4stories10poems

cardboard

2007-02-21T21:27:00.000+09:00

bent in chilled rain
homeless man
shuffles cardboard across street

ride of the valkyries

2006-09-29T08:27:00.000+09:00

maple seeds
in the wind
ride of the valkyries

cranes

2006-06-15T20:11:00.000+09:00

cranes flying
against the riverbank
better than origami

The Flu

2006-05-28T22:41:00.000+09:00

When I have the flu
I like to read
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Exciting Art Hero!

2006-05-21T10:30:00.000+09:00

I always learned a lot whenever I went into the countryside. Elderly country folks who seemed a little lonely would talk to me and ask me things. They were always curious. There was the time I was hiking up over the hillside in Okutama, the hinterlands outside the big city. I was alone and it seemed the trail I'd found running high up above the river was one only the locals knew about. That day, I was startled by a cry from up the hillside in the cedar forest. When I looked, I saw it was a deer bounding further up the steep hill and stopping to give the same warning cry again to the other deer of the forest. To me its cry sounded something like "scree-awww", very quick, very plaintive, with the pitch dropping sharply after "scree".

That was the day I walked all the way upriver, always up in the forest on the steep bank high up above the stream. I could hear the rush and the roar of the river below and I walked all the way out to a point where the stream narrowed and plunged over massive boulders. It was a long hike but it was worth it. Down at the streamside there were bright yellow stoneflies which meant the water was very clean and pure. Evidence of what I already knew in my heart -- that this was wonderful country. On the hike back, I encountered an elderly man in the forest and called out a greeting to him. As I came nearer, I saw much of his life in his short, broad body and the wisps of gray hair on his head. He could absolutely not look me in the eye as he talked. I'd seen that before in troubled people, but with this old man, I took it to be simple shyness. He had that charming, soft-spoken quality that some old-timers have, unable to make eye contact, but always smiling and nodding and asking about what I'd seen and where I was heading. He asked me if I was hiking and I said yes, I was. And he nodded like he thought it was a fine thing to do. When I told him I was going back to the station, he proceeded to explain very carefully the way back along the trail, still never looking at me, but still with the friendly look on his face, explaining very carefully, even though I'd come that way in the morning and I remembered it quite well. But you never interrupt people when they're being careful and helpful like that. If you were to interrupt them, you'd miss out on one of the most spontaneous and valuable parts of life.

When I got back to the tiny station out there in the countryside and boarded the train for the city, I was still thinking about the old man and I was feeling happy. A young blind woman and her friend got on the train and sat across from me and I watched the two women talking, the blind woman looking up above my head with a dreamy expression on her face. I sat quietly and I sighed from time to time as I neared the city and home.

On the days I stayed in my apartment, I would sit around and drink liquor and feel sorry for myself -- because I wasn't out in nature or because I didn't have a girl. I was almost always sorry I wasn't out hiking or something and I only sometimes thought about girls, although when I did, I thought quite intently.
Continued...
But on my trips out to the country it wasn't only elderly people who talked to me. Once, when I was far out on one of the southernmost islands, a woman who looked to be in her thirties came up to me and asked if she could speak English with me for a moment. Some of my acquaintances don't approve of that -- they called people like the woman "English bandits". It might have something to do with the fact that they were teachers and they were used to being paid $50 an hour to talk with the locals and finally they got to where they never wanted to do it for free. I'm not sure. But anyway, I didn't mind this lady. She was very polite and sincere and I found her charming, actually.

But by far one of the most intriguing encounters I had was out beyond the village they call Shimoyama. The name is a bit of a misnomer, because while it's true that the village lies at the base of the big mountains, it actually sits on a plateau that overlooks all the low country to the west. Anyway, out past the village I saw the big billboards again. I'd passed them many times before on the rural train. The first one said "Hiro Art!", the next, "Art Studio Hiro", each letter a different color. As odd as it seems, yes, there appeared to be some sort of artist's studio out there, even though such a thing out in the middle of nowhere would surely have no patrons. Every time I went to Tsukude or Taguchi, there they were, the billboard signs, "Hiro Art!" and "Art Studio Hiro". Imagine Andy Warhol promoting a studio in Appalachia.

So one day while I was riding the little one-car diesel train out for a hike and a jolly mushroom hunt near Tsukude, I was running early and seeing those wacky signs yet again, and quite on a whim, I suddenly felt compelled to have a look at this Hiro, this country artist with the quaint confidence in his backcountry studio.

There were only two other passengers in the train - two old grannies who'd been in to Shimoyama for a bit of shopping. I saw a new billboard: "Exciting Art, Hiro!" The train clacked and rocked over the rail switch and pulled alongside the "descending platform" (trains going away from the city are called "descending", those going toward the city, "climbing"). Without thinking, I stood and went over to the doors. Looking back at my seat, I noticed that my silver flask had climbed out of my pocket and was lying on the seat there. I dashed back over to the seat, grabbed the ornery bugger and jumped back to the door, pressed the button for the doors to open and stepped out onto the lonely, sun-baked and chipped old platform. The door closed and the train's engine grew louder and, begrudgingly it seemed, pulled out of the station very slowly at first, carrying the grannies and the driver on up the line, black exhaust rising, the sun glinting off the old silver train car as it rocked and clacked back onto the single track and on up the hill around the bend through the forest.

I checked the train schedule. The next one would come in two hours. That would be enough time to check out this Hiro character and his "art" and then go on with my real purpose for the day -- my sacred mushroom hunt.

There was no ticket gate and no station attendant. There was only a wooden box nailed to the wall with a slot in which good little disembarking passengers were to drop their tickets, and being a good passenger, I deposited my ticket and passed through the dark and cool station building and out into the sunshine. It wasn't too hard to find this Hiro's studio, what with the colorful signs and the fact that there were only two buildings out in the wide clearing under the sun. There was a house, and beyond it a tin-sided building with another of the colorful signs painted directly onto its side.

"Well Come to Hiro Art Studio," it read. At the edge of the building, there was a strange, fantastical, painted giraffe and he was looking out over the words with dispassion, it seemed. I started down the gravel road that led to the buildings, having little idea what lay in store for me.

As I neared the house a dog started barking. It was a Shiba and he was chained to a stake in the ground by his doghouse. He had clever eyes set close together and his tail curled up and over and pointed down onto his back. I looked at him and said, "Now why all the barking?" He stopped barking and changed to whimpering and sniffing the air and watching me with his clever eyes.

"Now that's better, isn't it?" I said.

Just then a woman opened the window and leaned out smiling.

"Hello," I said and waved to her.

"Hello." She nodded and smiled.

"I've come to see the studio," I said, raising my eyebrows.

She grinned big. Nice and rosy-cheeked, plain but pretty woman.

"Please," she said, pointing with an open palm over to the warehouse-looking building.

I turned to head over to the building and the woman disappeared from the window and reappeared quickly at the front door. I could see her slip out of her slippers and into sandals and she came out toward me with tiny, quick, laughable steps and looking very cheerful like I was the first person to stop there in years. The little Shiba started up barking again and pulling against the chain, standing on his hind legs and pawing at the air.

"Hush, Yosef!" she said.

"His name's Yosef?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, coming up to me. "It's German."

"Really?"

"Well, maybe," she said. She smiled again, looking a little embarassed. She had pretty, black hair in two pigtails behind her ears. I say she "came up to me" which is interesting because she really only came up to my chest. Tiny woman. I already liked her.

"Hiro will be glad," she said.

"Ah. Is Hiro your..." I trailed off and tilted my head thinking my question would be clear. Or at least vague enough to get an answer. But all she did was tilt her head back at me and smile.

I laughed. After toying with me she came out with it.

"Yes, my husband!"

"Oh!" I laughed again. We were at the door to the warehouse... I mean, studio, and she opened it. I had to duck going in.

Inside, it was a plain concrete floor with a couple of rough hewn wooden tables, varnished and glowing under warm lights overhead. And back at the far corner, standing facing us with a big grin on his face and his fists on his hips, was a man I took to be Hiro.

My first impression was shock. He was part bear, part giant, part laughing, big-bellied Buddha. But at the same time I felt instantly at ease with this curious fellow.

He came bounding across the floor, saying "welcome!", grinning the whole way. He offered me his hand. I stuck out my hand and while he crushed it, he kept glowing with that infectious grin jumping out from from his long black goatee beard.

"You come to see Hiro art!" he said, spreading his arms as a conductor does. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes... that is why I have come," I only half lied.

"Good! Good!" he laughed loudly, which made his wife wince. I guessed Hiro to be in his forties. His wife seemed around my age. Their discrepancy in size was hard to reconcile. Yet there they were: beauty and... well, not quite, but still... the grinning beast.

Yes, beast. But in the best of ways.

"Well, look around! An-chan, show him around. Show him Hiro Art!" And watching his jolly expression, the twinkle in his eye, for the first time I sensed he was making fun of himself.

"Please come here," his wife said softly, beckoning me with that always funny downward and toward scooping of the fingers, like a cat pawing.

I complied. It was easy to comply with her. I looked back at Hiro with his whiskers and his girth and grinned at him because I was running to his wife. He just stood there with his fists on his hips again. Smiling. Sticking his belly out proudly.

His wife led me over to the far corner and stopped before a painting there.

"This is me!" she said.

I looked at the painting she was pointing to on the wall. I don't know how I did it, but I recognized it immediately as her. I say "I don't know how I did it" because drawing closer I quickly saw how... unusual... his style was.

It was a woman. It was her alright. But the face and torso were built up with pieces of wood. What I mean is, this Hiro standing over there (he was still grinning at us), had somehow conceived of a world where everything was made of wood. There was a woman in this world and her nose and lips and hair and even her eyes were parts of a tree or sawed and planed lumber, painted bright matt colors and by god, that's what he'd painted. Her nose was a tree trunk with graceful curves at the roots like you sometimes see in the forest, and here the roots arched over as her nostrils, a little wide and quite beautiful. Her hair was parted along the center and was made of two saplings on each side that had been trained around each other, growing in spirals and these were her braids. Her nose was set onto her face with seams visible there where the tree trunk joined the planed and smooth wood cut in at her cheekbones. Her face had a fine, beautiful structure and everywhere, the wood grain spread over her features.

I looked into the eyes of the lumber woman. Her eyes had the same wood grain only much lighter -- it looked like it might be pine. That is, if it were really wood and not a painting of a piece of wood. Her irises were mahogany with drilled out holes leaving blackness for pupils. Her lips were curious. It looked like he'd made them from the scarred tissue that forms around a fallen branch as the tree continues to grow and the bark bulges and starts to wrap the wound. I'd always thought it looked like lips whenever I saw a tree like that in the forest. And her lips fashioned in that way were painted soft pink and were the only part of the painting not done in matte, but shiny just like a young girl glosses her lips.

My eyes moved down along the line of her neck and shoulders, made from a carefully chosen tree trunk with wide-spreading roots for all the graceful curves at her neck and shoulders and collar bone, upper arms against her chest, everything with an intentional and slight assymetry.

And I tried not to stare (or to let her know I was staring, at least), but last there were her breasts, two saucer shaped bulges of wood cut from a tree, the seams again visible where they'd been fastened to her chest and in the center of each, a darker knot with a tiny concave depression in it, where a branch had wanted to form but instead left a little knob, a little bark covered nipple on the tree that the imaginary craftsman had chosen as the breasts for his sculpture in this strange world.

I was not going to look down to compare when I turned to his wife. I was going to look into her eyes.

When I finally did turn, she was smiling at me with raised eyebrows.

"That's something," I said.

"He's crazy, isn't he?" she laughed.

I made what I hoped was a "no comment" face.

"Do you really think it looks like me?" she asked.

I cleared my throat. "Well, I can certainly see a resemblance in the face."

She made a playful smack on my arm. People never did that here, but I was quickly finding that Hiro and his wife were not ordinary people.

I looked back at the painting. I don't know how he did it, but he made that painted wooden woman beautiful and the real woman, his wife standing there, had changed and was beautiful now, too. The wooden lady, the sculpture in the painting, really looked like her.

"An-chan! Let him look around!" Hiro boomed from across the room.

"I am letting him look around."

"Don't follow him. An-chan likes him, ne? You make him nervvous," he said, heavy on the "v".

"I don't like him!" his wife said. Then, "I mean, yes, I like him." She smiled. "He's got a flat stomach."

Hiro grinned and began patting his belly, laughing loudly.

"Go ahead, look around," his wife said.

"Thank you."

"If he tries to speak English to you, let me know. I want a good laugh."

I started to laugh, but then choked it back. She smiled at me without blinking for a very long time. Then she left me by myself.

"Where are you going, An-chan?" Hiro called over.

"I'm bringing tea and sweets."

Hiro lit up.

"But only one for you, big bear!" she said.

"Only one!" he said and began laughing in a peculiar way. It sounded almost like crying.

I walked along the wall, taking a little time standing before each painting. They were all quite small paintings. But there were all kinds of scenes -- there were animals, laborers, fields of ripening grain that when you looked closely you saw were tall and thin trees, with winter-pruned limbs for the rows of grain at the top. Everything was from a strange world and had been sculpted from trees and lumber. The paintings were amazing, really. I felt a little guilty about having dismissed him as I passed his signs all those times on the train.

I'd stopped before a curious painting. It was a figure wielding an axe, chopping down a tree. He was roughly done, like a scarecrow woodsman, with planks of wood for his torso and what seemed to be broom handles for arms. And the tree he was felling had bright red paintbrush heads instead of leaves. Or were they buds? I was puzzling over this when I noticed that Hiro had come up beside me. He was grinning again.

"You like this one?" he asked.

"Yes. Actually, I like them all."

Hiro nodded.

"Do you want this one?"

"Oh... I don't know." I leaned in and checked the price. He was asking about $200.

"I give it to you."

"Pardon? Oh no! That's OK."

"I want you to have it." He was grinning like a little kid.

"I couldn't take it."

"Why!? Why!?" he boomed, and then laughed loudly.

I was trying to come up with an answer. He smacked me on the back solidly, still laughing. Then he asked quite suddenly, "Where are you from?"

"America," I said.

"Ah, America!"

Just then his wife came through the door carrying a tray.

"America, An-chan!" he boomed.

"Oh?" she said.

"Have you been?" I asked.

"No, but I went to go."

"Want to go!" his wife corrected. She was laughing and she set the tray down on the table in the corner.

"America! I want to go!" he said again loudly, laughing.

"Where would you like to go?"

"Everywhere! Disney, Las Vegas!"

I raised my eyebrows.

"HA HA HA! No, it's a Hiro's joke!" he was laughing good now. When he became quiet, he said, "I want to see mountains, forests!"

"Good," I said.

"Montana!"

"That's a good place. I've never been. But it's a damned good place."

"DAMNED GOOD PLACE, An-chan!"

"I heard him," she said, wincing.

"What's your state?" Hiro asked.

I was tempted to say "confused". Instead I said, "Kentucky."

"Ah, Kentucky!"

"You know about it?"

"No. It's west?"

"Well, actually it's more east."

"South?"

"Everybody says so. But it's not. It's in the middle."

"It's mountains and forests?"

"Yes. Not as big as Montana, but there's plenty of old, old mountains."

"Good. An-chan, someday we will go Kentucky!"

"Let's!"

"I give you my painting and some day we visit Kentucky and Mr..."

"Oh, call me Paul."

"We visit Mr. Paul!"

His wife shook her head.

"Is that a fair trade?" I asked.

"Fair! Fair! Someday," he said.

"But I don't know when I'll go back there," I said.

"OK. OK. Someday," he said. Then, "An-chan, he likes the painting." He pointed over to the woodsman. "I give it!"

His wife smiled and clapped her hands like a girl.

The painting I really would have liked to have was back in the corner. The "portrait" of his wife. But I didn't feel comfortable saying anything about it. Anyway, I was happy and surprised that I'd have a real painting. I'd never bought any kind of art before.

"Would you like a sweet?" his wife asked. She went over to the table where she'd set the tray among the clutter of paints and jars and brushes. With the table lamp clamped there, it looked like a still life painting itself. She brought a plate with two little rice sweets. There were flower petals on the pink one and toasted sesame seeds on the other. My eyes lingered on the table in the corner. I saw now how he worked. A thick square of paperboard, a work in progress. He'd painted the whole square off-white. Then the colors were applied for each layer of wood, meticulously, building his "sculpture". There were none of those quick impressionist's strokes to capture a scene. He was building. I couldn't conceive of how long each painting must take him. But he wasn't a painter. He was a craftsman, I felt.

His wife handed me the plate with the delicate sweets.

"An-chan made them!" Hiro said proudly.

"Wow, they're... They look nice."

His wife smiled.

Hiro picked up the other plate and jabbed a little bamboo fork into his one rice sweet and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth and began chewing and grinning big.

I took the little fork and stabbed it into the pink one and bit off half. It was chewy and lightly sweet and a little sour at the same time.

"That's sakura," his wife said.

"Hmmm," I said with my mouth full.

"Where do you live now?" his wife asked.

I swallowed. "Down in the city."

"Very exciting!" Hiro said. He was still chewing.

"Actually, I wish I lived out in the country."

"Come live with us!" Hiro said and began laughing again. Then he started choking and coughing.

"Eat slowly!" his wife scolded. "He doesn't want to live with us!"

"Two's company, but three's a crowd," I said.

"Sorry?"

"Uh..." I laughed. "I'd be in the way."

"No! No!" Then a moment later, "You come here just for Hiro art?"

"Well, actually I was going mushroom hunting."

"Ah! Amigasatake, no?"

"Yep!"

"Morilles" he said to his wife.

"I know!"

"Where?" Hiro asked.

"I was planning on going on out to Tsukude."

"Hmmm, maybe good place." Then, "But these hills good, too."

"Really?"

"Sometimes I find them."

Oftentimes the real morel hunters, the fanatics, will lie to you and mislead you in order to protect their honey spots. But it didn't seem like a thing Hiro would do.

"Then maybe I should look around out there," I said.

"Yes. It's good place."

"Where is it exactly?"

"Come," he said.

His wife and I followed him over to the door and out to the gravel road.

"Go there. There's a path. You go up into the hills. About 30 minutes walking, it's many good places."

"Elms?" I asked.

"Ichou. And sakura."

I knew sakura were cherry trees. But "ichou"...

"I should know 'ichou', but I forgot it," I said.

"Maidenhair," he said. He reached over and stroked his wife's hair and she pulled away from him.

"An-chan likes!" he boomed, laughing again. And I laughed with him.

He grabbed her pigtail and pulled it.

"Ouch," she yelped. "Stop it!"

"Ping-pong!" he said and laughed loudly. She smacked his arm.

"An-chan likes!"

"No, I don't like it!" she said. "You big monster!"

"She gave me water," Hiro said in a funny voice.

I didn't get it.

"You know?" he asked.

"No."

"Quasimodo!" he hunched over. "Ping-pong!"

Then I got the joke and laughed, which seemed to piss off his wife.

"I'm sorry, Ah-chan," Hiro said. He reached over and hugged her, with her trying half-heartedly to get away. Then he kissed her as she grimaced.

"You wanna kiss, too?" he said looking at me and pointing to his wife.

I laughed and waved my hand. She pushed him away and hit him on the arm again.

"If you go hunting, you wanna drink?" he asked me.

"Uh..."

"Liquor! Plum schnapps!" he said, heavy on the "sch".

"Well, I brought my flask," I said. I pulled it from my pocket and showed him.

"Let's drink!"

"OK," I said.

His wife shook her head.

We went back in the "studio" and over to his workbench. He moved some sketches aside and there was a clear bottle with a cork stopper and a dull red liquid in it. There was one glass.

"I'll bring another," his wife said.

"No! We don't require," he said smiling.

"Yes!" she said.

"No!" He grabbed her around the waist and started kissing her again, with her fighting him off.

Then he let her go and reached for the bottle. He uncorked it and poured out some of the liquor for me in the glass and handed it to me. I sipped at it. It was strong and sour and pretty good.

Hiro tipped up the bottle and drank from it. "Ahhh!" he said. His wife was shaking her head.

"Now you won't work all day," she said.

"No! Now I work better all day!" Then, "And all night!" He laughed loudly.

"Another?" he asked me.

"Well..."

"For Morille!"

"OK."

He poured me another and then he tipped up the bottle again. I drank from my glass. A little faster than the first time.

"An-chan?" he asked.

"No."

"It's rude!" he looked at me. "Rude!" he pleaded.

"It's OK," I said to her.

"Rude!" he laughed.

"Shut up!"

"HA HA HA HA..." he was booming out his laugh again.

"Shut up!" She took the bottle from him and took a sip. Her face flushed immediately.

"There! Happy?" she asked, shoving the bottle back at him.

"Hiro is happy! Mr. Paul is happy!" he said. "An-chan is happy!"

His wife shook her head again. "A big bear!" She was glaring at him, but she wasn't really angry. "You are a big bear who drinks plum schnapps!" she said.

"Maybe I should get going to look for shrooms," I said.

"Yes, look carefully," he said to me, very serious, directing me with his finger.

"But let's have a drink of my whiskey first," I said.

His eyes lit up. I took off the cap and handed the flask to him. He took a drink and then started making a growling sound, which from him I took to be how he expressed pain. He wiped the flask and handed it back to me. I took a swig and rolled it over my tongue. Then I swallowed and felt the burn going down.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Wild Turkey."

"Ah! Tah-key! You are smart man!"

"It has a way, doesn't it?" I said.

"What?"

"It has that little certain something." I was a little tipsy.

Hiro nodded, but I still didn't think he understood.

"My uncle used to say that if you were drinking Wild Turkey, people could smell you from across the street."

"Yes!" he boomed. "Good strong smell!" He leaned over and breathed in his wife's face. "How An-chan?"

"Kusai!" She grimaced, waving at the air in front of her face.

"Care for a drink?" I offered her the flask.

"No, thank you."

"Well, I'll go have a look for the forest fish," I said.

"What?" Hiro asked.

"Morilles," I said.

"Yes! Forest fish!" and he began laughing, his belly jiggling, booming out guffaws with the sound bouncing off the tin walls, like I'd made a grand "American joke".

"Well, thanks for the tour and the sweets!" I said, looking at his wife. She was smiling prettily. I was tipsy. "And the schnapps," I added, turning back to Hiro.

"You are welcome," he said. "Good luck! Do your best!" He raised his fist in the air.

"I will."

"Good luck," his wife said.

"Thanks!" I smiled at her. Must stop that.

"Look for the animals!" Hiro said.

"Pardon?"

"Paintings. They show you the morels," he said.

"OK," I said. I figured it was just drunken talk.

I walked over to the door.

"Don't forget. Stop again and I give you the painting," he called over to me.

"You don't have to."

"I must!" he said.

"Goodbye!" I waved and went out the door. As it closed I looked back for one last glimpse of Hiro, huge and bearish, and his little wife in pigtails, and I walked out into the warm late afternoon.

Everything was changed. Whereas before I'd just seen a clearing, now I saw a meadow with tall grass and blue and gold wildflowers. I heard a cuckoo's call carrying down over the hills with the breeze. I walked the way Hiro had shown me and at the edge of the forest there were warblers calling to me. Everything was bright and light. I knew it would wear off. But for now, everything was bright and light.

