“I lived in the States for a while when I was young,” Sachi said.
“No wonder,” the officer said. Then he gave Sachi her son’s belongings: clothes, passport, return ticket, wallet, Walkman, magazines, sunglasses, shaving kit. They all fit into a small Boston bag. Sachi had to sign a receipt listing these meager possessions.
“Do you have any other children?” the officer asked.
“No, he was my only child,” Sachi replied.
“Your husband couldn’t make the trip?”
“My husband died a long time ago.”
The policeman released a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how to get to the place where my son died. And where he was staying. I suppose there’ll be a hotel bill to pay. And I need to get in touch with the Japanese consulate in Honolulu. Could I use your phone?”
He brought her a map and used a felt-tip marker to indicate where her son had been surfing and the location of the hotel where he had been staying. She slept that night in a little hotel in Lihue that the policeman recommended.
As Sachi was leaving the police station, the middle-aged Officer Sakata said to her, “I have a personal favor to ask of you. Nature takes a human life every now and then here on Kauai. You see how beautiful it is on this island, but sometimes, too, it can be wild and deadly. We live here with that potential. I’m very sorry about your son. I really feel for you. But I hope you won’t let this make you hate our island. This may sound self-serving to you after everything you’ve been through, but I really mean it. From the heart.”
Sachi nodded to him.
“You know, ma’am, my brother died in the war in 1944. In Belgium, near the German border. He was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of all Japanese American volunteers. They were there to rescue a Texas battalion surrounded by the Nazis when they took a direct hit and he was killed. There was nothing left but his dog tags and a few chunks of flesh scattered in the snow. My mother loved him so much, they tell me she was like a different person after that. I was just a little kid, so I only knew my mother after the change. It’s painful to think about.”
Officer Sakata shook his head and went on:
“Whatever the ‘noble causes’ involved, people die in war from the anger and hatred on both sides. But Nature doesn’t have ‘sides.’ I know this is a painful experience for you, but try to think of it like this: your son returned to the cycle of Nature; it had nothing to do with any ‘causes’ or anger or hatred.”
Sachi had the cremation performed the next day and took the ashes with her in a small aluminum urn when she drove to Hanalei Bay on the north shore of the island. The trip from the Lihue police station took just over an hour. Virtually all the trees on the island had been deformed by a giant storm that struck a few years earlier. Sachi noticed the remains of several wooden houses with their roofs blown off. Even some of the mountains showed signs of having been reshaped by the storm. Nature could be harsh in this environment.
She continued on through the sleepy little town of Hanalei to the surfing area where her son had been attacked by the shark. Parking in a nearby lot, she went to sit on the beach and watched a few surfers—maybe five in all—riding the waves. They would float far offshore, hanging on to their surfboards, until a powerful wave came through. Then they would catch the wave, push off, and mount their boards, riding almost to the shore. As the force of the waves gave out, they would lose their balance and fall in. Then they would retrieve their boards and slip under the incoming waves as they paddled back out to the open sea, where the whole thing would start over again. Sachi could hardly understand them. Weren’t they afraid of sharks? Or had they not heard that her son had been killed by a shark in this very place a few days earlier?
Sachi went on sitting there, vacantly watching this scene for a good hour. Her mind could not fasten onto any single thing. The weighty past had simply vanished, and the future lay somewhere in the distant gloom. Neither tense had any connection with her now. She sat in the continually shifting present, her eyes mechanically tracing the monotonously repeating scene of waves and surfers. At one point the thought dawned on her: What I need now most of all is time.
Then Sachi went to the hotel where her son had been staying, a shabby little place with an unkempt garden. Two shirtless, long-haired white men sat there in canvas deck chairs, drinking beer. Several empty green Rolling Rock bottles lay among the weeds at their feet. One of the men was blond, the other had black hair. Otherwise, they had the same kind of faces and builds and wore the same kind of florid tattoos on both arms. There was a hint of marijuana in the air, mixed with a whiff of dog shit. As she approached, the two men eyed her suspiciously.
