by Paul Yoon
All at once men tumbled out of the cargo holds, their bodies shadowed against the low sky. Scurrying like thieves. Some knelt on the grass and appeared to be digging. Then the air popped and the grass caught fire, first in one corner, then in another, and another, as if the ground had cracked open to illuminate the stretchers, dozens of them, already spread out on the lawn.
Miya climbed down the tree and brushed away dirt from her hospital gown. She tucked the loose strands of her hair behind her ears and put on her nurse’s cap. She followed the path to the driveway, engulfed by the smoke of flares and the scent of the wounded. She helped a nurse lift a stretcher, shocked by the soldier’s lightness. He was an American. His gaze lolled and his breath was sour. The nurse led them past the doors and into the main hall.
“What’s your name?” Miya asked the soldier. “Where are you from?”
He looked up at her, seeing her upside down. He grinned. “Hi, doll face,” he said. “I’m Benson from Boston.”
“Hello, Benson from Boston,” she said, and the American blinked and his smile vanished. When he was settled into a bed she took his hand.
Soon after, a patient was placed on the bed beside Benson’s. She didn’t go to him until later, curious, parting the curtain to reveal a young man with gauze wrapped around his head and bandages over his eyes. He was a mainlander, perhaps. Or an island native. He was comatose, she realized, and asked Benson whether he knew who the patient was. Benson didn’t respond, staring up at the ceiling as he would for most of his time here. She checked to see if Henry was close by. He was at the end of the ward. She turned again toward the bandaged patient and shut the curtain behind her.
She leaned forward. It was as though layers of his body had been stripped. “Hello,” she whispered, not yet recognizing him. The sun had risen and the ward blazed white for a moment before the clouds passed. She lifted the bandages away from his eyes, then quickly drew her hand back as if stung. She looked around, disoriented, clutching the bed sheet. She knew him, she kept repeating, though no one responded. She knew him. He was there, within this face, this aged body, she was certain of it. But her voice had failed her and so she spoke in silence about how long it had been and how he had come back, as she knew he would, this boy, whom she held under a tree, many years ago, while a man painted their likeness.
She was woken by the fading thunder of aircraft. Then the quiet returned and she lay listening to the sound of breathing. She was unsure of the time. Her eyes adjusted to the faint light from the windows, the convalescents lined up along the walls like dark monuments. She had fallen asleep on a chair beside Junpei’s bed.
Benson was muttering, “I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t do nothing at all.” She crossed over to him and massaged his temples with her fingertips. He was sweating. A fever. She went to the sink and soaked a cloth in cold water and then draped it over Benson’s forehead. A nurse passed her, yawning. “Get some sleep, Miya,” she whispered, heading to the quarters. Miya put on her coat. And then, looking back at Junpei, his shadowed body under a sheet, she stepped outside, breathing in the air.
At the stone garden she sat on the bench and took off her shoes. The garden’s terrain was made of sand, raked to resemble currents of water running beside the stones. She placed her feet into the sand and felt the coolness of it and then the quick warmth, as though the earth were a hand tugging at her ankles. She looked up at the tree and then drifted into sleep once more, facing the dark windows of the ward.
In daylight she rose to the footsteps of convalescents and nurses. At the grove she plucked a lemon, slipping it into her pocket before returning inside. Junpei lay with his arms to his side. She leaned forward and inhaled his raspy breath and saw the child she remembered still there along the bottom half of his face. She brought the lemon to her mouth and bit into the rind, breaking away the flesh. She squeezed the juice onto a wet cloth and began to clean his chin, wiping away dirt and crusted blood.
“You’ll need a proper bath, soon,” she said. “Like everyone else here. It’s no longer a school, you know. But there is still the tree. And the stone garden. Of course there is.”
They found him beside the remnants of a house, she was told. “He wouldn’t have gone inside first,” Henry said, examining the patient’s legs. “We’d have nothing left of him if he did.”
