overhead, fell like shot on the surface of the water before them.

“I am called … Seiji,” he decided finally—what would they know, Americans; how would they know a Chinese from an Ugandan?—“Seiji … Chiba.”

And then, feeling expansive, dry and warm and wrapped in a down blanket, his stomach full for the first time in days, he told them the pathetic story of his misadventures in the swamp. His boat had overturned, yes, two days ago—it was a crocodile that attacked him. It dropped from the trees on him and he wresded with it, but the boat went under and he lost everything, all his bags of meat, his Cracker Jack, his Levi’s and his surfboard. And so he wandered, on the verge of death, eating berries and drinking from the swamp, until they rescued him—and he ended by praising them for a full five minutes, in English and Japanese both.

When he was finished, there was a silence. The storm had let up and insects had begun to whine through the fevered air; something bellowed in the night. “Well,” the man said, clapping his hands together like a referee, “I guess we all better turn in, huh? It’s been quite a day.”

* * *

Sometime in the deep still vibrating hub of that night, when the chittering and hooting and screeching had subsided to a muted roar and the new generation of mosquitoes lay waiting to be born, Hiro awoke shivering and discovered that the rain had started up again. He knew where he was at once and knew too that the insulated blanket they’d given him—these Amerikajin seemed to have two of everything—was soaked through. The wind had shifted to the north and there was the unmistakable scent of autumn on it. But what month was it? August? September? October? He had no idea. He’d been gone so long, living like a bum on the street, like a barbarian in a cave, that he didn’t even know what month it was, let alone what day or hour. Shivering, he thought about that, and began to feel very sorry for himself indeed.

They would be after him soon, he knew that. The boifurendo would go to the police and the tired pointy-nosed little sheriff would round up his Negroes and dogs and take a flotilla into the swamp, speedboats and pontoon boats, canoes and dinghies and floating jail cells. The spatterface and his hard little companion would be there, Ruth, Captain Nishizawa—they’d batter the trees with helicopters, tear open the sky with their sirens and the long- drawn-out bloodthirsty howls of the dogs. If they hated him two days ago, they loathed him now to the depths of their being. He’d made fools of them. And they would come after him with everything they had.

It was a shame. It was. If that Mercedes had belonged to anyone but the chief butter-stinker himself, if it had belonged to an itinerant peddler, an encyclopedia salesman, a hit man, Hiro could have been a thousand miles away by now—in the Big Sky Country, in Motown or at the Golden Gate. But it hadn’t, and he wasn’t. What he needed, he realized with a jolt of intuition, was a boat. If he had a boat he could paddle his way to the edge of the swamp, strike out cross-country and find a road, and then—then what? More double-dealing? More hate? More hakujin backstabbing and Negro viciousness? Yes, and what choice did he have—they were going to hunt him down like an animal. He lay there, wet and miserable, wrapped in his sheet of lies, and he hardened his heart. He knew where there was a boat. A canoe. Sleek and quick and provisioned for an army.

The Jeffcoats slept as one, the gentle stertor of their breathing synchronized, sleep a reward, their goods spread out round them like an emperor’s ransom. The canoe lay there in the shadows at the edge of the platform, blackly bobbing. He could have spat in it from where he lay. But what was he thinking? They’d been kind to him, like Ambly Wooster. There was no hate in their eyes, only health and confidence. How could he steal from them, how could he abandon them to their fate out here in the howling wilderness?

How? Easily. They were hakujin, after all, hakujin like all the others, and after they found out who he was they’d lock him up themselves, twist the handcuffs tight with the cracked porcelain gleam of righteousness in their eyes. He was a Japanese. A samurai. To be ruthless was his only hope.

He was about to make his move, about to slip out of the wet blanket and stir himself to betrayal, when the boy began to moan in his sleep. The sound was incongruous and devastating in the dead black night. “Uhhhhhh,” the boy groaned, swallowed up in his dreams, “uhhhhhh.” In the space of that groan Hiro was plunged back into his own boyhood, awakened to the demons that haunted his nights and the birdlike embrace of his grandfather, and then a figure rose up in the dark—the father, the boy’s father—and Hiro heard the gentle shushing, the susurras of comfort and security. Father, mother, son: this was a family. He let the apprehension wash over him until it became palpable, undeniable, until he knew that the canoe, his only hope, would stay where it was.