“My son was staying here,” she said. “He was killed by a shark three days ago.”
The men looked at each other. “You mean Takashi?”
“Yes,” Sachi said. “Takashi.”
“He was a cool dude,” the blond man said. “It’s too bad.”
The black-haired man explained in flaccid tones, “That morning, there was, uh, lots of turtles in the bay. The sharks come in lookin’ for the turtles. But, y’know, those guys usually leave the surfers alone. We get along with ’em fine. But, I don’t know, I guess there’s all kinds of sharks…”
Sachi said she had come to pay Takashi’s hotel bill. She assumed there was an outstanding balance on his room.
The blond man frowned and waved his bottle in the air. “No, lady, you don’t get it. Surfers are the only ones who stay in this hotel, and they ain’t got no money. You gotta pay in advance to stay here. We don’t have no ‘outstanding balances.’”
Then the black-haired man said, “Say, lady, you want to take Takashi’s surfboard with you? Damn shark ripped it in two, kinda shredded it. It’s an old Dick Brewer. The cops didn’t take it. I think it’s, uh, somewhere over there…”
Sachi shook her head. She did not want to see the board.
“It’s really too bad,” the blond man said again as if that was the only expression he could think of.
“He was a cool dude,” the black-haired fellow said. “Really OK. Damn good surfer, too. Come to think of it, he was with us the night before, drinkin’ tequila. Yeah.”
Sachi ended up staying in Hanalei for a week. She rented the most decent-looking cottage she could find and cooked her own simple meals. One way or another, she had to get her old self back again before returning to Japan. She bought a vinyl chair, sunglasses, a hat and sunscreen, and sat on the beach every day, watching the surfers. It rained a few times each day—violently, as if someone were tipping a huge bowl of water out of the sky. Autumn weather on the north shore of Kauai was unstable. When a downpour started, she would sit in her car, watching the rain. And when the rain let up, she would go out to sit on the beach again, watching the sea.
Sachi started visiting Hanalei at this season every year. She would arrive a few days before the anniversary of her son’s death and stay three weeks, watching the surfers from a vinyl chair on the beach. That was all she would do each day, every day. It went on like this for ten years. She would stay in the same cottage and eat in the same restaurant, reading a book. As her trips became an established pattern, she found a few people with whom she could speak about personal matters. Many residents of the small town knew her by sight. She became known as the Japanese mom whose son was killed by a shark nearby.
One day, on the way back from Lihue Airport, where she had gone to exchange a balky rental car, Sachi spotted two young Japanese hitchhikers in the town of Kapaa. They were standing outside the Ono Family Restaurant with big sports equipment bags hanging over their shoulders, facing traffic with their thumbs stuck out but looking far from confident. One was tall and lanky, the other short and stocky. Both had shoulder-length hair dyed a rusty red and wore faded T-shirts, baggy shorts, and sandals. Sachi passed them by, but soon changed her mi
nd and turned around.
Opening her window, she asked them in Japanese, “How far are you going?”
“Hey, you can speak Japanese!” the tall one said.
“Well, of course, I am Japanese. How far are you going?”
“A place called Hanalei,” the tall one said.
“Want a ride? I’m on the way back there myself.”
“Great! Just what we were hoping for!” the stocky one said.
They put their bags in the trunk and started to climb into the backseat of Sachi’s Neon.
“Wait just a minute there,” she said. “I’m not going to have you both in back. This is no cab, after all. One of you sit in front. It’s plain good manners.”
They decided the tall one would sit in front, and he timidly got in next to Sachi, wrenching his long legs into the available space. “What kind of car is this?” he asked.
“It’s a Dodge Neon. A Chrysler car,” Sachi answered.
“Hmm, so America has these cramped little cars, too, huh? My sister’s Corolla maybe has more room than this.”
“Well, it’s not as if all Americans ride around in big Cadillacs.”
“Yeah, but this is really little.”
“You can get out right here if you don’t like it,” Sachi said.
