by Weston Ochse
He finally lost his breath only a half mile from home. He’d have to walk the rest of the way. His legs ached almost as badly as his arms and back. His cheek throbbed. Drawing a hand to it, he realized for the first time that it would leave a scar. How horrible would it look? Would his face scare his son? What of his wife? He’d never been the handsomest man in Hiroshima, but he was delighted that Katsumi seemed to think so. Would she still love him with such a scar as this would leave?
The sound of a song caught him, bringing memories of his youth past the horrible clarity of the present. It was a warabe-uta known as Tōryanse, a children’s song he’d sung as a young boy. More than a song, it was also a game. He and a friend would hold their arms together and sing the song while others walked between them. The person who walked through at the song’s end was caught.
The words came crystal clear in the ruined air.
Tōryanse, tōryanse
Koko wa doko no hosomichi ja?
Tenjin-sama no hosomichi ja
Chotto tōshite kudashanse
Goyō no nai mono tōshasenu
He followed the sound through the smoke and destruction until he spied a woman standing in the middle of Miyuki Bridge. From a distance she looked like a courtesan pausing to gaze at the carp before continuing across to the other side. She held a red paper umbrella to keep the rain from wetting her coifed hair. Her body hugged her kimono. Cranes dipped and swooped through the pattern of the material.
The water of Miyuki River was black with soot. Bodies bobbed along like flotsam. One turned in the water, the face coming into view. He knew this one. She’d sold him fish on Thursdays. She’d always had a sweet smile, all the more sweeter for her youth. The image should have shocked, but the song soothed him as the woman sung it over and over. She started it again.
His mother had sung it to him as a child. His wife had sung it to his son. He’d sung it as a child, the meaning wrapped in the mortality and the achievements of life. But why was this strange ephemeral woman singing this song? What did it mean? Itoro had read and heard about phantom visitations since he was a child. Could this be one of them? Perhaps it was Amaterasu, the beautiful goddess of the sun, come to the darkness of Hiroshima to bear witness and see the devastation before she’d once again shine her healing rays upon the city. Perhaps she’d appeal to her brothers, Susanowa and Tsuki-yomi, who shared the power of governing the universe, and ask them if they’d avenge the murder of Hiroshima.
Itoro quickened his step and hurried towards the bridge. But the closer he got, the more different she looked. What he’d taken for a crane pattern kimono seemed strangely misshapen, her body completely filling out the fabric. Tears dripped from her eyes as she stared at the bodies. Black rain sluiced off her umbrella. Her bare feet were mangled and broken. And then he saw it and realized why her kimono looked so strange as it undulated, an edge folding against her skin, tighter, becoming her.
It never was a kimono. The cranes had the quality of line art created by a master tattoo artist. They indeed swooped and dived, each carrying a spark of life from their creator. But they hadn’t been drawn on fabric, but on skin, and what was wrapped around the woman had never belonged to her. Instead, it had probably belonged to a yakuza or some gambler whose largess had always been destined to become the garb for this phantom goddess at the end of the world.
Knowing the nature of the skins, Itoro could only guess that she hadn’t been fast enough to outrun it.
And her tears?
Were they falling because of what the memories she now gazed upon or was it because she’d lost herself, becoming someone she’d never even known existed before? Even now she was stuck in the loop of the song, singing the verse over and over; more the tragic, her haunting voice filled him with its beauty.
Then he noticed a power line that had somehow survived the devastation across from the river. Birds hung from the line, or rather skin hung like birds. And as he watched, several disengaged themselves, took flight and headed towards him. With the Tōryanse in his ears and his heart in his throat, he somehow found the strength to run the little way he still had to go. Reaching down, he grasped a piece of metal and began to swing it at the skin-birds as they sought to land on him.
He was so close to home, so close to his wife and child – he couldn’t lose himself so near the end. Here and there homes still stood, battered and beaten, but still a home where the occupants could count on the protection of the walls and the comfort of a sturdy ceiling.
