The Hummingbird (28 page)

ICHIRO SOGA CLIMBED DOWN
from his seat in the Cessna 182 as cautiously as if the ground were molten, then stood on the tarmac clapping his hands in glee. Donny Baker III hurried beneath the wings, attaching the tie-down straps before handing Soga his cane.

For once, Donny did not refuel upon landing. Instead, he helped Soga into the pickup truck, and they drove off to their various appointments. Piper Abbott, ever diligent, tailed them once again. Her interview with Soga that night brought her the tale of what had happened on the flight.

The following morning Donny provided the Japanese pilot with a penultimate tour of Brookings—with Heather sandwiched between them in the truck. They visited the harbor, Azalea Park, the upland avenues away from the sea. Donny also chauffeured through some less-known sites: the vast lily farm, a high view down on the broad Chetco River, the county’s tallest redwood.

Afterward Soga and Heather embraced in the Kerrs’ driveway. Soga bowed deeply to his fellow pilot. “Aw, cut that crap out,” Donny replied, shaking the foreigner’s hand.

There were other good-byes: Jaycee leaders, the mayor. Then the city’s rented limousine transported Soga to Portland, where he boarded a plane to San Francisco, connecting to Tokyo.

Four years later, the Brookings roads department announced plans to erect a highway marker that would direct people to the memorial shrine. A sign at the site would acknowledge Soga’s gift of the tree, and the date of its planting. The sponsor of this plan was none other than Donny Baker III.

Public reaction revealed that controversy over Soga, even in 1994, had not ceased. “We feel it is a slap in the face,” Elmer Hitchcock wrote in the
Pilot.

City officials invited Soga to attend the dedication of the highway marker. When the question of the travel expense arose at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Donny suggested that the business group pay Soga’s airfare. Many of the members present responded by laughing.

“Look,” Donny said. “I’m late to the party on this, I know. But I got my reasons for wanting to talk to him again. Besides, whatever the guy did all those years ago, he has made our town a pile of cash since then.” He pointed at two brothers sitting together, who between them owned half of Brookings’ restaurants and nearly all of the hotels. “You guys alone ought to shell out for Soga’s plane tickets. You’ve made a killing because of him.”

The motion carried. The town’s invitation went out with an offer of free travel.

Donny began preparations for a different kind of tour: This time Soga would take a ride on a seagoing commercial fishing vessel, spend a day at a working logging site, maybe kill a night strolling among the hippies in Portland.

“Enough of this banking bullshit,” he told Heather. “I’ve got ground to cover with this guy. Let’s show him the real Oregon.”

A reply to the invitation came from Soga’s son in a handwritten note marked by reserve and formality.

“It is with deep regret that I must inform the honorable people of Brookings that Ichiro Soga cannot accept their kind invitation. My father is not at present strong enough to make the journey. He has lung cancer.”

CHAPTER 18

IN THE MORNING I WOKE EARLY,
but Michael was not in the house. I pulled on clothes and went searching. He was not in the guest room, no clanking rose from downstairs, there was no one in the kitchen. I put on coffee and went into the living room. In the middle of the rug lay one of Michael’s military boots, and it was ruined.

The top had been chewed, the sole gnawed up by the toes, and the tongue ripped from the boot entirely. I snatched the pieces up, rushing them to my closet while calculating how I could find a replacement boot before Michael discovered what Shouri had done. Otherwise there would be a hurricane. This was not any old shoe the dog had destroyed.

I put the pieces in a plastic shopping bag, stuffed a t-shirt in on top of it, and hurried it all out to my car.

They were out on the back lawn, Michael and the dog. He was kneeling in the grass and throwing a tennis ball. Where had he found such a thing in our house? The dog was chasing the ball at full speed and snagging it with her mouth.

She dashed back to him faster than I thought she could run, plowing into him headlong. He fell over on his side, grabbing the ball for a tug of war.

“Shouri, huh?” Michael said. “Maybe instead we should call you Spaz.”

But he was laughing. Laughing.

THAT DAY, THE PROFESSOR AND I
had three brief conversations. I wanted more. I longed to share with him how his gift had inspired me and helped my husband. But those three snippets were all he had the energy for. Otherwise he was quiet, doing his work, making his path. When he did awaken, his agenda mattered infinitely more than mine.

“How old am I, again?”

“You are seventy-eight, Professor.”

He wagged his head. “How in the hell did that happen?”

“That you’ve lived so many years?”

“That they passed so quickly. As brief as lightning.”

IN LATE MORNING I
took Barclay Reed’s pulse, and his hand was cold. His feet, too. It was a chilly premonition. The circulatory system had begun prioritizing essential organs. But a dying person feels cold every bit as much as a healthy one, so I added a blanket for his feet and gave his hands a vigorous rub.