Then I was in the cool of the forest on the path and walking up through the cedars and cypress and making grand theories about how to tell them apart by just looking at the bark on their trunks. Before I knew it, I was at a crossing of paths and wondering which way I was supposed to go. And down at the corner formed by the two paths was a little sign nailed to a post with a painted hare on it, with a wood plank body and dying tree trunk ears and I knew now this was what Hiro was talking about. I walked on in the direction the hare pointed, still feeling good and seeing things I hadn't seen before.

I was up on the top of a rise and I stopped and squatted down to rest for a moment. The forest had changed around me. On the east side of the path were the same second growth cedars, but on the left side, going down the slope, it was a broadleaf forest with oaks and cherry trees.

I kept along the path and it curved and rose from time to time and then, far below through the cedars, I could see an old, overgrown forestry road. Then, I almost tripped over it and went back to look. It was another painted sign, this time it was a pheasant and he was telling me to take a narrow deer trail that branched off to the left. I was glad I saw him because I would have kept on straight ahead on the main path.

This deer trail zigzagged through the leaves and saplings on the steep slope and went down steeply and then curved along the top of a ravine and along a ridge out from it. I heard the warblers calling to each other again and I stopped to listen to them for a while. Each one's song was a little different, as if they were comparing interpretations. Then I pushed on, with the trail going along atop the ridge and the slope down each side became more gentle and the land flatter. This time I saw him from far off. Down at the corner where my deer trail met a bigger path, there was a sign with a boar on it, painted by Hiro. His snout was saying to take that wider trail out further along the ridge rather than the deer trail on over the hillside. Hiro had made him a clever little wild boar with sharp, proud tusks and a glint in his eye, like he knew some big secrets. I walked for another five minutes, listening to the warblers calling again. Each time I heard them it made me smile.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him, sitting squat among the leaves, with his gnarled, pitted head, looking like a Russian peasant in a weathered tophat.

"Monsieur Morille," I said out loud. "There you are!" And looking out past him, down the slope, up popped another, and another, and then I saw that all down the hillside there were morels, mostly blacks and already a few whites, but hundreds of them. I walked down through them carefully, fished a paper sack out of my jacket, unfolded it and began the harvest. I walked among them enchanted, taking only one out of every three or four I found, leaving the rest to carry on undisturbed.

When the sack was full, I sat down on the forest floor, on the leaves from last fall. I looked back up the hillside at the mushrooms. How they looked standing among the fallen leaves and the new green foliage on the saplings. Then I looked up overhead, up through the tiny new leaves. It was a cherry and maidenhair forest. There were some maples, too, with star-shaped leaves like hands playing rock-paper-scissors. The sun was low beyond the hillside. Up against the slate of the sky, those new spring leaves were an uncanny green. I looked back up the slope, at all the morels that were still there and up at the leaves in the trees again. Hiro came to mind again and I thought that surely this fellow must be some sort of wizard.

Back over my shoulder I saw the little fan-shaped leaves on the maidenhair trees and they made me smile again. I remembered Hiro stroking his wife's hair and I laughed out loud into the forest and felt strange as it echoed and the warblers grew quiet.

"Sorry," I said in a low voice.

Soon, I saw it was time to leave and I took the trails back, passing the boar and the pheasant and finally the quiet hare and I thanked each one of them in turn. The liquor had worn off, but now I was drunk on something else.

It was dusk when I came out onto the gravel road beyond their studio and house. I knocked at the door to the studio and after a moment, Hiro opened it, smiling, and looking much more subdued than in the afternoon. I could tell he'd been working hard.

"You find it?" he asked.

"Yes!" I smiled. "Here..." I took out another paper sack and started putting some good mushrooms in it. "Here you go," I said.

"Thank you!" he said, with the afternoon cheer returning.

Yosef was barking now and I turned and saw Hiro's wife walking over. It had been a grand day. They asked me if I'd stay the night, but I begged off.

"Wait here," Hiro said.

I watched through the open door. He went off to the corner and came back with a package wrapped in brown paper. I couldn't see under the wrapping, but I knew it was the painting.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes, I insist!"

"Yes," his wife said smiling.

"Well... thank you."

"Please enjoy looking."

"Thank you. I will."

"Don't you stay here tonight?" he asked again.

"No, I really have to get back."

"OK. Next time," he said, happily.

As I rode the train down the mountain and back into the city, I was sorry I hadn't said yes.

maples

2006-05-06T17:58:00.000+09:00

lonely day
watching maples
in the wind

fireflies

2006-04-26T21:33:00.000+09:00

Yesterday's weather was magnificent. Cool, overcast morning. Then thunder shook the building where I work. Rain fell lightly at first, then in sheets. The rain grew whiter, rounder, colder. Hail, the size of pachinko balls (?!) falling with more thunder. I gestured for one of my students to stand up and have a look, but being a good girl, she didn't dare stand and look out the window during class.

cherry petals
in a hailstorm
like morning fireflies

by afternoon, the sun cast long shadows and all the hail had melted. There was a cool breeze and the only remnant of the morning was in the memory of the rain and the fluttering petals outside the window.

The Arrangement

2006-04-13T20:00:00.000+09:00

He sat down on the bed in the tiny room he rented in the big city. His rabbit, Harry, seemed to be watching him, so he gently lifted the animal onto his lap and began stroking the fur between its ears. The fur was so thick and soft he could hardly believe it. It made him reflect on the wonder of life and all the things man hadn't yet touched and ruined.

"You're what keeps me from going nuts, Harry," he said, looking the animal square in the face. Harry's eyes were blank. He had a lot of stress there in the city and sometimes it made him a little crazy. Harry rested there peacefully on the man's lap and the hand with its long fingers stroked the rabbit's fur.
Continued...
Harry had been a wild rabbit when the man took him as a pet, so he wasn't white or black or any carefully bred color. The fur on his ears was peppered black and golden brown. He had a jaunty little tuft of white fur on the top of his head. Across his face there were stiff little white guard hairs in among the soft, velvety fur in myriad shades of tan. He had long black and white whiskers. Some of the fur on his cheeks was so soft and long, like a very young child's hair who's never had a haircut. But as he stroked the fur above Harry's eyes, that was his favorite. It was black down by his skin, then golden, and then black again at the tips. My god, what a beautiful creature, he thought.

"Your whiskers are fine," the man said.

He stroked the fur along the animals cheek and its long whiskers flicked out as his fingers moved across them. Harry didn't flinch. He was used to this.

The man stroked along the whiskers again. His thumb was shaking again. He should probably go to the doctor, he thought. It had been like that since he was younger, since he moved away from home and started life on his own, started finding himself, started to develop his own "non-conformist" personality, as he liked to think. He should probably go to the doctor. But he probably wouldn't, he thought. They probably won't have a clue what's wrong anyway. Probably just make it worse. I get along just fine, he thought.

Watching his own fingers stroke the rabbit's fur there, in that detached way of his, he thought how that hand looked like an artificial hand, if you disregarded the shaking (hell, you had to know what to look for to even notice it). It was bony, and too thin. It was like a prosthetic hand, a wooden hand, a piece of beautiful sculpture, one of Tilman Riemenschneider's hands, he thought, with a little pride.

Harry was lying in his lap with his ears out straight, a little stiffly. The man thought he could almost feel Harry breathing. He loved Harry. And Harry loved him, at least as much as a beast can, because he never tried to get away, nor did he flinch like most animals will when they are picked up.

But he felt kind of bad about having taken him out of the wild. A wild animal belongs in the wild, and he knew it all too well.

The bell rang on his intercom. He set Harry down on his bed and went to the door. He always hated this part. When he was hidden away from all the bustle in his little room, away from all the hate and rudeness and selfishness of that city out there. He peered through the peephole. It looked like another salesman. People were always hassling him.

The salesman had the ubiquitous dark suit. The shiny, peach tie that was apparently in fashion lately. Pockmarked face. Narrow eyes. He felt revulsion and backed away from the peephole. He went back to the bed and sat down and waited for the salesman to leave. There was only the bed in the room, and a low table and a small bookcase. There wasn't room for anything else. No chairs, no nothing. A sofa was out of the question. It was a bleak room, but he didn't mind.

He lifted Harry onto his lap again and began stroking his fur again. The bell rang again and he winced.

"Go on now," he said in a low voice. "Take your peach tie and go sell something someplace else."

He waited quietly, very still. Then finally he heard the man walking away. He went back to petting Harry. The smooth, thick, richly varied colors of his fur. He was reflective again. He wanted to freeze life. Keep it in its best state, without any interruptions, without salesmen. He felt behind the animal's ears. It was rough and dry back there.

"Poor fella," he said and knit his brows, wrinkled up his forehead. Oh well, nothing comes out the way you hope completely, he thought.

"I guess I'll have to take that follow-up course," he said. He'd gotten up the nerve the previous spring to leave his little room and take a course at the community center in taxidermy. Then in the late spring he'd found Harry.

He set the dried hare's mask down on the low table lovingly and laid back on the bed with his forehead still wrinkled up, thinking.

Well, there was that to do...

2006-04-03T20:45:00.000+09:00

"Leaves" is finished. (At least if I consider it a first draft). And frankly, I'm glad to be rid of it. Now I can try to write a real story -- one that's not 10,000 words. A real, short, three-pager kinda story.

(silence)

If I can just think of something to write about. ;-)

Anyway, that's two down and two more to go. The poems, I've neglected lately. But maybe I can finish all this up some time soon.

Rambling... the whole idea for "Leaves" came from a walk by a river last December. That and the imagery of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Fiction is often derived from experience. But sometimes it goes the other way. Ever come across a scene from a novel with a vivid (and tasty) description of a meal and then want to go out and try it? Reading "Crime and Punishment", or Turgenev makes me want to drink vodka.

Writing the camping scene on the mountain from "Leaves", the image stuck with me. Stuck with me enough that I did a sort of reenactment the other day. I might write about it sometime soon.

Oh well, that's enough for today. Goodnight!

"Leaves"

2006-04-03T20:40:00.000+09:00

Leaves

"Leaves" Chapter 10

2006-04-03T20:35:00.000+09:00

The significance of the word "hamlet" lies in its patronizing euphemism. In this country where Paul had chosen to live, in the not too distant past, a feudal system of government prevailed. And of course it was marked by a well-defined class hierarchy. How people came to be in a particular class is not important, for no one knew and, frankly, few people cared. Paul had left his own country because of the incessant barrage of unsolicited opinion -- the bumper stickers, billboards, television advertisements. Strangers -- people you will never meet -- telling you what they think about religion, about birth control, morality, politics, about most anything, really. And all without your ever having asked. In his fragile state of mind before leaving, those strangers, those opinion soap-boxers, were speaking directly to him. And soon, they were speaking directly in his mind.
Continued...
So he left and he came to this country and for a while, he enjoyed the narcotic anonymity it afforded. But here, he was slowly learning, the opinions were just as pronounced, just as self-assured, just as grounded in the obscurity of tradition, just as beholden to the culture's mythos. And that these opinions (these prejudices) weren't displayed on the bumper of some dullard's car, but rather hidden in whispers and in narrowed, judging eyes -- this just served to make it more sinister and, ultimately, more oppressive.

The name for the untouchables in this country's language, when translated directly and a bit roughly, yields "people of the hamlets". They were the lowest of the class system, the unclean, the "un-human". They worked in all the "unclean" professions, serving as butchers, cobblers, tanners, all the jobs that involved killing animals (luckily, fish were not considered "animals", otherwise the "unclean" would be a majority rather than minority). Others worked at the cremation or burial grounds. Historians speculate that this hierarchy was a result of Buddhist taboos. But those same historians never bother to mention that Buddhism came here from another country. And they never mention how Gautama Buddha preached that all people, all classes, were equal.

Ms. Matsumoto's forefathers were from this line of "unclean" people. And incredibly, people still seemed to care. They still seemed to check before hiring you. They still seemed to hire an investigator to check your family background before allowing you to marry their son or daughter.

The class system had been officially abolished and the peasantry allowed to take surnames about a century earlier. But laws written on paper can be evaded. Especially when those who are supposed to enforce the laws disagree with them and decide to look the other way. Especially when there is an unspoken agreement that the hierarchical system will be preserved. Just dress the window nicely, thank you. Leave the dirty laundry in the back room and never speak of it, thank you very much. Yes, that will do.

---

After a week, Paul's arm had mostly healed. He was left with only little points of white scar tissue dotted up and down his forearm and onto the palm of his hand. Shizuka told him it was time for their visit.

In the afternoon, they drove northwest, with the road winding and descending into foothills.

"Are you going to finally tell me where you're taking me?" Paul asked.

"I told you. To see the lacquer shop," Shizuka said.

"I've seen enough lacquer to last me a while."

Shizuka wondered what he meant.

"Whoa! Whoa! Watch it!" he said suddenly. Shizuka was drifting off the road.

"Sorry!" She smiled at him and he motioned ahead, to the road.

"I love to see your smile," he said. "But I also enjoy not dying in a car crash."

Shizuka laughed loudly, as if it were simply a joke about an impossibility.

"But what are we gonna find out at a lacquer shop?"

"I don't know," Shizuka said, lying. Lying was alright when it was for his good.

Later, after nearly an hour, Shizuka pulled off the road.

"I want to check the map," she said.

"OK."

Shizuka pulled a folded map from a pocket down by her legs on the driver's side door. She unfolded it and examined it for a moment.

"Are we going to Kiso?" Paul asked.

"What?" She looked up at him.

Paul tapped the part of the map folded back in her left hand. She unfolded it and started laughing.

"Oh! I made a mistake! A big mistake!" She was still laughing and Paul gave her a perfunctory smile. Then he turned to the window and looked out at the countryside. "What the hell does this girl have in mind?" he was thinking.

"I made a mistake. We have to go back." Shizuka pointed to the map.

"OK." Paul looked at the map. "It's not far."

Shizuka looked down the road and then back behind her. There were no other cars and she flicked the turn signal lever and turned the car in a wide U and started driving back the way they'd come. After ten minutes, she slowed to nearly a stop in the middle of the road, just short of a gravel road going up a hill. There was a sign that read: "Matsumoto Lacquer Art"

"I think it's here," Shizuka said.

"OK. Onward and upward," Paul said, a little sarcastically.

Shizuka drove up the gravel road. The wheels spun a few times in the gravel and the road wound through tall cypress and cedar trees. Then there was a clearing and an old wooden house with a thatched roof. Off to the side there was a small building with earthen walls, crumbling in places, revealing layers of straw and mud and in the corner, a gridwork of bamboo slats.

"This is a nice place," Paul said.

But whereas Shizuka would usually smile cheerfully when Paul mentioned he liked something, now she wasn't smiling. "Yes," she said, looking pre-occupied. Perhaps even worried.

"I think I want to live here," Paul joked. Shizuka looked at him but said nothing.

They walked up to the door and Shizuka knocked softly. A breeze picked up and Paul could smell the cedars. Then a door down along the house slid aside and a woman looked out quizzically. Shizuka raised her hand briefly in a slight wave.

"Little Shizu?" the lady asked. Shizuka nodded.

The lady disappeared and they heard quick footsteps on a creaking floor.

"She's my cousin, Haru," Shizuka said.

"So you know her?" Paul asked, stupidly. "I mean..." he trailed off.

There was a reason Shizuka had been lonely all those years and had never married. She, too, was a "person from the hamlets". When she was with Paul in the grove by the river and she saw what she took to be urushi, and what was written there, she thought immediately she might know who had written it. Or who would know.

Ms. Matsumoto came to the front door and opened it. Her eyes were wide and bright, as if she were caught off-guard at Shizuka's visit. Then she looked at Paul and forced herself to smile briefly.

"This is my friend, Paul," Shizuka said.

The lady gave a polite nod and brief smile again. But it was betrayed by her face which still had the look of astonishment. Then she realized how obvious her surprise was and she remembered etiquette.

"Please come in," she said.

Inside the entrance, Shizuka took off her shoes and Paul sat on the raised floor and unlaced his boots and took them off. They followed her cousin, Haru, over the wooden floor to a low table set off to the side from a fire pit. The room had a lingering scent of smoke and the floor was dark and had been polished by feet for many years. Haru said something and then went off to another room at the back.

"She's bringing tea," Shizuka said. Her face was still strangely serious, it seemed to Paul.

"So what's going on?"

Shizuka smiled. "Just be patient."

Paul tilted his head to the side while watching her. "Oh well," he thought. He looked up into the ceiling, the wooden lattice-work was darkened, yellowed from many family fires in the sunken hearth there in the middle of the room over the years. This was a house to live in, he thought. To be away from people. He hadn't been joking when he said he wanted to live there.

Shizuka noticed him looking up in the rafters.

"This house is more than 150 years old," she said and relaxed her expression into not quite a smile.

It would seem that going to that house was a dangerous thing to do. Shizuka was girlish sometimes, and perhaps naive. But usually it was an act. She was girlish, but she was not stupid. "Nori I'm sorry" was what she'd seen written there in the woods. And the "girl from the hamlet" made her think first of Haru, her dear cousin. Haru, who'd suffered so much.

That could only mean that Haru had some connection with the girl, Noriko. And why write "I'm sorry"? But the thought of Haru doing something terrible... The thought never really entered Shizuka's mind. She couldn't allow such a thing to enter her thoughts. She was sure she knew Haru too well for such a thing to be possible. She could never do something like that. Haru was kind. And bore her suffering well. Better than she herself could, Shizuka was sure.

Haru came back into the room carrying a tray with stoneware cups and a porcelin teapot. She sat down and poured out tea for Paul and Shizuka and offered a cup to Paul. He thanked her. She still had that look of astonishment. Her face was like a young girl's, Paul thought. A frightened, timid young girl.

He'd noticed when she sat down across from him what a pretty woman she was. Small, strong. Hair streaked lightly with gray, but still young. Her, living in this house -- it seemed like the real tradition of this country to Paul. When everyone else dyed their hair and lived in crackerbox houses, this woman, this girl, it seemed, with her pretty face, not wanting or not needing to wear makeup. This, was what he'd come to this country seeking.

Shizuka was talking with her. Paul followed some of it. She spoke very softly, this woman named "Haru". He thought her name might mean "Spring". As Shizuka spoke, Haru was nodding often and looking down. Finally, Shizuka turned to Paul.

"Paul, could you show her your arm?"

He looked from Shizuka to Haru. Then he pulled back his sleeve and laid his arm palm up on the table. Haru looked at it, again seeming worried and a little astonished. Shizuka said something and Paul recognized "urushi".

Haru looked up from his arm to Shizuka and then into Paul's eyes. She seemed agitated.

"You mustn't touch it!" She said suddenly in English and then reached out to take Paul's arm, so quickly that Paul jumped and almost jerked his hand back.

She held his wrist. Her hands were rough, he noticed. But the way she held his hand, his wrist, was very gentle and told him much about her.

She looked down again and still holding his arm, began shaking her head and saying "I'm sorry" very softly, again and again. Finally, she laid his hand down on the table, still not daring to look up.

Shizuka stood and went around the table and kneeled by her. She put her hand on Haru's shoulder. They were quiet for minutes and then finally Paul got up his nerve.

"Haru...was it you that I saw last week? By the river?"

She looked at him sadly but didn't answer.

"It was Sunday night," Paul said. Then a moment later, "I saw someone go into the trees. With a hood."

Haru cast her eyes down again. She said "yes" and sniffled. She wiped her face with her fingers and looked up at him for just an instant. Then her eyes darted back down.

"It's alright Haru," Shizuka said.

As he tried to reconcile all of these pieces, Paul was suddenly anxious about sitting so near her. He didn't have the benefit of knowing her for such a long time, as Shizuka did. It came and went in just a flash, but it was the fear that people have of being in the company of the mentally disturbed. And he couldn't know it, but it was the same uneasiness people sometimes felt with him -- with Paul. His reasons for being there and running away from his own country should have served as warning that his own mind was less than "tranquil".

Paul looked at Shizuka. "How..." he started, but then lost his nerve. Then, plunging in, "How does Haru...". "How did you know the girl? That died?" he said, turning to Haru.

"I didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I didn't mean to..."

Shizuka turned to her and spoke very softly, still holding her. Haru told her everything, about the girl's, Noriko's visit. About her marriage that never took place (which Shizuka knew), and the fact that Noriko was the man's daughter, which came as a surprise to Shizuka.

Shizuka turned to Paul and apologized for speaking in their language.

"Don't worry," he said, looking up from the table. He was following their low conversation as best he could.

Haru explained that the girl came to her after fighting with her father. She said that at school, they'd been taught briefly and cryptically about the "former" outcasts. She was a clever girl and seeing the discomfort her teacher had, and the quick way they'd skipped over that short paragraph in their history books, she sensed that she was being lied to. But asking her father hadn't helped and he exploded, forbidding her to ever mention it again. But Nori's mother was less tactfully quiet and had let slip (with a little pride) that her father was so angry because he'd once been engaged to one of "those poor people". But little Nori shouldn't worry herself over all this, her mother had said. However, her mother made a mistake, for she also told the girl her name, the woman's name, and vaguely where she lived -- in "a rundown old house in the country". "Poor woman," Nori's mother had said, shaking her head and thinking that was the end of that.

But Noriko was clever and persistent, perhaps even with a stubbornness inherited from her grandfather. And she'd found Haru and Haru had not lied to her and that had been the terrible mistake.

"I just told her the truth," Haru said finally. She looked up at Shizuka and Paul, pleading for their understanding. "But I don't understand how... Why that man got her."

"He was crazy," Paul said. "Crazy people can do anything. There's no understanding it."

And it's true -- there's no understanding why Sagawa would confess to killing the girl when he hadn't done it. The only person who could understand her death was Noriko. She was so distraught at Haru's story, so ashamed, that she confronted her father again and matched his rage with her own (which was strangely self-destructive for such a young girl). But above all, it had been shame -- from what she was and from the hidden hate she'd found. That, and (like Paul) vindictiveness had led her into the grove to take her own life.

"I wish I could understand," Haru said.

Paul could not look at Haru for very long when she seemed so forlorn. His uneasiness had been replaced with tenderness for her. He was gradually comprehending just how much she'd suffered.

"Last week..." Haru said. "I was thinking about her. I couldn't stand it." Then, "I wanted to visit where it happened and pay my respects. In my own way." She was quiet. Then finally, "I was a little crazy I guess. To do it the way I did."

Paul shook his head, trying to tell her he didn't think it was crazy.

"But I almost felt that Noriko was my own daughter. I can't explain it," Haru said, and she lowered her head again.

"I'm sorry!" she said louder. "I feel I did a terrible thing."

"It wasn't your fault," Shizuka said.

"But Paul was injured."

"It's OK," Paul said.

Shizuka patted her shoulder.

Paul was gazing out of the old house where Haru had slid the door aside, and he was surprised he could put everything out of his mind so cleanly. The shadows from the trees at the edge of the clearing were growing longer. Down beyond the forest and the road, there were terraced fields curving down to the valley floor. In one of them a farmer was burning straw from the summer's harvest of grain. That clear light and the breeze in the tops of the cedars was fleeting. Paul liked this time of year most out of all the seasons. Everything was forgotten. Almost everything could be forgotten. He was a sentimental man, but not in a way that most people would accept. He thought he'd like to come back to this house some time. He'd like to come back alone, he thought.

Later, they said goodbye to Haru. She asked them to come see her again and they promised they would.