She ran her fingers over his bandages, guessing where his eyebrows were hidden. “Where have you been, Junpei?” she asked him, cleaning his hands.
She had witnessed his first step, she recalled. At the orphanage’s entrance. Once learned, he walked all throughout the day, the child’s face filled with determination as he swayed his hips and his arms, shuffling past the dormitory, the classrooms, the barn—out toward the fences as well, ignoring Miya’s pleas for him to slow. When she was doing her chores he would walk back and forth beside her, in circles, some form of fury in him, his body unwilling to pause until they were called for supper, where he would sit on her lap, his head bowed, as if catching up on a day’s worth of breathing. “Messenger,” the children called him.
The orphanage was still there, she knew, on the other side of the western hills. It had expanded over the years, housing children from the war. She did not go to it anymore.
She and Junpei had arrived at the same time. An earthquake had destroyed Tokyo. They had, along with hundreds of others, been airlifted to this island, which was under Japanese rule then. Solla, it was called. Their ages were guessed. Names were given. They had not known each other before. They were paired together and slept on a blanket on the floor, her arm tucked under his head. They lay on their sides, facing each other, their bodies in the shape of prayer. Junpei’s hair caught in her teeth when she woke in the mornings.
In those early years she bathed him. She filled unused fuel barrels with water and lifted the boy into it. He would cling to her ears as she washed his chest. When he was older, she brought Junpei to Miss Hara’s lessons, learning both Japanese and Korean to communicate with the local islanders. They were taught songs, mathematics as well. They helped with the house chores, wiping windows with newspaper, mopping the floors, taking breaks to duel with brooms in the yard. They took walks through the forest and up the hills to view the ocean. They walked to the school, counting all the artists they could see behind windows. Not once did they speak of Tokyo.
When the boy was nearly Miya’s height, Miss Hara asked him whether he now preferred to stay with the other boys. He shook his head, clutching Miya’s hand, and she felt the surety of his grip and was convinced in that moment that they would grow old together—that theirs was a shared life. She would, at night, tell him of this. A house by the sea. They would fish. They would plant a garden. “Horses,” she would add, facing him, her fingers galloping across his shoulders lit by the moon.
She would always remember that morning when he left her in the yard to chase a crow. In memory there was his face and only that, the open mouth, his wet eyes, his return, his hands picking at his clothes, an animal-like cry erupting from the center of his body. How he held her and she, unable to calm him, saw Miss Hara hurrying to the barn. Miya followed. A crowd had formed. They were all gazing up.
It took her a moment to realize that what hung from the rafters was in fact a person and not a doll, his limbs dangling, as if filled with cotton. It was a boy, his face discolored from the rope around his neck. And there was Junpei behind her, clutching her waist, pointing at the floor where a shoe had fallen. No one else noticed.
After this, Junpei began to wander. She would wake to find that he had already risen. Or she would be washing clothes and turn to see that he had disappeared. He missed his lessons. In the evenings he didn’t show up for supper. She searched the dormitory and the classrooms. She searched the barn and the fields. She ran down the road and saw at last his figure in the distance, standing there by the fence, his hands rooted into his pockets.
“Junpei,” she called one evening, taking hold of his wrist. “Where have you been?�
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It was growing dark. He wouldn’t look at her, his eyes roaming over the mountains. “Not far,” he said.
“Miss Hara will be worried,” she said, tugging on his arm. “Come.”
She turned and he followed her. At the orphanage they slept as they always did, facing each other. Sometime later he woke her with his voice. “I can’t find it, Miya. I’ve looked everywhere. For the other one. He was barefoot, you know. I saw his toes.” He drifted, the words slipping, and she dreamed of a boy who would not stop walking.
In six month’s time, Junpei was gone. They had been at the orphanage for over a decade. It was the beginning of winter. Snow had yet to fall. She went to bathe. Upon her return, he wasn’t there. The schoolbag they shared was missing, their pillow as well. Miya, wearing her nightgown, rushed to the road and called his name and waited. Her hair began to freeze. Miss Hara found her that afternoon, still waiting. With her hands she had torn the hem of her gown.