“Whoa, I didn’t mean it that way!” he said. “I was just kinda surprised how small this is, that’s all. I thought all American cars were on the big side.”
“So anyway, what’re you going to Hanalei for?” Sachi asked as she drove along.
“Well, surfing, for one thing.”
“Where’re your boards?”
“We’ll get ’em there,” the stocky boy said.
“Yeah, it’s a pain to lug ’em all the way from Japan. And we heard you could get used ones cheap there,” the tall one added.
“How about you, lady? Are you here on vacation, too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Alone?”
“Alone,” Sachi said lightly.
“I don’t suppose you’re one of them legendary surfers?”
“Don’t be crazy!” Sachi said. “Anyway, have you got a place to stay in Hanalei?”
“Nah, we figured it’d work out once we got there,” the tall one said.
“Yeah, we figured we can always sleep on the beach if we have to,” the stocky one said. “Besides, we ain’t got much money.”
Sachi shook her head. “It gets cold at night on the north shore this time of year—cold enough for a sweater indoors. Sleep outside and you’ll make yourselves sick.”
“It’s not always summer in Hawaii?” the tall one asked.
“Hawaii’s right up there in the northern hemisphere, you know. It’s got four seasons. The summers are hot, and winters can be cold.”
“So we’d better get a roof over our heads,” the stocky boy said.
“Say, lady, do you think you could help us find a place?” the tall one asked. “Our English is, like, nonexistent.”
“Yeah,” said the stocky boy. “We heard you can use Japanese anywhere in Hawaii, but so far it hasn’t worked at all.”
“Of course not!” Sachi said, exasperated. “The only place you can get by with Japanese is Oahu, and just one part of Waikiki at that. They get all these Japanese tourists wanting Louis Vuitton bags and Chanel No. 5, so they hire clerks who can speak Japanese. The same with Hyatt and Sheraton. But outside the hotels, English is the only thing that works. I mean, it’s America, after all. You came all the way to Kauai without knowing that?”
“I had no idea. My mom said everybody in Hawaii speaks Japanese.”
Sachi groaned.
“Anyhow, we can stay at the cheapest hotel in town,” the stocky boy said. “Like I said, we ain’t got any money.”
“Newcomers do not want to stay at the cheapest hotel in Hanalei,” Sachi cautioned them. “It can be dangerous.”
“How’s that?” asked the tall boy.
“Drugs, mainly,” Sachi answered. “Some of those surfers are bad guys. Marijuana might be OK, but watch out for ice.”
“‘Ice’? What’s that?”
“Never heard of it,” said the tall boy.
“You two don’t know anything, do you? You’d make perfect pigeons for those guys. Ice is a hard drug, and it’s everywhere in Hawaii. I don’t know exactly, but it’s some kind of crystallized upper. It’s cheap, and easy to use, and it makes you feel good, but once you get hooked on it you might as well be dead.”
“Scary,” said the tall one.
“You mean it’s OK to do marijuana?” asked the stocky one.
“I don’t know if it’s OK, but at least it won’t kill you. Not like tobacco. It might mess your brain up a little, but you guys wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Hey, that’s harsh!” said the stocky boy.
The tall one asked Sachi, “Are you one of those boomer types?”
“You mean…”
“Yeah, a member of the baby boom generation.”
“I’m not a ‘member’ of any generation. I’m just me. Don’t start lumping me in with any groups, please.”
“That’s it! You are a boomer!” said the stocky boy. “You get so serious about everything right away. Just like my mom.”
“And don’t lump me together with your precious ‘mom,’ either,” Sachi said. “Anyhow, for your own good, you’d better stay in a decent place in Hanalei. Things happen…even murder sometimes.”
“Not exactly the peaceful paradise it’s supposed to be,” the stocky boy said.
“No,” agreed Sachi. “The age of Elvis is long gone.”
“I’m not sure what that’s all about,” said the tall boy, “but I know Elvis Costello is an old guy already.”
Sachi drove without talking for a while after that.
Sachi spoke to the manager of her cottage, who found the boys a room. Her introduction got them a reduced weekly rate, but still it was more than they had budgeted for.
