The Electrical Field (8 page)

At a glance, they were a family, despite the stiffness, the space between their bodies. They were nihonjin, after all. But from that very first day four years ago, they were odd, even to me. It was in early December, the kind of still day when the cold seems to suck the heat from your bones with its
dryness; about five in the afternoon. I remember the time because I’d just checked the clock and made a mental note to serve Papa his dinner in one hour, as usual, expecting Stum within the next half-hour.

The four of them had come out of their car, the same navy Pontiac, newer and shinier then. Yano struggled with the front door lock for a moment, then Chisako led Tam and Kimi in, eight or nine at the time. They must have been hungry and tired from their journey, wherever they’d come from. They took nothing inside except for Chisako with her handbag and small vanity case. I kept an eye out as I made dinner, walking out to the living-room for one thing or another.

When Stum arrived, he stopped on the porch to look at the orange U-Haul across the electrical field, all the while holding the door open to the brittle cold.

“Hayaku, hayaku!” I hurried him in, briskly shutting the door. I was a little more buoyant then; I had more energy. He went to the window with his coat and boots still on.

“Who are they?” he asked. I heard the boyish anticipation in his voice, the bit of hopefulness that some life might come to our lonely neighbourhood. His emotions seemed more pure then, untainted. He was less guarded and his sweetness shone through in simple ways, daily. He studied the blue Pontiac parked there with the U-Haul hitched behind it. The car sat low to the driveway, packed as it was with a jumble of items. It was impossible to discern more from this distance.

“Nihonjin,” I said abruptly, walking away.

“What?” He was jittery. Excited even.

“Take off your boots,” I scolded. The snow he’d trekked in was melting into my carpet.

“How do you know, ne-san? Are you sure?” He struggled to kick off his boots in the hallway. His nose was running.

“A family,” I added, handing him a tissue. I could not be wrong about them being Japanese. There were telltale signs. I took Yano for a nisei right off, with the U-Haul, the toughness, everything do-it-yourself. Chisako’s walk, the way she held her head slightly tilted and down; her wearing a dress instead of slacks, even for a day of moving, in winter. I knew she was from Japan. Later she would alter her walk, taking bigger and straighter steps, striding with her head held high, no doubt mimicking other women she saw. But before long she reverted to her old ways and gestures, when she came to understand how attractive they could be, tilting her head down and stepping daintily.

All that evening, Stum and I watched out the window for some sign, but nothing moved. As night fell, the house remained dark.

“Maybe the power’s not on yet,” Stum offered. His eyes followed the wires from the house to the electrical towers streaming over the field.

The next morning, as I dusted the windowsill, I spotted Keiko Nakamura from two blocks over, walking in her way, which was then lithe and athletic, even eager, you might say, springing off her muscular calves. Her hair was long and sleek, the fashion for young mothers then. She followed the driveway up to the house, skirting the U-Haul. In one hand she was carrying a box wrapped in a brightly coloured cloth, a furoshiki chosen, I knew, with care; with the other she dragged along Sachi, who was the same age as Tam and Kimi. Struggling to keep up.

Keiko knocked, waited, knocked again; after another moment, she set down the box in the furoshiki beside the door and left. This time she crossed in front, through the mounds of melting snow, glancing up at the wide empty window.

Five minutes later, no more, someone peeked out from the corner of the window. It was Chisako. I saw her thick black bundle of hair. I felt like a birdwatcher spying a rare, twittery bird. A moment later she appeared at the door, reached for the box, and disappeared.

Another day passed before Yano emerged, by himself, to begin unloading boxes from the U-Haul. I remember noticing then, from that distance, something disagreeable about him. A mean stubbornness. The way he took on too heavy a load but refused to put it down in order to close or open a door. The boxes tumbled from his arms two or three times, and each time he stood over them for a minute. Later I would see his broad, ugly hands in tight fists of frustration, like Papa’s in years past; he was so angry at himself and the rest of the world. So many times he proved to himself with those tumbling boxes that nothing went his way, nothing turned out right, ever. Things went more wrong for him than for anybody else.

