Tomo Read online

  By Monday every house I visited buzzed with talk of the toaster. Mrs. Kawabata was predicted to die by fire—the same as Mrs. Shinjo. Both were librarians. Extra fire extinguishers were purchased for the older wooden library building, and a state-of-the-art sprinkler system was installed.

  A newlywed couple canceled their honeymoon flight to Hawaii because both of their pieces of toast had popped up bearing the character “air.”

  At dinnertime my parents and sister talked about how nuts everyone was, but I kept quiet. I didn’t necessarily believe in the toaster, but I was at least willing to be convinced, maybe.

  The news reached all over the prefecture. The line spilled out Yamada-san’s door and down the steps. News vans crowded the narrow street so that I had to drive fifty meters away to park.

  Mr. Doc held forth on the front stoop. “Don’t let curiosity pollute your mind!” he bellowed at the line, which was full of unfamiliar faces. A few college-age kids stood with him, holding signs and chanting, “Knowledge of death sullies the will to live!” The crowd ignored them and was silent, as if in line to receive a blessing. I stepped through the mob with the beer, excusing myself and sneaking peeks at the faces. Some people seemed lost in thought, staring up at the bamboo grove beyond the house, while others whispered nervously to one another.

  “Hey, no cuts, buddy,” someone said as I passed. I held up the crate of beer and almost said, “Delivery,” but then I thought that maybe Yamada-san didn’t want these people to know she’d ordered all this beer, so I turned back.

  I lingered near my truck and watched people come down the stairs, each clutching a piece of toast. So many People Who Knew. Some looked confused and some relieved. One woman was bawling so hard she dropped her toast, and when she did I saw what it said: suicide.

  That was eerie, but even eerier were the ones whose faces were blank and empty and lost. Like maybe they were already dead.

  A cry rose from the front of the crowd and suddenly everyone got very noisy. People gestured and talked amongst themselves, and some turned away and started heading back toward the road.

  “Broken? Right! I knew it was a fraud.”

  “Just my bad luck . . . should’ve come earlier.”

  “Not really sure I wanted to know, to be honest. . . .”

  I waited until everyone left, then approached the door with my crate.

  “Yamada-san?”

  She stepped into the hall, prim as ever.

  “Keisuke! How good of you to come amid that throng. I noticed the truck outside earlier and thought you’d given up.”

  “No, ma’am.” I held the crate out and she took it without a word. I shifted around, trying to sneak a peek into the kitchen.

  “Come on in and have a drink,” she said.

  There it was, unplugged, sitting right smack in the middle of the round yellow table; a silver single-slice toaster trimmed in black with rust lining the opening. The table was littered with crumbs. I wondered if you had to eat the toast in order for the prediction to come true, or if just toasting it was enough.

  “Well, there it is.”

  “Is it . . . broken?” I asked.

  “Seems to be.” She frowned.

  “Did it really work, though?”

  Her smile returned, serene beneath her lace collar. “Oh, yes! God’s methods sure are beyond our comprehension. Who are we to judge His ways?”

  “But . . . maybe you can get it fixed.”

  “Maybe. But perhaps this is simply the appliance’s fate.”

  She took a bottle from the crate and gestured with it toward the back door. “Please, come.”

  I followed her out the back door. The yard had been completely overtaken by a jungle-like garden that seemed out of step with Yamada-san’s tidy appearance and manners. We picked through vines until we reached the back of the yard, where a stone shrine stood against the first tall mud terrace. The family grave.

  “This is where my ancestors rest, and most recently my husband,” she said, picking up the bottle opener lying at the base of the shrine.

  “He loved beer. His favorite thing in life was a cold beer in the garden at sunset. Ah, Shuji,” she said.

  She opened the beer deftly and poured it all over the shrine, slowly dousing the statuary in caramel foam. She shook the bottle wildly at the end, spraying us both with drops of beer. She looked like my sister dancing to a Morning Musume song when she did that.