Skins swooped and grasped at him, but he wouldn’t let them attach. His family had once been samurai, so he wielded the metal as if it was the finest sword, and he was the strongest warrior. The skin birds tripped him once, but he managed to get back to his feet with only the memory of a recipe for kuromame to remind of how close he’d come.
When he turned onto his street, it was with a scream of joy. He found himself laughing as he swung and batted away the skin-birds that seemed increasingly desperate to attach to him. He spied his house halfway down the block, still standing and barely damaged. Warm shards of joy skewered his doubts as he realized that he was almost home.
Everything was going to be okay.
I am Itoro Haruki.
I am Itoro Haruki.
My wife is Katsumi.
My son is Mynami.
Suddenly a skin-bird struck him full in the face. He dropped the metal bar. As it clanged to the street, he used both hands to claw at the skin as foul memories intruded.
... taste of her sweet clean skin.
... smell of jasmine at the hollow of her throat.
... stickiness of the blood seeping from my slash across her stomach.
No! He screamed. He didn’t see a face in the memory, but it reminded him too much of Katsumi. His torso lurched and twisted as he grasped the skin with both hands and jerked it free. A window had broken on the house next door and Itoro impaled the dread thing on a spike of broken glass.
Then he dashed for the front door. He tried the latch. It was unlocked. He rushed inside. Slamming the door behind him, he placed his back to the door. There on the mat against the wall were his wife and son. Huddled together, they stared at him. He experienced both delight and panic in the single second that their gazes locked.
The memory of the murder had nothing to do with Katsumi. She and his son were alive. But the look in their eyes. Was it the scar? Was it so bad? He turned to check it in the mirror near the door and saw that it was indeed a horrific wound. A palm-sized piece of skin had been ripped free when he’d disengaged himself from the man he’d been behind at the train station. But perhaps it would heal without much scarring if he took care of it. In the meantime, if it scared her so much he’d keep it covered.
“Katsumi, I was so worried,” he said, turning back around. “Mynami, my son, how are you?”
He stepped towards them, causing his wife and child to draw their feet up as they huddled closer together. The abject terror in their eyes didn’t match the joy that had come home to his heart.
“What’s wrong? Are you worried about this?” he asked, pointing to his cheek. “We can get that fixed.” He stepped closer and Katsumi opened her mouth to scream, so he stepped back. “My darling, what’s wrong? Why are you so scared?”
“Get out of my house,” she stammered.
“But Katsumi—”
“I don’t know how you know my name, but stop using it!”
Thoughts swept through his mind. Was there someone else in the house? Was she trying to warn him? What had happened for her to act this way?
“Daddy is on backwards, mommy.”
“I know, honey. Don’t look.”
On backwards? He felt his naked chest and back and couldn’t decipher the meaning of his son’s cryptic statement.
But the child wouldn’t be hushed. “Daddy’s tattoo. It’s on this man’s chest. Did he
steal it, mommy? Did he steal daddy’s tattoo?”
Itoro’s eyes shot wide. He examined the skin from his chest, remembering how he’d had to peel away from the man in front of him. And there in the center of his chest surrounded by blackened skin was the line-drawing of a dragon, wings folded in, claws wrapped around a sword. He’d had that tattoo done on his eighteenth birthday to match his father’s. Haruki men had dragon tattoos going back to the reformation when they’d once been a powerful clan. Having the symbol tattooed on their backs was to remind them that they’d once worn the symbol proudly on the backs of their armor. He remembered how much the tattoo had hurt and how he’d bloodied his lip by biting down on it, damned if he’d show pain in front of his father.
Daddy is on backwards, his son had said.
How had the tattoo moved from his back to his front?
That’s impossible unless...
He stared imploringly at his wife and son.
“I am Itoro Haruki,” he said.
They shook their heads.