On the drive back, they were both somber. As darkness came, Shizuka suddenly looked over at Paul.

"We can never marry someone from here," she said. "Unless it's another of our group."

Paul looked at her, but said nothing.

"That's why I'll never let you leave me," she said, laughing once, a bit nervously.

and another poem - "Swings"

2006-03-28T21:02:00.000+09:00

Sometimes, when your landlord is outside making noise, using a carbon steel circular saw to cut up old appliances so that the garbage truck will take it (only small pieces allowed), and you're driven out onto the street to find some quiet, so you can plan tomorrow's work, and you walk to a nearby park, and say hello to the elderly man walking his cairn terrier, and he explains to you about "cairn", how it's a Celtic word and all that kind of stuff, and then he says goodbye, and then a 20-something girl comes with a little kid and greets the other people at the park, but doesn't greet you, but then the girl and the kid leave and it doesn't really matter anyway, and then finally, some elementary school kids come and start playing around and swinging on the swingset and then they all go off, promising to meet and play together again soon (because it's spring vacation), and in the end, you're there all alone... sometimes, you get an idea for a little poem...

swings
still moving
long after girls have left

"Leaves" Chapter 9

2006-03-20T20:57:00.000+09:00

Paul was standing at a pay phone. He dialed Shizuka's number. "She'll be happy to have a record of this in her phone log," he said under his breath, into the receiver, into the sound of the ringing.

Shizuka was in her car when the phone started ringing and she jumped a little and swerved on the road until she found a place to pull over safely. She'd been working the night shift at the clinic and then freshened up her face and set out in her car as she had been doing in all her free time since Paul went off by himself. She wanted to be close to him and Paul had little idea of just how close she was as she answered the call from the number she didn't recognize.

"Hello?"

"Shizuka, this is Paul," he said.

"Oh, hi!!!" she screamed into the phone. Then she began laughing and Paul wondered why. She was always laughing. Well, when she wasn't crying, that is.

"I'm happy you called," she said.

"Oh. Listen, where are you now?"

"Where? I'm driving."

"Oh."

"Why?"

"Well..." he trailed off, looking down at his hand and forearm.

"What's wrong?"
Continued...
"Well, I seem to have picked up some kind of rash."

"Sorry?"

How could he phrase it? "I have an allergy."

"Oh!"

"On my arm. And hand. Red bumps."

Now she understood and she became serious. "How did you get it?"

"I'm not sure." But he was pretty sure. It was that goddamned red stuff. Or was it the lighter fluid? Or maybe the river water? But probably it was the red stuff.

"I don't know," he said finally. "Maybe some stuff I touched by the river."

Shizuka couldn't quite imagine what it would be, but it didn't matter. He'd called her and he needed her help and she was suddenly happy.

She laughed into the phone again.

"It's not funny. Looks pretty bad," Paul said.

"Oh! I'm sorry. I'm just very glad because Paul called me!"

"I know it's too much to ask, but..."

"Yes?"

"I wonder if you could come and look at it."

"Where are you?" But she basically knew. Because it was her that had driven along the river the previous night. It had been her car. She had waited for him where the trail joined the river going upstream and she had watched him walking in the early evening, watched him sit down by the river, but she hadn't wanted to disturb him. Then she'd driven back home and gone directly to her clinic to start her shift.

She felt a little bad because she'd been following him. She only wanted to be near him, but knew he wanted to be alone. Men are funny, she thought. But she loved him. She wasn't going to let him go. He needed her. His call now proved that, beyond a doubt. She was so happy now.

"I'm in the old village by the river. You know, where I lived before," Paul said.

"Oh yes. OK, I'll come now," she said.

"How long do you think it'll take?"

"I don't know. But I'll hurry! I'll drive fast!"

Paul was shaking his head. "You don't have to rush."

"Maybe one hour," Shizuka said.

"OK."

It would only take her fifteen minutes, actually. She'd already been on her way to "check up" on him. But she smiled and thought she could spend a little extra time to do her makeup. She had to look nice when she met him.

"Where should I wait for you?"

"Ummm..."

"How about this park near the station," Paul said. "It's big and it's called Suigen or something like that."

"OK!"

"It's down by the river."

"OK!"

"OK, I'll just go there and wait for you."

"Good."

"Shizuka, sorry to bother you."

"No, no!"

"Especially after I insisted on coming out here alone."

"No, no. I'm happy!"

And she was happy. He needed her. It's a good thing I've been coming to check on him every day, she thought. He's like a little boy, she thought. So cute.

Yes, Shizuka was happy. She'd forgotten all about how it had been when they'd argued about his birthday. She'd forgotten about how she broke down at his apartment. And she'd nearly forgotten about the mean things they'd written on the stone statue up on that mountain. The little monument to the family that had lived down in the valley below. When she watched Paul starting up the mountain trail, and she climbed up after him, she recognized the name on the stone and it made her sad. It made her turn back. She knew it was the name of one of the families, one of the "untouchable" families that had lived down there and all around the surrounding hills, but always apart from the other villagers. And those mean things -- "dirty people get out!" Shizuka was mad then. But now she'd nearly forgotten about it.

Shizuka put the phone away in her handbag and dutifully used the turn signal and when the little van passed, she pulled back onto the road heading for the village. Outside the village, she stopped in a convenience store parking lot and took a mirror and her makeup bag out. Twenty minutes later she was satisfied with everything. Her eyes had been lined, lips glossed, cheeks powdered and lashes curled. Then she drove into the village, got lost for ten minutes, then got her bearings again, and finally, almost on the hour she'd promised, found the park Paul had mentioned. He was sitting on a bench down by the river and his pack was leaned up against the side of the bench.

Shizuka walked across the grass in her heels. She came up from behind him and covered his eyes with her hands.

"Who am I?" she shouted and then began laughing.

"Uh... Norika Fujiwara?" Paul said, and this made her laugh even more, becoming so noisy that the other people in the park looked over at them.

Shizuka took her hands from his face and leaned over farther from behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed Paul's cheek several times.

"OK! OK!" Paul said. He turned his head to kiss her on the lips.

"You're choking me!" he said afterwards.

"Oh! I'm sorry! Are you OK?"

"Yes." He laughed.

"Are you OK!?"

"Yes! Damnit." He patted the space on the bench beside him. "Now sit down and have a look at my gangrenous arm."

"What?"

"Nothing..."

She came around the bench and sat down beside him. She took his wrist in her hands. As she looked at his hand and arm, Paul was watching her. He was watching her with that freshness and resignation that illness or injury bring. That same purple floral skirt she always wore. Her nice legs. Her hair, curly and hard from all the gel she used.

"Oh, by the way, thanks for coming," Paul said and smiled. Then he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Shizuka giggled and looked up at his eyes, smiling. Paul lifted his eyebrows and motioned with his eyes and head down to his forearm.

"Oh! Yes. I'm sorry!" Shizuka said.

She held his wrist gently but firmly and ran a finger over the bumps on his skin.

"Well, it doesn't look so bad, I think."

"Really?"

"I can buy medicine at a drugstore. You will be OK."

"Phew! That's a relief. I was afraid they'd have to amputate."

"What?"

"Cut it off."

"No!" But she saw he was joking and then she began laughing again. Again a little noisily.

"But how did you get this?" she asked.

"That's a long story."

Shizuka looked at him, waiting to hear it.

In the car, as they drove to the drugstore, Paul told her about everything. The grove. The "paint, or whatever it was," as he said. And she nodded, with a worried look on her face as she drove. Paul wondered if she really understood. And he wondered if he should mention the person he'd seen.

At the drugstore, Shizuka went in alone. When she came back out, she was holding a bag and in the car she showed Paul the tube of cream. He asked her what kind of medicine it was and she told him the name which meant very little to him, so he just let her put it on his hand, his wrist and forearm. With her rubbing the cream into his skin, holding his wrist from underneath, he suddenly wondered why he'd insisted on coming on the trip alone.

But then she was asking him to take her to the place where he touched the liquid that he thought caused the reaction. And he reluctantly agreed to show her.

---

They were standing on the bridge together.

"It was over there," Paul said.

"Really?"

"Come on, I'll show you."

They crossed over to the walkway. With the day bright and clear, the grove of trees wasn't quite so intimidating as it had been the night before. The bright reflections on the ripples in the stream cheered Paul up a little -- just enough to disregard any misgivings, to put away temporarily the dark sensation this stretch of the river would bring, and would have brought the night before if he hadn't been encouraged by the whiskey and the loneliness.

There were people in the distance. An old couple, a child walking a dog. But there by the trees, Shizuka and Paul were alone and so he led her into the grove. The leaves were still wet under foot.

"Now where was it?" Paul said, thinking out loud.

"Hmmm?"

"Just trying to remember."

Shizuka's eyes were bright, eager. "An adventure with Paul!", she thought. Adventure, indeed.

Paul scanned the leaves strewn and layered over the ground. He looked around for some time, then he thought he'd found it. He walked with careful footsteps over between two cedars, holding his left hand behind him for Shizuka to take it.

She stepped forward delicately in her heels and took his hand. All up through her arm, into her breast, into her heart, the touch tingled. She wasn't thinking of how she'd gotten what she wanted. She was simply happy.

"Yes," Paul said. "Look." He pointed ahead, to the ground. The substance was now very dark, seemingly spilled haphazardly. It sure looks like spilled blood, he thought. Although he wasn't sure where he might have seen such a thing before.

"Where?" Shizuka asked.

"Right here." He kneeled down, taking his hand away from Shizuka. He pointed to a line of the paint, the dark substance.

"Yes, I see it." Shizuka was now squatting beside him.

"And this is probably the leaf I picked up last night." He pointed to a jagged-edged leaf off to the side, mostly covered with the dark red -- now it looked burgundy.

Shizuka came around him to the other side and squatted down again, her floral skirt tight up under her thighs. She reached out to the leaf and Paul took her quickly by the arm, causing her to jump.

"Maybe you shouldn't touch it."

She looked over at him. "Oh, yes..."

Paul found a fallen branch and broke off two long, thin pieces, and using them as chopsticks, he lifted the leaf. Other leaves adhered to where the liquid had dribbled over the side and dried.

"What is it?" Shizuka asked.

"Good question." Paul set the mass down and then pulled off a splinter from one of the sticks and poked at the shiny, deep red substance on the leaf. It was dry. Puckered here and there on the surface, but essentially dry.

Paul turned to look behind him. Shizuka followed his gaze. There were people walking by, out on the walkway, but they didn't seem to notice Paul and Shizuka in the grove. Paul put his hand on her back, somehow trying to convey that they shouldn't speak. Shizuka watched his face. Then the people were gone.

Paul brought his eyes back into the grove. Now he saw that Shizuka was looking out at the leaves, all around the spilled area he'd shown her.

"I think I know what this can be." Then, "What this might be," she said.

"What?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"OK. But what?"

"It looks liked urushi."

"What?"

"Urushi. I don't know how to say it in English. It sometimes makes an allergy. Like you have."

Paul said nothing. He was still kneeling, looking into her eyes. Then looking past them, thinking.

"So I think your arm is not so serious."

"Really?"

She nodded. Then she said "But why is it here?"

"But what is it? You don't know the word, but try to explain it in other words."

"Well, they put it on bowls and trays. To decorate wood. It's shiny and beautiful."

"Like varnish?"

She didn't know "varnish".

"Maybe," she said.

Then she was tilting her head like a bird. She stood and moved a few paces away and around, in a tight curve.

"What are you looking at?" Paul asked her.

Shizuka looked up at him, but didn't answer. Paul stood and followed her path around and stood beside her.

"It says something."

With her peculiar movements and the way she tilted her head, Paul thought for a moment that she meant "is saying", in a literal sense, which was a little frightening. He watched her closely.

"Writing," she said.

"Oh!" Then, "What?"

"I can't see clearly."

She began writing in her palm with her finger, eyes lingering on the forest floor.

"no-ri-I..."

Paul looked at the ground, at the splashes of red. Now he could see "no" and "ri", but below that, nearer them, it was just random splashes, it seemed to him.

Then Shizuka knit her brows and seemed almost angry.

"What's the matter?"

"I think I can read it now."

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you, but please, let's just go now."

"Why?"

"Please."

"OK, OK. Let's go."

They walked back across the soft, damp leaves, through the trees and came out onto the walkway. There was the same girl walking her dog. But only Paul cared that they'd been seen.

They were walking back to the park, to her car.

"So can you tell me what it said, Shizuka?"

"Yes." Her eyes had the same look of anger, or perhaps it was more a look of fear. "It said 'Nori I'm sorry'"

"Nori was the girl's name," Paul said. He'd told her about finding the girl. But they 'd never talked about it after that.

"Yes, her nickname," Shizuka said.

"Who's sorry? Why?"

"Then it was signed 'girl from the...'. How do you say it? Village?"

"Village?" Paul wrinkled up his forehead.

"Well, not village. A very small village."

"Hamlet?"

When he said it, she winced. "Yes," she said. And whereas she was always happy when he taught her English before, now she didn't seem to be.

"What does it all mean?" Paul asked.

"Well, I don't know completely. But I know a little."

"Oh."

"And we shouldn't tell anybody about this."

"Why not?"

"It's not good to talk about this here."

Paul said nothing. He looked out across the park, at the people walking on the grass.

"But maybe I know someone to ask about it," Shizuka said after a while.

"Leaves" Chapter 8

2006-03-15T20:56:00.000+09:00

It was his third day out on the long walk. Paul's shoulders ached from carrying the heavy pack through the hills. He'd followed the river upstream until finally he was near the old village. He'd found a good place to set up the tent, in an orchard near a farm south of the village. He hoped nobody minded, and more importantly, that nobody would find him in the night.

"I should probably get in touch with Naoko and Kaz," he thought. They were friends from back when he lived there. But he sensed that he wouldn't get in touch with them. He sensed that he would continue being alone, as a wallowing and a liberating feeling. It was strange, after all, (and a little embarrassing) to come back like this, in anonymity, and not get in touch with friends. But he wanted to be alone. He wanted to sit by the river here and watch the lights from the traffic signal far off across the river. This was peaceful. The river was much wider here than just upstream in the village. They'd dammed it like that had almost every other flow of water that might threaten to flood their gradual migration into the valleys, and from there into the towns and finally into the cities. He wondered briefly why he had this distaste for the city, but then we know, don't we. Rats in a cage, crowded beyond reason. Makes a rat crazy.

No, being here was right. The calm, slow river here. He'd had a bath at a little inn in the late afternoon. The lady innkeeper was kind and asked if he would like to come into their fancy indoor hotspring, but he thanked her and said he'd like to try the little spring outside, the one by the hut. She smiled and told him to take his time and to let her know if he needed anything. On the wall by the door of the hut, there was a cedar box with a slot just the size for a coin and he dropped one in with a ching onto a few coins already inside. It was about a dollar. And he soaked until the sun was low and he thought he'd better be on his way and find a place to camp. He reluctantly got out of the bath, dried off and put on fresh underwear and the same shirt, sweater and jeans and set out for the trail again.

So he'd had his bath and bought a half pint of whiskey and now here he was, sitting quietly by the river. There was a frog croaking somewhere in the brush down the bank and it made him laugh a little. The frog must have been offended because it plopped into the water with a kerplunk.

Now and then, a car would move along the road on the other side of the river. When it stopped at the signal the taillights brightened and the red reflected brighter, waving on the surface of the water. He was remembering the girl now, and it made him sad, but it was long enough ago that it was a sort of beautiful sadness.

He sipped some whiskey and watched the liquid lights in the river change from red to green. Just like Christmas, he thought. A car moved along the road as if the driver were a little lost. Paul watched the car slow and pull off the road. In silhouette, it looked vaguely like Shizuka's little car. Then he was daydreaming about her.

The driver got out and stood looking at the river -- and it even seemed to Paul -- looking in his direction. He laughed again and took a long swig of whiskey. The driver got back in the car and drove off again slowly and passed under the signal far away. Red lights pooled on the water. Now green, now yellow. Now red. These are like death, too, he thought.

Why not visit there again? Where it happened. Why not?

---

"I didn't kill her." She was thinking to herself. The lady's name was Matsumoto. This was the lady who lived in the thatched house alone. Who'd not been allowed to marry because of her lineage.

"No, I didn't kill her." She meant the girl, the same girl they found in the water. The same girl that came to Matsumoto a week before Paul and the old man found her in the water.

You see, the girl was the daughter of the man Ms. Matsumoto was to marry. The daughter, of course, from his marriage to the other woman, the woman his father hadn't forbidden. The woman whose family wasn't "tainted".
Continued...
The father. The old patriarch. The bitterness was acrid in her -- novelists will tell you "she tasted it as an acrid bitterness welling up in her throat, taking over her body" or something like that. But it's not true. She only tasted it in her mind, which is after all, our whole world.

The father, that Ishihara. She had been a kind woman ever since then. Indeed, she'd always been kind. She'd accepted her lot and gone meekly away, out of their lives, more or less. But now, thinking of the smugness in the old bastard's poker face, she could have slashed his face with the wood carving knife she now noticed she was gripping much too tightly, causing her knuckles to pop under the strain.

But he was dead. He was gone. There would be no revenge.

"My god. What have I done," she said out loud. But she was alone in her house.

Later, she was calm and the hatred was gone. She sat on the smooth and blackened wood of her raised floor, the panel door slid aside. She sat watching the hillside. The fall leaves.

But I didn't kill her, she insisted to herself. That Sagawa did it, didn't he? He said he did, so that makes it so, doesn't it? But still she wondered. She had her doubts. Nori seemed like a strong girl. She should have been my daughter, she thought. Matsumoto did her best to push the thought away. So strong, especially for a ten-year-old. My, the girls these days are stronger than we were. They would never accept what I accepted then.

Poor girl. She was crying now. Calmly, softly. I'll never have a daughter. But I didn't do it. I didn't kill her. Nori, little Nori, seemed devastated when I told her about... her father... and me. And what her grandfather had done.

But I only told her the truth.

She was crying quietly and the hillside was in the last light of evening. A faint smell of smoke from burning leaves drifted over the hills from the farm beyond. "Why can't we just lie," she said out loud.

She slid the panel shut and walked across the wooden floor in the dark. She found her coat and put it on and then left the house without bothering to lock the door. Then she was walking down the path in the dark.

But Sagawa hadn't killed the girl, actually. No, he hadn't killed Noriko. He just found her body in the grove by the river and had taken her down from the rope. And then he'd taken her for a "swim" because he felt it might cheer her up. Yes, in his world, in his mind, he was taking her for a swim. And when the little girl hadn't cheered up after all, he knew he'd killed her. In his mind, he'd killed her.

---

There he was again, after a year. Paul was standing on the bridge and looking down into the water. No one was there. It was dark, but the river and all of the walkway was lit by the streetlights overhead, save the part near the ladder, the metal rungs set in the stone leading down to the water. There, the trees in the grove overhung the walkway and kept it in shadows. He left the bridge and walked over into the shadow. Then he leaned over the railing and looked down into the water. The leaves in the pool were gone. The girl's face was gone, too.

He heard the ring of a bicycle bell and looked down the walkway and saw a rider pass someone. The light on the bicycle flickered and moved left and right as the rider came up the incline unsteadily. From instinct, Paul began walking back up to the bridge and along the road past the trees. He looked back over his shoulder to see which way the bicyclist would go. He saw the beam from the light waving across the walkway, coming up the slope. The rider looked both ways and pedalled across, back onto the walkway beyond the bridge.

Paul went into the grove of trees. He wasn't sure why, but he didn't feel like meeting the eyes of that person he'd seen the rider pass. He felt the exhilaration one gets when taking silly risks. Creeping along through the trees in the dark, feeling ahead with his hands in the cool, moist air. His footfalls were quiet. He was lucky that the evening mists from the river kept the leaves and the pine needles soft back there in the grove of trees.

His eyes were adjusting slowly and he could see faintly through the trees where the lights lit the walkway. Paul moved forward quietly, his feet touching first with the outside edge of his boots and then rolling the foot in, adding weight. One slow step at a time.

A branch scraped against his face and he wanted to curse, but he kept it in. One more step. Another. Then he bent at the knees and got down very low, squatting on his heels. The person the bicyclist had passed would be coming up the path soon, he thought. He watched patiently, and then finally he saw the figure beyond the trees in the low light, walking slowly, entering the shadow of the trees. And there it stopped. Just where the rungs down to the water would be. Paul could see the person only in outline against the lit walkway across the river. Whoever it was, he stood there motionless. He was quite small. Paul tried to breathe quietly. There was the constant rippling sound of the stream out there, but he wasn't taking any chances. He could see his breath fogging off to the left in the low light.

Then the figure turned around slowly and looked into the grove. Paul froze and held his breath. He could see a faintly lighter hue where the person's head would be. It must be a face with a hood pulled over the head, he thought. Paul sank his own head down into his coat collar and lowered his face, hoping the brim of his cap would hide the white of his face. He kneeled there motionless, frozen. Surely no one would be able to see him. It would be embarrassing to have to explain what he was doing, lurking there in the dark, in the grove near where the girl's body was found.

The figure began moving again, going up the slope to the bridge and back into the light from the streetlamps. He watched it turn onto the road and come along beside the grove as he had done moments earlier. Paul rose slowly to his feet and as quickly and quietly as possible crept through the trees, straight toward the walkway and the stream. All the while, he kept his head turned to the right to watch this person and his left arm and hand up in front of him to feel for branches. The person seemed to be going slowly. And then Paul was at the edge of the grove and peered out onto the walkway to check whether anyone was coming, anyone to see him coming out of the woods acting "strangely" -- again, near where the girl was found. Noone was there. He stepped out onto the walkway.

What to do? He made as if admiring the stream and the trees on the far bank. This is stupid, he thought. But he began walking back up the slope to the bridge, with his head seemingly straight ahead, but his eyes cast sharply to the right to the trees, watching for anything out of place. He listened with intensity for any snapped branch, any sound of footfalls, anything, back in the grove of trees. He was taking in much too short breaths and his heart was beating a bit faster than he'd like. Then he was up at the bridge and the road and he made a cursory look left and then with a little dread, to the right.

The man, the person, was gone. The road was fairly well-lit and he could see far off along it. And the person was not there. Damnit. He looked quickly behind him. Nothing there. And he crossed the road trying to think what to do. He set off along the walkway beyond the bridge, going slowly to bide time and looking back the way he'd come. When he was about 50 yards from the bridge he stopped and leaned against the railing, pretending to look down at the water. Since the walkway sloped down on both the upstream and downstream sides of the bridge, he might just be able to see the head and shoulders of someone coming out of the trees down there. If the person came out along the roadway, he'd never know.

He waited there, watching. Every so often he scanned all up and down the river, along the walkway he was on, across the stream, and along the road on both sides of the bridge. And then his eyes came back to the place down past the bridge by the woods. Minutes passed. Paul watched and waited and his breath fogged and drifted along the railing and then down over the edge and out of sight.

He heard some chatter over the sound of the stream and then saw two older ladies walking along the road from the other side of the river. They crossed the bridge, still talking, seeming to talk over one another, and then they turned onto the walkway toward where Paul was standing. Great, that's all I need. When they came near him he made as friendly a face as he knew how and said "Good evening". The one lady who was doing most of the talking returned the greeting, but the other eyed him a little suspiciously. Then they were gone, and Paul was watching the place down by the woods again.