  When the bottle was empty she set it on the ledge where offerings are left. The family name, Yamada—heavenly mountain and earthly rice field—was carved in fancy calligraphy above the shelf, and beer meandered down the grooves in the stone like a lazy river in summer.

  She sighed. “I do that every day. That is my offering to him.”

  After what I’d just witnessed, I felt comfortable enough to ask, “Yamada-san, what about the eighth bottle?”

  She laughed. “You are an astute fellow.”

  She went in the house and returned with the toaster and another bottle.

  “Do you know what baptism is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Baptism is a ritual that washes away original sin, she said, setting the toaster on the offering ledge.” She reached again for the opener. “It makes you pure.”

  Then she held the bottle over her head, closed her eyes, and turned it upside-down.

  I reached out automatically to help her, to save her from herself, but she raised her palm. The beer gushed over her hair, her face, onto her white starched shirt and long beige skirt. Her hair flattened out. Here and there her cheek makeup ran and revealed darker skin underneath.

  About three-quarters through she stopped, opened her eyes, and held the bottle out to me.

  I didn’t move. All I could hear was the drip-drip-drip of beer hitting the dirt around Yamada-san’s feet. I know what my uncle would’ve said: what a waste of alcohol. He always said it was a sin to waste liquor.

  My impulse was to take the bottle—maybe she wanted me to hold it for her—but then she raised it to the sky and said, “For once, they came to me. I did the best I could, I explained what God truly is and how to be saved, but no one listened.”

  The remaining beer sloshed around inside the bottle. Her eyes were closed. It seemed she’d forgotten I was standing there.

  “They just wanted the piece of information,” she said. “Like I was some kind of palm reader! When the show was over they left as quickly as they came.”

  She opened her eyes and looked around, teetering as if she’d drunk all that beer instead of showering in it. When she noticed I was still there, she held the bottle out to me once again. Strands of wet hair clung to her cheeks. She smiled a smile I’ve never forgotten, a smile like a girl playing in a puddle.

  I stepped close to her, close enough so that I could see the pink brassiere through her damp blouse. I tried to follow her cues, and together we emptied the bottle into the toaster’s vacant slot.

  She looked toward the sky. I wondered if she was thinking of her own death. I guess we both knew how she was going to go, I thought.

  I followed her gaze. I could see the hilltop behind us and the bamboo growing way up there. The stalks moved slightly in a breeze I couldn’t feel, revealing and concealing slivers of blue that seemed to form words faster than I could read them. Well? Why not? I thought. Maybe that, too, was a marvel for anyone who cared to see it that way.

  Jet Black and the Ninja Wind

  by Leza Lowitz and Shogo Oketani

  The full moon party had just started, and Jet stood in Amy Williams’ kitchen, wearing the two-dollar black dress she’d bought at the thrift store.

  “That’s such a cool dress,” Amy told her, pushing a drink into her hand. The girls gathered, staring as if trying to remember whether they’d seen the dress in a catalog or a store window. Still, Jet knew it would have been cooler to have a date or to buy clothing that hadn’t belonged to someone living in an old folks’ home.

  “Yeah, she sa
id, “just put a hood on this thing, and I’d look like the grim reaper.”

  The girls in their sleek new outfits laughed. Jet could hardly believe it. She knew she’d changed, that people looked at her differently, and even her mother, staring at her one morning, had said, “The tomboy’s gone. You’ve become a woman.” And now Jet wanted nothing more than to spend the evening with the girls who’d always ignored her. But she couldn’t. She had ten minutes before she had to leave. The game. Tonight was the night of the game. Saturday night had been ever since Jet could remember. She hated the game like she hated nothing else.

  She took the drink anyway, not sure what it was—orange juice and something that smelled like rubbing alcohol. Amy Williams cranked the music. Boys were arriving. The girls began dancing in the living room just as the star quarterback threw open the door, a cooler on his shoulder. Jet tried to dance. How did they make it look so easy, swaying and turning gracefully? She’d have been more comfortable doing a spinning kick or a backflip. Now she had to make up her mind. Was it better to awkwardly explain she had to leave soon, or just slip out and later invent a story?

