Work Text:
Yane yori takai koinobori
Above the roof fly the koinobori
Okii magoi wa o--
The big one is my--
--”Mother,” Kazuhira sang, pointedly loud. He met the reproachful glance he received from an old woman hunched over the newspaper rack with a glower of his own.
Chiisai higoi wa kodomo-tachi
The small ones are the children
Omoshiroso ni oyoideru
They swim happily along
"Young man," she began, a bundled copy of the March 5th 1953 Yomiuri Shimbun clutched like a stick of incense to ward off his impertinence, "What would your father say if he heard..."
Nothing--he wouldn't understand a word of it, Kazuhira thought but did not say. He left the stock room for the shop; drawing close enough for the late spring light to catch his eyes said it for him. The old woman squinted: at the pale brows and eyelashes beneath his newspaper kabuto helmet, at the two streaming carp hung above the shop window, fluttering against the brisk bay breeze.
His mother begged a hushed pardon from the customer at the sill and slipped in beside him with a soft frown. "Kazuhira, how many times have I told you not to wear this indoors?"
"E-exactly right," the old woman straightened, not missing a beat, "Mind your manners."
"That will be five yen, please," his mother extended her hand while Kazuhira eased the paper hat off to set down carefully. The old woman handed her ten and was gone before she returned with change.
His mother sealed it in an envelope and handed it to Kazuhira to store away for safekeeping. If it wasn't claimed it was savings; savings were good, they meant a trip to the bank and shaved ice or a hot drink along the way, a smile on her face. She went back to her customer, who Kazuhira knew by scent even if he was too small to see him over the sill. It was the confectioner; he always smelled like powdered sugar and rice flour.
"Oh no not at all," the confectioner was saying, as he took the carton of cigarettes he'd bought out of her hands, before she could lay it on the counter, "Boys are supposed to be a handful. Makes the girls want to tame them--just you wait."
"You cad." His mother reprimanded him with a push, laughing. "My Kazuhira will be a perfect gentleman."
The confectioner leaned in and beamed back at her. "The mochi'll be finished by noon or so--why don't you stop by and pick it up?"
His mother agreed to do just that; Kazuhira was old enough to mind the shop for a little while. He could count all the way to a hundred. Divide by twos, fives, and tens. Stand on a box behind the sill in his kabuto and call out to passersby. Even the sailors. Today was a holiday so business was good: harried fathers found reprieve from their families in magazines, wide-eyed Americans on shore leave found solace in Kazuhira's blue eyes and broken English. Crisp bills piled up in the register; his mother would be happy.
"Hey, Kah-zoo-hee-ruh." A deliberate mispronunciation of his name to sound like the Americans did when they tried it. Kazuhira leaned over the counter to face the boy-next-door's biting smirk. "Look!" He pointed upward and Kazuhira followed that finger, blinking. "Your black carp fell off."
He was supposed to ignore the snicker that followed, just like everyone around them now did. People who make scenes only shame themselves, his mother told him. There were plenty of black carps that now flew over fatherless households; but those fathers had died in the war eight years ago. Even the fathers of children younger than him.
Kazuhira'd learned that if he scowled--or smiled--widely enough his lip wouldn't tremble. "My father's not a stupid carp."
"Yeah, he's-"
"An eagle, who eats carp." Kazuhira's grin bared teeth. "And he's coming back for me."
The other boy's cheeks puffed out when he sneered, and he stood on his toes. “Sure he is. When'll that happen, again?
"Sooner than it happens for you."
The boy's eyes went wide and moist; when he lunged for Kazuhira, Kazuhira ducked out of the way. So he swept his arm along the window and knocked everything out of it, down onto the dusty sidewalk, before sprinting away in tears.
Kazuhira tried to save as much as he could. He caught a whole jar of salted plums before it rolled over the edge, even though he landed hard on his chest with a grunt. He wrestled it back up under staring eyes, cheeks burning. Set it down and rushed out into the street before anyone in the crowd could make off with the rest: dirty lighters, crumpled cigarette packs, cracked hard candies.
He's a troublemaker - what a surprise. Where's his mother? Off with a new man, I heard. Oh my, another one? Too bad she can't put him on a ship to send him back where he came from. Don't say that, that's horrible.
He salvaged what he could. Some of the crushed packs had cigarettes inside that were still good; he could clean the lighters. But so much of it was ruined. It would cost his mother money.
