Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,125

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