“No way,” said the tall one. “We haven’t got that much money.”
“Yeah, next to nothin’,” said the stocky one.
“You must have something for emergencies,” Sachi insisted.
The tall boy scratched his earlobe and said, “Well, I do have a Diners Club family card, but my dad said absolutely not to use it except for a real, honest-to-goodness emergency. He’s afraid once I start I won’t stop. If I use it for anything but an emergency, I’ll catch hell when I get back to Japan.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sachi said. “This is an emergency. If you want to stay alive, get that card out right now. The last thing you want is for the police to throw you in jail and have some big Hawaiian make you his girlfriend for the night. Of course, if you like that kind of thing that’s another story, but it hurts.”
The tall boy dug the card out of his wallet and handed it to the manager. Sachi asked for the name of a store where they could buy cheap used surfboards. The manager told her, adding, “And when you leave, they’ll buy them back from you.” The boys left their packs in the room and hurried off to the store.
Sachi was sitting on the beach, looking at the ocean as usual the next morning, when the two young Japanese boys showed up and started surfing. Their surfing skills were solid, in contrast to their helplessness on land. They would spot a strong wave, mount it nimbly, and guide their boards toward shore with grace and sure control. They kept this up for hours without a break. They looked truly alive when they were riding the waves: their eyes shone, they were full of confidence. There was no sign of yesterday’s timidity. Back home, they probably spent their days on the water, never studying—just like her dead son.
Sachi had begun playing the piano in high school—a late start for a pianist. She had never touched the instrument before. She started fooling around with the one in the music room after classes, and before long she had taught herself to play well. It turned out she had absolute pitch, and an ear that was far above ordinary. She could hear a melody once and turn
it into patterns on the keyboard. She could find the right chords for the melody. Without being taught by anyone, she learned how to move her fingers smoothly. She obviously had a natural, inborn gift for the piano.
The young music teacher heard her playing one day, liked what he heard, and helped her correct some basic fingering errors. “You can play it that way, but you can speed it up if you do it like this,” he said, and demonstrated for her. She got it immediately. A great jazz fan, this teacher instructed her in the mysteries of jazz theory after school: chord formation and progression, use of the pedal, the concept of improvisation. She greedily absorbed everything. He lent her records: Red Garland, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly. She would listen to them over and over until she could copy them perfectly. Once she got the hang of it, such imitation became easy for her. She could reproduce the music’s sound and flow directly through her fingers without transcribing anything. “You’ve got real talent,” the teacher said to her. “If you work hard, you can be a pro.”
But Sachi didn’t believe him. All she could do was produce accurate imitations, not music of her own. When urged to adlib, she didn’t know what to play. She would start out improvising and end up copying someone else’s original solo. Reading music was another of her stumbling blocks. With the detailed notation of a score in front of her, she found it hard to breathe. It was far easier for her to transfer what she heard directly to the keyboard. No, she thought: there was no way she could become a pro.
She decided instead to study cooking after high school. Not that she had a special interest in the subject, but her father owned a restaurant, and since she had nothing else she particularly wanted to do, she thought she would carry the business on after him. She went to Chicago to attend a professional cooking school. Chicago was not a city known for its sophisticated cuisine, but the family had relatives there who agreed to sponsor her.
A classmate at the cooking school introduced her to a small piano bar downtown, and soon she was playing there. At first she thought of it as part-time work to earn some spending money. Barely managing to scrape by on what little they sent her from home, she was glad for the extra cash. The owner of the bar loved the way she could play any tune at all. Once she heard a song, she would never forget it, and even with a song she had never heard before, if someone hummed it for her, she could play it on the spot. She was no beauty, but she had attractive features, and her presence started bringing more and more people to the bar. The tips they left her also began to mount up. She eventually stopped going to school. Sitting in front of the piano was so much easier—and so much more fun—than dressing a bloody chunk of pork, grating a rock-hard cheese, or washing the scum from a heavy frying pan.