Where was his mother, anyway? It wasn't that far to the confectionery. He'd walked there with her before. Noon, she'd said; the sharp shadows cast by the ships in the harbour stretched back east across the sea. Maybe something had happened to her? Sometimes she felt tired and needed to sit for hours--needed his help to walk. What if she was alone, in the street?
Kazuhira popped a shoe-crushed candy into his mouth for lunch, closed and locked the shop, and went in search of his mother.
With the paper helmet on and his head down he looked like any other little boy weaving through the Yokosuka crowds. Above him hundreds of other fabric banners snapped in the wind--whole schools of fish that always went black, red, blue, sometimes green, then purple, or even all the way to orange. Balmy warm weather meant doors were open to display samurai figurines; even real kabuto. A pair of sailors joked about wearing one around town; neither was drunk enough to try it.
They might not be able to afford displays, but Kazuhira and his mother would have kashiwagi-mochi, just like everybody else. Good mochi, at that; the nice confectioner was the best in eastern Yokosuka. His stomach growled. Wasn't the shop right around here? No, it must've been down one more street.
It wasn't there, either. There were so many people out today and the decorations made everything look so different. Nothing was familiar; he didn't know anybody, and when he tried to go back the way he came, he somehow got closer to the port. Further from home.
Kazuhira's jaw clenched; he wasn't lost. He'd find his way to the train station and follow the line home. He could hear the tracks rumble and whistles peal from anywhere. He scrubbed his hot cheeks and burning eyes and made for the sound.
But when he got there, he didn't know which direction to follow them. The one he chose took him even further away, next to the barracks. By the time he finally sagged against a chain-link fence with his kabuto crumpled in his hands there were only a few hours of daylight left. His feet hurt; he'd never make it.
Past the barrier he could hear a raucous cheer, followed by men's laughter; background noise, as distant as the train ahead sliding seaward. He could barely make it out over the frantic beating of his heart.
Until something struck the wires a few feet away, its sharp impact accompanied by the rustle of metal. Kazuhira blinked up backwards as a shadow fell across his face, cast by the tallest man he'd ever seen. A head taller than anybody he knew. His eyes were grey like smoke, and he held a baseball glove in one hand.
This American spoke English too fast for Kazuhira to understand. "P-pardon," Kazuhira repeated, wondering what he'd done wrong. They were causing a scene; others called from back in the field. Kazuhira noticed children, with blond and brown and red hair, watching from behind the pitch. They stared for a few seconds only and went back to chatting amongst themselves.
Slowly and clearly the American said, "Why?", touched the fence, and Kazuhira realized: he was asking him why he was on the other side.
"I don't know," Kazuhira replied.
The very tall man told him to wait. Gestured a sitting motion. Kazuhira had no idea what else to do, so he obliged. Nobody seemed to mind him being there. He understood neither their speech nor the game well, but there were cheers for every hit and cries for every out. One man made it around all the bases then kissed an enthusiastic woman with beautiful curls right on the lips, in public. Everyone saw. Kazuhira gaped.
A different woman with sunlit blonde hair approached him and gave him something foil-wrapped. Greasy. Kazuhira'd seen hamburgers before, but he'd never eaten one. He took a tentative bite, expecting hamburg sauce--unprepared for cheese, onions, bitter mustard and sweet ketchup. Delicious. He told her so but she couldn't understand him.
The sun fell with the evening; the game was long packed up and the spectators gone and worry gnawed at Kazuhira's gut again before the tall man finally returned. His mother was barely visible behind him; Kazuhira smelled her more than saw her. Waited until she was close enough to grab before he clung to her.
Face pressed into her stomach, he felt her bend in half in a deep bow.
He heard the American scratch his head in bewilderment at the solemn apology. "You're welcome, ma'am."
He offered to escort them home; his mother declined. She took Kazuhira by the hand instead. Walked with him along the tracks in the right direction. He didn't think he could make it all the way there, and she'd stopped carrying him years ago, but he was determined not to complain.
They made their way to the station, instead. Kazuhira couldn't look her in the eye; he should have stayed at the shop, like he was supposed to.
Beneath the stairs up to the platform lurked one of the hungry ghosts of the station. Awful-smelling, thin as bones, with melted, paper-thin skin. There used to be more of them, many more, but these days there were less and less. Sometimes people appeased them with food or money; Kazuhira and his mother never had any to spare. He hid behind his mother.
They were alone on a painted wooden bench, waiting, when Kazuhira spoke to break the silence. "Why did my father leave?"