Then he realized that Itoro Haruki had died in that train station. Perhaps by heart attack or by the explosion sucking the oxygen from his lungs or by the sheer weight of the men who’d melted together, the man who’d once been Itoro Haruki was dead. He’d died, but his spirit had lived on, needing desperately to return to his family, it had inhabited him. Like the skin from the little school girl or the skin-birds hanging from the line, his mortal remains had lived on after his death, striving to find a home for his memories.
Then who was he? He became as frightened as the woman he’d thought was his wife as he realized that he did not have the answer, might never have the answer, and was as lost as the woman on the bridge who could only sing that song as the bodies bobbed past and Hiroshima fell all around them.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I was invited to an anthology and asked to specifically write about Japan during World War II. During my research, I came upon an awful set of pictures and the story of the Hiroshima train station and how terrible it was for everyone to have melted together. I just had to write about it. But I was very nervous to turn such a horrendous event into a work of genre fiction. With the most delicate touches and the utmost respect, I wanted to make this story a tale of identity; not only national identity but personal individual identity.
Doctor Doom’s Guide to the Universe and Special Rules for the Burial of Christian Insects
IN-PROCESSING GOES like a flash bang grenade. By the time I open my eyes, my hair is gone, my clothes are stripped from me, and my freedom is traded for ten sunny weeks of healthy eating and exercise at the all-expenses paid resort known as Basic Training. We load into cattle cars and rumble across the Army post. We stand like spoons and every bone-crunching, pelvic-thumping, elbow gouging mile has us griping and groaning until we sound like the cattle this truck was meant for – human cattle, ready for slaughter.
I will not give in.
I will not allow them to change me.
I am a lover not a fighter.
When we arrive, we file out and find our faces eating concrete. We learn the push up. Up. Down. Up. Down. It’s an important exercise – one that we’ll come to love and hate. It makes us stronger. It makes us weaker. It gives us a breather from doing other things. It’s our entrance into the chow hall. It’s our exit to the day and that which must be done prior to us embracing the hard wool heaven of our beds. It’s our benevolent mistress, who we imagine beneath us. It’s our savage master, who we imagine sitting atop us. We push and push and push until our arms and legs wiggle like Chinese noodles and our heads sag like taxi cab Chihuahua heads. Our faces mash into the concrete when we’re done. We like the feeling of the cool rock grating against our face. We love the grit. We love the dirt. We love anything that isn’t the push up. Give me liberty or give me death were the last, most famous words of Nathanial Hale before he was hung. If he’d been threatened with a lifetime of pushups, he would have said fuck it and moved on.
Patriotism has its limits.
“They say that in the Army the coffee’s mighty fine
It looks like muddy water and tastes like turpentine
Chorus:
Oh Lord, I wanna go
But they won’t let me go
Oh Lord, I wanna go hoo-hoo-hoooome EH!
They say that in the Army the chow is mighty fine
a chicken jumped off the table and started marking time
Chorus:
Oh Lord, I wanna go
But they won’t let me go
Oh Lord, I wanna go hoo-hoo-hoooome EH!
Then we meet Doctor Doom. His real name is Drill Sergeant Bloom, but everyone calls him Doctor Doom. He’s a too-tall, lean, mean, African-American fighting machine with more patches than any three other drill sergeants. Airborne. Air Assault. Alpine Training. Jungle Training. Pathfinder. Combat Infantry Badge. Halo. Scuba. Ranger. They say he killed hundreds in Vietnam. They say he eats snakes and shits cowboy boots. They say he’s the hardest Drill on the post and you’re fucked if you have him
And I’m fucked.
“Sittin’ on a mountaintop beatin’ my drum.
I beat so hard that the MPs come.
MP MP don’t arrest me.
Arrest that sergeant behind that tree
He stole whiskey and he stole wine
But all we do is double time.”
