Sophie and the Rising Sun (7 page)

But the wallet was empty—stripped of everything of value. Still, his fingers prodded relentlessly into the tiny pockets—and found a small, obscure rectangle of cardboard tucked deep into a corner of the wallet.
Cardboard? What good is that?
He had trouble reading the words printed on it, but finally he made them out:
ONE WAY, JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
. A bus ticket.

Despite the desperate and disappointed lurch of his belly—which had anticipated food—he nearly laughed aloud. Providence had given him a way to flee the city, the terrible city full of false friendliness and rotting food in open cans and scuffling and grunting in the dark. He put the ticket carefully away into his pocket and kept his hand over it. He had absolutely no idea where this new place—this Jacksonville—was located, but it was where he would go. Good fortune had provided the way, and he would go.

He brushed off his clothes as well as he was able and straightened his collar before he went back into the bus station—to where he had arrived with his father’s money and with great responsibility upon him. And with all his false pride. Once there, he waited for a long time, watching the rivers of people coming and going. Seeing people embrace each other, laughing and crying at the same time. Those were the people who still had families. He saw also others like himself, who had no one to greet them and who moved along with their eyes blank and flat.

Finally, he approached the information window and held out the ticket. The clerk glanced at it briefly and at Mr. Oto for a long, breathless moment before she pointed an indifferent finger and mumbled, “Gate Three.”

When he found the gate, the bus was already parked there, purring and waiting—only for him, it seemed. Mr. Oto handed the ticket to the driver, but by then, he was so weak with hunger and shame and relief that he could hardly walk. Still, with whatever remote and final bit of strength he had left, he climbed into the bus, sank into an empty seat, and promptly fell asleep. He slept away the miles and the hours, on his way to a solitary life. One without family or friends. In Jacksonville.

But of course, he never arrived there, but ended up in the little town of Salty Greek, Georgia, where the sheriff lifted him up into his big arms just like a baby and the doctor’s wife befriended him—and then later, Miss Anne.

Over a year had passed
before Mr. Oto sent a letter to his father, confessing his shameful foolishness, begging his father’s forgiveness, and enclosing the money it would take to bring his aunt to California—money he had saved from the very small amount of what Miss Anne called “pocket money,” that she gave to him, over and above his use of the cottage. And he told his father all about Miss Anne, the kind lady who befriended him, and of his desire to repay that kindness by restoring her garden. After long consideration, Mr. Oto put a return address on the letter: General Delivery, Salty Creek, Georgia.

For weeks after he sent his confession and the money, he thought that perhaps he would receive a letter in return. He even dreamed the words of his father’s forgiveness. And so he went to the little post office often, asking if such a letter had come for him.

Finally, it did come. The envelope was addressed in his father’s spidery handwriting and the letter inside was very short: “Come home, my son.”

But he had not gone home. He didn’t quite know why. Because he always meant to go. But one thing had led to another—the fertilizings and the transplantings and the prunings. And his own desire to leave Miss Anne with a lovely garden she would be able to maintain after he had gone. A garden that would be his gift to her.

Now, a great crane of his father’s homeland had come to him in Miss Anne’s garden. And what could it mean? What did the crane bring to him, besides the terrible memory of his shame and the reminder of his father’s great mercy?

All afternoon, he stayed in the hut, meditating and waiting for the answer. Only when it was night did he creep out very quietly and tiptoe around the wall until he entered Miss Anne’s garden from the rear gate. He walked across the manicured oval of grass rimmed by the shrubbery. The garden stood empty and expectant. Under his bare feet, the grass was cool and damp, and his shadow in the moonlight stretched across the whole garden, so that he seemed to be a giant.

“Where are you, Great Crane?” he whispered.

But there was nothing in the garden except his shadow.

Every day, Mr. Oto worked
in the back garden, watching and waiting, so that he even sacrificed being able to see Sophie, just so he could see the crane again and learn what meaning it had, this impossible thing.

But the crane did not appear. On Wednesday, a small egret came, very early, for a brief look around the garden, and later that same afternoon, an osprey tilted across the sky. But no great crane. Mr. Oto worked and waited and began to wonder if it had really existed at all.

Every afternoon, he sat quietly in the hut, trying to meditate, but instead, he was thinking and wondering about the crane, so that instead of feeling peaceful, he felt worn and more than a little confused.

On Sunday, in the deepest darkness before dawn, the crane came to him once again, this time in what he knew was certainly only a dream. It entered the cottage and stood gazing down at him where he slept, watching him with great, bright eyes. So that he awakened with a start. Nothing there, of course, except for the silver light of the descending moon lying across the floor.

But the dream left him so filled with longing that he got up and made a cup of tea and took it out into the garden at first light to stand quietly, gazing around at the trees hung with Spanish moss and breathing in the aroma of the nearby salt marsh in the morning air.