I didn’t see any more of them for several days, until Chisako came out with the two children, leading them to the side yard, still clutching her handbag and wearing a dress, very ladylike. There they played on the crusty mounds of greying snow. To me, the children’s coats looked flimsy and the two seemed to grow cold quickly.

I stood watch at my window whenever I could, but Papa
was growing more demanding with each passing day. Stum would shut himself away in his room. Then one morning after I’d packed Stum off to work with his lunch, when Papa lay dozing on the old green chesterfield, long since pitched out, there was a knock at the door. Not one knock or two but several, over and over, insistent.

My speechless surprise at finding him at my door might have been taken for rudeness by almost anyone other than Yano. But he was as distracted as ever, preoccupied with his own scattered concerns, yet at the same time quite focused and determined. He was someone who could only concentrate on one thing at a time. If you gave him a square inch of sidewalk to study, he’d find something in it.

“What do you want?” I asked. A little more brusque than I meant to be. I held the door half closed, as I did with strangers. Sometimes I wouldn’t answer, to avoid pushy door-to-door salesmen or nosy neighbours. Yano seemed to expect me to open the door wide and invite him in.

“Saw you walking,” he said in a stilted way, punching the air towards the field with his fist. It was the way so many nisei spoke, their Japanese no better, with that halting rhythm I’d worked hard to rid myself of; no grace at all. I remember that feeling, the hated awkwardness of my speech; the lumpiness of my tongue. I cringed to hear it come back at me out of another’s mouth. And there were other loathsome things about Yano: his smell, of course, and how he stared so intently at you and stood so close. I closed the screen door even more, as if to shoo him away. But he stayed put, his face almost pressed to the mesh. His smell grew more pungent.

“You nihonjin?” That’s how direct he was. I nodded, though I was not willing to acknowledge the slightest connection between us. “Yano desu,” he said, pushing his hand inside the door, I suppose to shake mine, when Papa suddenly shouted for me. I excused myself and quickly shut the door.

“Dare desu-ka?” Papa was demanding to know who it was. I hastily shut the drapes as he strained towards the window. I did not want him to become needlessly agitated or excited. I glimpsed Yano heading down the length of the electrical field instead of across it, back to his house.

“New neighbour,” I said, plumping up the cushion behind his weakening back. “Yano-san.”

“Nihonjin?” he exclaimed. For what were the chances of three Japanese families settling in one small neighbourhood? I went to point out their house but realized I’d already shut the drapes. I explained that he lived with his wife and two small children in the house across the field. Papa grew excited then, and struggled up on his frail legs, but fell back. He struggled again. I could make out the outline of his legs, the jut of bones through the worn fabric of his trousers. I suppose he was hoping to make new friends. At his age. Whatever his ideas, I thought it best not to encourage them, and to keep him calm.

“Sit, Papa.” I gently pushed him down. “Gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

That would be the sum of one afternoon’s conversation between us. Not much less than now. Back then it worried me, spending all of my time alone with only Papa and his ragged bits of English. I was reading books, books of all
kinds, on all topics under the sun, one after another from the shelves of our little local library. I went through the newspaper with my dictionary every day, and began filling in the crossword puzzles to put myself to the test. I wanted to better myself. I was petrified, in spite of the progress I was making, of sliding back. In the beginning, watching me, Stum was often silent and sullen, retreating to his room.

After a time, the two of them began to tiptoe around me whenever I was reading, filling in my crossword, or sorting out my word jumble. Often they left the newspaper folded in quarters to that page for me. They saw me differently in those days, I suppose. Different from them, poring over my precious words every day.

Yano talked like the rest of them, and in many ways he seemed cruder, rougher. When he later told me that he’d worked on a road crew during the war, I wasn’t a bit surprised.

One morning several weeks after his brief visit to our door, he intercepted me on my early morning walk.

“Saito-san!” His deep voice, commanding really, reached me through the faint hum of traffic from the distant highway. I glanced back without breaking my stride. I heard the trudge of his boots crack the surface of snow glazed from freezing rain early that morning. Suddenly he was at my side, out of breath, and a single bead of sweat rolled down his temple, odd in the dead of winter.

“Sure walk fast,” he announced, smiling a broad, fleeting smile.