  Her senses stilled. she took in the music blaring, the thudding baseline, the hollering boys, but behind all that, if she focused, there was the battering, off-rhythm engine of the truck turning onto Amy Williams’ street. Kids were crowded around the door, so she went upstairs and into the bathroom. She took off her sandals, lifted the window screen and slipped out onto the roof’s overhang, then jumped down to the ground. She caught the top of the fence and swung herself over it. The truck was still moving, nearly to the house, when Jet reached the door and let herself in.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered to her mother, sliding down in her seat. A duffle with clothes for the game was on the floor, and as soon as they turned the corner, she began to change.

  “Have fun?” her mother whispered, slumped at the wheel, more gaunt than ever.

  “Best time of my life,” Jet replied, “all ten minutes of it.”

  Satoko drove them out of the suburbs and into the mountains, over roads muddy and rutted from a week of heavy rains, though now the sky was clear, and the full moon hung in it as if Amy Williams herself had put it there.

  The narrow road skirted the steep drop, hugging the edge of the mountain peaks that glowed in the moonlight. As they went around a bend, the back wheels fishtailed. Jet gasped and clutched the seat. The truck almost turned sideways, skidding toward the cliff. Her mother jerked the wheel and hit the gas, and the truck slid back toward the mountain. She brought it under control and pulled it to a stop. She pressed her foot on the emergency brake, locking it in place. Her breathing sounded labored. She’d appeared unwell for months now.

  “This is the last time,” she told Jet.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Jet said, but the sound of her own voice wasn’t convincing. The words came out whispery with fear.

  “Have I ever said this before?” her mother asked. “Have I ever told you it was the last time?”

  “No . . .”

  “Well, it is. You’ll never have to come up here again.”

  “No more game?”

  “No. The game will be over.”

  Jet stared out over the hood of the truck at the muddy road. Her mother seemed to have calmed. Jet could sense her exhaustion, the slowness of her breathing, even the tired beating of her heart. Her mother had said she had bronchitis, but her cough only got worse and worse, and Jet wondered for the first time whether her mother’s problem might be more serious. All week she would look exhausted and stay in bed, or meditate, and then, on the night of the game, she would pull herself together and become the woman Jet had always known her to be. She would concentrate her energy, focusing herself, slowing her breath, her eyes becoming still. Even now Jet could feel the slow expansion of calm around her, could see the precision in her movements. On the nights of the game, her mother would even cease to cough.

  “I promise you,” she told Jet, “this is the last time.”

  “Okay, Mom. I’m thrilled.” But Jet knew this wasn’t true. The intensity of her mother’s concentration distracted her.

  “You take the truck up to the parking spot,” her mother told her.

  “What?”

  “Take it up. I’ll get out here. You can find me.”

  “You mean like—”

  “The same rules as always,” her mother said.

  She got out and stepped down into the mud. She slammed the door, and Jet slid over across the old vinyl seat whose split seams trailed bits of stuffing. When she looked out the window, there was only the cliff alongside them, no sight of her mother. But this didn’t surprise her. She released the parking brake and steered the truck up along the mountain. What if it really was the last time? she asked herself and tried to stop being angry about the party. If the game is over, what’s next?

  The parking spot was no more than a widening in the road where the limbless trunk of a dead tree stood at the foot of a jumble of immense boulders. Hundreds of times Jet had climbed the mountain, crouched, pausing to watch for movement. She wrapped her body in black cloth and hid her face, leaving only a slit for her eyes. One more time, she told herself, but as soon as she was out of the truck, she stopped and stared up at the moon.

  Like a sign written across the sky, it seemed to be saying, “Loser, you couldn’t even get a date to the prom. Now you’re missing the coolest party ever, and you’re going to graduate from high school without ever being kissed.”

  She tried to think of a witty comeback. She stared at its face, at the craters like acne, and thought of the unpopular kids, the ones who didn’t get invited to parties either. She’d never even had acne. She was just different from everyone else. That was her curse: forced to be weird, to hide everything.