Suddenly, he knew where to look for the crane.
Of course! I will go to the river this morning,
he thought.
Perhaps the crane is waiting for me there. After all, a crane doesn’t belong in a garden, and if one has come all this way, it would want to be in the marsh by the river.

He went back inside to get dressed, and at the last moment, he began gathering his paints and brushes. While he waited there for the crane, he would paint a picture of it standing against the familiar backdrop of the live oak trees and the sawgrass and the pale blue sky. That, he felt, might even encourage the crane to make itself visible to him again.

As he washed out his cup and thought very hard about painting a picture of the crane, Sophie passed by on the sidewalk, hurrying a little so she could go on through town before people started moving about. After all, it was Sunday—the day for church. And they wouldn’t understand, even as she herself didn’t quite understand, that on this one morning, at least, she couldn’t bear being shut up in the narrow, little white building.

Because why on earth was she inviting him, of all people, to share her precious riverbank? Yet at the same time, she remembered his deep and humble bow in the hardware store. Besides, he would not talk much, and when he did speak, the tone would be nice to hear. And perhaps there would be something comforting in having him nearby.

“I hope this day sees you in excellent health.” The measured words, the gentle tone, the soft sincerity—she smiled and glanced at him where he bowed low before her.

“Yes, thank you.” Then, without another word, she turned back to her painting.

For long minutes, she heard no other sound and thought that perhaps he had left after all. Or perhaps he was still in the deep bow, waiting for... what? Her permission to stand erect again?

Then she heard his pencils and brushes rattling as he sat down at a respectful distance and a bit behind her and began to sketch. His heart was pounding so hard that the collar of his shirt trembled, but still he managed at last to begin sketching the head and the long, graceful neck of the crane before his pencil trailed off the edge of the paper and he found himself watching Sophie far more than he was looking at the sketch.

And in that very strange way in which it can happen, he gazed at her for so long that her form began to lose all logical and rational meaning to him, and so it didn’t really come as a complete surprise to him when he began envisioning white wings behind her, wings that echoed the angle of her white arms.

He looked back at his sketch, at the long, graceful neck of the crane snaking across an edge of the paper, and he began adding the wings, and below them—and yet a part of them—Sophie’s white arms. So that over the next quiet hour, the crane in his painting became—somehow—one with her: Sophie sitting in her canvas chair by the river, with sunlight on her arms, while behind her and yet with her, dreamlike and indistinct, the great crane stood with its wings outspread and its eyes full of love.

And more. Something that had always been and that he had always known.

Of course! The old fable of the Crane-Wife!

Out of his childhood memory rushed back the old story of the poor woodcutter who rescued a great crane and nursed it back to health. So that by magic, the crane became a beautiful bride for him, bringing him good fortune. And love. The story his father’s mother had told to his father and his father had then told to him when he was just a little boy. And that he could now see on the paper.

Well!
He didn’t try to stop the smile of incredulity that curled about him.
A poor gardener could hope to gain such a woman as this. If a poor woodcutter, why not a poor gardener?

Then he chastised himself, but gently:
Why, this is the kind of dreaming a young and impetuous man would do, and not a man of mature years!

He glanced a little nervously at Sophie.
My dear Sophie! What would you think if you knew I was imagining you as my Crane-Wife?

But Sophie, who seemed to be too deeply engrossed in her painting to notice anything about Mr. Oto, was thinking that actually it was quite nice, having someone there with her—a quiet man. The way it would have been with Henry. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant thing to think about, even though the man sitting near her wasn’t Henry—would never be.

She darted a glance at the completely unsuspecting little man and hid her embarrassed smile.
If you only knew what I was thinking,
she thought with amusement,
it would frighten you right out of your wits!

For an hour or more, they both painted, saying nothing but ever mindful of each other’s presence. Then Sophie began gathering up her paints, and Mr. Oto courteously pretended not to notice. But as she left, she smiled politely at him.

“I have to go now. I hope you enjoy your painting.”

“Thank you,” he managed to mumble, turning his paper just a bit so that she could not see the sketch of herself as the Crane-Wife from the old tale.

On Monday morning,
Mr. Oto worked again in Miss Anne’s front yard close to the sidewalk, and when Sophie passed by on her way to tend the crab traps, Mr. Oto’s glance at her lingered for a moment, and she caught the flicker of his eyes.

“Good morning,” she said, but she neither slowed her steps nor looked directly at him—not that he could tell, anyway. And he did not rise from where he was kneeling in the flower beds. But still, he lifted off his hat and held it over his heart.

“Good morning,” he answered in a strong voice to her back and received a nod of her head.

My dear Miss Sophie
, he did not add.

The same thing transpired on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And on Thursday and Friday. Always the same. Her barely audible “Good morning,” and upon his stronger greeting, the curt nod of her head.