His mother drew in a deep breath and offered him a smile. "Because he had to, Kazuhira. He had orders to move to another post."
"Oh." That was that, then. His father was a soldier and his country had told him he couldn't be here anymore. "Why didn't we go with him?" The barracks didn't seem so bad. Kazuhira could learn to play baseball.
Her smile faltered. "It couldn't be helped."
He scraped his feet along the concrete, shoes blurry. He could tell she was upset. He'd disobeyed her. He'd closed the shop. He'd cost her money; that was bad, now things would disappear from around their home, just like they did whenever she was upset about money. "Where were you...?" Kazuhira whispered. Snuffled.
"Oh, Kazuhira," She wrapped him up in her arms and pulled his head to her chest. She smelled sweet, like mochi. "Just settling accounts."
***
"I dunno', pal--'Miller's' a pretty common name. You know anything else about him?"
Kazuhira glanced back over his shoulder to make sure his mother hadn't heard. But she sat in the pile of pillows on her futon that she rarely left these days, double-checking the inventory ledger. The flutter of an electric fan and the satin baritone of Frank Nagai extolling the merits of nighttime Yurakucho smoothed over her mutters about costs and his chatter with the Americans at the counter.
Harold, a regular, had brought a friend along this time: Ensign Oliveri, who liked to be called Drew. They'd met five minutes ago; Kazuhira'd committed it to memory. They liked it when he remembered their names. It was good for business. Drew'd greeted him in the best Japanese he'd heard from an American yet, and was able to keep up the conversation for a solid minute after the initial ohayo.
"Nothing. Only, his name is Miller, he is an American soldier."
Drew had unusually dark eyes for an American; they sloped lazily downwards at the corners, which creased when he smoked or chewed gum. He did both now thoughtfully while he scanned the photo Kazuhira held. "Too bad he's in civvies, huh, otherwise I coulda' told you--wait a minute. You sure he's a soldier?"
Kazuhira nodded. His mother wouldn't have lied to him about that much. "Yes?"
"Well, geez, you're not gonna' get very far asking a buncha' sailors and marines. You know any ground pounders, Harry?"
"Nope." Harold turned a magazine perpendicular, leaving no doubt as to the genre. He seemed to find something of interest near the fold when a bald-headed American peered inside.
"Are you CHEWING GUM in UNIFORM, marine?" The older man’s voice hit the shelves like a tsunami. The others stood straight as rails and broke out into sweat; as if that tiny ojiisan was a steam engine barreling down at them.
"No, gunny," Harold responded, with gum in his mouth.
The bald man moved like an executioner. "And what about you, sir--what did Commander Ward say about deportment?"
"No," said Kazuhira with the most accented but still intelligible English he could muster. "Samples. Samples! I give them to regular customers. They tell me if like. Very impolite to refuse."
The old man scowled. Drew spreads his hands. "The Commander told me that I was to under no circumstances cause trouble with the locals, sergeant. We were going to swallow it before we stepped outside."
They both sagged when the bald man left, mollified. "Goddang, kiddo, you sure saved our bacon," Harold sighed.
Kazuhira shrugged; he'd seen his mother defuse enough tricky situations with sailors over the years. "You come here every day. Least I can do."
"Still, lemme see if I can't help find this Miller for you." Drew reached for the picture. "I know signals guys at the air base who worked with the Army in Korea. Maybe they know him."
Kazuhira shook his head and snatched it back.
"They're not gonna come all this way for candy and newspapers - say, why don't you come with me? ...Least I can do."
Kazuhira'd never been to Atsugi; it wasn't far, just a transfer from the Yokosuka line to the Tokaido line near Yokohama. It was almost time to close the shop, anyhow. He told Drew he'd meet him at the station closest to the harbour.
"He doesn't owe you." His mother frowned up from her accounts; they slowly lurched toward a larger store, or an inn in the countryside, hamstrung by doctor's bills.
"You can't keep me from finding him, mom." As hard as she'd tried. When he'd made her supper he kissed her brow and left for the docks.
Drew awaited in a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up against the heat, hair slick with oil and sweat.
A pedestrian enough sight in Yokosuka, 'two' foreigners still earned a wide berth a few stops down the line.
"What makes you wanna find your old man?" Drew asked after a time, lounging on the plastic train seats with his legs spread wide enough to touch Kazuhira's knee.
"He didn't know about me. When he does, he will come back."
"Hm.” Unconvinced. “What makes you think that?"