The Professor opened his eyes. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“Have you decided whether or not you believe?”

“
The Sword,
you mean?”

He nodded, swallowing noisily.

“What I can say is that the book is bringing up things that are helping Michael. Knowing his weapon, giving a courageous gift. So to me, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true.”

“It is the only thing that matters now.” The Professor grimaced as though he had a terrible sore throat. “The only thing.”

LATER I FOUND HIM SLEEPING
with his mouth open. I could see it drying out. I opened a fresh glycerin swab, and wiped around his gums. Those are tender tissues, so it can be an extremely intimate form of care.

Barclay Reed appeared to like it. After I had swabbed the near side of his mouth, he turned his head and opened wider so I could reach the far side.

“Professor, is there anything you might want to eat or drink?”

He frowned. “It’s all shut down now.”

“If you’re comfortable here for a moment, I’d like to go get you something.”

“I doubt I have the strength to chew.”

“Trust me.”

Quickly I hulled three strawberries, and rinsed them in the sink. I reached for the ordinary bowl, but then decided to take a risk—and used the one his wife had made instead.

“Not fair,” he said.

“What’s not fair, Professor?”

“As I grow weaker, you become more stubborn.” He made a feeble cough. “You are an inferior listener, as well. Didn’t I just say that I can’t eat? And I certainly don’t want that bowl.”

“I always listen,” I said. “But not everything is said out loud.”

I picked a berry, the reddest, ripest one. I reached across the bed and held it directly under his nose. After a perplexed moment, Barclay Reed understood what I was doing. He took a long, deep sniff.

“Ah. Heaven.”

The way he was positioned, I had to put the bowl on his bed so I could stretch my hand to keep the berry beneath his nose. But he hooked the bowl closer with the crook of his arm, snug against his ribs, and something in the room relaxed. Under the sheets, the Professor uncrossed his legs. The hummingbird bowl was permitted again. Some old knot had untied itself. Then he smelled the berry under his nose deeply once more. “Yessss.” He nodded. “Absolute heaven.”

Though eventually my arm grew sore from its own weight, I kept that berry in place till Barclay Reed was sound asleep again.

TWO MORNINGS LATER,
Sunday, when Michael took Shouri for a walk, I decided to visit the weight room. I told myself I intended to finish the cleaning he’d begun with the papers a few days before. But if that were the whole truth, I would not have waited till my husband was out.

By then I felt tired all the time. Like a little bird, endlessly zipping from one needy man to the other, trying to ferry a little nectar back and forth between them, flying as fast as I could. It was exhausting. I hadn’t gone to yoga in months, hadn’t participated in the book group since Michael came home. Forget those activities, though. A nap would have made more sense.

But on that morning I wanted to be in his space without him there. I was curious how it would feel now, in this different phase of our marriage. There was none of the base temptation I’d felt earlier, when I considered snooping in his computer’s history. This time I had higher aims: learning, and maybe understanding.

Immediately I marveled that he could exercise in such an unpleasant place. The light came from bare overhead bulbs. The floor was gray cement. The air smelled musty and stale. Tools lay scattered here and there, stacks of neglected books, moving boxes we’d never unpacked. Against the wall leaned posters we’d owned before living together—his red Ferraris, my Springsteen in concert—which each of us had vetoed for the walls of our mutual household.

At least Michael’s gear was tidy. The weights were organized, dumbbells on the floor in order of size. But over some of my parents’ old furniture, the tarps we’d thrown years ago had visibly mildewed. I suspected they were the cause of the basement’s poor air quality.

Obviously Michael didn’t mind, but it would be no great task to clear them out. Not remembering even vaguely what was beneath, I lifted the nearest tarp with care. That was when I made my discovery.

On my father’s old desk, the one he had used for grading papers, three bottles of ceramic glue made a little tent over a work space. And there, in the middle, sat two-thirds of a reassembled blue china dinner plate.

At first it did not register. I had grown too accustomed to receiving bad news, to absorbing emotional blows and the whole downward spiral. I did not recognize good news when I saw it. I had no idea what to do.

I sat on the weights bench with the partial plate in my lap. So that’s what he had been doing in the trash the other night: digging for remnants. There were lots of shards on the desk, some as large as a dime, some as small as a sliver. I ran my fingertip over the repaired portion and it was surprisingly smooth. Michael was not a man with fine motor skills. I could not imagine how painstaking this project must have been.

“Oh, lover,” I said out loud, since he was not there to object to the word.

What did I know about Michael’s interior life? At one time I had known it nearly as well as my own. But this was a total surprise.

The man was trying. I had to give him that. He was sincerely trying to repair what had been broken.

