She was dead. Her throat was slashed, deeply, very near to the bone. She had probably died in less than a minute. There was much blood, naturally, but it was almost wholly pooled in a broad blot beneath her, the dry red earth turned a rich hue of brown. There was little blood on her person, hardly a spatter or speck anywhere save on her collar and on the tops of her shoulders, where the fabric had begun blotting it back up. It was as though she had gently lain down for him and calmly waited for the slashing cut. The oddity was that he was unsoiled as well, completely untouched. There was nothing even on his hands, with which he was rubbing his close-shaven head. Repeatedly I asked him what had happened but he did not seem to hear me. He merely sat there, his knees limply splayed out, his cap fallen off, an errant expression on his face, like a man who has seen his other self.
Finally someone asked me what they ought to do, and as I held rank, I told the men to take Corporal Endo under arms to the officer-in-charge. While I stood at the edge of the trail they led him off. I recall myself, now, as having remained there after Endo had been escorted away. I ordered some others to fetch a stretcher for the girl’s body, and after a few moments, I was left alone with her. In the sudden quiet of the glade I felt I should kneel down. Her eyes were open, coal-dark but still bright and glassy. She did not look fearful or sad. She was no longer in mourning. And for the first time I appreciated what she truly looked like, the simple cast of her young girl’s face.
Endo was kept that night under close watch, and after a brief interrogation by Captain Ono, he confessed to the deed. The following morning, just after dawn, under witness by the entire garrison, he was executed. Mrs. Matsui was present, and the girls, as was the dead girl’s sister, Kkutaeh, who looked upon the proceedings without the least affect. She stood somewhat aside from the others. The officer-in-charge announced that Endo had been charged not with murder, but with treasonous action against the corps. He should be considered as guilty as any saboteur who had stolen or despoiled the camp’s armament or rations. Endo looked terribly small and frail; he was so frightened he could hardly walk. They had to help him to the spot where he would kneel. By custom he was then offered a blade, but he dropped it before he could pierce his belly, retching instead. The swordsman did not hesitate and struck him cleanly, and his headless body pitched forward lightly, his delicate hands oddly outstretched, as if to break his fall.
10
ON ANY SATURDAY MORNING in the Village of Bedley Run, one can see everywhere the prosperity and spirit and subtle industry of its citizens. There are the running, double-parked cars in front of Sammy’s Bagel Nook, where inside the store middle-aged fathers line up along the foggy glass case of salads and schmears with chubby half — Sunday papers wadded beneath their arms, impatiently waiting for the call of their number. There are the as-if-competing pairs of lady walkers, neon-headbanded and sweat-suited, marching in their bulbous, ice-white cross-training shoes up and down the main avenue, strutting brazenly in front of the suddenly tolerant, halting weekend traffic. There are the well-dressed young families, many with prams, peering hopefully into the picture window of the Egg & Pancake House for an open table, and if there isn’t one, strolling farther down Church to the birchwood-paneled Bakery Europa, the fancy new pastry shop where they prepare the noisy coffees. And all over the village is the bracing air of insistence, this lifting breeze of accomplishment, and whether the people are happy or not in their lives, they have learned to keep steadily moving, moving all the time.
Though I shouldn’t, given the doctor’s strict orders of convalescence, I now drive through these Saturday streets for perhaps the thousandth time, slowing at the pedestrian crossing and then by my former store, which should be open for customers at this hour but is instead shadowy and shuttered. I notice that a royal-blue-and-white Town Realty sign — PRIME RETAIL & APTS FOR SALE/LEASE — has been placed in the window case, and the name of the agent on the bottom is of course Liv Crawford, whose multiple phone numbers in bold lettering, despite my resistance, I have somehow accepted into memory.
The second-story apartment windows are dark as well, but curtains are up and the Hickeys’ car, a red Volvo station wagon with rusty wheelwells, is parked at the curb. In the past two weeks I’ve been home, I haven’t heard a word about the store or the Hickeys, or news about their son, and I’ve been too afraid to call the children’s ICU to find out what, if anything, might have occurred. I don’t wish to hear the nurse’s voice stiffen and lower. I don’t wish to hear her ask if I am family. During the quiet, inactive hours I’ve been stuck inside the house, I’ve been thinking again, too, of what it would mean for Patrick Hickey to survive, of the awful accident or gradual demise of another young boy or girl with the exactly right heart, and I begin to imagine — or even hope — that the necessary and terrible thing will happen, just come to pass, for it seems that if there should be a price to pay for darkly willing an innocent person’s fate, I may as well pay it, and not the beleaguered Hickeys, who must endure constant torment by such conflicting thoughts.
I didn’t even hear about the store being available from Liv Crawford, who probably thinks I would find it too disturbing in my recovering state to learn that Sunny Medical Supply has finally gone out of business. Well, I do. It’s not that I believed the shop would be there forever, or become a village institution, but I did hold out hope of the store’s being passed along in the coming years, if going by a different name, from the Hickeys to whomever and whomever else, a humble legacy that a decent man had once begun and built up and nurtured. In fact, it becomes even more troubling a notion to consider how quickly the memory of the store will fade away, once it reopens as something else, say a bookshop or a beauty salon, and how swiftly, too, the appellation of “Doc Hata” will dwindle and pass from the talk of the town, if it’s not completely gone already. I realize, probably too late, that I wish to leave something of myself, a small service to Bedley Run, and not simply a respectable headstone, but after seeing the generic, forlorn closedness of the store, I feel precipitously insubstantial behind the wheel, like an apparition who has visited too long.
But I am bolstered by Liv Crawford, whom I haven’t actually seen in some time but whose daily contact with me is most regular, in the form of a different catered box dinner delivered each afternoon by her new assistant, Julie, a cheery, bouncy young woman whose talk and dress are uncannily like Liv’s. Yesterday it was moussaka from the Aegean Shack, with flatbread and a Greek side salad, and though I’ve asked Julie to please tell Liv this catering must cease, when the doorbell rings at six o’clock I find myself swiftly ambling to the door, my senses keen for what Liv has decided on that day, whatever delectation and surprise she’s thought to order for me. In fact, I think I have never enjoyed such a range of dishes, or known they could be had in the immediate area, though even more satisfying than the cuisine has been the simple idea of Liv taking a few moments from her busy afternoon to think of me. For a long time, particularly after Sunny left, I was certain that I would never get to enjoy the pleasantness and warmth of this kind of filiation and modest indulgence, and had resigned myself to a bachelor dotage of one-pot meals and (if careful) one-log fires and the placid chill of a zone-heated house. And I wonder if the spartan clime and space I’ve carefully arranged for myself has nearly shut me off, made me believe I ought never need to know what a sweet acceptance it can be, what good true ache can come by the door-to-door delivery of a hearty casserole in foil and a half-bottle of fruity red wine.