It was the year an American woman named Earhart had flown over the Pacific. From Hawaii to California. She recalled that she and Junpei had heard through the radio. That evening they climbed the hill behind the orphanage. They walked to the edge of the cliff. They raised their hands above their eyes and peered out at the horizon until the ocean faded.
All that week she remained beside him, vigilant. Benson ignored her, staring up at the ceiling. With her head resting on her hand she watched Junpei. The flat bridge of his nose. The curve of his cheekbones. His chapped lips. She dipped her finger in lemon water and placed it into his mouth, convinced that in his sleep it would sink into the soil of his tongue and he would dream of citrus. She felt his teeth, like crags, the one he had lost a mystery to her, this empty space near the front, an incomplete thought. The hair on his face was beginning to grow. He smelled of staleness and storage. She pressed her thumbs against the calloused skin of his feet, feeling for any traces of where he had been.
She spoke to him. Of her years. Of what he had missed. “You still have your youth,” she told him. “You’ll get used to things here.”
She attempted to imagine his own years away but couldn’t. They were an undecipherable map, with nameless cities and towns, borderless countries. She saw him forever on a boat following the routes along the Pacific, absent of history, invisible to it. He would have woken one day in a cabin, feeling the ocean shudder, great spires of smoke in the far distance in Japan, as if the entire country were evaporating. He would not have thought of her then.
And would he have ever gone to Tokyo? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think so. She never believed he had gone in search of that. Instead, he had fled. Sure of this, she fell asleep beside him, speaking of gardens to his silent face.
She was startled from a dream she couldn’t remember. Carrying a lamp she wandered the hospital’s corridors, as she did when she first arrived. In the hallways she brought the light up to the walls, pushing away the moonlight. On first glance the walls were bare, nondescript, the paint yellowed by age and dust. The longer she stared, however, bright rectangular shapes rose out of them, spaced out evenly along the walls like ghost windows.
She had searched for paintings before. She used to ask Henry about them but he shrugged, indifferent. All that night she looked again. First she explored the main hall, taking the staircase quietly. There were so many doors. She paused at each of them, listening to a patient’s breathing. If she heard nothing, she slid the doors open and inspected the rooms now used to store equipment, cans of food, extra mattresses. She went outside and into the cottages, opening closets, waking the patients there. They looked at her perplexed, and she brought a finger to her lips as if sharing some kind of secret. She hunted with all that was left of her energy, releasing it in a great burst.
Exhausted, she headed to the stone garden. The moon hung over the crest of the hills, an even light spreading over the grass, the tree, and the sand that sparkled like diamonds. Midway there she stopped. One of the stones had moved. She squinted, then rubbed her eyes with her palms, shaking her head, feeling her limbs grow heavy. The stone moved again. It rose. It began to approach her and she clenched her fists, wondering to what world she had entered in these hours. Closer, it grew skin and then a face formed and she saw that it was a boy, no older than thirteen.
“Hey, Miss,” the boy said, in the island dialect. “I hear your footsteps. All over.” He tapped his earlobes. He was dressed in dark pants, a button-down shirt and rubber moccasins. His head was shaved and he had thin lips. A small leather pouch hung from his belt loop. He asked what Miya was looking for.
“Paintings,” Miya replied. “Seen any?”
Laughter erupted from the boy’s small mouth. “I see nothing,” he said, and motioned for her to step closer.
She did so, bending forward. The boy’s eyes were fogged, like porcelain. He reached up to touch Miya’s face, extending his fingers along her jawline and then closing them over her nose. His palms smelled of cinnamon. He wrapped a hand around her pinky finger. “Come with me,” he said, leading her to the stone garden.
Was he a patient? she asked. Another volunteer?