He woke to the smell of corned beef hash and eggs. It was an unusual smell—aside from the slop Chiba concocted, he’d had little experience of foreign foods—but he recognized the habitual hakujin odor of incinerated meat. “Seiji!” a voice chirped at him the moment he opened his eyes. It was Julie Jeffcoat. She was in shorts and a shell top that emphasized her breasts, motherly and sexy all at once. “Sleep well?” she asked, crossing the platform to hand him a cup of simmering black coffee. The sun was up. It was hot already. Jeff Jr. perched at the edge of the platform, methodically flicking a lure from the tip of his rod to the far edge of the pond and then drawing it back again, while his father bent over the canoe, stowing away their gear in tight precise little bundles. He whistled while he worked. “Well,” he boomed, glancing over his shoulder at Hiro, “ready for some breakfast, pardner?”

Dazed by the assault of cheer and energy, Hiro could only nod his assent. He was feeling a bit queasy—but then why wouldn’t he, with all he’d been through—and he hoped the food would help steady him.

Jeff Jeffcoat turned back to his work. Jeff Jr.’s line sizzled through the guys and there was a distant splash. Hiro sat up to blow at his coffee and Julie Jeffcoat presented him with a plastic plate heaped with eggs, hashed meat, puffed potatoes and fruit cocktail from a can. It looked like something Chiba would whip up for one of his western-style lunches. “Ketchup?” Julie asked, and when he nodded, she squirted a red paste over everything.

“Denver omelet, yes?” Hiro said.

Julie Jeffcoat smiled, and it was a beautiful Amerikajin smile, uncomplicated and frank, a smile that belonged on the cover of a magazine. “Sort of,” she said.

Half an hour later, Hiro watched Jeff Jeffcoat steady the canoe as first Jeff Jr. and then Julie eased themselves into the narrow trembling envelope of the vessel. It was heaped to the gunwales with the neatly stowed paraphernalia of their adventure in the wilderness, with their cooler, their charcoal and starter fluid, their binoculars and fishing rods and mess kit, their tents and sleeping bags and changes of clothing, their paperback books, flashlights, lip balm and licorice. There was no room for Hiro. Jeff Jeffcoat had assured him that they would paddle straight back to the boat launch and get a ranger to come rescue him. He looked pained—he was pained—because they couldn’t take Hiro with them. But Hiro—or Seiji, as they knew him—wouldn’t be forgotten, he had Jeff’s word on that.

Before he shoved off, Jeff Jeffcoat had impulsively sprung from the canoe to shuck his loafers and hand them to Hiro. “Here,” he said, “I’ve got another two pairs in my backpack, and you’re going to need these more than I do.” Hiro accepted the shoes with a bow. They were Top-Siders, the sort of shoes the blond surfers wore in the beer commercials on Japanese television. Hiro slipped them on, feeling like a surfer himself in the cutoffs and oversized T-shirt, as Jeff Jeffcoat eased back into the canoe and shoved off with a mighty thrust of the paddle. “So long,” he called, “and don’t worry: they’ll be here to get you by noon. I promise.”

“ ’Bye!” Jeff Jr. cried, shrill as a bird.

Julie turned to wave. “Bye-bye,” she called, and her voice was like Ruth’s, and for a moment it stirred him. “You take care now.”

They’d left him food, of course—six sandwiches, a Ziploc bag crammed with marshmallows, three plums, two pears and a sack of tortilla chips the size of a laundry bag, not to mention the two-liter bottle of orange soda with which to wash it all down. “Sank you,” Hiro called, “sank you so much,” wondering if on could be calculated in the negative, for what wasn’t done as well as what was. He owed them a debt, an enormous debt—but then they owed him too. He hadn’t bludgeoned them to death, hadn’t stolen their food, their canoe, their paddles and fishing rods and charcoal briquettes. When you came right down to it, he’d sacrificed himself for them—and wasn’t that something?

He stood there on the platform a long while, watching them as they threaded their way up the narrow channel, paddles flashing in perfect harmony, father, mother, son.

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