And then there it was again. Dark clothes, dark hood separating from the dark of the grove at first not at all distinctly, but then, yes, definately a figure, a person, moving very slowly from the trees, to the railing, looking into the water. The hair on Paul's arms prickled. The figure was walking away, back the way it had been coming when the man on the bicycle passed. Paul began walking, very slowly at first, back up to the bridge.

He didn't feel like doing this. God this was stupid. Who did he think he was? But he was crossing the road and walking back down along the grove. Very far off, he thought he saw the person still walking. Paul checked all around again and with a sigh, went back into the woods again. He took his keychain from his pocket -- the keychain with only one key. But more importantly he carried a little light that had come as a gift with a package of tea he'd bought years ago. Amazingly, the thing still worked. It was a little light in the shape of a stylized green tea leaf and it ran on a disk watch battery. Whereas he'd admired its design before and thought it was quite a clever little tool, he wasn't thinking about that now.

To work the light, you squeezed the soft plastic in the middle of the leaf and the little green diode in the tip lit. He squeezed it now between his thumb and index finger and the soft green light came on and shielding it from dilated eyes, it cast a soft light ahead, just enough light to make out dark trunks of trees and damp leaves on the ground that looked olive in the green light and... something glistening, brown, spilled on the leaves. He let off the light and spun his head around. Paul listened -- more intently than he ever had before, or so he hoped. He had absolutely no rational reason to believe what was spilled on the leaves was blood. In the damp air, he caught a distinct odor that was so out of place it took him a moment to remember it.

OK. He would squeeze the little tea leaf again and the dead leaves on the forest floor would have splashes of... spilled paint. Yes, it would be paint. Unfortunately, he'd held his breath just after exhaling, with empty lungs. The smell was turpentine. He was light-headed -- a flash came from somewhere, a tableau, into his mind, with a title in gothic script: "Spells and Humours", a shattered mirror still in its frame. Oddly, it made him want to laugh. But he fought it off, and instead he made a sound rather like gagging.

He squeezed the little light, shielded his eyes again and kneeled down by the spilled "paint". He lifted one of the leaves with the glistening liquid and brought it to his nose, but what a ghastly color it was and it spilled onto his hand and he dropped the leaf and was breathing again. Yes, it was paint. Just paint. He rubbed his hand in the leaves off to the side and tried to get as much of it off his hands as he could. But it was drying and sticky and (curiously, he thought) oil-based, and it adhered to the lines in his palm. It looked like a topographic map in green and deep red of some wonderful river system in a strange country. Again, the laugh came and he fought it off.

But he wanted to get it off his hand. He left the grove and took a deliberately circuitous route to the outskirts of the village. He stopped at a little mom-and-pop country store, sliding the wooden door open and walking into the dimly-lit room. He wondered if they were even open, and even then, if they'd feel like selling anything to a foreigner.

"Hello?" he called into the back. He heard footsteps upstairs, someone coming down stairs and then a smiling, middle-aged lady came in through the back door and said "welcome!"

Paul hid his hand and went down the aisle and holding his wallet between his chest and right forearm, managed to fish out a bill with his left. He found a can of lighter fluid and took it to the register, holding it in his left hand, with the bill between his fingers and his right arm hanging at his side, palm back. Standing a little askew to further hide his hand, he hoped he was striking a not completely unnatural pose. The lady didn't seem suspicious, although she should be, he thought.

"Cold out there tonight, isn't it?" she said.

"Yes."

"Living in the village?"

"Yes," he lied. "But up on the north end." It's where he'd lived before.

"Oh well, please come again," she said smiling.

"OK." He smiled, too. But it was a worried smile.

Walking back down the river to the orchard, he stopped and picked up a rag, some sort of pink child's shirt, and he dabbed it with the lighter fluid and more or less managed to clean all the paint off his hand. Then he went down to the river and rinsed his hand in the water.

His pack was still there. The orchard was quiet. He tried to keep his hands from shaking as he set up the tent in the beam of the flashlight, and all the while, he kept checking the surroundings obsessively. Then he crawled in and somehow fell asleep, but he slept uneasily and with odd dreams just before dawn.

Then he woke with it still quite dark outside and his arm on fire. Red welts on his hand and all up his forearm. He clicked on the flashlight. The skin was red, as it is when getting out of a hot bath, only he'd of course been sleeping in the cold night. There was a moment of panic, but then it passed. In its place, came resignation. My own personal stigmata. He was feeling more confident in not being crazy compared to the night before. But he still gave a sickened laugh.

"Leaves" Chapter 7

2006-03-05T21:53:00.000+09:00

Paul took the bundle out of his backpack. Darkness had fallen outside. He was in the tent, the cold wind of the mountain ridge blowing against it, the inside lit only with the warm beam of his old flashlight. The bundle was a folded blue canvas bag that Shizuka had given him on a whim when she'd stayed overnight once. He'd found out later that the logo on it was from a ladies' clothing shop and he wondered if that was the reason she'd given it to him, so that whenever he used it, other women would know he had a girl in his life.

The bag was folded over many times. He unfolded it and took out a notebook. It was a journal to keep him company on his trip. He felt around inside the pack for the pen. Then he started writing in the low light:

Day 1: very tired. Hiked from Shinshiro up to the "Old Man" mountain. Scary as hell getting up. Rickety wooden stairs along the sheer cliffs, then rusty old chains to pull yourself up with, all with this goddamned heavy pack on my back making me top-heavy and screwing with my balance. But I made it. Signed the book saying I'd made it. Took in the view, sat a little while with the little stone Jizo statue near the edge of the clearing. Good hard day. Knees ache. I'll drink some much-earned whiskey now & sleep. Good weather up here. Peaceful in the tent. After I put it up, I went back up to the top to watch the sun set. Kinda creepy coming back down with the flashlight. Oh, by the way, today I'm suddenly a year older.

Continued...
He drank his whiskey listening to the wind in the trees high up the mountain. When he wrote "signed the book...", he was referring to a logbook that he'd found in a wooden box fastened to a post on the summit of the mountain. The box had a clear, hard-plastic cover and inside were a notebook and an inkpen, both tethered to the box with worn cotton strings so that they wouldn't "escape". The logbook had dates and names of people who'd made the climb. He dutifully, and with a little pride, wrote his name and the date and in the space over on the right side for comments, he wrote, "I'm tired!"

But he was happy. He and Shizuka had made up and he'd promised her they'd celebrate his birthday just a few days later when he got back from his trip. He didn't think of it as "if he got back".

He was on a small part of the long trail, this country's answer to the "Appalachian Trail" of his home. In the morning, he'd taken the bus over to the next valley where he could join the trail coming from the southeast. He planned to walk for four days with three nights of camping. It was Friday night, and while other people were probably at home watching TV or out drinking and laughing, Paul was up on a mountain ridge, alone in his tent drinking whiskey and listening to the wind blowing outside.

Down on the other side of this mountain, the trail followed the old river upstream and passed quite near the old village he'd moved away from. He would be walking into it again. But that was fine with him. He'd sort of wanted to see the hills to the east and stay in them a while, back when he lived there. But he'd never gotten around to it. The next day he would follow the trail down into the valley and start up along the old river.

And while Paul was walking down into the valley, there would be someone else climbing the mountain behind him and writing a name in the logbook just below his name. If he could see that new entry, that new name, he would recognize it, and it would surprise him. And what would be written off to the side as a comment would make him... uneasy.

Not only would a new entry appear in the logbook, but the little statue nearby would also be visited. And his follower would understand it for what it was -- not just a Jizo statue, but a gravestone. And unlike Paul, his "follower" would understand what was written on the gravestone, both the original name and what had been added later, maliciously: "filth get out".

---

She'd lived there alone in the mountains for over a decade, ever since the life she thought she would have became impossible. Impossible for a reason beyond her control.

She bought the old house with a little money her father had left her. The previous owner was a widow who passed away without any heirs, and the branch of the district court in the nearest town had taken over the house and put it up for auction. She bought it for an impossibly low price. Nobody else wanted an old thatch house on a hill in the middle of nowhere. A house like that was too vivid a memory of the land's not so distant past. Everybody wanted to be in the city. It was "modern" to be in the city, and in their feverish striving to prove themselves modern, and not just simple people a mere hundred years removed from feudal life -- to prove they weren't peasants -- they desperately strained to get into the city. She had wanted that, too, at one time. But feudal ways hadn't died completely, it seemed. They were being preserved by some of the very same people who were striving to be "modern". Life isn't fair and it often does not make sense. But "life" is outdone in this by the particular cruelties of individual people.

She couldn't marry the man she loved and who loved her in return because the man's father forbade it. She was twenty then. And although she knew her father and mother, her grandparents, her great-grandfather and great-grandmother, had all descended from the old "untouchable" class, and that she herself was one of them, she'd allowed herself the naiveté of thinking it wouldn't matter in a world striving to be modern.

She'd been wrong. There was no marriage. She gave up. He married someone else and she moved to this old ramshackle house, restored it as best she could, as lovingly as she knew how, and she lived simply and quietly, almost like a nun, trying not to be bitter. It's easy to decide not to be bitter. But fulfilling that goal is not so easy.

For a little income, she practiced a craft her grandfather had taught her when she was a little girl, a craft his people had done lovingly for generations in his old home far away on the cold western coast by the sea. It was old lacquerware. Beautiful, slow, peaceful lacquer. It was a strange old craft, she thought. The natural resins of the lacquer tree don't dry like a modern synthetic urethane. It requires moisture to cure and harden. It requires damp, cool air. Sometimes she found inspiration in this fact. She imagined that she, too, was hardening, curing up slowly over the time. Only in her case, it was in an atmosphere of tears.

The beauty is what most of us see in lacquerware. But behind the beauty, there is something fickle and spiteful. The raw resins cause horrid allergic reactions when they touch skin, almost as if the tree is seeking revenge for being robbed of its lifeblood. Occasionally, it even causes death.

In this cafe

2006-03-04T19:00:00.000+09:00

In this cafe, in this little shop -- it's actually a donut shop -- there are many kinds of girls. There are girls who hold a pen in their right hand, doing homework apparently, while holding a mobile phone in their left, tapping out email. There are girls who laugh feverishly, making a sound as if they were hyperventilating. There are girls with leather Louis Vuitton bags. There's one, just over there, who has a white mobile phone opened on the table in front of her, and another blue one in her hand. She's clicking the buttons with concentration that would drive a Theraveda monk to jealousy. The lady she's with, across the table from her, has a green mobile phone and she is also tapping out email, apparently. They aren't talking to each other. There is a girl with dyed-brown hair -- it's a peculiar shade of brown... what is it? almost the color of a good Thai red curry -- and she's in love, apparently. She's holding hands with the guy next to her. She's staring into his... cheek. From about eight inches away. (I'd like to say she's staring into his eyes -- that would make a better story -- but alas, she's not. It's his cheek.) She has an almost ill look, in her face, in her eyes. It's difficult to say from this far away, but it appears she has a slight cast in her left eye. The guy, he's not looking at her. He's looking down into the table. He, too, appears to be ill.

Hmmm... but this isn't fair, is it? Let's have a look at the guy sitting over against the window, by himself. He's not from around here, apparently. His hair is thinning. He's writing in a little notebook, frantically, using a much too long pencil. He, too, has admirable concentration, although he's not as good as the girl with the two cell phones. I say this because he looks up from time to time, quickly scans the room until his eyes come to rest on a girl -- it seems to always be a girl, even though there are an equal number of guys. He regards the girl for a moment, smiles slightly, and then bends his head over the notebook again and begins his frantic writing again.

Something to do

2006-02-26T21:07:00.000+09:00

He liked to use those recycled paper, brown card-stock covered notebooks from the no-brand-name shop. The paper was smooth and cream colored and the notebooks had a shiny red, woven ribbon glued into the spine for keeping one's place. The notebooks were a dollar a piece. They seemed worth it to him.

For writing, he used long, round, plain wood pencils with hard leads and no eraser. He never erased. When he wanted to change something, he just struck through it ~~like this~~ and quickly kept moving across the page, scrawling words that he could barely read himself when he went back to read them.

After weeks of writing, scribbling, scrawling, the notebook would be mostly filled and the end of the ribbon a little frayed. The long pencil's lead was dull and it was no longer really such a long pencil. It might only be four inches. And his fingers ached and cramped, his knuckles were a little sore. But it was something to do.

Religion

2006-02-26T20:49:00.000+09:00

The first shop was closed. The doorman apologized, but told him there was another on the other side of the railroad. The traveller opened his umbrella and set off through the cold rain. He was hungry, and cold weather had come into the town but he was happy. He thought he might stop in some place and buy a can of beer and drink it on the way back from the fishing shop.

The shop was warm and cozy in its being filled with books and heavy canvas bags and wool clothing, hundreds of rods, the split cane ones in glass cases, gleaming, precise reels, and a few customers -- that eccentric sort that are the fly-fishermen -- carefully regarding whatever it was they were after that particular evening. The young, disheveled looking fellow with the heavy glasses was squatting in front of the drawers that held thin reels of monofilament. He wanted to tie up some leaders this week and he was trying to decide between the clear line and the light brown "gut". It was a tough, but important decision.

Our traveller put his umbrella away and went over to the sliding wooden panels, pegged and stocked with all the hen and rooster capes and game bird skins. After looking through the top grade rooster capes that ranged from $100 up to $150 (pricey, but he thought he might like to buy one some day soon), he moved on to the partridge skins which were much more reasonably priced and what he was after today anyway. He was going to tie up some of his favorite flies in the world. They were simple, but that added to their appeal. He was going to tie up the old Cumberland pattern. He was going to tie the Partridge and Orange. Just thinking the name filled him with that sense of the sacred. Standing there in the warm shop, he was filled with religion.

"Leaves" Chapter 6

2006-02-26T19:29:00.000+09:00

What could he tell her about death? She was a nurse, after all. With her own hands, she'd delivered over a hundred babies. Only a few times had something been wrong, and from those few times, it would seem, she knew more about death than Paul could know.

But the thing I haven't told you about Paul is that everywhere he lived, girls died. The sadness seemed to follow him as if it were a shadow watching from behind a tree. And he'd always gotten away from it.
Continued...
The girl in the old village. She'd been there just an instant, in the corner of his eye. And there was the girl from the south. The one that had been pushed out of the car on the highway. They collared a teacher for that one. He'd been suffering from depression, they said. The girl had been abused by her father and was living at a home for troubled children. And she was meeting guys she got to know through her mobile phone. Not for the money, but for the companionship, the warmth. That's how she'd supposedly met the teacher. And then there was the girl in the north they'd found in the woods. But nobody'd confessed to that one yet.

There is a word from the greek. Translated, it comes out roughly as "shattered mind", but it's not as frightening as it seems. It simply means the ability to compartmentalize. To remember when useful. To forget when necessary. Imagine a shattered mirror. No, that's too frightening. Broken glass is dangerous. But still, it's a useful metaphor, each shard still in place, held by the mosaic of other broken pieces in the mirror's frame, each piece reflecting a slightly different angle on what stands before it. A useful metaphor, but still a disturbing image. Think rather of the leaves back in the old town, before they'd been crushed into fine bits under foot. All the leaves patterned, colors slightly varied, fitted together, again like a mosaic. An impressionist's portrait. That's how the leaves in the water had looked, Paul thought. At least, that's how they'd been until he looked closer.

He moved away. He tried to forget.

---

It was fall again. Shizuka had big plans for Paul's birthday. She'd been thinking about it for weeks, all the things she wanted to do. A nice birthday cake she would bake for him. One of the nice restaurants, perhaps that French one she'd read about in the city. She would take him there. She thought about what sort of present to give him. Spending the night at his apartment. The photographs she wanted to take of them together -- at the restaurant, blowing out the candles, opening the present.

So you can imagine how she felt when they were standing on the bridge in the village and he told her he would be going off hiking and camping alone for his birthday, how he did that every year.

"Why don't you want to spend your birthday with me?" she'd asked, very hurt.

"It's not that I don't want to spend it with you. It's just that I always go off alone this time of year."

She was shaking her head.

"I know it's strange," Paul added.

"Don't you like me?" she asked.

"Of course I like you! I like you just fine."

"So spend the weekend with me."

"Can't we celebrate my birthday next week?"

Shizuka lowered her head and shook it slowly. After some minutes, she looked up again and said, "I don't want to see you any more."

Why was she so attached to the sentimentality of the day, Paul thought. It's just like any other day. Really, it is.

This was as bad as the time she'd bought the new mobile phone and become so upset when the store clerks called the number to check it. She'd insisted they reset the phone's memory because she wanted the first call to be one from Paul.

Well, this wasn't as bad as that time, he thought.

But she didn't want to see him anymore? To whom did his birthday belong, he wondered. Was it a day for him? (To go off hiding in the woods -- not to die alone, but to grow a little older alone.) Or was it a day for her and the people around him? Was he being selfish? Was she?

He wasn't sure. But he already knew about the vindictive streak that ran through him. She didn't want to see him anymore? Fine.

"I see," he said, and looked at her, but she didn't look up at him. Then he turned slowly and began walking away. He turned once to look back and she was watching him.

Back at his apartment, he felt empty. But he also felt a strange form of liberation. The vindictiveness always hurt him in the long run, but he never seemed able (or willing) to stop it when it came.

He tried to concentrate on packing. He went to the bookshelf and took out the little brown notebook where he'd written the list years ago. In a way, it was a compendium of all the mistakes he'd ever made, all the things he'd forgotten when he'd gone into the woods.

But just the act of opening it... There she was. Shizuka. His conversation with her intruding, sweeping into the mind. He pushed it away. That never works.

pack
flashlight
extra batteries

"Why don't you want to spend your birthday with me?" He pushed it away.

water filter - This one he'd learned the hard way, hiking down the mountain just for water and then back up. All that, when there were cold, clear brooks here and there along the hike. Of course, the locals simply drank directly from the stream.

sleep bag
tent
knife
bamboo hatchet

The phone rang. He knew it was Shizuka. No one else ever called. Should he answer? Just as he never seemed able to stop that sweet vindictive instant, he didn't stop his hand, moving to the phone, lifting the receiver.

"Hello?"

He heard a sniffle.

"Can I come over?" It was Shizuka.

He sighed.

"I thought you didn't want to see me anymore."

He could hear her crying now.

"No," she said. "I want to come over."

He breathed out again, trying to keep his mouth away from the receiver.

"I think if you got that mad at me today." He paused. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say. "Maybe we should stay apart for a while."

She sniffled again.

"OK?" he asked.

"I'm coming over," she said after a moment.

"Look, Shizuka. You said you didn't want to see me anymore."

"No."

"I just wanna break for a while," he said.

"No. I..." she was crying again.

"We can talk when I get back."

"I'm coming over."

It was exasperating. "Well, I won't be here," he said.

She hung up. He didn't know where he'd go, but he didn't want to deal with it all just now. He got his cap and wallet and coat and he left the apartment. He walked up the hill and went past the farm houses. He didn't know how long he would stay away. He didn't know what he was doing.

The path led up through the grove to a point on a road where he could look out over the valley and see the lights in houses there in the evening. He watched the lights through the mist.

Was she really coming over? Couldn't she understand it would be better to take a break for a while? With the lights down in the valley flickering in the evening air, he wanted to stand there all night. It wouldn't be fatigue, or cold, or even boredom that would take him away. He wanted to stay there, to be tranquil, without worrying. But he didn't even try to keep it away now. It was useless.

After perhaps an hour, he started back. The road led back down the hill and approached the apartment from the back. Someone was at the back sliding glass door.

"Shizuka?" he called softly.

"No!" She wailed.

"Shh!" he called, rushing over to her. She collapsed in his arms, crying. "No!" she said over and over, much too loudly. The neighbors would hear. She was huddled on the concrete, shaking and he had his arms around her.

"No! No!" was all she could say.

He had to get her inside. She wouldn't budge.

"Wait a moment," he whispered, trying to make it sound as gentle as possible. He ran around to the front door, unlocked it and came to the back door and slid it open. He stepped outside and tried to lift her. She only stood grudgingly, still crying, and she came inside. He shut the door.

"Shhh," he said softly. He stroked her hair.

"No." she said again, a little more softly, a little more like a young girl. She was shaking her head again.

"But you said you didn't want to see me anymore." He was holding her.

"No," she said again.

An American Guy

2006-02-25T18:40:00.000+09:00

An American guy sits down on a boulder by a stream in the mountains of Japan. He unbuttons the breast pocket of his jacket and takes out a can of Swedish-made snus. It's a paperboard can with a shiny blue label. The tobacco has juniper berry oil mixed in with it. It's pretty good. It was a pretty good stream, too. He'd caught three brook trout, released two and kept one that appeared to be a little lame. A car drove onto the bridge upstream and the driver slowed to watch the American.

Blue Jeans

2006-02-25T18:32:00.000+09:00

She wore blue jeans with little rhinestone hearts on the back pockets. What this means is that she had little glittering hearts on her ass. This brought his eyes up, up further, to her face where he found the face of a middle school girl.

"Leaves" Chapter 5

2006-02-17T21:35:00.000+09:00

"Look at the ducks!"

Shizuka pointed down the slope past the two houses.

"Yes," Paul said. Strangely, he was thinking of Coq au Vin. A girl he'd been dating a while back - a girl with plenty of money and a fondness for "foreigners" - had taken him to a fancy "dining bar" in the metropolis. The hostess-cum-waitress had brought slices of mimolette and Paul told the girl it was from Switzerland. But the waitress had corrected him. "It's from France," she'd said. "Oh," Paul said and felt foolish. Then they ordered Coq au Vin and he told the girl "coq" means chicken and the waitress had to correct him again, although he was pretty sure about it this time. "It's duck," she'd said. Well, at least this "dining bar's" version was duck. Things aren't always as they seem.

The dogs had finally stopped barking. Shizuka had insisted they go to view the cherry blossoms on the weekend and Paul, for his part, had insisted they find some place where there weren't a thousand people saying "It's beautiful, isn't it?" melodically, cloyingly, repeating it like a mantra. He'd tried to explain to Shizuka his thoughts on "codified beauty" and she'd just smiled at him, so he gave it up. But she liked the idea of finding some place secluded and so that morning he'd led her up a path in the forest to a little hill overlooking a nice river where he knew there were cherry trees. He'd forgotten about the caged hunting dogs and the stench of the drying boar pelts at the two houses on the way, but they were above that now and the dogs had shut up. The stream running in the valley below was pretty.
Continued...

"This is a nice place you found," Shizuka said.

"It's not bad, huh."

"Let's have some wine."

"OK"

She opened her backpack and took out a soft insulated case with three little bottles of wine "en screwcap". She had clear, hard-plastic cups and poured out some of the red wine for Paul and then waited for him to take the bottle from her and pour for her. Then he capped the bottle and leaned it up against her pack.

They tapped glasses with a little sloshy click of plastic and Shizuka said "cheers!" as she'd learned somewhere, smiling prettily with her beautiful lips.

"Prost" Paul said.

They sipped at the wine. She was watching him to see if he liked the wine she'd chosen.

"Not bad!" he said and smiled. Shizuka looked relieved.