"He only left because..." Kazuhira stumbled over the words. He was ordered to? He had obligations, to his home, to his family? "...It couldn't be helped..." he murmured under his breath in his mother tongue.
"We don't really say that, y'know. Not like you do." Drew looked out the window at the vibrant green paddies rushing by."We say: where there's a will, there's a way. He could've released. Could've divorced. Could've dropped everything for a plane ticket and a pretty smile. So long as you're willing to pay the price."
"Is that what you would do, Drew?" Addressing someone older, a near-stranger, a customer, so informally tasted wrong, but Kazuhira was well beyond familiar territory.
"Sounds like 'doll' when you say it." Drew gave his thigh a nudge, grinning. "You sweet on me?"
Kazuhira laid his palm atop Drew's knee to move it back into place. His skin burned to the touch; throat and chest damp with perspiration Kazuhira could feel. "Would you stay for a smile and a plane ticket?"
"When you get far enough away from home, nothing seems real. It's a dream; you could be anything, to anybody. Nobody knows you. You're free..." Drew caught Kazuhira's hand before he could remove it. "...But, eventually, you gotta wake up."
"Not yet, though."
"No, not yet."
A grey thread of dawn wound through the black streets by the time Kazuhira returned home, hours past the last train. He'd planned to scrub off the thick scents of sweat, cigarettes, and alcohol in the sink; he got all the way to the washroom before he realized that his mother was sitting up awake in the dark.
Would she want to know that he'd found a full name and address? That Miller'd been successful, wealthy; a well-respected instructor who’d retired a full colonel?
"Where were you?" Her face was so tight she looked as old as the other mothers of children Kazuhira's age.
Kazuhira turned away. "Settling accounts."
* * *
A snippet of talk radio Kazuhira had overheard while passing through Haneda airport five years ago had lied to him.
Japan, a dour commentator had said reverently, is the only country in the world to experience four true seasons.
And for a moment, standing tall and straight-backed beside his single suitcase in the line to check it, Kazuhira had experienced doubt. He’d already pawned off the first class ticket his father had paid for in exchange for an economy fare, spent the difference of it and the sale of the shop on the best hospital he could afford for his mother - there was no going back now. But which season was he prepared to relinquish: sweltering summers, biting winters, bright springs or vivid autumns? Would his spirit wither in their absence, as the man on the radio implied; who were these people who made do without them, and would they ever understand him?
The autumn leaves in Providence were as red-gold as any on Tsukayama - albeit a month early. Redder, perhaps; they reminded him of his one and only trip to Kyoto, to see distant relatives who'd ushered him largely out of sight. Hazy childhood recollections of mauve, crimson, amber, and woodsmoke scattered amongst dark green conifers. Of distant temple bells.
The air was just as crisp, too, and there were as many sweaters and jackets worn as laid out on the leaf-strewn grass on which they all sat. The last good weather of the year, he'd heard. Until it snowed.
Kazuhira was watching the clouds assume ever more interesting shapes through the wisps of their collective marijuana smoke when his subconscious alerted him to the sound of his name amidst his classmates' scattered conversations. The brisk, clipped speech the tutor his father hired had preferred came almost naturally to him now, the extremes of his accent ironed out completely and the remainder smoothed; yet, fast-paced, excited native speakers with a shared dialect still lost him, at times.
"Tommy," Janet was saying in the sing-song tone his mother used to chide potential customers, "Shut up. Miller's dad was in the army."
"Miller's not his dad." Tommy protested with a wave of his joint. "It's a joke, right? 'To prevent the spread of communism in Asia.' It's an internal struggle - I thought the whole point of the free market was survival of the fittest. Let the people fight it out."
"Good strategy, if the USSR was willing to play along." To take a strong position in on a political issue was a quick way to out himself as an outsider, Kazuhira'd found. There was always some nuance he'd managed to miss in spite of all of his reading; he could mimic an op-ed column in last week's newspaper, if pressed. "She's not, though."
Besides, to him Vietnam was an alien ceremony held on a bright sunny day that baked him through a borrowed black suit. Clean, rolling lawns dotted by gravestones as far as the eye could see and only rarely grouped by family. Bumbling through the motions of a ritual everyone else knew, thankful that no one deigned to see or speak to him.
Janet's raised eyebrow and Tommy's head tilt told him he'd said something wrong; Kazuhira swallowed, chest tight while his mind spooled up rapidly to rationalize it.
Until: "Mother Russia, right." Tommy shrugged. "I'm surprised they don't just look to Japan. Free market got their recovery back on track, that's for sure."
