unmarked Ford. The cold air was like Boise in January. He climbed in slowly, using his uncut arm and his uncut leg for leverage.
“Got everything, Gunny?”
“Enough to get me back.”
“We’re off. We’ll get you there in plenty of time.”
Nobody talked on the long drive to Narita. It was essentially the second time he’d been ejected from Japan, and he knew he was lucky he wasn’t in prison. The traffic, the small, crowded neighborhoods, the driving ranges, all fled by unremarkably, and two hours later, the low, sleek hull of Narita’s No. 2 terminal came into view.
At the curbside, he got out, as did one of the corpsmen.
“Ben’s going to park the van. I hope you don’t mind, but we’re supposed to stay with you till you get beyond security.”
“Sure, you have a job to do, like everybody.”
That ordeal went smoothly. He checked in, displayed his passport, got his boarding pass-well, well, the flight was first class, so much easier-and the two young guys took him to security.
“This is always a pain,” he said. “I have a steel hip, so bells go off.”
“No problem,” said one of the kids. “We’ll help.”
“Look,” he said, “is this it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, nobody’s debriefed me, nobody’s taken a statement, nobody’s even asked any questions. I don’t know what happened to some people who were involved with me. There was a little girl who-”
“Gunny, we’re just pharmacist’s mates. We don’t make policy. This is the way they want it.”
“Them again.”
“Sorry, Gunny.”
“I just have to make sure this little girl is all right. I mean, she was just a kid.”
“I don’t have any information for you, Gunny. They didn’t say anything.”
“Oh…okay, okay.”
So he turned to security and this time, at least, the bell didn’t go off. Without ceremony he was through. He nodded at the boys across the rope line, and they nodded back but made no move to leave. As this was the only exit, clearly they were to stay until eight-ball Swagger had safely departed.
He walked toward the gate, skipping the mall area where, a few months ago, he’d so memorably fallen off the wagon. He felt-well, what? Not satisfied, not really. Old. His wounds hurt, his gait was stiff, he needed another painkiller, but at least he wasn’t on crutches or in some kind of a chair. He also felt oddly empty. The light was gray and somber, perfect for his mood: used up, useless, spent, irrelevant. Maybe even disappointed. Couldn’t put a finger on it. It was over, was all, back to the world, DEROS, all that good shit.
Till the end, he kept his hope up. Perhaps Okada-san would show up, perhaps she’d have Miko along and they could have a nice farewell chat. That way there’d be some finality to it, some sense of ending. But it didn’t happen and then the flight was called.
The blade flew against the scrub, bit hard and clean, and sent a sheaf of cuttings flying through the air, where a harsh wind sprayed them across the slope. Back and forth, back and forth, the scythe ate the brambles as Bob found his rhythm, leaning in, uncoiling lightly, and cutting.
He had to start over, of course. During the months in California and Japan, the slope had grown out. Now, under a lowering winter sky, you could hardly tell where he’d cut and where he hadn’t. This was his fourth day here, the air was raw and the wind sharp, but on some principle that he could not name, he had come back, taken up the scythe, and again laid into the long job.
“That is not what is eating you,” Julie said. “You don’t give a damn about that slope. Something is eating you alive. I can tell. You’d better get some help.”
“Sweetie, I am fine. I started a job, now I will finish it.”
“You should talk to someone about Japan. Maybe not me, maybe not anyone here in town, but a specialist. I have never seen you so low since the day you showed up in my front yard shot full of holes all those years ago. Bob, if you don’t deal with it, this’ll be the one that kills you.”
“Nothing bad happened in Japan,” he said. “Everyone says it was a big success, and that we got a job done. Now I am back, everything is fine, and I have this thing to do.”
“Yes, and you came home like you always do, tired and sad with a whole new set of scars. You only get scars like that in fights to the death. But it’s even worse than that. I can tell. Someone died, someone you cared about, and you don’t have any way to scream about it. Honey, you’ve got to find a place to scream.”
“There were some rough times. Yes, some people died. Nothing I could do about it, unfortunately. But that’s not it. I have to tell you, there’s a child I wanted so much to help. And I couldn’t, not really. So she’s lost. Not dead, just lost. That’s all. I’ll tell you more sometime, not now.”
“Well, I’m sorry. A child would be nice,” said Julie. “Liven this place up. I might even love a child. Tired of living with a grouchy bear, how much worse could a child be?”
Not even Nikki, who’d come home for a spell, could really get through to him.
“Something about a child that he didn’t want to talk about has him all hurting,” her mother said, “and he’s too goddamned stubborn to take a rest and get some help.”
“He’ll be all right. You know him. He comes back from everything.”
“But someday he won’t, and maybe that day has come.”
“No, he’s fine.” But even as she said it, she didn’t believe it: her father was somehow there/not there at once, as if a hole had been opened, then lightly covered over.
A child? What child could that be?
So the three lived in the nice house on the outskirts of Boise, and from a distance, everything seemed fine. The doting father, the handsome wife, the beautiful daughter, now and then in town at a fine restaurant or off to the movies. Why, it looked so fine; there was plenty of money and the three of them so bright and attractive you’d have thought, Those are America’s aristocrats, not of birth but of skill and strength. They are so blessed with health and courage and even some wealth and so proud of each other. They are the best we make.
He cut, he cut, he cut. First day was the worst. Each cut brought an increment of pain. His stamina was way down too, and he wasn’t as hard as he thought he’d be. He’d lost a lot. By the end of the first hour, he breathed hot and hard through dry lips. Over the next few days, it got a little better, and by the third day he stayed out even as a squall blew through, pelting him with ice particles.
It looked like today might bring more of the same, though the heat he’d raised was insulation against the rain and the cold. In the distance, of course, stood the mountains, dark to the point of purple, their peaks lost in the low strata. The prairies between them and him had turned yellow in the winter, dried out and cleansed of wheat or let simply go if they were only grass, so the whole earth had a yellowed, used, even dead feel to it. Yet it was so western: nothing at all looked like it could be of Japan or the East, just rolling hills and plains and the scars of the mountains lost in the dark clouds thirty miles to the east.
It was about four when he saw Nikki’s truck. What was that damned girl doing all the way out here? He’d driven her out to look at his land once late last summer, before all this, but she’d not returned since and there’d been no talk of a visit that morning or any other morning. He was surprised she even knew the place, for it involved a cutoff and a couple of unnamed back roads before it yielded the Swagger retirement property. Maybe she’d had a bitter fight with her mother and was pulling out early and stopped off for a good-bye. It had happened before.
Nikki’s truck pulled up at the foot of the slope, and Bob came down to greet her.
He could see his daughter in the driver’s seat, laughing. Then he saw she had a passenger, and the door opened and out climbed Susan Okada.
Something went off inside him; it might have been a sense of hope. He took a deep breath.
“Well, lookie here, the lady from the embassy.”
“Hello, Swagger. I had to come.”
“My god, it’s so great to see you!”
“You saved my life. I never thanked you.”
“You saved the child’s life. I never thanked you.”
“The child’s life is thanks enough.”
