back to the island just last Wednesday and went out to see what had become of the place. You know, have a look around. Mr. Jurgensen was out there, up on his tractor. We talked for a while about things.’

  ‘Well, good,’ said Etta. ‘So you talked to him.’

  ‘I talked to him,’ said Kabuo. ‘He said I’d better talk to you.’

  Etta folded her arms more tightly. ‘Humpf,’ she said. ‘It’s his land, isn’t it? Go on back and tell him that. Tell him I said so. You tell him.’

  ‘He didn’t know,’ said Kabuo. ‘You didn’t tell him we were one payment away, Mrs. Heine. You didn’t tell him Mr. Heine had – ’

  ‘He didn’t know,’ sneered Etta. ‘Is that what Ole told you? He didn’t know – is that it? Was I supposed to say, “Ole, there’s these folks made an illegal agreement with my husband hands over seven acres to them”? Is that what I was supposed to say? He didn’t know,’ repeated Etta. ‘Most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I’m supposed to tell someone’s buying up my land there’s an illegal contract muddling matters up? And what if I did? Huh? Fact is you people didn’t meet your payments. That’s a fact. And just suppose you done that to a bank ‘round here. Just suppose. You don’t make your payments, what do you think happens? Somebody waits real polite on you? No. Bank repossesses your land, that’s what happens. I haven’t done anything a bank wouldn’t do. I haven’t done anything wrong.’