They looked out over the valley and both took a second drink of their wine. Then Shizuka lifted her head up to the blossoms spread over them, casting the two of them in speckled shade, sitting on her mats below the trees.

"It's pretty isn't it?"

"Yes," Paul said and smiled. It was pretty, he had to admit, codified or not...

"I wish there was someone we could ask to take a picture."

Paul smiled. "Yeah, it's too bad." He shook his head and winked at her.

Shizuka had put together quite an impressive picnic lunch. Paul thought she'd overdone it a bit, but he sensed that she'd been waiting for this opportunity for some years, so he told himself to keep quiet and just enjoy the nice lunch. And they both did enjoy it.

After they'd finished eating sandwiches and salad, camembert with nice crusty rolls and the second bottle of red wine, Shizuka took out two little cakes on foil doilies.

"Where did you get these?" Paul asked.

"I made them!" she said.

"Wow! They're beautiful!" He leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek and she smiled.

They ate the little cakes with plastic forks and when they'd finished, they were both feeling full and they drank the third little bottle of wine - the white wine, since no one was there to lecture them on the proper order of red or white or whatever. Then Paul was sleepy and Shizuka was a little drunk and she wanted to kiss him. And although he was worried someone from the houses below might be watching, he still let his hands move over her where they wanted and he let her do all the things she wanted to.

They were lying back on the mats and looking up at the blossoms and the blue and white of the sky overhead.

"These are like death," Shizuka said.

At first, he was surprised but then he quickly knew what she meant and said, "oh".

"The cherry blossoms are beautiful. But they only stay a week. Then they fall," she said.

"Yes," he nodded up and down against the mat.

"What do you think?" she asked as she looked over at him. But before she gave him a chance to answer, she was propping herself up and leaning over to kiss him.

They were kissing a long time and Paul indulged his bad habit of opening his eyes and when he did, he saw her wonderful face, her closed eyes, reading her feelings in that beautiful face and the white-pink petals and he thought how odd, but how fitting. Her mouth. Beauty. Death.

Later, they'd packed everything and were walking down the path, the dogs snarling and barking at them again. The smeared boar pelts, hung over the guardrail by the snaking, one-lane road. They were down near the stream and walking over the wooden bridge. Shizuka was very happy. Paul was quite happy, too. However the afternoon had taxed him for some reason he couldn't pinpoint. He sensed it might be what she'd said about death. Cherry blossoms and codified beauty.

I could tell you a story about death, he thought. But he didn't want to poison the feeling because she was really a rather nice girl and he didn't want to be a bastard.

"Leaves" Chapter 4

2006-02-11T20:21:00.000+09:00

In the newspaper, nearly two months after they'd found the girl in the river, Paul read about how it had been solved. The newspapers told of how a man named Sagawa had walked into the police station in the old town and turned himself in. Based on his confession, he was quickly tried and convicted. The authorities in this country have a remarkable rate of conviction, being based largely on confessions made when no lawyers are present. In this case, the police also didn't mind that Sagawa had a history of mental illness. Quite the contrary, it reinforced their sense that this must be the guy.

Actually, it was only the English language paper that mentioned his past. Mental illness being something that just isn't talked about in this culture. Of course, if his family was rich enough, he might be freed after a little time in an institution. He might even become a sort of minor celebrity and get his own column in a lifestyle magazine or something.

But unfortunately for Sagawa, he had no family to speak of and was quickly hanged and his body cremated and the ashes entombed in an unmarked grave at the prison. Continued...
And noone bothered to take the ashes in the dead of night to a shrine so that he could become a "kami" and enter heaven.

I digress.

It was interesting for Paul to read all of this, but as I said before, it was very much in the past for him. In the mountains near his new home, he found trails to wander and explore. The trails wound through broadleaf forests and were rich in life. Sometimes he chanced upon deer and stood still, watching them gallop away. He could feel the ground resonate under the thud of their hooves until they stopped at the top of the next hill and cried out with that piercing call of theirs, warning the other deer in the forests. There were wild boar trails, and pheasants thundering away and when spring came, warblers calling from the treetops. It was grand country.

And Paul had been together with Shizuka since nearly that first night they met at the "welcoming party". Well, actually, it was a week or so after that, after Shizuka had called Mrs. Kawai and asked for his telephone number.

Shizuka had been lonely for a long time and his coming into her life had made her happy almost to the point of feeling sick when she thought of it. And as for Paul, Shizuka took his mind off of the worries. A woman is wonderful for that. Sure, she brought with her her own set of problems: the requests to see musicals in the city, the constant photographs to document their trips together, the random and unexplained crying. But she was a fine girl and it seemed worth the few troubles to Paul.

She taught him many things about the country. He was amazed that a girl like her would be living in the mountain village there. There was something very forceful but still fragile about her. And he taught her many things, too - answered her many questions about his language, explained his odd (to her) sense of humor, taught her how to undo button-fly jeans...

In a way, he was living a fantasy. He'd come to this country to get away from his own. But he never felt comfortable explaining to people just why he'd done it.

So perhaps I should explain for him, since I know him better than he does himself. Perhaps I should. Or perhaps I shouldn't.

He'd been away for seven years in all. Sometimes people asked him about his life before. Sometimes they didn't see for several minutes that he preferred not to talk about it so much.

During these seven years in this country, he was living simply. He was getting by. In times of introspection, he felt a tinge of guilt, as if he was postponing the inevitable. This living in another country. This avoiding his own.

It was fear.

There were many things that Paul was not afraid of that other people feared. When he went camping alone he didn't fear bears or wolves or other wild animals. He never thought much about what might happen if he slipped and turned an ankle a day's hike out on a snowy camping trip. He didn't fear the cold, the elements, the darkness of night in the forest, nor the sounds that carried over the dead leaves those nights in the hills.

Paul didn't fear being alone. He didn't fear death.

But still it was there - the postponing. And the reason was fear. Or more precisely, dread.

"Leaves" Chapter 3

2006-01-29T20:08:00.000+09:00

Paul moved away from the village to a town further west and up in the mountains. The sad river and the leaves, he left behind.

In the mountain village, it seemed everyone knew each other. There was a middle-aged lady, Mrs. Kawai, who had been a teacher years before and when she found out Paul had moved there, a real English speaking foreigner, she quickly set to work organizing an English conversation circle. They were to meet on Wednesday evening at her home, only as she related it to Paul, it was to be a party welcoming him to the village.
Continued...
On that evening, they sat on the straw mat in her house, Paul and four middle-aged women, the women laughing and plying him with Concord grape wine and asking him if he could use chopsticks, whether he liked the country, did he cook for himself every night and many other questions which he answered to the best of his ability in between drinks of the cloying, but pleasant wine. Then Mrs. Kawai announced it was time to eat and the women brought in little charcoal grills, the kind made for grilling strips of beef and vegetables at the table. The kind that are sometimes also used in this country by people who meet on the internet and plan a group get-together/suicide on isolated mountain roads by rolling up the windows and burning a little charcoal inside the car to bring on the slow asphyxiation.

But this evening, the grills weren't being used for suicide. This was English conversation! Just as Mrs. Kawai lit the charcoal, the last member arrived, and Paul was surprised that it wasn't another middle-aged woman, but a rather less middle-aged girl with a pleasant smile and a pleasant face and what seemed to be a pleasant shape as well. She showed Mrs. Kawai the cake she had baked for the occasion as the ladies cooed and then she took a place next to Paul on the mat, sitting in that peculiar way women sat in this country, with their legs bent at the knees to either side of their thighs and rump, all flush with the floor. It was cute, but it looked painful to Paul.

"My name is Shizuka," she said and smiled brightly.

"I'm Paul", he said.

"Yes, I know."

Word got around in the village, it seemed.

"How do you like Shimoyama?" she asked as she stared into his eyes.

"I quite like it here."

She smiled again, her eyes still fixed on his. Never believe what they say about this land, about people's eyes never meeting.

"You have blue eyes," Shizuka said.

"I thought they were green."

"Green?" she said,　surprised. "I think blue."

"Hmm..." Paul said. "Maybe you're right. What the hell do I know?" He laughed. A little too loudly, from the wine, and she laughed with him.

The other ladies were still busy ferrying plates from the kitchen into the room and placing them around the grills set on the low table.

"So what do you do for a living?" Paul asked.

"Sorry?"

"Umm... Do you work?"

"Yes! I'm a nurse," she said.

"A nurse?" he said. Then "Good answer," under his breath.

"Pardon?"

"Umm... So can I call you when I get sick?" he asked.

She laughed, with her face lighting up. "Yes! But only if you are pregnant."

Paul's eyes widened.

"I'm a..." she said, then turned to Mrs. Kawai and spoke for a moment.

"She's a nurse at the obstetric clinic," Mrs. Kawai said.

"Oh!" Paul laughed and all the ladies looked over at him.

"Do you help during childbirth?" he asked her.

"Usually, I deliver the babies," she said.

"Really?"

"The doctor only comes if there's... if there's some difficulty."

"That's too cool!" He was impressed that this girl sitting next to him, this pretty girl, delivered babies.

But she hadn't understood completely. "Sorry?" she asked.

"That's really..." he started. "That's great!" he said finally.

Shizuka smiled and was still staring into his eyes.

After the Fact

2006-01-26T22:17:00.000+09:00

After the Fact

snow

After the Fact Intro

After the fact Intro

2006-01-25T19:20:00.000+09:00

About that poem yesterday. It looks on the face of it like just another poem about snow. "Ooh, footprints in the snow... how romantic...yawn..."

But it's actually a bit more sinister.

You see, there's this mountain trail not far from where I live. It's linked to a set of trails that are quite popular. So popular, that when you walk one of them, you'll meet other hikers every 5 minutes or so.

But this trail is different. Most people who go hiking out there don't seem to know it exists. It's sort of hidden, and merges into one of the main trails from behind a hill with an old, gnarled ginkgo tree on it.

Well anyway, way down along this hidden trail, there is a small path that branches off and goes up an incline and down the other side into the forest. One time I was mushroom hunting my way up the hillside from below that forest and when I came to the top, there was a small clearing. It was a nice enough place. Secluded, lots of oak and beech trees around. And there was a path leading away from the clearing, so I set out on it, figuring it would lead into that main (but rarely taken) trail I mentioned above. And I was right. But there was something curious...
Continued...
Along this path, someone had written something with yellow paint on a few of the trees. There was

"In this area there are many suicides"

and another tree, further along had this

"Here someone hanged themselves"

Kind of a screwed-up thing to find out on an otherwise lovely hiking trail, but there it was. I figured it was just some kids messing around.

Going back there over the following months, I noticed that the words were periodically erased with black spraypaint, but that the yellow text would show up again. And one strange afternoon, I actually encountered a middle-aged man wearing camouflage, creeping along in the forest. I hoped he was just another mushroom hunter. But I also wondered if it wasn't kids messing around, but rather some older guy with a twisted sense of humor. I wondered if the guy I saw could be the person who enjoys writing strange things on trees in the forest.

Well, that's fine by itself, if a little strange. But there's one more thing...

One afternoon wandering along the trail, I spotted a mushroom over in the trees. I walked over to it and my foot got caught on something. I looked down and saw that it was a wire that had been strung along the forest floor about 6 inches off the ground. I wondered what the hell it was for, but then I think I found the answer. I noticed something among the dead leaves that didn't fit. There was a very sharp stake made from bamboo sticking up. I looked around the area and noticed another. Then three or four others. This was no longer just a place where someone with a twisted sense of humor came. It was a place where a really fucked-up person came.

I plucked the mushroom gently from the soil and walked out of there slowly, carefully and stopping every few paces to listen good and hard into the forest. You could say the place was spooking me, and that may be the goal of my fucked-up "friend", and I guess it was working because I don't go there so often lately.

But last weekend it snowed. And from reading Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", I know that snow offers the opportunity for the hunter to become the hunted. (Of course, you don't need to read the novel to figure that out, but he painted quite a vivid picture of the peril of snow). I knew that I could go out there and I'd be able to see just how many people walked that path and where they went and how long it had been since they walked it.

I worked up the hillside through the trees rather than taking the path from where it branched off the main, but neglected trail. Before I knew it, I was up in the clearing. There they were. A single set of footprints in the snow. Smaller than my own, but probably still a man. The footprints were a little rounded from a couple of days of melt and re-freeze. Just one set of footprints, going along the path, a day or two before me. The yellow paint on the trees was there. The sharpened bamboo stakes were there, piercing the snow, now clearly seen. Eerie, but the prints' age set the mind at ease. But still eerie to be walking along in the footsteps of my strange "friend" with the twisted sense of humor.

It could be that the person is not twisted, but trying to be helpful. Trying to warn of a bad vibe in the forest there. It could be.

But anyway, that's the story behind the poem. Now go and read it again.

snow

2006-01-24T23:00:00.000+09:00

in the forest
footprints in the snow
who am I following?

"Writer's Block"? Or just "Lazy Ass"??

2006-01-24T21:47:00.000+09:00

Well, I've written two versions of a third chapter for "Leaves".

And they both stink. But the thoughts are "a swirlin" and I may just get out of my gumption-less funk and post a new version soon.

In the meantime, I'll try to divert attention from all that by posting a little poem.

Second Thoughts

2006-01-03T10:03:00.000+09:00

In doing some year-end cleaning, take down the 2005 calendars (yes, somehow I ended up with three...) One is a "Provence" calendar with nice photographs of some places I've been: Les Baux, Avignon, the Abbey at Sénanque. Brings back memories.

last year's calendar
into the trashbin
second thoughts

"Leaves" Chapter 2

2005-12-29T21:30:00.000+09:00

Standing downstream from the bridge again, he was quiet and staring into the pool of leaves.

"What are you looking at?" he asked himself.

"Not sure yet", the answer in his head.

The surface of the river was only broken by the rain, pricked here and there with the pinpoints of raindrops. The rain had brought that familiar musty smell.

"What is this mind looking at...I should have asked," he thought to himself. Did I mention that Paul was a little strange? Those of his friends that were kind told him he was "unique", or sometimes "enigmatic".

In the pool, he couldn't see anything out of place. It was uniform, in an impressionistic way, like a painting by Sisley - "uniform" deep reds, golds and yellows under the cold surface with the waving shimmers where the gray sky was reflected and the dark outlines of trees lay across it.
Continued...
He backed away from the railing slowly again - watching the ducklings had been joyful, whereas this watching was almost frighteningly focused. He walked slowly backwards upstream. He no longer cared if anyone was watching. He worked his way almost up to the bridge and still couldn't find it. Give up. He brought his eyes up to the walkway. There was a man riding a rickety bicycle up toward him. Paul began walking back down to and past the point where he'd stopped a moment before, looking straight ahead with just the periphery of his vision gliding over the water.

He was passing the pool of leaves and to the left was the old, empty playground and he wondered if he hadn't actually seen something in the playground, but then, there it was again, just between shimmers, a gap in the leaves, and among the burnt colors, a small patch of something, partly shining, partly opaque and cream colored. What was it?

There were metal rungs set in the stone wall that had replaced the stream's bank. He put a leg up over the rail and carefully found the first bar with his foot and tested it with a little weight at first. Would be wonderful to have a dunking here in the cold. And embarassing.

He worked his way down the rungs, testing each one before putting weight on it and gripping tighter than he might if he trusted this old stonework and iron more. He was at the bottom and squatted on the last bar above the surface next to the pool of leaves, holding on with his left arm above.

He reached into the cold water and pulled up a soggy branch brought down by the stream.

"What's wrong?" He heard a man's voice up above.

He looked up and saw an old man leaning over the railing. He was wearing a tweed cap and his face was wrinkled. He looked harmless enough. By the man's feet a dog's snout poked through the gap in the railing and Paul could see the nose working over the smells of the river and most likely his aftershave as well.

"Something wrong?" the old man said again.

Paul realized he was expected to answer. "Nothing's wrong," he said. "I just saw something strange down here in the leaves."

"What'd you see?" the man called down to him.

"Something white."

"Something white?" the old man repeated his words. Seemed to be thinking. Then he said, "Probably just a dead carp."

Paul tilted his head, doubting. Then he looked back out over the pool. Wondering.

Up above, the old man was tying his dog's leash to the railing. Paul was brought from his reverie when he heard aluminum creaking and looked back up at the railing and was surprised to see the man lift himself up and over the railing with a grunt. He hoped the man didn't fall on him.
Also, where the hell did he think he was going to stay down there?

The man climbed down to the rung where Paul had his hand and said, "Excuse me." Paul leaned out to the side and the man climbed on down and stepped right into the water. He was wearing galoshes, but Paul expected to watch him sink right down into the water and to have to help him back out. But the man didn't sink. He must've been standing on a submerged ledge.

"I fish here all the time," he said, knowing what Paul was wondering.

"Oh," Paul said.

"Where do you see it?"

Paul pointed with the branch. "Over there."

The man gestured for Paul to hand him the branch and with a shrug, Paul complied.

The old man sloshed through the leaves gingerly. "There's a big drop-off around here," he said, pointing just a few steps ahead of his feet. He stopped sloshing and poked the branch down through the leaves to show Paul how deep it was at the drop-off. The branch was about five feet long and the man's hand went all the way into the water.

Back up on the walkway, the man's dog was whimpering and sniffing.

"Probably just a carp," the man said again and stretched the branch out under the water, cleaving the bed of leaves, with them falling back into an eerie cloak in the water. The branch reached something solid near the white patch Paul had seen and the old man pushed against it. The branch broke, but just as it was cracking, the surface of the water rose all out from the white he'd seen and the leaves moved with the water, just a few inches, and looking carefully, bending to miss the reflected overcast gray, Paul and the man could see a face.

Paul was still behind the old man and the man did not turn around. The dog was still whimpering up above. Paul looked up and saw the snout poked through railing and sniffing. He looked back out at the river. The man's shoulders were shaking. "It's a girl..." he said in a strange, choked voice. Paul somehow wasn't surprised. The man's shoulders were shaking and he didn't turn around.

"Leaves" Chapter 1

2005-12-22T05:56:00.000+09:00

It was the first very cold day of December. The leaves changed late that year and it had been dry and cold for weeks, but today the sky was overcast and promised rain in the early evening. It was very cold.

On the asphalt walkway by the sad little river, leaves had been falling for a few days and were ground under foot, beaten and powdered into colorful powders that looked like cured tobaccos under the cherry trees.

The rain started very softly and gradually so that Paul didn't bother to use his umbrella at first. He stopped and leaned against the railing over the high stone walls where they'd improved the river banks and he watched the widgeon ducks whistling and chirping and holding their heads under the water, foraging.

The maidenhair trees were pungent but still pretty. The bright gold leaves shaped like folding fans fell onto the water with the breeze and floated along gently with the current in a smooth and uniform procession. The ducklings swam among the passing leaves and the water was clear late in the season.

He closed his eyes and drew the moist air in through his nostrils. This was a strange country and although it was winter, the smells were most definately fall. The river and the fragrant leaf powders and the smell of stale butter. What was that? It must be the decaying ginkgo seeds, he thought.

"Well... it's not the winter solstice yet," he said to himself under his breath and opened his eyes, looking up and down the river, checking if anyone had seen him talking to himself.
Continued...
He backed away from the railing and went on downstream. When he came to the bridge, he crossed and continued walking toward the village. He wanted to do some shopping for supper.

Below the bridge there was a back eddy where the bright red and yellow cherry leaves had collected in a pool. It was deep there and very pretty, he thought.

Have you ever been flipping through the pages of a magazine when your mind catches a word that went by much too quickly for you to have read it and yet, you read it, and you have to go back through the pages one by one, slowly, searching carefully for the page where you saw it? A frustrating itch, closer to stubbornness than to curiosity, will not let you move on until you find where you saw it.

This is exactly what happened to Paul as he walked past the pool of leaves. He was trying to plan out his evening meal, and yet he knew he had seen something and it was no use trying to drop it. He stopped and turned around and began walking back up to the bridge with his eyes steady on the pool of bright red leaves as if it were a wild animal that might attack at any moment.

Stop and Start

2005-12-22T05:52:00.000+09:00

Thinking about serializing a story here. Not sure if it's my style, but it might be interesting to see whether the result is quality or "qrud". ;-)

English

2005-12-03T16:50:00.000+09:00

Hmm... I guess "tread-upon" is not correct. Oh well, it sounds better to me than "trodden-upon". And to think I'm supposed to be an English teacher... %-)

Pheasants (another poem)

2005-11-28T22:17:00.000+09:00

From today's hike out to a waterfall and up a mountain and along the ridge. Sometimes you sneak up on animals. You surprise them. They surprise you. And as long as it's not a surly bear or tread-upon snake, it can beautiful, if fleeting...

thunder

on the mountain ridge

two pheasants taking flight

"Old Flynn"

2005-11-26T17:48:00.000+09:00

Old Flynn

One down and...

2005-11-26T17:45:00.000+09:00

"Old Flynn" is basically finished. I'll post a table with all four parts in a moment.

"Old Flynn" Part 4

2005-11-26T17:29:00.000+09:00

The next weekend was nothing but storms. It got cold enough that the rain turned to sleet on Saturday and I was wondering if my season up on the stream had ended just as it was starting.

I tried to stay busy with tying flies and reading, but I wasn't putting my heart in it. Well, at least I had enough gumption in reserve to finish up a set of wet flies. Two orange, two olive and two yellows. I should've tied up more than that but being a lazy ass, that's all I got done in my moping-around mood. I figured the flies were about the right size for the trout up in the stream there, so I didn't bother tying any smaller sizes and went back to my moping.

So you can understand that I was in a damn foul mood come Monday. But at work, I bore down and with the help of plenty of coffee and skies that were clearing, my mood picked up gradually. By Tuesday it was really warming up and it looked like we were in for a real Indian summer. I asked my boss for the Thursday and Friday off and since he was a fisherman too and seeing as how I was ahead on my work, he said "sure".

Wednesday night I packed everything up real good and sat down at my tying bench with a glass of that Old Crow and whipped out a good dozen flies, both wets and some of those tiny spinners I enjoyed tying that weren't any bigger than the tip of your pinky. Sometimes I tied them with real fine gold wire and sometimes I used stripped peacock quill. Either way, they turned out real pretty and I better not say this... but they were "cute". Besides, the trout seemed to appreciate them, too.

I was up early the next morning, about 4:30, and had a breakfast of coffee and another cup of coffee. I got up to the stream with the morning still early. There was dew on the grass that grew all along the turnpike and it was chilly and bright. I was driving with the windows down and the past weekend was way back in time.
Continued...
I stopped in at the store. There were two motorcycles out in the lot with Canadian plates. They were all loaded up for camping or something. One was a fancy BMW bike and the other was an old, solid Honda. I went inside and both the owner and his wife were tending the store. I said "howdy" and then they recognized me.

"Well hi, honey! How you doin?" the wife said.

"I'm doin' fine because I'm up here and not at work," I said.

"You're a regular professional fisherman, ain't ya?" the man said.

"I'm not much of anything, really."

"How about this weather?" she asked.

"How about it! It needs to stay like this all through December, in my opinion."

"No, I need my white Christmas." She winked at me.

There was a group of people in the back, fussing over what beer to get. I heard them saying something about "micro brew" or something. I figured they were the Canadian tourists. There was an old man I hadn't seen before, sitting on a stool over by the deli counter.

"Can I get ya to fix me some sandwiches?" I said walking over to the counter.