I eyed his jacket, its flimsy fabric, as he unzipped it. “Careful you don’t catch cold,” I said.

“I’m cold-blooded, just like the reptiles. Never get sick.”
Then, as if to prove it, he took off his jacket as we walked and proceeded to roll up his shirt-sleeves.

We walked on, the towers looming ahead, marking my halfway point. Birds were swarming in the grey sky above us. I was about to say something about the possibility of more freezing rain when I heard Yano’s voice lagging behind me once again, fainter this time. I turned back to find him stooped, one hand spread across his chest where his shirt opened. As I came closer, I heard his breath wheezing in and out, a rope straining through a narrow loop.

“What is it, Yano-san?” I was little help standing there in the middle of the field as he choked. He peered up at me through suddenly bloodshot, watering eyes, and pointed to his back. He’d dropped his jacket in the snow and I bent to pick it up.

“Please,” he sputtered. “Chotto,” and he pointed to his back, making a gesture for me to rub it. He had the strength to snatch the jacket from me with one hand, and threw it back to the ground. “Hard, like this, ne?” He showed me again as he gasped for air. I rubbed the heel of my palm over his back, behind his lungs, but my hand kept slipping. I took off my glove. His shirt was wet, and a sharp, yeasty odour rose from him.

“Harder!” he rasped and stooped lower. “Hayaku!” He meant for me to rub faster, and I tried, but though his flesh was solid and thick I was afraid of hurting him. Then, like a clearing arrived at in a forest, my movements finally found a rhythm that joined with his slowing breath. In another moment he straightened up and was able to breathe more easily. He pushed my hand away then, roughly.

“Iie, iie,” he muttered gruffly, like an issei with no other words, like Papa, telling me: enough. He took the jacket I held out to him. “San kyu, san kyu,” he said with a mock bow.

“Are you all right now?” I asked cautiously.

“Fine, fine.” He took a deep breath to show me. “A little breathing problem. Nothing serious.” He coughed once more.

I nodded. “Well, if you’re sure you’re all right.” I’d already stepped away from him.

He waved me off. “I know, I know. Papa’s waiting, right?” He winked and fell in beside me. “Don’t hold back. I can keep up,” he reassured me. But I could tell he was growing tired, and I slowed down. I noticed he was staring straight ahead, up at the hill.

“You know who they named that for, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

He whistled, watching me. “The prime minister. That bugger Mackenzie King.”

I had no interest in that kind of discussion, of things I’d long ago left behind and made my peace with. But Yano kept on with them. I stopped at the point in the field opposite his house. There were still no drapes up, as there never would be, and the window displayed an empty space without furniture. Then, quite abruptly, Chisako with her stark black bun peeked out from the corner of the glass. She must have been there for some time. No sooner had our eyes met when she vanished. Yano seemed unaware as he put his jacket back on, and took one quavering, gulping breath that betrayed him. “See you again, Saito-san,” he said cheerfully, smiling a wide-open smile that revealed a jumble of teeth in a too-small mouth.

As my little porch and my curtained front window came into sight, I heard him bellow behind me across the field. “Saito-san!” I turned and gave a short wave.

“Thank you, Saito-san! Thank you!” he shouted back.

My memories of those first meetings with Yano drifted in and out of my head, I suppose because I’d summoned them. I was haunted by the echo of that voice, that voice not heard in days, wondering when I would hear it once more. Remembering too how he unsettled me each time, repelled as I was by him. I wanted to convince myself that, repulsive man though he was, Yano was not capable of harming his own children, or his wife. Something had gone terribly wrong, it was true. But Yano was not capable of such an act. The children, I was convinced—in spite of Stum’s terrible accusation—were somewhere, anywhere, safe with him.

“It’s still there.” Sachi was rubbing her fingers together as she had at the parking lot just days ago. Already it was Tuesday. Clutching books in one arm, she watched me closely as I held the screen door open to her.

“What is?” I couldn’t tell if she was trying to torture me or herself. But I had to make her say the words.

“The blood. Tam’s mom.” Behind her the late-afternoon sky was growing sooty. I shook my head as I let her in.