I run hard with the rest of my platoon. We’re Delta Two Four. We’ve been together for a week. We sweat. We stink. We still trip over each other. Up the hill. Down the hill. The sand is so fucking deep. The air is so fucking hot. Flies eat at us with every breath. Doctor Doom makes us sing. All the time we sing. He calls them jody calls. Jody is the guy fucking our girl back home and we’re supposed to be motivated to run with songs of her having spectacular sex with a fucktard too chicken to join the Army. The cadence of the calls is supposed to keep us in step. It’s supposed to teach us things, besides how awful we miss our girls. Doctor Doom calls the cadence and we scream it back at him. It’s our only defiance. It’s the only way we can hate without getting in trouble.
“One mile no sweat,
Two miles better yet,
Three miles think about it,
Four miles thought about it,
Five miles feeling good like I should.
In my legs,
In my head,
In my chest,
Feeling good,
Super troop.”
He has this idea that we’ll become a cohesive unit; that we’ll work and play together. This is the new army. They have no idea that we were born individuals. We’re not like they used to be. We’re not automatons who parrot every word and movement. This is no black and white John Wayne movie. This is no television show where we are all the same. We are our own people. The black boys. The white kids. The Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. Even the Guatamalans and Filipinos. We are individuals and we group together. Whites with whites. Blacks with Blacks. And so on. Fucking spic, wetback, slant-eyed, gringo, nigger bastards all of us. We’re individuals and we try and maintain our identities. I’m me first and Delta Two Four second and don’t anyone ever doubt it.
“Two old ladies lying in bed.
One reaches over slaps the other side the head
I wanna be an airborne ranger.
Live the life of sex and danger.”
We run. We do push ups. This is what it means to be a soldier.
I can see it now on the battlefield. We run towards the enemy. Then we do push ups. No one laughs because they’re doing it too. It’s the evolution of warfare. We’ve become caricatures of a long lost icon. We’ve forgotten we were forged to do murder. We have become masters of our own humiliation, the puking, cursing, cramping lot of us who finish all the runs and do all the pushups.
Doctor Doom is tall and
takes long strides. He calls it a range walk. We try and mimic him, but we have to run to keep up. He’s fucking inhuman. He doesn’t heave. He doesn’t retch. He barely even sweats. They say he was in Vietnam, but he won’t talk about it. Alphabet tried to ask him one day at mail call and low crawled around the barracks for his trouble, so none of us ask him. Still, he has a look about him. Something in the way he stares at the sky scares us. It’s as if he’s seen something and has a special relationship with god. They can look at each other like old friends, a nod carrying a thousand words.
A yellow bird
with a yellow bill
Was sittin’ on
my window sill
I lured him in
with a piece of bread
And then I smashed
his fucking head
Saturday mornings find us standing in ranks in the middle of the fog-hugged parade field. Bayonets affixed to the ends of our rifles glisten wetly in the humid air. I feel like a soldier in the Civil War only I don’t know which side I’m on. We begin bayoneting drills. Such a strange pairing of words I never thought I’d use. Bayonet. Drill. We run screaming as we impale an invisible enemy. We pull the bayonet out and advance once more. We parry and block and stab. I imagine my enemy a rifle’s length away and am at first scared. But the more I sweat and scream and stab, the more confident I become. Soon, I find myself forgetting that the rifle can deliver death at 300 yards, and treat it only as a bayonet delivery mechanism.
“Hey Ho Didilly Bop Bop,
I wish I was back on the block.
With my rifle in my hand,
I’m gonna be a killin’ man.”
They put saltpeter in the food to keep us from masturbating. Not that I’ve thought of doing it with a barracks filled with other men, but I can’t remember the last time I went a week without dreaming of Cheryl Ladd or Farrah Fawcett wiggling naked and ready before me. It must be the saltpeter. Saltpeter is one of the working ingredients in gunpowder. Alphabet, whose real name is some incomprehensible Armenian combination of letters, says it was Napoleon who added it to his army’s food stores to keep them from getting randy during their retreats. Probably why they fucking lost – bunch of limp dick frogs.
