Sophie and the Rising Sun (4 page)

Still, by the next morning, he was much better. But when the doctor started asking who he was and where he was going on that bus, Mr. Oto just smiled and shook his head and said nothing—except to touch his chest and say, “Oto.” That’s how come the doctor figured he didn’t speak any English. So he communicated with Mr. Oto from then on by using his hands a lot and short, simple words, too, which he yelled—just as if the man were deaf.

Eulalie certainly went into a flurry of cooking over the next few days, and all in Mr. Oto’s behalf. Always like that, Eulalie was—had a big heart for creatures that were sick. Or lost.

Why, one time, she had a whole bunch of seven or eight stray cats she fed all the time. And she had names for every single one of them, too. Used to cook up a concoction of pigs’ livers and oatmeal for feeding to them. What a smell that was! And it was only after all the doctor’s patients started complaining to him that he had to put his foot down about that.

And I’d expect that the minute the sheriff brought Mr. Oto in, the good doctor knew what was going to happen, as far as Eulalie was concerned.

She sure lived up to her reputation that time, because for breakfast she fixed steaming bowls of grits, platters of fried eggs, and plates piled high with hot, buttered biscuits. For noontime dinner, she made fried chicken or chicken with dumplings or meatloaf and always a big bowl of mashed potatoes that towered above Mr. Oto’s smiling face where he sat at her table. For supper, she served cold fried chicken and potato salad, or country ham and cornbread, and Jell-O salads that were thick with fruit cocktail. And always, a platter piled high with cornbread and plenty of butter to go with it. That Eulalie sure loved to cook, and she’d been missing it, what with the doctor always being on some kind of diet and trying to watch his weight. Not that it ever did him much good, though.

So Mr. Oto ate and ate, as if he could never get enough, Eulalie said. And the good doctor ate and ate, too—and gained a full six pounds in only a few days. He was already a big man, you see, and with all that good food, he got even bigger in a hurry.

But anyway, that’s how Mr. Oto regained his health, so much so that a few mornings later, he swept out the doctor’s office and washed all the windows in the whole house, unasked. Then he trimmed the bushes in the front yard, and he found some tomato plants in a can of water on the back porch—the doctor had meant to plant them the weekend before—and he carefully set them out in the back garden. So that the doctor’s office was sparkling clean, the garden well-tended, and Eulalie’s kitchen just roiling with the good smells of her cooking.

It was no wonder to me that although Mr. Oto was certainly well enough to travel again, he didn’t seem to understand that the doctor was trying to suggest that he do exactly that. In fact, whenever the doctor tried to talk with him about it, Mr. Oto looked at him with a blank look on his face, and, of course, Eulalie snorted and glared at the doctor whenever he tried to bring it up.

Finally, the good doctor came to me with his problem, because we’d been friends for many years, and, too, he knew about the gardener’s cottage on my property. And, as he said, Mr. Oto couldn’t go on forever sleeping on the cot in the back of his office. Of course, I had been expecting it, really—what with all the fuss Eulalie was making over Mr. Oto—so I agreed to let him stay in my cottage until he was ready to continue his journey. And besides, the doctor knew I wouldn’t mind if Mr. Oto was a foreigner. And that he wasn’t white.

But because I was never one to receive charity or to give it, I said he’d have to earn his keep by working for me—replacing that broken faucet in the backyard and the cracked windowpanes in the sunroom and by painting the front porch, too.

Poor Eulalie put up a terrible fuss when the doctor told her Mr. Oto would be leaving their house, and finally, the only thing that would stop all her crying and carrying on was that the doctor and I agreed that she could continue providing Mr. Oto with sumptuous meals. For a while, at least.

All in all, it seemed to be a pretty good solution, and so the doctor delivered Mr. Oto to me. I hadn’t seen him before myself, and I’ll have to admit that I’d never seen anyone who looked quite like him before. Still, he looked quite nice in the doctor’s freshly washed and ironed, outgrown clothes and carrying a bulging, brown-bag lunch. Just to tide him over until Eulalie could deliver his supper.

But the funny thing was this: As soon as the doctor left—and all that leave-taking required a lot of smiling and bowing on Mr. Oto’s part—he turned to me, and bowing once again, he said in the softest possible voice... and in perfect English, “I am most grateful for your generosity.”

At that, I pounced on him with a lot of questions—after finding out that he could speak English as well as an American. But instantly, he retreated into all that silence and bowing. So in that quiet way, he let me know that he wasn’t going to say much about his past. Or his future either, for that matter.