Kazuhira exhaled; the clouds were burned newspapers lit to roast bony, bottom-feeding fish purchased off the black market. The only thing he'd eaten that day - another hazy memory of childhood. Adults clucking a mixture of admiration and incredulity over some politician who'd kept to the government's rationing limits for food out of principle and starved to death.
"That's because it's fake." Janet rolled her eyes. "And they're not stupid. Without US support during their reconstruction, without trade favouritism, they'd be in the same position as the rest of Asia."
"No," said Shunsuke - they called him 'shuhn-soo-kee' so Kazuhira was careful to do the same - with a vehemence that clearly surprised them both. "It is not. The Economic Miracle is real."
Kazuhira willed himself not to cringe with every word. 'Miracle' was nigh unintelligible, understood through context alone - the first half of it sounded like his own name.
Shunsuke was a politician's son. There had been a tradition of sending them to American Ivy League schools before the war, he'd learned, after it the tradition continued. Kazuhira had never met one in his life in Japan; Shunsuke's family was loaded, and Shunsuke himself could be very generous whenever Kazuhira showed up with the things Shunsuke himself could never manage to bring to a party. Attractive co-eds, for example.
"It is true there was some help from the US government, but there was much devastation." Shunsuke continued in his book-learned, book-taught English: "The hard work of the Japanese people made the difference."
"Every country has hard workers." Janet remained skeptical. "Man hours don't have that much to do GDP. It's an issue of prot--"
"It is attitude. Unselfishness. Japanese people work together, with gratitude for their companies."
"There are plenty of other collectivist societies. Like I was saying, protectioni--"
"There is a history. In Meiji Restoration, Japan became modernized in decades. Recovery, same." Shunsuke was losing his grammar along with his temper; Janet was starting to scowl.
"Maybe it was faster, yes, but all that means is the Japanese economy will suffer as the others catch up. If China ever becomes a major player it might even coll--"
"No, it will grow, it will be biggest, do not compare it with China, we are not--"
"Hm, he's got a point, babe," Tommy interceded. Janet opened her mouth; he kept going. "I read about it - there's this thing called bushido. Means 'samurai spirit'. Absolute loyalty to one's lord - that's the same attitude a worker has for his boss. He's saying you need to understand the culture."
Kazuhira wasn't going to correct him as to what bushido meant - wasn't going to say a word. He'd come to relish the selective invisibility this country had given him. If no one had addressed him he'd have been happy to spectate.
But Janet asked, "What do you think, Miller?", looking for an ally. "I heard you grew up in Japan."
"Sure." Kazuhira replied with impenetrable neutrality. "My dad was posted there when I was a kid."
"Oh cool." Tommy nodded. "Yeah, what do you think? You'd know better than any of us."
"I think it's a hard-working society, definitely." No one had ever asked him to be kingmaker before; Tommy's expression left no doubt that Kazuhira's word would be final. That would be that. He chose his next words carefully. "But it's true that it also benefits from a unique economic situation."
Janet seemed satisfied; Shunsuke, terse now, was not. He mulled over his words, visibly, before catching Kazuhira's eye. "I heard. That you are part Japanese."
Kazuhira felt every heartbeat before he managed to nod. "That's true. On my mother's side."
Shunsuke plainly did not know what to do with that response; it did not have the effect he had anticipated on Janet or Tommy, who were impressed or mildly curious at best. Tommy's grin was lopsided: "Can't say I don't feel him. Your old man, I mean. Those girls sure know how to treat one."
"Yeah. Absolutely." Kazuhira's blithe smile, he thought, could have rivalled any of his mother's.
"So why'd he leave? Could've retired there."
That was easy enough to answer, now: all Kazuhira had to do was ask himself. He pointed to Shunsuke. "Same reason he left. You grew up here, you wouldn't get it, but - this is the center of the modern world. This is where all the opportunities are. You want to make something of yourself, you gotta come here. You don't, and all you'll ever be is the king of your own backyard."
Kazuhira was watching the lays rays of red light bleed through redder leaves across the surface of a pristine pond when Janet found him. The length of twilight here - twice that of back home - hadn't ceased to fascinate him. He knew from the way she wordlessly cozied up against the same tree, half-full bottle of red wine in hand, that the others had gone home.
He offered her his jacket.
"Shunsuke tried to tell me you were half-Japanese, you know," she mused, picking her hair out from the collar strand by strand, "that he could tell by your accent that you were from a poor family somewhere south of Tokyo. Kanto, I think he called it."
