Hear The Wind Sing Part 9

The town is home to many different kinds of people. In my eighteen years there, I learned lots of things. The town really took root in my heart, and most of my memories are tied to it. However, when I left town to go to college, I was relieved from the bottom of my soul.

For summer vacation and spring break I go back there, but I usually just end up drinking too much beer.

29

In just one week, the Rat's condition worsened. Partially due to the onset of autumn, probably also due to some girl. The Rat didn't breathe a word about any of it.

When the Rat wasn't around, I grabbed J and tried to shake him down for a little information.

"Hey, what's up with the Rat?"

"Well, you know as much as I do. It's just because it's the end of the summer."

With the start of autumn, the Rat's spirits always fell. He'd sit at the counter and stare at some book, holding up his end of our conversation only with oneword answers. When the evening came and that cool wind blew, and the smell of fall could be felt, the Rat stopped drinking beer and started gulping down bourbon, feeding limitless amounts of coins into the jukebox and kicking the pinball machine until the TILT light lit up and J got fl.u.s.tered.

"He probably feels like he's being left behind. You know how that feels," said J.

"Yeah?"

"Everyone's leaving. Going back to school, going back to work. Aren't you headed back yourself?"

"Yeah."

"So you know what I mean."

I nodded. "And the girl?"

"It's been awhile, so I don't remember so well."

"Did something happen between them?"

"Who knows?"

J mumbled something and went back to his work. I didn't press the issue any further. I went over to the jukebox, put some change in it, picked a few songs, then went back to the counter to drink beer. Ten minutes later, J came back over and stood in front of me.

"Hey, the Rat really didn't say anything to you?"

"Nope."

"Weird."

"You think so?"

He kept polis.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s in his hand as he thought it over.

"He really seemed like he wanted to talk to you about it."

"So why didn't he?"

"It's hard for him. He feels like you'll give him a hard time."

"I wouldn't do that."

"It just seems that way. He's felt that way for a long time. He's a real easy-going kid, but when it comes to you, there's something there...I'm not saying anything bad about you or anything."

"I know that."

"Anyway, I've got twenty years on you, and in that time I've seen quite a bit. 'Cause of that, this is, well, it's just..."

"You're worried."

"Yeah."

I laughed and drank my beer.

"I'll try and talk to him."

"I think that'd be good."

J put out his cigarette and went back to work. I got up from my seat and went to the washroom, washed my hands, and looked at my face lit up in the mirror. Then I went back and s.p.a.ced out as I drank another beer.

30

Once upon a time, everybody was preoccupied with being cool.

When I finished high school, I resolved to say only half of what I was really thinking. I don't know why, but that was the plan. Over the course of a few years, I was able to stick to this. Then one day I discovered that I was no longer the kind of person who could just say half of what he was really feeling.

I don't know what that had to do with being cool. However, if you could call an old refrigerator in desperate need of defrosting cool, that was me. In that vein, I was caught in the ebb and flow of time, and when my consciousness begged for sleep, I kickstarted it with beer and cigarettes to keep on writing like this. I took lots of hot showers, shaved twice a day, and listened to old records ad infinitum. Right now, behind me, those old-fas.h.i.+oned Peter, Paul, and Mary are singing: "Don't think twice, it's alright."

31 The following day, I invited the Rat to the pool at the hotel on the mountainside. Summer was almost over, traffic was rough, and there were only ten other guests at the pool. Of them, half were swimming and the other half were contentedly-sunbathing Americans staying there.

The hotel was a remodeled n.o.bleman's estate spanned by a splendid lawn, the pool and the main wing part.i.tioned by a hedge rising up a slightly inclining hill, with a clear view of the ocean, the town, and the harbor below.

After racing the Rat back and forth down the length of the twenty-five meter pool, we sat in the deck chairs and drank cola. I caught my breath and then in the time it took to take one hit of my cigarette, the Rat was all alone, his gaze fixed absently on an American girl swimming beautifully.

In the brilliant sky, a few jet trails could be seen, stuck to the sky as if frozen there.

"I feel like lots more planes used to fly by when I was a kid," said the Rat as he looked up.

"They were mostly US Air Force planes, though. Twin-fuselage propeller planes. You've seen 'em?"

"Like the P-38?"