He didn’t respond. He sat on the garden’s edge and began to wipe the waves away in the sand until the surface was smooth. He opened his pouch and dug his fingers into it, lifting his hand to reveal dozens of marbles. These he placed in the middle of the sandbox, adjusting the cluster, each orb illuminating colors under the night sky. Satisfied, he offered another marble to Miya. She took it and lay on her stomach in the grass. She aimed. She flicked her thumb and followed the marble’s path over the surface of the sand as it ricocheted against the others. The boy lay down beside her. His hands rested on his chin, his legs swinging in the air.
“What does it look like?” the boy asked.
She turned onto her back. Stars formed into shapes and then broke apart. The blinking dot of an airplane moved from left to right, vanishing behind the silhouettes of branches. She used to wait for Junpei to return. She would climb trees at the orphanage, the ground below shrinking. The forest canopy opened to her like the waves of the sea and a flock of birds rose out of it, spraying leaves. She waited for boats.
The boy nudged her, breathing into her ear, pointing at the marbles. “Hey, Miss,” he said, repeating his question.
“Fireworks,” Miya responded.
The following morning the boy was gone. The day was warmer than the others. The sun had settled onto her skin. The ground was damp. When she rose from the garden she saw the land had created a cast of her body: grass folded pale to form her slightly parted legs, the curve of her shoulders, the sand indented where she had rested her head. Beside that was the shape of the boy, too, though it appeared he had been lying on his side, watching her. Or was it that? Her certainty, an instant before so sure, abandoned her. A wind came and stole the shapes. She looked for the marbles’ paths but they had been erased as well, replaced by the waves that were always there. The rake lay under the bench like an old rifle. She brushed sand from her hair.
Inside, she found Henry tending to a soldier who was recovering from surgery. They were sending him to a rehabilitation clinic in Virginia, Henry told him. The soldier seemed pleased with the news. They shook hands. The doctor continued with his rounds. She stood in the ward’s entrance for a moment and watched the soldier sit up in bed suddenly, stretch forward, fingers extended, and touch the space where his legs had once been.
She approached Junpei’s bed. If she stared at him long enough it seemed he wasn’t breathing. Or as if the entire room was, rising and falling. Henry was beside her now, making note of Junpei’s vitals. He was holding the nurse’s cap he had given to her. She must have dropped it somewhere.
“Junpei you said his name was?” Henry asked, without looking at the chart.
“There was a boy,” Miya said. “He is blind. A native. Have you seen him?”
Henry kept his gaze on her and shook his head.
“Is he a volunteer?” she asked.
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br /> “Miya.”
“He wore dark pants and moccasins. Perhaps he was a patient.”
Henry looked over her shoulder and she saw the tiredness of his skin. He took her arm and led her outside to the corridor. They stood by a window and his brown hair speckled in sunlight.
“He carries marbles. In a little pouch.”
“Miya,” Henry repeated. “You aren’t sleeping.” He spoke in a whisper. “We’ve talked about this. Do you remember? You’re of no use to me if you aren’t sleeping.”
She took her cap and put it on.
“There are others you could tend to,” he continued.
She ignored him. She had known Henry for two years now. He had been one of the singers when the orphanage director was here. She avoided his stare and returned to Junpei and his stillness. She placed lemon juice onto his lips and then combed his hair with her fingers. She had done the same for Miss Hara and spent the days reading to her from a book of folktales, keeping her company as the woman drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Has he been bathed?” she asked Henry. “It’s time, I think. Don’t you agree? We could remove the bandages, also. From his eyes. It can’t be good for him. He would wake to see nothing.”
In Henry’s hand was a tin cup filled with two tablets. “For your headache, Miya,” he said.
Had she complained of that? She couldn’t recall. She took the pills, slipping them under her tongue.
“Rest for an hour,” he encouraged her. “You need your strength. Do you remember, Miya? Like we said. You need to rest.”
He took her arm again and led her upstairs to her room. She didn’t protest. After he left she spat out the pills and ground them on the floor with the bottom of her teacup. She then gathered the powder into her hand and blew it out the window, watching it scatter.