"You sure can, honey. Whaddaya need?"

"Oh... a couple of bologna and cheese sandwiches with plenty of onions and dressing."

"OK."

"And a couple of country ham sandwiches."

"You're awful hungry today!" she said.

"I got a big appetite."

"Good for you. You need to stay strong and handsome."

Her husband was over by the register listening to us carry on and shaking his head. He was also watching the Canadian tourists with amusement, it seemed.

The old timer sitting there on the stool was looking at me.

"Howdy," I said.

He nodded and said, "howdy" back. Then "you fixin to do some fishin?"

"Yes sir. I am."

He nodded.

"Where you goin?"

"Up past the bridge."

He nodded again.

"Big fish up there."

"Yes, there are," I said.

"Big swamps up there, too," the wife said from behind the glass deli.

"Ain't no big fish gonna be in a place that's easy to reach," said the old man.

"Maybe so," she said.

"Fly fishin?" he asked me.

"Yes." I nodded and smiled.

"I use to fish a fly," he said. "Never got very good, though."

"I'm sure you were fine."

"Naw. Caught more trees than fish," and as he said that he cackled real good and we all laughed with him. Then his cackling changed to coughing.

The tourists had finally picked out their beer and were paying up at the register.

"We're going to try camping up in the gorge," one of the men said.

"That's a good place," the store owner said. "But make sure you hang your food up away from your tents so the bears won't getcha."

"Oh, right!" The Canadian said.

"You should also get an overnight permit in case the rangers come around."

"Really? How much is it?"

"Five dollars per couple."

"OK, we'll take two," the man said.

"Here ya go," said the other Canadian, the taller one. He was handing the first man a five dollar bill.

"Don't be silly. I got it."

I wondered why they were only getting two couples' permits when there were five of them. It was two men and three women. The one girl with long hair was standing back from them a step or two. They didn't look old enough to have a daughter her age. Must've been a friend or a sister, I thought. Then I remembered the two bikes out front and I wondered how the five of them were travelling around on two motorcycles. I looked at the girl in the back closer and I got a chill up my back. Goddamnit, it looked like the girl I'd seen out by the stream.

They all went outside and I moved over to the window and watched the group going over to the cycles and strapping down their supplies. But I couldn't see the girl.

"I'll be back in a minute," I told the wife.

"OK, honey."

Outside, I watched the two couples get on the bikes and then ride off down the road. The girl wasn't with them. I looked all around. There was no time for her to have gone anywhere. I walked all around the store building. She wasn't anywhere. I was starting to get frustrated and more real to the point, downright spooked.

I went back inside. I didn't know whether to say anything to them or not.

"Forget your wallet?" the wife asked.

"Uh... no... I was just checking what else I needed. Ch-checking what food I already have."

"Oh."

"What'd you think about our Canadian friends?" I asked, kinda fishing around it.

"Somethin else, huh?" said the owner.

"Two fine looking ladies, weren't they," said the wife.

"Yes, I thought so, too."

So that's how it was. I wandered around the store trying to pull myself together and wondering if I'd be able to concentrate on fishing. I picked up a bunch of stuff I didn't really need and some more that I did need: two six-packs, four packs of the little donuts.

When she'd finished fixing the sandwiches I took it all up to the register and paid, trying to keep smiling.

"You need any more of the..." the owner cleared his throat, "medicine?"

"No, I'm still working through the Old Crow."

He nodded.

"Well, thank you," I called over to the wife and nodded to the old timer.

"Bye bye and be careful honey," she called back to me.

I waved and went outside, and over to my car. I put everything in the back seat. I was still looking all over for any sign of that girl. My hands were shaking. I was driving back up the road, kinda manic and looking all over the place for her. I wondered whether I should go to that place on the stream or go out and have a talk with old Flynn.

---

I decided to go straight to Flynn. Out at his house I found him back in his tool shed.

"You can't stay away from this place, can ya!" he said, grinning.

"Seems that way."

"I expect you're heading out to fish."

"Yeah... I am. Maybe fishing for more than trout, though."

"Let me take a guess. Would your other 'quarry', so to speak, have long black hair and be shapely and shy?"

"Except for the long hair, sounds like you're talkin about a trout," I said.

He chuckled. Talking to him was already calming me down.

"I'm talking about your girl, ya son-of-a-bitch." He grinned at me again.

"I know it. Listen!..."

"I'm listenin," he interrupted.

"Listen, I think I saw her at the store just now."

"What the hell was she doin at the store?"

"I don't know."

"Did ya talk to her?"

"No."

"Why the hell didn't ya talk to her?"

"She disappeared before I could."

"You mean disappeared - up and left. Or disappeared - vanished in a puff o' smoke?"

"Little bit o' both. She was with a group of tourists."

He frowned, like he found it strange.

"Well, at least I thought she was, but when they were outside, she wasn't with 'em."

"Maybe she was hidin' from ya in the car."

"Ya see, that's it. They were on motorcycles. She wasn't with 'em afterall. Besides, they only asked for overnight permits for four people."

"What permits?"

"Up in the gorge."

"Oh." He seemed to be thinking it over for a while.

"Whaddaya think?"

"Hushup, I'm still thinking."

"Sorry."

He was putting things away in his shed. Seemed to be just piddling and it was making me antsy.

Finally, he said, "Well, I tell ya what I think."

"Please do."

"I think she's followin you around. Waiting for ya to make a move."

"How the hell did she know I'd be at the store today?"

"How the hell should I know? But I tell ya what I think we should do. I think we should go look for her."

"OK!"

"And if we happen to get in a little fishin, so much the better." He grinned again.

"Right." I wasn't really listenin to him now. I'd gone off in my own world the moment he suggested she was followin me around.

We got our gear together and took separate cars out to the dirt road downstream. About the place I'd seen the girl before, I stopped and got out to go back and talk to him.

"Maybe we should park here," I said.

"And do what?"

"And look around for her."

"How we gonna do that?"

"I don't know. Look around for clues or something."

"You're a regular Sherlock Holmes, ain't ya!"

"I don't know, Flynn!" Being there was making me jumpy again.

"I'm sorry I been teasin' ya," he said. "Here's my honest advice. We go on up to the good hole and fish a while and you try and forget about it. If she wants you to find her, she'll send you a sign."

This was getting to be too much. I didn't know what to say. I just looked at him like I thought he was full of shit, which I did think.

"Don't think it's a good idea?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Trust me. You need to clear your head up and give the answers some space to take roost."

"You really think so?"

"Yes, I do. Besides, I'm an old man and I want to get in a little fishin while I can."

"Well..."

"Come on," he said.

"OK." I nodded and went back up to my car and hopped in. We went on up the road bumping along the rough track.

He was right. I'd come to fish and if I got caught up in some silly bullshit, the fishing would be ruined. And I'd probably have nothing to show for it.

By the time we reached the stream I'd almost let it go. And when I saw the water, all smooth and serene and cool looking and leaves all turned beautiful, I forgot about the silliness and we set in for some good fishing. Flynn still had the flies I gave him. He hadn't lost any of em. I gave him a few of the little spinners I tied up and made him start in at the good spot while I watched.

He slipped into the water and took up a good place upstream of the hole where I'd caught the big mean trout. I hadn't noticed before how silent he was and how he blended in so well with the stream and the trees, all quiet and like he was a part of it and belonged there.

"You gonna fish or just critique my style?" he asked.

"I'm gonna fish. Just give me a minute."

He turned back to the stream and on his second cast he had a trout on. I watched him fight it and the trout jump a couple of times. He got it about halfway up to him and it jumped again and was off.

"Goddamned barbless hooks!" he said.

"You know better than that," I called out to him, grinning.

"I know better than you think. But it's still a goddamn pain in the ass from this end."

I just smiled and shook my head and started walking downstream along the bank. I put in above the fallen tree and started casting my wet fly to it and letting out loops of line to have it flow over the log. On about the third cast as I was retrieving, I thought I'd snagged the log. But snagged logs don't pull back and then shoot off for deeper water. I had a goddamn big trout on and I thought he had to be that same big and mean one or his brother or something. I tried not to lose him and at the same time, turn around to get Flynn's attention. He was behind the trees upstream of the bend.

"Hey Flynn!" I yelled out.

The trout jumped higher than I've ever seen a trout go. Straight up a good ten feet, thrashing, and he was big and mean looking and beautiful. It felt like my heart went up there with him. In the air and the morning sun of the Indian summer he was all bright and glistening, throwing off a spray of water, making a mist in the air around him. Then he was back in the water and pulling hard and then the line was slack.

Goddamnit. Goddamnit for losing him and goddamnit for him having a hook still in his mouth and being pissed at me.

"What's all the commotion," Flynn called from behind me. He was wading down to me.

"I had him on."

"The big one?"

"I think so. Looked big enough when he jumped."

"How big was he?"

"Good twenty-four inches."

Flynn nodded and waded down quietly to me.

"I'm startin to worry you won't believe me," I said.

"I believe you alright without seeing him."

I reeled up the line and was already planning what fly was gonna replace the one just lost. But there at the tip of the leader was that damn orange silk fly, now all brown from water and fish spit.

"How the hell did he get off?" I asked. "I had him tight. Hell, I thought he'd broke it off."

"Maybe he wasn't hooked. Was just clamping down good on it and he was teasin ya."

"Bastard!"

Flynn patted me on the shoulder and grinned.

---

We fished all day, only taking time out of the stream to eat the sandwiches and drink a few cans of beer for lunch. As evening came on, we climbed out and sat by the stream drinking the rest of the beer and just watching and listening.

"You forgot about your other quarry?" Flynn asked.

"I suppose so."

"Good! Now you're ready to figure things out."

"How?"

"How the hell should I know? Anyway, I thank you for a fine day fishing and for some fine flies."

"You heading back?"

"Yep. You're welcome to come back and sleep out in the barn."

"Thanks anyway. I think I'll stay here tonight."

"OK."

"You sure you're alright to drive?"

"Yes. You sure you're alright to camp?" He said and grinned. "Bye now. Maybe I'll come out tomorrow or you can come by and tell me how many ya catch."

"OK."

"Goodnight." He waved and went off toward the path.

"Goodnight, Flynn." I said and wondered if he'd heard me.

---

I just sat there and watched the stream. It was the best damned kind of meditation I knew. I watched the water and the mayflies and whenever a trout would rise, I'd watch the rings spread out smoothly and flow gently downstream as they spread and came over to me and died out.

I was there in my church, listening to my sermon. They all seemed to have spirits to me. Even the little mayflies. The bats were working up kinda high over the stream and between the treetops. I was feeling peaceful. I'd given up and I was just letting the stream bring everything to me and then carry it away just as smoothly and slowly.

A little later, I was dozing off, leaned up against the tree when the stream brought me something I didn't expect. I heard a whoosh and then a soft gurgling that lifted me up out of my "meditations". I knew it was him before I even looked up. He was eyeing me. He cawed and then whooshed down to the ground and started his waddling around.

"Biddy hours," he said.

"Huh?"

He was getting near me, didn't seem afraid.

"You want something to eat, don't ya." I said.

"Biddy hours."

"Whatever you say."

I reached into my pack and pulled out a package of the donuts and took one out. He was watching me the whole time. I broke off a piece and tossed it over to him. He took it up into his beak and pointed it up to the trees and shook his head to swallow it down. Then he came up real close. He wasn't six feet away from me. I broke off a little piece and when I moved he jumped back a little, flapping his wings. But he saw I was just gonna feed him and came back up close. I tossed it over to him and he ate it up.

"Piddy hours," he said.

"What?"

"Preddy flowers."

I was hearin him clearer now and I finally understood what he'd been sayin all along and it all clicked into place.

"You know her, don't you? She's your friend."

"My friend," he said, tilting his head.

"And she likes flowers, right?"

"Preddy flowers," he said.

I tossed him another piece of donut. I was kinda surprised at myself. At how calm I was.

"You're a good little bird aren't you."

He was almost close enough to touch and in the last light before the sun set, I could see his feathers real clear, all black and purple and iridescent.

"Will ya take me to her?" I asked him.

He gurgled a little.

"Take me to your friend, fella."

He tilted his head. "My friend," he said.

I took a couple more of the donuts out and swallowed them down quick. Then I did something I'm not proud of, but I needed to do it and I hoped it'd help me to follow him to wherever he would take me. I reached down and found a stone by my leg and hefted it in my hand. Too heavy, I thought, so I looked around for a smaller one and finally got one I was happy with. What I did was I put it in the packet with the donuts and tied a knot in the loose end of the plastic. Then I got up, and when I did he flew back up in the trees, but he came back down soon enough cause he saw I wasn't coming after him. I went over to the stream and reached down onto one of the stones and grabbed a pinch of the slimy moss growing there in the still part of the stream and I spread it all over the packet of donuts. Then I went over and grabbed my pack and I tossed the little gift over to him and sure enough, he grabbed it up in his beak and flew up into the tree, but just as he landed on his perch he dropped the pack of donuts. He came back down for it and grabbed it up again and flew off into the woods. I took off after him, hurrying as much as I could through the swampy part. I was lucky I still had my waders on and I wasn't sinking down very deep when I stepped.

I heard him drop the packet again and it gave me time to almost catch up with him. He flew back around and came down for it. I was afraid he'd tear open the packet but he wanted to get away in a hurry. I kept after him, making a terrible noise, splashing all through that swampy part. He'd stopped in a tree ahead and when I got up to it he took off again. Then I'd lost him, or so I thought. I kept on to where I'd seen him through the trees, going as straight as I could. Then I came out onto a part of the dirt road, up where I'd never been before.

I stopped there and tried to catch my breath. I was trying to be quiet to listen for him but all I could hear was my heart beatin real loud, thudding away in my chest.

I heard a whoosh and saw something black move through the branches and I headed into the woods on the other side of the road after him. It was working alright. I could see he was trying to get the pack of donuts again and he saw me coming and it was giving him an extra nudge and he finally managed to grab it and take off again.

Seemed like a hell of a long time later and I was beat and feeling kinda desperate. The light was nearly gone in that thick forest. He was waitin for me up ahead. I squatted down but got my pack wet so I couldn't even rest there. I fished out the flashlight and moved it around up in the trees. There he was up ahead, all black except for the glint of his eye and that strange iridescence. He was waitin for me alright. He was my friend afterall. But I wasn't really thinking ahead enough. I was almost ready to give up, but to tell the truth I wasn't sure at all I'd be able to find my way back. The whippoorwills were calling in the forest. It was kinda creepy and yet beautiful and lonely if I thought about it, but I pushed it away as quickly as the feeling came. He was gurgling again. I thought I heard him talkin again. "Preddy flowers." Helluva thing to say in the middle of the forest at night out there in a goddamned swamp.

Then he took to flight again and without thinking, I started following him again, but kind of sullenly and not caring anymore about anything. Not even caring about finding out about that girl. Goddamned talking raven. What the hell was I doing following a goddamned bird into the forest at night.

Now I was just walking. Just going straight ahead, I hoped. I stopped and turned off the flashlight and just listened. Not even the whippoorwills were calling now. Just a little breeze. I stayed there in the darkness, closed my eyes and breathed. Smell of pines, of cedar. Dankness of the swamp. I counted out to sixty and opened my eyes again and switched on the flashlight. The batteries were almost dead. It wasn't helping much. There was a moment of panic. I waited and watched it a while, doin nothing. Then it seemed to slip away. With the flashlight still switched on, I stuffed it in the side pocket of the pack and then pushed against the canvas and switched it off. Then I unlatched the pocket on the other side and reached down inside for the lighter I always carried. I hoped I wouldn't dump anything out into the swamp. I had it finally and then I latched the pocket closed again. It was tricky in the dark with my hand shaking. Then I put my arms through the straps and hefted it onto my back again. I lit the lighter and found that if I held my hand between the flame and my eyes I could see out ahead reasonably well. Hold it more than a second or two and the metal heated up and burned my thumb. Shoulda had a zippo, I thought. But they dry out too goddamned fast. So I flicked the lighter and got my bearings, let it go out and walked ahead a few paces in the dark. I did this over and over for a long time. I didn't know where "my friend" had got to. I was just going ahead and not giving a shit anymore. What the hell was wrong with me? Couldn't keep a wife. Could barely keep a job. And I could barely keep from going nuts. Ah to hell with it, I thought. And to hell with anybody who'd say a thing about it. They just don't understand. I don't either, but I know for damn sure they don't understand.

Finally, must have been almost an hour later, the ground had gotten dry and I was out of the swamp. The trees were more spread out. It was almost a kind of meadow.

That was it. I was sleeping there, I decided. I looked up and could see some stars but they would fade out and come back. Musta been cloudy, but I didn't believe it would rain. It was chilly, but I'd be alright, I thought.

I got out the sleeping bag and unrolled it right there on the ground. Then I took off my waders and just let em lay where they fell. I clipped my knife to my shirt and crawled inside. I hoped a bear or something wouldn't come to visit in the night. There were many things I could worry about like my rod and gear back at the stream. Or my car. Nobody would mess with it, I figured. Hell, nobody came out there. Just me and Flynn. And that girl.

I decided not to worry and not to care -- in this case, I suppose "care" was another way of saying "fear". I decided not to do it.

There I was, out in a field late at night, one crazy son-of-a-bitch, but I just lay there and looked up at the stars shining and them going dark beyond clouds and the breeze and I was asleep before I could think of anything else.

---

When I woke, it was chilly and there was fog out over the meadow. The trees were spread out. The land had been cleared a long time ago.

I got out of the sleeping bag and rolled it up still damp on the outside and stuffed everything into the pack including the waders. I was still sleepy but I needed to move and get the legs and the brain going. I wandered up the gentle slope. There'd been a house there. All that was left was an old stone foundation that must've been laid a good two hundred years earlier. Out past it was what must've been the root cellar, lined with stones and sunken in. It was all gone.

I wanted to get back to the stream and fishing for trout and forget about being crazy the night before. But I might as well spend a little while longer out here, I thought.

Down the slope it was real foggy. The sun wasn't up high enough to burn it off. I could see there was a little barn down there at the edge of the meadow and I started down to it. The high grass was all dewy. When I got down to the barn I saw what a mess it was. The back half of the roof had caved in. There were gaps in the plank wall. The doors were the kind that slid aside, but they were jammed. I pushed in on it and made a space to fit through.

It was quiet and calm inside and light came in through the hole where the roof was caved in. There was a lot of junk strewn around, but over in the corner beside the doors it was a little tidier. Still, every damned thing in there was all cobwebbed over and looked like it'd been untouched for years. I went over in the corner to get a better look in the low light. Then I noticed dried flowers hung up on nails in the wall planks. All kinds and colors of wildflowers that grew around these hills. I kinda felt myself getting crazy again, but I stayed right where I was.

There was one of the big old time milk cans in the corner with a mirror set on top. The silver in the back of the mirror was all tarnished bronze around the edges. There was a hair brush by it with cobwebs on it. Next to the old milk can was one of the old school desks set up against the wall. It was the kind they used a hundred years ago, with a seat that folded down for the student in front. In the shelf under the desk were some books and things. I didn't want to be going through anybody's things, but this looked like it hadn't been touched in a long time. I pulled out a stack of books. They were all dusty and mildewy. On top was an old farmer's almanac from thirty years ago. I leafed through it and felt a little nostalgic from the style the pictures were drawn in. There were three old Reader's Digests and on the bottom was a notebook with hard paperboard covers and a ribbon hanging down from the binding.

I opened it up and there were dried, pressed flowers inside the cover. In the back were some cards. Two Christmas cards, a birthday card and a "get well soon" card. I looked at the birthday card. It had an autumn leaf scene with a deer drinking at a stream. I opened it up and read the inside.

Happy birthday sweetheart. You're my most precious thing in the world.
- your father

I put the cards back inside the back cover and looked at the front cover again and then opened it and looked at the first pages. It was a girl's diary with months and dates and days written, but no years. The handwriting was all careful and girlish and she was writing about nature and her hopes and dreams and what she had for dinner and how it had tasted and all kinds of things.

I heard a whooshing sound and that damned raven had showed up, flew in through the hole in the roof and perched up on a rafter above. He was eyeing me, gurgling and all.

"Is this where you wanted to bring me?" I asked him.

He gurgled at me.

"Was she here, fella?"

He gurgled some more and tilted his head so his black glistening eye was on me. Then he tilted it back up again.

"My friend," he said.

I just nodded to him and said, "I know, fella, I know."

I flipped through the pages of the notebook and looked at them, all beautiful penmanship and lovingly written until about three quarters of the way through when the writing changed.

There were no dates and the writing was thin and frail as if the girl's pen was running out of ink. It was difficult to read because it was so lightly written. But still it was somehow elegant. Real different from the girl writing at the front.

I found the last page that was written on and tried to read it in the low light there.

I can't speak anymore. Even to friendly souls from far away.

All I wish for is to walk out there and among colors and dreams.

I flipped back to where the writing had changed and there was a gap of blank pages on either side of one in a completely different kind of sloppy hand. It was the same writing as on the card from the father. It was real short.

The girl does not come back.
- James Flynn

I took one last look at the girlish writing earlier and the pages at the back and I closed up the book and put everything back in the shelf under the desk. I stood up and the raven tilted his head to me again.

Outside, I was feeling sort of empty. The raven whooshed out of the barn and perched up high on the peak of the roof that hadn't caved in.

"Let's go fella," I said. He just tilted his head down at me and eyed me and didn't say anything nor gurgle.

It took me about an hour but I made my way back through the swampy part to the road and walked it down to where my car was, then out to the stream. My rod and gear were still there, still leaned up against the tree.

I got everything together and went back and put it in the car and drove straight out to Flynn's place.

When I got there I was a little taken back. There was a car there parked by his and some people standing around. As I pulled in and parked I saw that it was a lady and two little kids, a boy and a girl.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello," she said and looked a little surprised. "Did you have trouble finding the place?"

I was confused and she seemed to notice.

"You're the one who called earlier, right? About the ad," she said.

"Uh...no. What ad?"

"About this farm being for sale."

"Uh.. It's for sale?"

"Yes. We're finally gonna try to sell it. You weren't the one who called?"

She must've been wondering why the hell I was there.

"Actually, I was just driving by. Kinda got lost," I said.

"Oh. Maybe I can help ya. Where you trying to go?"

"I was trying to get to... the gorge."

"Oh, well you're on the right road. Just keep on out this road and it'll go up through the hills. You'll see the signs to turn off and go down into the gorge."

"Thank you." I smiled.

"You're welcome!"

I looked around.

"So nobody lives here now?" I asked.

"Nope. Not since uncle Jim passed away."

I was trying to take all this in and not show anything on my face.

"You know... I've been looking for a place out around here. I sometimes come up fishing."

"You're welcome to take a look around. I thought you were the one that called earlier!"

"You mind if I have a look at the house?"

"No, go ahead. I'll let you in."

She walked over the long grass to the back door. The boy and girl were wandering around out by the barn. She put the key in but found that it was unlocked.

"Well, I'll be... Ronnie musta left it open, big dummy." She looked at me. "Ronnie's my husband." She opened the door. "It's likely filthy in there. All the furniture was moved out years ago, but I haven't been in to clean it."

"I don't mind," I said.

I went inside and got hit in the face right away by a cobweb.

"Sorry," she said.

"No problem."