"Yokosuka," Kazuhira corrected. The mouth of the bottle tasted like her lipstick; a storefront cherry waxed shiny to entice customers. "That's where the base is."
"And that's where you would've learned Japanese." She rolled her eyes with a sigh and a smile. "I knew he was full of it. Besides, you can't be half-Japanese."
Kazuhira paused mid-pull, lips still quirked around the rim. "I can't?"
"Your eyes," she murmured, brushing the bone below one with her thumb, "Are blue. Which means someone on your mother's side had blue eyes too."
"Unlikely, maybe, but--"
She laughed. "Not unlikely. Impossible. That's what he said, too. But you can't argue away genetics. They're not based on your point of view. No matter what anybody says about you, you needed two sets to get these baby blues."
The cherry tasted sour on her lips.
"Strange how few Japanese people seem to know that."
* * *
Kazuhira paused at the foot of the road to check the mail before undertaking the long trudge through unplowed snow up to his father's house proper.
Reams of envelopes spilled out of the box the moment he opened it; too many to catch with both hands. Power bills and bank statements littered the ground and were damp by the time he unburied them. He rifled through them all, the festive multicolored lights of the gated home next door sufficient to see that not one contained a Japanese address.
Kazuhira's mother had stopped responding to his letters some time ago. None of them had been returned to sender; the hospital hadn't informed him that she'd left, been moved, or died. They still charged him every month. Fine - let her be petty about this. He'd already made up his mind to come home. And now, he'd be able to get any job he desired. He could buy her another store to replace the one he'd sold to keep her in comfort while he was gone. He could make it so she never had to work another day in her life while she was with him.
He crammed them all into his briefcase and made his way far, far up the winding driveway past snow-laden trees until all flashes of bright tinsel and snatches of music were swallowed by dimness and silence. Past the half-blanketed taupe Chrysler Imperial on which he'd first learned to drive; through the unlocked door closed to within a quarter inch of the stop against the elements.
He stopped to kick off his shoes then thought better of it: the most recent set of dust-lined footprints were the housekeeper's, and she hadn't. The fundamental wrongness of the act had ceased to bother him years ago.
Sheer force of habit drew him to the kitchen to make tea. He set the briefcase down on one of the many cardboard boxes beside the cabinets - she'd never sent for her half of the china. Kazuhira had finished boiling water on the stove by the time he realized the cupboards were empty.
The housekeeper wasn't here to smack his hand for reusing a bag.
He carried two tepid mugs up the stairs to his father's study. The door to his brother's room was ajar, the blankets on its bed slightly mussed.
The sole light Kazuhira had glimpsed through the windows was the desk lamp in the study. It shone on a bottle of bourbon, a single glass, and his father's M1911. The cleaning kit lay beside it, unopened.
His father didn't look at him when he entered the room, so Kazuhira responded in kind. There had been no new additions to the bookshelves since last year - Atlases were stacked against volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, issues of National Geographic, von Clausewitz, and Lafcadio Hearn. Neither had the pictures, though the family ones downstairs had greatly: both Millers in uniform, his father beaming next to a beleaguered T-34 driver on V-E day.
His childhood fantasies of his mud-splattered, roaring father storming the beaches of Okinawa had long been replaced by the reality of a soft-spoken gentleman officer who had spent every tour prior in Europe, had freed and fed prison camps, had been selected to oversee the occupation government due to his diligent work rebuilding West Germany.
Kazuhira set the mugs down on the desk and took a seat opposite his father, unacknowledged.
He had no plans to return here. He absorbed the contours of father’s wan face - once fair and now ashen - to the same extent he had the lines in his mother’s brow the night he’d packed his bags and left Japan for what had been in his mind for good. They would be deeper when he got back to Yokosuka. His father’s eyes would be hollower if he ever came back to Virginia.
His father poured the bourbon into the tea.
“Merry Christmas.”
Kazuhira knew what he ought to say: Merry Christmas, dad. Or to bid him farewell. Promise to write to him and send pictures. To tell him how his mother was doing; to ask, perhaps, if he wanted to send for her even though it had been the first thing Kazuhira’d asked him when he’d laid eyes on the man in Norfolk International.
Instead, he spun his own mug in a tight-knuckled grip. Until the tea in his was cold. Until his father’s was empty.
Until he worked up the courage to ask, breathless: “Why did you leave us? Why come back here?”
“For my son.”