  There was a faint buzzing sound, and something, like a bird or a bat, flew close to her face. It brushed alongside her cheek, the sound clearer, a thin hiss of displaced air. A long knife struck the dead wood of the tree and embedded itself, quivering.

  Jet dropped to a crouch, looking up and around, then scuttled alongside the truck. Her mother couldn’t have thrown it, could she? This wasn’t part of the game. They didn’t use real weapons, only sticks, rocks sometimes.

  She was kneeling in the mud, her heart beating fast, moisture seeping through her pants, making them heavy, she realized. She shifted onto the balls of her feet.

  Stay light, she told herself. Nothing moved on the mountainside. She didn’t sense anything, not a single living creature, nothing.

  “Mom?” she tried to call but the word got stuck in her throat. How stupid could she be? Whoever had thrown the knife wouldn’t miss next time. She knew that she should stay on the move, but she couldn’t stop trying to figure out what had happened, whether her mother had changed the game because it was the last time, or whether something had gone wrong and someone else was out here. She’d said “same rules as always,” hadn’t she?

  Staying in one place is dangerous! Jet told herself.

  She sprinted and jumped, catching the handle of the knife and pulling it from the wood. She landed among the boulders and moved quickly, with small, darting steps against the stone, until she was on a perch in the middle of the jumble, hidden from sight.

  She turned the blade over. It was an army knife of some sort, long, its handle heavy. It would be easy for her to use, but then she almost dropped it, realizing that someone had meant to kill her. Why? What had she done?

  No, it had to be her mother who was trying to scare her. But how could Jet play this game if they were using real weapons? Maybe her mother wanted to teach her to take her training more seriously? Jet had once heard a story about a crazy war vet living up in these mountains, a man who had deserted, who’d gone AWOL on a visit home, and who hunted anyone who came onto his land. Maybe that’s what was happening. And if so, then her mother might be in danger, too.

  “Mom?” she shouted this time and moved quickly, changing her
hiding spot. “Be careful!”

  She placed her steps to leave the fewest traces. She ran along the side of a long flat boulder as big as a house, then crouched in a new hiding spot. There was no sound. Nothing. Who was out here with her?

  “Mom,” she shouted again, “if it’s you, I don’t want to play. Stop trying to scare me.”

  She changed places again and listened. There was no response, not a sound anywhere.

  She knew every way up the mountain. The wind was picking up. Small clouds shuttled quickly across the sky, beneath the moon, their shadows gliding over the earth.

  She concentrated her mind, listening, moving her senses out, watching the shape and hues of the landscape for traces of another person, for even the faintest pattern of footprints. But she sensed no one. Her mother had taught her to sit and feel everything for almost a mile around—birds, rabbits, people walking. The desert seemed empty, as if someone had cut Jet off from the world—or as if nothing was alive, or she wasn’t.

  She had two choices, to be slow and cautious or to find her mother before someone else did. As a cloud passed beneath the moon, she sprinted, running into its shadow. She was fast. No one could beat her in a race, and she would be a hard target, weaving and leaping.

  Her ankle twisted and her foot was pulled from beneath her before she could even feel the pain. She struck the mud face-first and rolled. It had been a sharp trip wire, she instantly knew. She could feel the swelling in her ankle, the blood filling the soft leather of her moccasin boot. She wanted to cry, to scream her mother’s name, but stopping now could get her killed. She leapt behind another long rock and lay still, trying to become invisible. The mountainside was irregular, an obstacle course of stone and fallen trees, of mud and sheer cliffs. Her mother had chosen it for this, to teach Jet all of the skills that her mother claimed she would someday need, though Jet never had.

  Maybe that was why she didn’t cry now. The training. The lessons. The constant expectation that things would be more dangerous than they really were. But though she tried to sense what was around her, she couldn’t focus. Her thoughts collapsed to fear. There was only her heart hammering in her chest, her body, her muddied arms and legs, her throbbing ankle, her cold fingers still gripping the handle of the knife.