"Go ahead and look around. I better make sure the children aren't getting into anything." She left me and walked out to the barn.

I tried to get all the cobweb off my face and hair, but you can never get it off satisfactorily.

There was a fine layer of dust on the floor. I squatted down and ran my finger along it. Nobody'd been in here for a long time. Yet I'd seen Flynn going in here. Now somehow I wasn't surprised by what I was seeing. I was just a little sad is all.

I went into what was the kitchen. There were the two glasses we'd drunk the whiskey from, set out on the counter. But there was nothing else there. I spent a while wandering around the rooms, just feeling the old empty house. In a back room there was an old wood burning stove. I went back into the kitchen and up some narrow and steep stairs. Up on the second floor the ceiling angled down on either side with the roof. The floor creaked under my feet. I went over to the far end into another room. All that was left was an old nightstand with paint peeling off. I opened the drawer and found an old receipt from a service station, and one of the old tabs from a soda can, the kind they had before they invented the ones that flip up and back and stay on the can. In the back of the drawer was an old photograph. It was Flynn, younger than I knew him, smiling big with his arm around a girl. It was her. There she was in the blue dress. I put the picture in my pocket and closed the drawer and went down the steps slowly as they creaked with each step.

Outside, I smiled to the lady and thanked her.

"It's a nice old house," I said.

"Well, I don't know about that. Might make somebody a nice weekend home I guess."

I noticed Flynn's car there. The "for sale" sign made more sense now. She saw me looking at it.

"The car's for sale, too," she said.

"Oh."

"My husband comes up about once a month to wash it and drive it around to keep it going. Runs real well, but hardly anybody calls about it."

"So how long ago did your uncle pass away?"

"Let me see, it's been almost seven years now."

"No wife or kids?"

"Well, aunt Betty passed away back in 1973. They had a daughter, but she ran off and nobody's heard from her since," she said. "Uncle Jim was awful lonely out here, I think." Her eyes teared up a little.

"I can imagine," I said. We were quiet a while and I was looking around again, thinking I might not see the place anymore. Then, "If you don't mind my asking, how did your uncle Jim pass?"

"I don't mind. It's kinda sad... he drowned out fishing one night."

"I see..."

"All he ever did after cousin Kathy disappeared was go fishing. He was either piddling and moping around here or out fishing. He always asked Ronnie to go with him, but Ronnie was too busy all the time."

I nodded.

"Let me give you my number in case you're interested in the place," she said. She got a notepad and pen from her car and wrote down her name and number. She tore off the little slip of paper and handed it to me.

"What's your name in case you call so I can remember you?"

"I'm Fletcher," I said. Felt kinda bad about lying, but figured it was for the best, considering everything.

"Old Flynn" Part 3

2005-11-23T18:21:00.000+09:00

I'd been fishing all morning and had a good time of it. I'd started up above the usual place where Flynn showed me. Up above there, there were young cedars growing back a ways from the stream. They weren't too high, so I was able to fish from the bank. There were long green weed beds growing on the bottom of the stream and they waved back gently and forth with the slow moving current. If you were patient, you could see a trout here and there just lazily swimming as the current moved past him, being real picky about the little bits and bugs that floated by over their noses. From time to time, he'd see something he liked and he'd rise up smoothly and pluck it from the surface and then flick his tail and arch his body and dive back down near the bottom. It was tricky and pretty technical fishing but I managed to take three of them down through that long slow run.

Then the sun was up just over the tall trees downstream and it was warm so I waded in, mostly to feel the coolness of the water, and I fished my way down to where I'd set my backpack. I'd been careful to pack everything inside nice and snug and pull the flap over it and cinch up the straps good and tight so that pesky raven wouldn't be able to get at it and so I could be sure I'd have a lunch to eat in the afternoon.

I went over to where I'd sunk the beer and got it and then climbed out and went over to the big cedar I'd leaned the pack against and I sat down. It felt good to give my back a rest. I'd been standing and leaning over all morning to stay out of the trouts' sight up in that smooth run above.
Continued...
I took out the sandwich and my mouth was watering as I unwrapped the wax paper she'd folded over it. Juicy tomato and strong sharp onions that burnt my nose as I chewed and nice savory and salty country ham. I popped a can of beer and swallowed down half of it in one long drink. If only you could freeze these few hours in time and live them over and over to make sure you were catching it all.

I reached in the pack and got out the donuts. The chocolate glaze on them was still nice and hard and I ate one, then another and tried to chew it more slowly and appreciate the flavor while I looked out over the stream lazily.

A while later I heard a whooshing sound up through the trees and damned if that ornery raven hadn't come back to visit.

"I suppose you want a hand out, huh?"

He croaked and cawed at me a little. I took out another donut and bit into it and he tilted his head down and watched me real good. After a little of that he couldn't take it anymore and started gurgling at me, begging. I had two donuts left.

"One for me and one for you. That sound fair?"

He kept gurgling. I tossed one over on the ground under the tree he was perched up in and he dropped down after it using his wings to sorta parachute down, swinging back and forth smoothly. He took it up in his beak and flew off back into the woods through the cedars.

After the excitement of his visit wore off I was feeling sleepy and I closed my eyes a while and soon enough was asleep in a real peaceful and resigned kind of sleep.

---

I woke up suddenly and realized somebody'd been talking to me. Then, still groggy, I realized nobody was there and thought it was just dreaming, making up for what I'd missed through the whiskey last night. But then I heard the voice again, real strange, and I looked up in the trees. There was that raven again.

"My friend," he gurgled at me.

"I ain't your friend you son-of-a-bitch. You stole my donuts, remember?" I was a little surly from being awakened so suddenly.

I looked at my watch. It was 3:20.

"My friend," he said again and tilted his head in that way he did when I showed him the donuts before. I was breathing more normally and blinking a lot, waking up more.

Now some people will think I'm being all Poe here, writing about a raven talking, but the fact of the matter is, a raven can be taught to talk if you keep it as a sorta pet, feed it and all.

Either I was still dreaming, which I wasn't, or somebody had taught that bird to say things. Or something else more curious was going on, but I doubted that.

"My friend," he said again and gurgled a bit more and cawed for punctuation.

"OK, OK. I'm your friend. And you're always welcome to the donuts."

He cawed at me.

"I'll bring ya more next time, I promise."

He cawed again. And gurgled. He was something else, alright. We sat there just like that, him up in the tree looking down at me, sometimes rubbing his beak against the branch he was perched on, and me down on the ground, laying back against the cedar.

I looked out at the stream. The sun was behind the trees on the far bank and there were a few flies out dancing over the water. I was fully awake now and no longer surprised. I heard the whooshing again, and the bird dropped down to the ground and waddled around a while looking for something to eat. After he'd picked at this and that and gave up, he flew back up to his perch.

"Biddy hours," he said.

"What?"

He gurgled a while and then flew off.

"Goodbye," I called after him. "Ya son-of-a-bitch."

---

I stayed there a long time, sitting on the ground, leaning back against the old cedar tree, just watching the stream. I wondered when Flynn was gonna show up and if I should wait for him before I got back in and started to fish the evening rise.

There were two or three trout rising occasionally in different pockets up and down the stream from where I sat. It was pretty exciting to watch them hunting. They are fierce creatures, but not brutal. Just real efficient and doing their part in the stream.

It was gradual, but the few tens of flies that had been out dancing had grown steadily and now as I looked out over what light was coming low through the forest, the flies' wings were lit up and they sparkled as they flitted up and down out there. It was beautiful to watch and at the same time it made me anxious.

Then there it was. Down by where Flynn had me go in that last time to go after the big trout he'd seen. It was a big violent splash and I wanted to know what he took. I kinda had the feeling he wouldn't come up like that after those little mayflies I was watching. I got up and crept down the bank trying to stay low. He came up again with another big, loud splash and I watched that spot intently and blocked every other damn thing out. I noticed something floating over him, but nothing happened. Then I realized it was a leaf that had come all the way downstream. I looked upstream through the swarm of mayflies and damned if he didn't rise again just then. I couldn't see anything he'd take, but then from somewhere back in my noggin, I wondered if I was looking in the wrong place. Sometimes you got to look straight down where you are and see what's floating by right in front of you.

I moved up right next to the water and looked down into it. I was lucky that it was a little deeper than other places up along the bank and I might get a good chance to see what was coming down because the way I read the currents, it seemed it was pretty swift there and would carry bugs in from the whole width of the stream. I watched it there for a minute, then two, then three and I heard him out there coming up for something again, but by god I did not look up at him and just kept right on staring down into the water and seeing my own face and looking past it and then, finally, my patience paid off and I saw something interesting. It was a clear husk with long legs and a plump body. I had a pretty good idea what it was and where my friend out there was finding it.

I went back up to where my rod was, as quiet as I could be and even though I wanted to run straight out in the stream and cast to him, I forced myself to sit down and do it slow and as mindfully as possible. I pulled out the little red mint tin that I'd converted into a fly box and I took out an orange silk fly with a bushy but still delicate apron of partridge feather. I nipped off the fly I'd been using and pinned it to my cap and then I tied on that orange fly and wetted the line with my tongue before I cinched the knot tight. Then I clipped off the excess and I took two good long and deep breaths and I crept on over to the edge of the stream and stepped into the water as if I was stalking a deer in the forest. I was even careful to point my boots down and pierce the surface of the water so as not to hit it flat and let him know I was coming.

It took me a good two minutes to get out ten yards and I was hunched over the whole time, trying to keep low. He was still splashing and I knew I was pretty lucky.

I started letting out line and casting over and back well up from where he was rising. When I thought I had it about right, I lowered the rod and let the line fold out and just as it was about to straighten and fall I pulled back a touch and let it fall on the water snaking all over the place. I let the current take it down and stripped off a couple of yards real quick and shook the line out and then I just let nature take its course.

When I thought the fly was down about where it should be and he could see it, I tensed up a little. But nothing happened. And then, just as I allowed myself to relax a little, the line jerked out and half the curves in my snaked up line disappeared and went dead straight and there was a big swell in the smooth water down from the tip of the line.

He was pulling hard and I got lucky again because I didn't have my fingers pinched on the line above the reel and he took off line and the reel whirred and he was heading down to the bend. I started splashing my way down there, too. When he let up, he was almost down to the sunken tree and I wasn't gonna let him get down there.

I reeled him in when I could and had to let him head back down to the tree more times than I could keep track of. When he realized I wasn't gonna let him get there he seemed to get pissed. He jumped up out of the water and I tried to pull back on the rod and keep it tight but as gentle as I could. He didn't get off and nor did he the second time he tried that trick on me. Then he seemed to give it up.

He was real sullen, but I kept at him and after what seemed like a damn long time, I had him up closer and I could see him. He was big. I knew he was tired and I didn't want to kill him so I tried to get him in quick and just prayed the leader wouldn't break on me. He was a handsome trout alright. When I got him up near me and dipped my hand down in the water to hold him, he was just as placid as could be. That sucker knew I wasn't going to kill him. He knew we had an understanding and I think he knew it when he took the fly - otherwise he woulda broke me off, because both he and I knew he could. I unpinned him and held him there under the water. He was all smooth and dark and beautifully marked on his back. I held him and let the current go over him. I watched him working his gills and sorta looking up at me, I thought, and when he was ready he pushed out of my hand and went over midstream and dove down deeper.

The light was pretty low but I stayed there out in the stream and watched it all as long as I could. The mayflies still dancing around me. The weeds swaying down under the water around my legs.

---

"They bitin'?"

I looked up and into the woods. It was Flynn.

"I just caught a big one!" I said.

"I sort of sensed it, you might say."

I came out of the water and walked over to him.

"A damned big one," I said.

"You think he was the one I saw?"

"May-uh been."

"He put up a good fight?"

"And how!"

"I meant to get out here earlier and fish a little."

"What held ya up?"

"Oh, piddlin..."

"Here, have a beer." I pulled one off my six-pack that I'd blossomed in the cool of the stream like I'd learned from Flynn.

"I just came out to see how you was doin." He said.

"Go on. Have a beer."

"OK, I will."

We drank our beer and relaxed as night came on. Flynn was squatted down, resting on his heels.

"What'd you take him on?"

"Partridge and Orange."

"Well I'll be..."

"Come out tomorrow and I'll give you some to try."

"Maybe I will come."

We were quiet a while. The whippoorwills were calling up and down the forest across the stream.

"By the way," he said. "I didn't see any pretty girls in blue dresses on my way out here." He grinned.

"That's too bad."

"You sure you weren't seeing things?"

"Mighta been." Then, "I'm pretty sure she was real, though."

"I guess she probably was." He was looking off into the forest and seemed absorbed.

"If I see her again, I'm gonna talk to her."

"What are you gonna say?"

"I have no idea. But I hope it isn't stupid. Or something that'll scare her off."

"I hope so, too."

The stream was just as smooth and quiet with just a trickling sound here and there. Bats were hunting out over the trees.

"Well, I better git."

"OK. Make sure you come back tomorrow."

"I'll be here."

"You got a flashlight?"

"I don't need one."

"You sure?"

"I'll be fine," Flynn said.

"See ya tomorrow."

"Watch out for the girl tonight!" He made his eyes wide and then grinned and waved as he turned and walked off along the path. I listened for his footfalls on the plank pathway back in the forest but I couldn't hear them.

I set up camp quickly and then built up a little ring of stones and made an Indian campfire for company and sat up close to it. I ate a big hunk of cheddar cheese and drank a couple of beers for dinner. I hadn't really thought about it till then, but Flynn saying that about the girl just as he was leaving got me to wondering about her again. And to be honest, with the shadows cast by the low fire dancing around in the trees in the distance, it got me a little spooked. But the beer took all the worry away eventually.

I sat there by the fire late into the night, throwing kindling on it whenever it got low. Sometimes I let it die almost down to just coals and embers and I liked the way it looked, glowing orange red in the darkness and I wondered how it would look from across the stream.

And off and on, I was halfway thinking and fantasizing about the girl walking up to my campsite quietly and what she'd have to tell me and so on. I sat there hours with the little campfire popping and hissing when I put on pieces of cedar boughs. I broke out the whiskey and drank the moonshine straight from the mason jar. I didn't want to climb into the tent and fall asleep. I just wanted the evening and the fire and the feeling from the whiskey to keep on for a while longer. I could hear an owl off in the distance calling with that haunting sound carrying down over the stream. All Saint's Day, I remembered.

---

The next morning old Flynn showed up early with a six-pack of beer and sandwiches. We had a good day of fishing and he was pretty excited about the flies I gave him. He caught a nice trout on his first cast with one of them, as a matter of fact.

We waded all up and down and even went down past the submerged tree where it was all marshy at the banks and trees hung out over the water. It was a little eerie, but we ignored it and kept on fishing. And try as we might, we never did find that big trout. But Flynn told me he didn't mind - said something like "he can't show himself all the time, now can he?" I feel bad about it, but we kept a couple of the smaller trout to have for dinner.

In the evening we packed everything up and stopped down at the store to visit with the wife. She was real sweet to me again, and real sweet to old Flynn, too, although she seemed a little nervous with him there and he seemed to enjoy devilin' her. We picked up some more beer and some country ham to cook up the trout with.

Outside, Flynn seemed really happy.

"She's scared to death of me, ain't it precious?"

"Naw, she likes you fine. You shoulda heard how she was talking about you yesterday."

"That ain't what I'm sayin. Sure she likes me, but she's still antsy as hell when I'm around."

"Oh."

"I can't blame her, though."

"Why is that?"

"Hard to say... Oh hell, who knows? Just a gut feelin'."

"I don't follow," I said.

Flynn stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. "Krane, you're a fine fisherman, but you don't understand women, ya see."

"I suppose I can't argue with ya there."

"And you shouldn't".

"I won't."

"Don't."

We both laughed, but I was kinda wondering how well he understood women and why the hell he wasn't telling me about his wife, but like I said, these past years I'd gotten pretty indifferent about most everything. Except angling, that is. Well, "indifferent" isn't the right word. I cared. I was curious. It's just that I gave up pretty quickly when I felt it was necessary. Pretty often it was necessary.

Back at his house we made a fire outside and cooked the trout campfire style, wrapped in foil with butter and country ham inside. Just threw 'em on the coals and flipped 'em over after about five minutes and then ate them out of the foil and drank a couple of beers.

Then it was time for me to head back. I gave Flynn my number to call me in case anything good was going on at the stream.

"Don't worry, I'll get in touch if there's any big trout out there," he said, grinning. "Or any girls wanderin around pickin flowers." He winked.

We shook hands and I started out on the long drive home.

I had a lot to think about on the way home. I was already dreading having to get back to work. And I was already planning on when I could get back up to the stream. I'd only been those few times, but I was already addicted to it. It was about the only thing I truly gave a damn about anymore.

The drive was kinda lonely, but I didn't mind loneliness so much, really. Not since a long time ago. It was almost like I craved it. I never got lonely on the stream. How could I? What with strange pretty girls there and ravens that stole from me and then started talking to me, wanting to be friends.

"Damn!" I thought. I forgot to tell Flynn about the raven. I wondered if he'd even believe me. Most likely would, I figured. He believed about the girl. Or at least did a good job of acting like he believed.

another poem - "Leaves on the Roadway"

2005-11-22T19:59:00.000+09:00

chestnut leaves
fall on the roadway
setting it aflame

"Old Flynn" Part 2

2005-11-21T20:21:00.000+09:00

It was a month later and I was up there again. Come to think of it, it was Halloween. The weather was perfect and crisp and everything. I figured the leaves would have turned and be just about right and would most likely be beautiful.

I stopped in at the store again and picked up my usual fare, only I was picking up more of it because I wanted to camp over the weekend and fish the stream slow and carefully. For camping, I needed extra food and extra beer. I had them make me a bologna and cheese sandwich again with plenty of salad dressing on it and fresh tomatoes and sliced onions.

The man who owned the place got to talking to me, asking if I was gonna do some fishing and I told him I was. I asked him if he had any whiskey.

"Well..." he hesitated. He looked at me a while and I wondered why a yes or a no wasn't good enough.
Continued...
"Ya see, we ain't supposed to sell hard liquor, just beer. But..." he reached down under the counter and his hand came up jingling with a ring full of keys.

"Come on back," he said.

I followed him to the back of the store and through a door into the storeroom. At the end of the room there was a door that was padlocked. He went over to it and unlocked it and set the padlock aside on a shelf. He opened the door and it was all dark inside. Then he reached in and pulled on a cord and a light came on - a bare bulb up in the ceiling.

What I saw amazed me. Rows and rows of bottles on wooden shelves, glinting amber from the light. It was like heaven. Some of the bottles had labels I recognized: Wild Turkey, Ancient Age, but they were old labels and old bottles. The Ancient Age was the old tall and thin bottle.

"Whaddaya need," he asked.

"Hell," I said. There was too much to choose from. "I don't know!"

"I'm a bit of a collector I suppose," he chuckled. "But I can't drink it anymore. My liver's all shot to pieces. Wife don't like me to drink."

"If it's a collection I don't wanna take anything..."

"Naw, go ahead. I don't care about it anymore. Like to see somebody who appreciates it have it."

"You sure?"

"Hell yeah I'm sure. I said so didn't I?" He didn't seem angry, just somehow sad. "Go ahead and have a look."

I went in. It was just a closet, basically. But a closet goddamned full of good whiskey. Down on the bottom he had a couple of old bottles of Old Crow, from before they were bought out by Beam. I picked one up and looked at the label.

"That's the good old stuff," he said. "People say Old Crow ain't no good, but they don't know shit, ya see. Now it's just Beam whiskey. But this is the old recipe, real high in rye. Dr. Crow's old recipe. And it's damned good whiskey. Don't let anybody tell ya otherwise."

I nodded. In fact, I already knew what he was saying. I knew it was true. I once found an old liquor store up in the mountains and they had exactly two bottles of the old Old Crow and I bought one of them and drank it all in a month, trying to make it last. I couldn't get back up there for a while and when I finally did the next year, the store was closed down and I just had to lament that lost bottle of whiskey.

I turned the bottle in my hand upside down and the glass had the number 73 on it, meaning it was bottled in 1973.

"I also got some moonshine if you're interested," he said.

He bent over and moved a couple of bottles to the floor and behind them were mason jars with clear, sparkling whiskey inside.

"This is pretty good. A buddy of mine still makes it at his farm. He won't quit and the sheriff quit botherin him because he figured he'd be dead soon enough. And anyway, the sheriff's daughter was seeing my buddy's great grandson and all."

"I don't drink much moonshine," I said.

"And you shouldn't. It'll kill ya. But this is good. Real smooth."

"Ok, I'll take a jar o that, too, please."

"You won't be sorry. Hell, I'll have a drink with ya now."

"I don't wanna get ya in trouble with your wife."

"To hell with her!" he said and then froze. He shook his head and looked sorry he'd said it. "Naw, I love her, but one little drink ain't gonna kill me, now is it?"

"I doubt it."

He went back into the front store and came back with some old glasses with the Coca-Cola Santa silkscreened on them. He moved aside a couple more bottles and took out a jar about three quarters full, unscrewed the lid and set it down on the shelf and then carefully poured out about three fingers in each glass. His left hand was shaking a little.

He handed me a glass and said, "try that on for size."

I sipped at it and he was right. It was plenty smooth. He took a big drink of his and he let out a long sigh like he'd died and gone to heaven.

"It's good alright," I said.

"You better believe it!"

He topped up his glass and drank some more even though he'd said it was just gonna be a little drink. It seemed like we'd been back there a while. We heard the bell on the door out front and I asked if he needed to get out there.

"They'll wait," he said. He was screwing the lid back on the mason jar and putting everything back in place. His hand wasn't shaking so much anymore.

"By the way," he said, still bent over and fixing up the bottles. "I seen you talking to old man Flynn last time."

"Yeah?"

"You be careful of him." He turned and looked me in the eyes.

"Really? Why is that?"

"Just..." He seemed a little drunk. "Just, he's a little off, I'd say. Since his wife passed."

"Oh."

"Some people say he killed her. I don't know."

"That so?"

"I don't know," he said and he put the padlock back on the door.

---

I was back on the road upstream. What a curious thing to say. "Killed his wife". I don't know, but the one time I met him, he seemed like an alright guy. Didn't seem like the type that would do an awful thing like that.

Well, hell, I thought. I wasn't worried. After I got back from the war I gave up caring about a lot of things. I gave up giving a shit. But I'd be lying to you if I said it didn't make me think a little. Think that it wouldn't hurt to be a little careful.

I was at the bridge and I drove across and turned onto the dirt road. I wasn't but a couple hundred yards in, just where the heavy overgrown bushes and weeds let up, when I saw somebody coming down the road. It was a girl. She was wearing a light blue dress and she seemed to be stopped to look at something by the road. When I got up to her, I saw that she was looking at some wildflowers growing by the edge of the road. I nodded and gave her a little friendly wave. She was holding some flowers she'd picked. She kinda looked at me strange. She had a real lonesome look about her. Then she looked away and I was on up past her. Real pretty girl. I wondered who she was and what she was doing up this old abandoned road when Flynn said nobody came up here.

I got to the spot and parked and got out my gear and headed into the brush. At the stream it was beautiful just like before. It looked like clouds were coming in from the north, but it was still clear overhead. It was cooler, of course, than the time before. The leaves were real pretty like I thought they would be.