Well, I accepted that about him because I don’t like telling people my business, either. So he moved into the small stone cottage behind my garden wall and seemed to be pleased with it. It was almost a year before he asked me for anything other than what I put into the cottage for his use: a cot, a table, two chairs, and—to his obvious delight—wood for the fireplace for when the nights would be cool in winter.

Within the first few days, he fixed the broken faucet and replaced the cracked windowpanes in the sunroom and painted my whole front porch without spilling so much as a drop. When all that was finished, he started in to weeding the big back garden—without being asked. And he did a beautiful job of it. Why, the flowers fairly leaped into bloom under his hands. And goodness knows, no one had cared for that garden in years. Not since my husband passed on. Made me feel so good to see it pretty and clean again, and with the flowers just blooming to beat the band.

From the very beginning, Mr. Oto was such a completely delightful man—quiet and unobtrusive, and above all, exquisitely polite—that I really became quite fond of him. So I bought a straw carpet to cover the bare, plank floor of the cottage and gave him a small electric plate so that he could make tea for himself.

For the longest kind of time, good old Eulalie continued to deliver at least one sumptuous meal to my house every day, and Mr. Oto dined, alone, on my back porch. Later, when the winter came and some of the days were quite chilly and very rainy, I fixed a card table for him on the sun porch, so that he sat among all those neglected plants I meant to find time to work with—and he always took a few minutes before he ate to pluck the dead leaves from them and to loosen the packed and dried soil in their pots. Soon, they were blooming also.

Finally—somehow—both Mr. Oto and I seemed to take it for granted that he would stay. And he did.

Mr. Oto staggered to a stop and gazed at it, while the full realization of what he was really seeing came very slowly, along with the memory of his father’s voice, speaking very long ago, saying:
“When I was just a child, my father took me once to the island of Hokkaido. And there, I saw the great cranes of Japan dancing in the snow.”

He blinked several times, as if to clear his vision, and then he began arguing against the very existence of that distinct, clear, and majestic creature.

It could be a blue heron, perhaps—a larger one than I have ever seen before. Or

maybe an egret with very strange plumage. But not a great crane of Japan. Impossible!

Indeed, herons and egrets sometimes came into the gardens and yards of the houses in that small town so close to the salt marshes—great blue herons and snowy egrets came, but never a great crane, such as Mr. Oto had never seen, but that his father had described to him in great detail.

But the crane still stood in his direct view—absolutely real, to the denial of all other possibilities. So that finally, he knew that he was not dreaming. It was real. A great crane of his father’s homeland. The slender neck and the unmistakable red spot on the white head and the gash of black feathers against the neck and along the tail.

And the sheer size of it! At least five feet tall, Mr. Oto guessed. Exactly as tall as Mr. Oto himself.

“Mr. Oto? Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne’s voice called his name not once, but twice—as always. So that no matter how close he was, he never had time to answer her until she had called him a second time.

Behind him, the screen door slammed and Miss Anne’s gardening boots clumped noisily on the wooden steps. She was coming to give him minutely detailed instructions about where she wanted him to plant the dogwoods, and how deep she wanted him to dig the holes, and how often he must water them.

And the crane, hearing the noise, looked once more directly at Mr. Oto for a long moment before it moved slowly in and among the camellia bushes until he could see it no longer.

“Mr. Oto? Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne called again from the bottom of the steps.

“I am here, Miss Anne,” he finally said in a voice too low for her to hear. “I am here. But I am not here.”

I am with my father when he was a child in faraway Japan, a place where I have never been; and with my father’s father, whom I have never met; and watching the great cranes—which I have never seen—dancing in the snow.

“What on earth are you doing, Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne came to stand directly in front of him and to lean forward, studying his face in nearsighted concern. “Are you ill? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”

“No, miss,” he finally managed to say, but still, he did not look at her, but leaned a little to see the camellia bushes and to wonder if there was something hiding in them.

Or am I becoming a dream-laden man who can’t tell what’s real? Like my old father before me?

Miss Anne looked at the bank of camellia bushes against the wall. Nothing was there.

“Well, then, if you’re sure you’re all right, let’s get these dogwoods planted before the roots dry out any more,” she said, striding off toward the other side of the yard and then looking back at him expectantly. Like an obedient child, he followed her. But to himself he said,
What can it mean that a great crane has come to me here? And what message does he bring— of my father and of my father’s ancestors?