"Nah, transport planes. Much bigger than P-38s. They'd be flying really low, and you could see the emblems painted on the side...also I saw a DC-6, a DC-7, and a Sabrejet."

"Those are really old."

"Yep, back from the Eisenhower days. The cruisers would enter the bay, and the town would be full of sailors. You ever seen an MP?"

"Yeah."

"Times change," he sighed. "Not that I particularly like sailors or anything..."

I nodded.

"The Sabres were really great planes. They were only used to drop napalm. You ever see an airplane drop napalm?"

"Just in war movies."

"People really think up a lot of things. And napalm is one of them. After ten years, you'd even start to miss the napalm, I bet."

I laughed and lit my second cigarette. "You really like airplanes, don't you?"

"I thought I wanted to be a pilot, back in those days. But my eyes were bad, so I gave it up."

"Yeah?"

"I like the sky. You can look at it forever and never get tired of it, and when you don't want to look at it anymore, you stop."

The Rat was silent for five minutes, then suddenly spoke.

"Sometimes, there's nothing I can do, I just can't stand it any longer. 'Cause I'm rich."

"I can't pretend to know how you feel," I said resignedly, "but it's okay to run away. If you really feel that way."

"Probably...I think that would be the best thing to do. Go to some town I don't know, start all over again. Wouldn't be too bad."

"You won't go back to college?"

"I'm done. There's no way I can go back."

From behind his sungla.s.ses, the Rat's eyes followed the girl who was still swimming.

"Why'd you quit?"

"I don't know, 'cause I was bored? Still, in my own way, I tried my best. More than even I could believe. I thought about other people just as much as myself, and thanks to that I got punched by a policeman. But, when the time comes, everybody goes back to their own routine. I just had nowhere to go back to. Like a game of musical chairs."

"So what are you going to do?"

He wiped his legs with a towel as he thought this over.

"I'm thinking of writing novels. What do you think?"

"Of course I think it's a great idea."

He nodded.

"What kind of novels?"

"Good ones. By my standards, anyway. Me, I don't think I have talent or anything. At least, I think that my writing has got to be the result of some epiphany or it won't have any meaning. Don't you think?"

"I agree."

"I've got to write for myself...or maybe for the cicadas."

"Cicadas?"

"Yep."

The Rat fiddled around for a moment with the Kennedy half-dollar hung around his neck as a pendant.

"Some years back, me and this girl went to Nara. It was a terribly hot summer afternoon, and we'd been walking on these mountain trails for three whole hours. During that time, to give you an idea, we had for company: the shrieking of wild birds shooting out of the trees, these monster cicadas buzzing across the paths between the rice fields, and the like. 'Cause it was hot as h.e.l.l, you know.

"After walking for a bit, we sat on a hillside covered thick with summer gra.s.s, and there was a nice breeze blowing the sweat off our bodies. There was a deep moat stretching out below the hill, and on the other side was this mound, covered with trees, looking like an island. It was a burial mound. For some Emperor from a long time ago. You ever seen one?"

I nodded.

"Looking at that, I started thinking, 'why did they make such a huge tomb for him?' Of course, every grave has meaning. Like they say, everybody dies sometime. They teach you that.

"Still, this was just too big. Bigness, sometimes it changes the very essence of something into something else entirely. Speaking practically, it was like this didn't even look like a tomb. A mountain. The surface of the moat was covered with frogs and water plants, and the whole edge of it was covered with cobwebs.

"I stared at it in silence, the wind from the water clearing my ears. What I felt at that time, I really can't even put into words. No, wait, it wasn't really a feeling. It was its own completely-packaged sensation. In other words, the cicadas and frogs and spiders, they were all one thing flowing into s.p.a.ce."

Saying this, the Rat drank the last sip of his already-flat cola.

"When I'm writing, I'm reminded of that summer afternoon and that overgrown burial mound. Then I think this: the cicadas and frogs and spiders, the summer gra.s.s and the wind, if I could write for them, it would be a wonderful thing."

Finis.h.i.+ng his story, the Rat folded both his arms behind his head and stared quietly up at the sky.

"So...have you tried writing anything?"

"Nope, I can't write a single line. I can't write anything."

"Really?"

"'Ye are the salt of the earth.'"

"What?"

"'But if the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?'"