I started fishing the same place as before and pretty quickly caught two nice trout. Flynn was right - they just needed to get to know me first.

Later I was down near the big fallen tree and I fished it pretty good and thorough. I was getting some big and scary pulls on the fly when I let it float over the thick, submerged trunk of the tree and let it hang there a while. I was using an orange silk, wet fly instead of the little floating mayfly pattern I'd used in September. I kept getting those pulls, but I couldn't get the sucker hooked. Usually when that happens I get real stubborn and I won't give up on the spot and I end up spending too much time there and not enough trying other water that was sure to have some fish, too. And that's exactly what I did this time, too. A big mean trout pulling on your fly'll do that to ya. I must've stayed there over an hour, sometimes I'd turn and cast back upstream, but I always came back to that spooky spot below the tree. I stayed there long enough, in fact, to let the clouds sneak up on me unsuspecting, and start to spit rain on me. There was still sunlight coming in at a low angle in the west and I looked up for a rainbow but didn't see any. What I did see, however, was a raven up in a tree watching me. I wondered if he was the same one that stole my donuts before and I thought about asking him, but then I thought it would be kind of a strange thing to do, so I tried to go back to my fishing. I was worried the rain would end the fishing, but it seemed to encourage a bunch of little olive colored flies to start dancing over the stream. They were touching down on the surface a lot and it was making all the shy trout come up and smack them. The trout were going nuts.

I reeled up and nipped off the fly and tied on a little olive wet. It wasn't an exact match of the color, but it was close enough, I figured. I soon enough caught a pretty good trout on it, but I didn't believe it was the mean one that was after my fly below the tree. Then the rain started coming heavier and I decided to call it a day.

My pack was still pretty dry up under the big trees, but I didn't feel like making camp in the rain so I decided to go see if Flynn was at home. I was back in the car and coming back down the dirt road to about where I'd seen the girl earlier. I wondered where she lived, cause there weren't any houses around and I didn't see any car or bicycle or anything. I crossed over the bridge and turned upstream. At his house, I pulled in the gravel driveway. The light was on in the shack behind his house. I got out and went over to it in the rain. I knocked on the open door and Flynn's voice came out from a back room.

"Yeah?"

"Hey Flynn. It's me, Krane."

He came out from the back room and wiped his hands on an old, oily rag.

"Well, howdy. You been fishin?"

"Yep." I nodded.

"Catch anything?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. I went back to the place you showed me."

"And you didn't come to get me first?" He grinned.

"Sorry."

"So what'd ya catch?"

"Four, five good trout on wet flies."

"Gooooood. See, I told ya, ya just needed a time or two more."

"Yep, you were right. What are you working on?"

"Oh... just fiddlin. When it gets overcast and rainy I get a little antsy. You want a beer?"

"Why not."

"Let me go get 'em."

He scurried out across the overgrown grass and went in the back door of the house. Pretty soon, he came out again with the four cans left of a six-pack, holding them by the emptied plastic loops.

"Here ya go." He pulled a can off and handed it to me.

"Thank you."

We popped our cans and he reached his over.

"Here's to catching trout on wet flies."

"Yessir."

We clanked cans and drank. It was good and cold and hit the spot after being out in the woods most of the day.

"Say Flynn."

"Yeah?"

"You ever see a girl out on that old dirt road?"

He thought for a moment. Then said, "No, can't say as I have."

"Well there was a real pretty girl out there today, just past the overgrown stretch. She was picking wildflowers."

"Sure it wasn't a deer or something?" He winked.

"Pretty sure."

"Hmmm..." He was quiet a while, just nodding his head gently. Seemed to be thinking it over. Finally he said, "Come to think of it, my grandaddy used to tell me all kinda stories about these hollows, and one of 'em was about an Indian girl who used to come out to the stream, picking flowers. I figured he was just bullshittin me. You know how grandad's are."

I nodded. I didn't really know about grandads. Both mine passed away when I was pretty young, but I did have an uncle, great-uncle actually, who used to tell me some tall tales.

"What'd she look like," Flynn asked.

"Well, now that you mention it, she did have real pretty long and straight black hair." I grinned at him. I didn't believe any kind of legend kinda stuff. I knew the real world was screwed up enough without a lot of fiction.

"Before I headed to the river, I stopped off at the store and picked up some... whiskey."

"She sold you some of his whiskey?"

"Well, not the lady. The man did."

"He tell you I killed my wife?"

It was so sudden I didn't have time to weasle around it.

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"You believe him?"

"Naw!"

I didn't think I did, at least.

"All those cocksuckers think I killed my wife, but I didn't."

I thought he'd elaborate from there.

"But that one has some good whiskey," he said. "His wife's real nice, too. He tell you about old man Fitzgerald's white lightning?"

"Yeah, I bought a jar off him."

"It's good stuff. Old Fitz is about the only fucker in this county that's worth a shit."

"Let's try some of it," I said.

"OK. Beats fiddlin around out here."

He went over to the house and took two folding chairs that were leaned up against the wall and set them out under the awning. While he was inside hunting for glasses, I went over to the car and got the jar of moonshine and we set out there and drank the whiskey slowly. I was still waiting to hear about his wife.

Later, the rain was just misting. We'd drunk almost half the jar of moonshine.

"That's curious about you seeing a girl out there," he said. "I wonder who she is."

"Me, too. She was so beautiful." I was fairly drunk.

"Well, I'll keep an eye out for her," Flynn said. I guess he was drunk, too.

We were quiet a while. The rain was real pretty. Then Flynn spoke up.

"You stayin at the lodge?" he asked.

"Well, actually I was plannin on camping."

"Campin? Whereabouts?"

"By the stream."

"You don't wanna camp there. Besides you're too lit to get back out there safely."

"Why don't I want to camp out by the stream?"

"Ain't it spooky out there?"

"Naw, I don't think so. There's not much that spooks me these days anyway."

"That's cause you're young."

"Well, maybe so. But also cause of the war and all."

"Oh, I didn't know. Hell, maybe you do wanna camp out there. I don't know."

I shrugged.

"But I'd rather not have the sheriff out here askin questions if you drive off the road and into a tree."

I laughed. Flynn grinned at me.

"You're welcome to camp out in the barn if you think you need to rough it."

"No, that's OK."

"I'd invite you in to stay, but like I said, it's a goddamn mess."

"Well, OK. I'll stay in the barn then."

"Ya see, after my wife left me I get all outa sorts in there, thinkin about her."

"I know what you mean."

"Naw, ya don't know. Well hell, maybe ya do know. What with the war and all."

We were silent for a moment. Then, it must have been dusk coming on... I said, "The skivvie pissing horror." My mind had gone off elsewhere. I'd drunk too much.

"What!?"

"Nothing," I said.

Flynn's face changed and he looked real serious for about the first time since I'd met him.

"I'm sorry son," he said.

"I'm fine." I smiled at him through the drunkenness.

"Goddamn cocksuckers sending everybody over there. Won't go themselves, though. Won't send their own kids, neither."

"It's over, though."

"Yeah, I suppose so. But let me tell ya something. You listen good. It ain't ever really over. I was in Korea and it ain't never gonna be over."

I said nothing.

"Let's try to forget about it," he said. "Give me another belt o' that stuff and let's turn in."

"OK."

We drank the whiskey down slow. It was dark. The whippoorwills were calling out in the woods and down the ravine. Flynn finished his whiskey.

"You make yourself at home out there." He grinned and patted me on the shoulder. He seemed much more frail than I'd thought. Maybe it was just the drink.

"Goodnight. And thanks for letting me stay out there."

"You're welcome. You sleep tight."

He turned and went into the house walking a little unsteady.

I got my sleeping bag out of the car. And the flashlight and my knife and I walked out to the barn. It was a little musty inside, but it was dry. It smelled strongly of old, curing burley.

I unrolled the sleeping bag and clipped the knife to my shirt. Then I took off my boots and set them at the foot of the bag and got in. I could see my breath in the beam of the flashlight. I turned it off and tried to think about that mean trout out there instead of other stuff. It was hard to concentrate from being drunk, but soon I was out there and I could feel the fly rod in my hand and see the splash on the surface. I guess I fell asleep real quick after that.

---

In the morning I woke up when I heard the swallows twittering in and out of the barn. I stood up and stretched and then rolled up the sleeping bag and went outside. It was nice and cool. All Saint's Day. I had a feeling I'd get some good fishing in today.

I went around behind the barn to pee and then headed over to the car. There was a note under the wiper. It was from Flynn.

I'm gonna head into town to get some supplies and piddle around. I'll see you at the good place in the afternoon. - Flynn

I headed on downstream to the store. The wife was behind the counter and she smiled big and said, "morning honey!"

"Morning!" I said back to her and smiled.

I looked around and picked up some stuff for lunch, some donuts. The ones I never got to eat. I asked her to fix me a sandwich and a cup of coffee and to put it in a styrofoam cup with a top, please.

"You don't need anymore whiskey, do you?" She winked at me.

"No, I don't drink that fast!"

"Did ya camp last night?"

"Indeed I did."

"I thought so because of your beard."

I felt around on my chin with my fingers.

"You look real handsome and rugged." She winked again.

"Well, thank you!" I could feel my face blushing.

"Where'd ya camp?"

"Actually, I went out to Flynn's and we got to drinking and I ended up staying out in his barn."

Her eyes widened a little.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"Old Flynn," she laughed. "My husband start talkin about him yesterday?"

"A little."

"Don't you listen to my husband, ya hear? Old Flynn is a fine man. He's a little peculiar maybe, but he's real sweet. The men in town don't like him cause they were jealous of him. His wife was so pretty and all."

"So what happened to his wife?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Well, I don't know for sure, either. I can never bring myself to ask him about it. She just up and left, I guess."

"Hmmm."

"My husband thinks he killed her and hid her out in the woods somewhere. But my husband's a drunk. I love him, but he's a drunk. Always been good to me and the children, but he drinks and talks. At least he don't hit anybody." She smiled. "No, Flynn wouldn't do something like that. I can't believe it. I won't believe it."

"He seems nice to me."

"He is." She nodded. "He show you around his house?"

"No. As a matter of fact, he seemed real bashful about letting me anywhere near it. Inside at least."

"I thought so. Nobody I know of's been in his house. Since around the time his wife left." She was quiet. "Maybe he hid her in there," she said suddenly and winked at me again.

"I've been around killers before," I said. "And he doesn't seem like one to me."

"He was in Korea, you know."

"Yeah, he told me. But that's different." I thought about how false that sounded. "Well, it's the same, of course. But still, it's different."

She nodded and suddenly looked real motherly to me.

"Honor and duty and defending the country, they call it," I said. I was thinking about that time we were raiding the... I stopped thinking it. And the kids...

"I'm sorry honey." She patted my hand.

"No, no, it's fine. I don't give a damn anymore, you see."

"Oh, you give a damn alright. At least when it counts." She smiled. "Well, here's your sandwich. I put some pickles in the bag for ya." She slid the paper sack over to me.

"Thank you."

"You better get going, unless you want to stay here talking to an old lady all morning."

"I can't think of anything finer," I said and smiled.

"You're sweet. But you're a liar. Get your behind out there and catch a big fat trout for me, honey." She smiled. "And make sure you stop in and tell me all about it."

"I promise I will." I took the bag and the coffee and said goodbye and was nearly out the door when I remembered I wanted to ask her something.

"Oh yeah, do you know anything about a girl that I would've seen out by the bridge yesterday? Real pretty girl. Long black hair. Gathering flowers."

"Sounds like Jenny, old Flynn's daughter. Didn't you ask him?"

"I did. He didn't say anything."

"I told you he was peculiar. I mean, she hasn't lived around here for years, so I guess it ain't her." She shook her head and wiped off the counter with a rag absentmindedly. "Besides, I never go out there anymore, honey. It's too swampy. And spooky." She winked again. "You're gonna think I'm the one that's peculiar! Naw, it's probably not Jenny. I imagine it was just a sightseer. A lot of times, people driving through from up north will stop to pick flowers and so on."

"Yeah, maybe she was just a tourist."

"Well if any pretty girls with long black hair stop in here I'll tell them they have a handsome admirer!"

"Thank you." I winked back at her this time and said goodbye.

"Old Flynn" Part 1

2005-11-20T14:02:00.000+09:00

This is the place nobody knows about. If I were any good at it, I could tell you about the katydids and about how the breeze has just picked up because the sun is setting. I'd be able to tell you about the stream right over there. Smooth as glass, with just the few ripples, imperfections. The long, green crowfoot waving under the surface. There are doves calling. Then the breeze is still. And there's a little olive mayfly that's landed on my shirt. I blow on it gently and it moves over a quarter inch and stays put. The doves take to flight overhead and flutter on, squeaking as their wings beat through the air.

Nobody knows about this place...

I could get up and fish the stream right now, but I won't. This isn't a fishing trip. This is a trip just for watching. I learned about this some time ago from a damned good fisherman. He would go out in the evening, head out to the stream without his tackle, just to watch and to look for his big trout. He'd see it come up and gulp down a fly and he'd mark the spot in his mind, remember the pool and the run where that goddamn big trout lives. See, the whole beauty is you can think about that trout all night, all week. Fish the stream in your mind. Plan out ways to sneak up on that big trout without him knowing it. Decide what kind of a fly he might like. Where to wade in. It's almost as good as the real thing.

And if everything works out right. If the weather's right and it feels like a good time to try, you make your way out to the stream like you planned it out in your mind. Of course, it'll be a little different from how you thought about it, but if you keep your mind where it should be and don't get caught up in things that don't matter, it'll be just like poetry. And forever after, you can remember how it was, going out to the stream, taking each step slowly, the feel of the current on your legs, cool and kinda like little wind chimes. Casting, waiting, watching the fly or watching the line. Waiting for that amazing, heart-wrenching and light and beautiful feeling when that big goddamn trout hits. You can think about that forever.

I only found out about this place because I happened to be at the store down the road last September. I'd just bought a big fresh-made bologna and cheese sandwich, some potato chips and a bottle of Coca-cola. Oh, and a tin of tobacco, though I'm a little embarassed about that part. I was on my way out and this fellow came in and I thought by the look of him he was a fly-fisherman. He was tall and a little haggard and he had white hair and white stubble on his chin. But there was something different about him. Something different from the other old-timers around these parts.
Continued...
When he came back out, I watched him putting some beer he'd bought in the cooler in his trunk and he moved a rod out of the way and I could see that there was a fly reel on it - an old brass fly reel.

"Ya fly-fishin?" I called over to him from my car window.

"Yeah." He grinned. "You?"

"Yeah, me too. At least I try."

"Catchin anything?" he asked, walking over toward my car.

"Well, I just got down here. I was just scoutin out good places."

"Well I'll tell ya a fine place. You go back upstream and cross that second bridge, the one they call Knight's bridge, and just on the other side is an old dirt road that's all overgrown with weeds. If you don't mind gettin your car all scratched up with brush and branches, you take that road on upstream bout a quarter mile and park and take this deer trail over to the stream. Well, I gotta tell ya, I seen some big trout takin flies around there all last week."

"You catch any big ones?"

"I wasn't fishin then. Just observin."

"Oh"

"I'm fixin to go up there tonight, if you wanna come with."

"Sure! That'd be great," I said.

One of the cardinal rules in fly-fishing is you never pass up an invitation from a local (provided you think he knows what he's doing).

He said I could follow him out to his house and leave my car there and we'd take his car, his old beat-up (or maybe I should say "well-weathered") station wagon on out to the stream. I followed him back up the road. He had a "For Sale" sign up in the back window of his car and I wondered why he'd want to get rid of such a characterful old car. It reminded me of our family car back when I was in kindergarten. If I remembered, I'd ask him about it, I thought. The road ran by the river and we headed upstream toward the hills. It was clear and cool and cheery weather with autumn just coming on. I drove with the window down and my arm up on the window.

His house was an old two-story farmhouse. I parked beside him, up behind the house by a shed. I got out and he walked over and put his hand out.

"My name's Flynn by the way."

"I'm Krane," I said and we shook hands.

He pointed to the house. "It don't look like much, but it's home," he said.

"Looks fine to me."

He laughed.

"And it's beautiful country out here," I said.

"That I'll agree with ya on. I'd show you around inside, but it's a mess."

"Naw, can't be any worse than my place" I said, trying to join in on the humility.

"Besides we got to get fishin," he said.

"Right." I nodded.

He stopped for a moment and looked off back up the road.

"I'm always having to fix things around here. I just put that new roofing on in the spring."

It was tin roofing and he'd painted it a rusty, brick-red color. It already looked weathered, but looked fine against the blue and the white clouds in the sky. He told me all about the roofing and how old man Collins had helped him, taking his bucket to spit tobacco juice in, on up the roof. How he'd been sure the old man in his nineties would surely fall off the roof and break into a hundred pieces, but how he'd had more stamina than himself and each night drank more beer and whiskey than he could after the hard day's work and then had walked down the road and up over the hill with dignity, to his house over in the next hollow.

I was afraid Flynn would forget about the fishing but soon enough he came back around to it and we climbed in his station wagon and headed back down the road to the bridge.

Flynn drove in a relaxed way, taking his time. The old station wagon looked lived-in and was dusty up on the dashboard. When we reached the bridge, he stopped out on the middle of it and we got out to have a look at the stream.

"It's up this year. I was worried that big rain we got two weeks ago would wash all the damn fish out."

"Really?"

"That's why I was out last week, observin. Seems like the fish stayed put."

We heard a buzzing sound and Flynn leaned so far over the rail I thought he'd fall in. He motioned with his head. I leaned over, too, and saw there was a fella up under the bridge and he was playing a fish.

"I don't know him," Flynn said.

"Hmmm."

"There's some good fish here, too. But not like the place I'll show ya." He motioned upstream with his head.

"Nobody goes up there cause they don't know the road and it's a pain in the ass to wade from here all the way up there. Sink holes and overgrown willows on the banks."

I nodded.

"And it's spooky!" He grinned.

---

Down the road, Flynn had turned off onto a dirt track that looked like it would go nowhere and he drove what seemed like a good while with the bushes scraping up against his car (and me when I didn't lean in away from the open window quick enough). Then after the road widened a bit and I could see more of the sky overhead and started daydreaming, he'd pulled off the road and parked. We got our rods and tackle out of the car.

"It's over thisaway," he said.

I couldn't see any path, but I followed him into the brush. Just ten yards in, it opened up and it was just bare earth under cover of big cedars. There was a deer trail and we followed it a good hundred yards and then it was swampy but somebody had built up a plank walkway through the swampy part. It was real serene out there. I could hear a woodpecker working on a tree somewhere through the forest. I could also hear a crow calling, but I couldn't hear the stream yet.

"My daddy built this walkway way back when he was young. I been keeping it up whenever it gets rotted up."

It was kind of rickety and I wondered when he'd last worked on it.

"I used to bring my wife out here. She loved it."

"This is a good place," I said.

Just about then we were up on the stream without me suspecting. I could see why now. It was smooth and quiet and like an English chalkstream. I'd never fished on this part before. I'd only been far downstream and I was surprised there was a place like this on the same river.

"Here's where I usually put in," Flynn said. "It's as good a place as any to drop our gear."

"Looks good," I said.

I put down my army pack and leaned it up against a tree by the bank. I had the plastic sack with my grub in it and I latched it onto the pack with an old Italian carabiner I'd had forever.

Flynn was getting out the six-pack of beer.

"We can sink this right here and it'll be nice and cold."

He waded in and worked the six-pack into the gravel so that it sort of blossomed out and the water could work between the cans.

I bent down and put my hand in the stream. It was nice and cold. God it was beautiful, clear water, I thought. Flynn had found a good rock to set on the beer and he was checking the underside. Musta been looking for wigglers and stoneflies. When he'd finished all his preparations he stood up straight and smiled.

"Well, let's fish goddamnit," he said.

"Good idea."

We waded out a few yards and he looked upstream for a while and then back downstream.

"Here's about where I saw that bigun. You give him a try." He was pointing downstream a little up under a cedar that was leaned out over the stream.

"Naw, you should try him," I said.

"Now I insist. You give him a try." There was a splash at the surface down by the big cedar. "Ya see, there's one now."

"Well, if you insist." I shrugged.

"I do," he said. "Besides, there's plenty of good ones further down, too, I'm sure."

He worked his way downstream staying close to the bank until he was a good sixty yards away and nearly around a bend down there. I had a little mayfly pattern already tied on that looked somewhat like bugs I'd seen on the stream before, down past the store where I'd fished before.

Right off the bat, I had a good splash at the fly, but no fish. I kept trying the same spot but didn't have any luck. Then I let it drift on down a bit further and there was a good splash and I had a fish on. He wasn't too big, but he was a fish and just as I was thinking that, he was off. "Damn!" I thought. "Damnit anyway," I said out loud.

---

I'd worked my way down slowly and it must've been an hour on and the sun was even lower when I heard some noise up on the bank back where we'd left our gear. When I looked up there, there was a big raven tearing at the sack with my food. I reached down into the stream and pulled up a rock about as big as his ugly head and I heaved it at him. But before it even left my hand he was flying off.

I went back to my fishing. I was down near the bend now and Flynn had worked all the way down to a fallen tree. I watched him a while. His casting was plain and skillful and I admired him already. Then he waded down below the tree and I couldn't see him anymore.

That's when I heard that same tearing up at my pack and this time I saw that damn ugly raven flying off before I could get another rock. He was carrying something in his beak and I tried to think what he'd gotten and realized it was a package of donuts.

"Goddamned raven," I said.

I could hear Flynn whoop down there by the sunken log. He waded out from behind the fallen tree and his rod was bending and pumping. I watched him play the fish and could see him look back upstream at me from time to time to make sure I was watching. When he landed it, I could see it was a pretty big trout. He let it go and started back up toward me, grinning real big.

When he got within comfortable talking distance he said, "That wasn't him, but it was a good one!"

"Sure was!"

"You have any luck?"

"Not really," I said. "Well I did have some luck. Just it was bad luck. Goddamned raven flew off with my donuts!"

"I'll be!"

"Guess he earned it, though."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well, the first time, I heaved a rock at him."

"Oh..." Flynn chuckled. "Well, let's go back up and drink some beer."

"Good idea," I said.

Later, we were drinking the beer, leaning up against trees at the stream's edge, watching the light fade.

"Don't worry. The fish just need a time or two more to get used to ya," Flynn said. "See that you're friendly and all."

I laughed and said, "Guess so."

a poem - "Like Christmas"

2005-11-19T19:37:00.000+09:00

a cold spring night
beside the river
reflecting traffic lights like Christmas

Birch Forest

2005-11-17T19:01:00.000+09:00

birch forest
autumn dusk arrives
which way did I come?

Welcome!

2005-11-16T20:41:00.000+09:00

Welcome everybody!

My idea here is to post some stories and the occasional poem. Please don't hold me to the number. It may come out to four stories and ten poems, but it could very well turn out to be two stories and twenty poems. (Or 1 story and no poems!?)

Anyway, it's just a hobby and we'll see where it goes. I'm starting a little late to get in on the National Novel writing month -- and besides, I doubt I could crank out a novel anyway. But still, in an indirect way, the whole NaNoWriMo project has inspired me.

Feel free to post comments. Not too keen on SPAM comments, though.