The fact that he had concealed it was part of the sweetness. He hoped someday to surprise me with a finished plate. Incredible. After all he had been through, enough to crush the kindness out of anyone, somehow this man had a reservoir of it left. I felt his marital commitment more in that moment than I ever had before. It wasn’t noisy or passionate. It was quiet, and patient, and slowly piecing itself back together.

Maybe sometimes love shows its true self, and reveals how much deeper it can be than anyone would have imagined.

I stood renewed, ready for the day. Then, hoping to remember how the pieces had been situated before I lifted the tarp, I tried to put everything back just the way I had found it.

By the time man and dog returned, I had packed a picnic. A blanket lay folded in the trunk of my car, under an umbrella just in case.

Michael saw me finishing in the kitchen. “What’s up, Deb?”

“We’re getting away. Time for a day at Cannon Beach.”

MICHAEL AND I WENT THERE
a few times in our dating days, but I had forgotten the scale of the place. Waves crashed against giant rock formations, seagulls circling the crowns. When we stepped out of the car, I was stunned all over again.

The coast was foggy, clouds clinging to the shoreline trees. A few hardy souls walked the low-tide edge, but the iffy weather had kept most people away. The air was damp, with a sour salty taste. We leashed Shouri and began the trail to the beach. Michael alternated between scanning the cliffs and parked cars for potential attackers, a soldier’s attention and worry, and paying attention to the dog, who wanted to run ahead.

I yearned to confess what I’d found in the basement, and how it reaffirmed my optimism. But I knew that if I did, it would be annoying at best and undermining at worst. Another opportunity to keep my mouth closed.

When we reached the sand, Michael unclipped the leash and Shouri went sprinting. She dodged side to side, as if evading some invisible predator, then dashed away up the beach.

“I hope she comes back,” I said.

“She’ll never leave us,” Michael answered. As if to prove his point, he picked up a branch as wide as his arm and twice as long. Having turned back to look at us, Shouri halted her escape, pink tongue hanging. Michael jogged to the water’s edge and flung the branch way out. The dog bolted down the beach and dove in after it. The water remained shallow, a long tidal flat under the surface, and she porpoised back with the branch in her teeth.

So this was what it would be like now. No matter what our moods were, there would be this exuberant presence as well. Packing the picnic had prevented me from checking Michael’s drawings that morning, but I was willing to bet there was no face with mouse ears.

We ate pork sandwiches and drank lemon tea. I shucked off my shoes and lounged on the blanket. Shouri ran away and back, rested with us a while, then made another circuit. I poured water into Michael’s cupped palms, and she licked it up greedily. Panting, she settled beside us at last.

“Dessert?” I asked.

Michael lay beside me, raised on one elbow. “What do you have?”

I reached into the canvas bag and pulled out a strawberry. Kneeling, I brought it within an inch of his nose. Michael opened his mouth but I drew back. “How does it smell?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Like a strawberry.” And opened his mouth again.

“I mean, how good does it smell?”

He gave in, and took a whiff. “Smells great, actually.”

“You can have it, you know . . .”

“Uh huh. If I do what?”

“Take another dose first,” I said. “Enjoy.”

He did, eyes closed that time as he took a long, deep sniff. “How did I forget about strawberries? We haven’t had them once since I’ve been back.”

“I brought a whole fresh pint.”

He lay back on the blanket. Shouri curled up against him, paws working the sand. “OK, what do I have to do?”

“Tell me another.”

He stroked the dog’s ears. “Another what?”

“From the faces.”

“Damn, Deb. You will not quit.”

“Apparently not.”

“Killing the dog wasn’t terrible enough?”

“It was terrible. I won’t argue with that.”

“Then why?”

I shifted closer to him. “Because we went shooting and you drew two fewer faces. Because you explained about Gene’s screw, and together we made it better. Because you told me about mouse ears, and—”

“Deb, you need to know something.”

“I’m listening.”

“Some of them will never go away. Never.”

I nodded. “I know. They’re part of you.”

He patted Shouri’s head, and her tail thumped the sand. “I mean, I would sure as hell like them to.”

“So pick one of those. The worst one.”

He shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Yes,” I said. “The man with the hat. Or sunglasses guy.”

“Sunglasses, oh. I will be grossed out by him for the rest of my life.”

“What about the one with the extra scribble? What happened with him?”

“God, Deb.” He turned away. “It’s not a scribble.”

We sat in silence, waves chanting against the beach. A gull cruised over us, wings motionless, before floating away inland. I handed him another strawberry.

Michael considered it, then pinched off the green crown and popped the fruit into his mouth. I listened to my husband chewing, swallowing. It made my mouth water. But I had eaten plenty at the Professor’s house.

I dug in the bag for another berry. “That’s the worst one? The scribble?”