The Hummingbird (29 page)

Michael took the fruit without a word. He smelled it deeply, then ate it just like the one before. Shouri sniffed, and he offered her the leaves from both crowns. She horsed them down.

“It was only by accident that I saw him.” Michael sat up, wiping sand from his leg. “We were transporting a backhoe that afternoon, to fix a water line, and that’s a slow job. So I was on advance, securing the route.”

He was cross-legged, elbows holding his knees, his eyes trained out to sea. “The guy was not expecting me. I spotted him with the scope placing an IED where the crew would pass later. I watched his caution, his whole method. It was a triggered device, so he would decide when to blow it. He would time it to kill a lot of us.”

I put a hand on Michael’s arm, and he did not pull away.

“I was toting a .308, heavy barreled, a bitch to carry. The range was nothing special, just over five hundred yards. But he was sideways to me, which made him a smaller target, with rubble in the way. Just like they trained me to do, I waited. He kept checking over his shoulder, up and down the street, but never once at the rooftops, where I lay on my belly. After he finished planting the bomb, he started back toward a building. A white building, baking there in the hot Iraq sun.”

I could picture it: the intensity of the moment, the power of his gun, the desert heat as different from foggy Oregon as possible.

“No one was in danger anymore because I had seen him. The water line crew would take another route and a squad would disarm the device. But the guy? He was about to get away, free to blow off my buddies’ arms and legs another day.”

“It was your job to prevent that. It was war. You were saving lives.”

Michael shrugged my rationalization off like a horse shakes away flies. “It was early, with the sun still low, so he cast a shadow on the building’s white wall.”

“Was that the scribble?”

“Let me tell it.”

Michael squinted into the distance, as if seeing the Iraq street again. “I held fire till he had almost reached the building, hoping he’d look back because it would make him a bigger target. And bingo, he did it, as if I’d written a script. Only it wasn’t to scout his escape route. It was to admire the job he’d done, the cocky fool. That little show of pride turned him full-body to me, gave me a perfect line.”

Michael stared down between his knees. “It was a clean hit, just below the collar bone. Like Joel’s OJ jug. Lungs and guts spraying everywhere. They spattered on the building like . . . well, actually, like a giant comma.”

“So the mess on the wall,” I said. “That was the scribble?”

Michael stiffened. “Let me tell it.”

“Sorry.”

“First thing afterward I have a routine, reloading and checking my perimeter, because when you’ve been focused on a shot, you pay no attention to the world around you. Then I radioed in the kill and IED location. I was panning the scene through the scope, in case he had accomplices. That was when this person stepped out of the shadow of the building, dumbest move imaginable, and I leaned down to pop him too.”

Michael rubbed his face with one hand. I offered him another berry. He dangled it by the stem so it looked like a little heart.

“It was a boy. Maybe eight years old? Nine? He had seen the whole thing, Deb. The IED planting. The spray. The remains on the ground, all of it.”

“That is truly horrific.”

“I don’t know if he was the guy’s son, or nephew, or what. Maybe a total stranger who for some random reason happened to be standing there. Whichever, he witnessed everything. And you know, you just
know
he will never forget. Put that one on me forever. I didn’t only blow away an insurgent bomber. I also planted the seed for the next war in this kid in a way he’ll remember when he’s ninety years old.”

And then I realized. “The scribble is a person.”

“Yes, Deb, and the worst kind: a person whose innocence you have obliterated, so the chain of violence continues.” Michael poked the strawberry at the air. “Here comes your next soldier, in your next war, and the next one, and the next one, forever and ever amen.” He tossed the berry to Shouri, the whole thing, and she gobbled it. “The thing I don’t get, though? How does a man do these things, and go on living? How?”

“You’re doing it right now.”

“Except that it’s not working. It’s not even close to working.”

Slowly Michael folded onto his side, inching down in the sand, almost burrowing. I spooned him, wrapped an arm over his shoulder, snaking a leg between his. We pretzeled on the blanket, my chest against his huge back.

All at once exhaustion poured over me, flowed through every inch of my veins. And I did not resist. I let myself sink into the sand too.

“I love you, Michael,” I murmured into his shoulder blade.

He did not answer. I felt with a pang the inadequacy of my words. To a man with Michael’s conscience, mere wifely love would be small comfort.

Yet he pulled my arm tighter, bringing my hand in against his chest. I could feel how fast his heart was beating. A gust of wind threw sand so we closed our eyes and lay still. I was nearly asleep, that quickly. Passing strangers would have taken us for lovers, but I knew better.

THE DOG WOKE ME.
She was shaking water off, her license and ID medals jingling. But when she kept doing it, I opened my eyes and saw that her sides were heaving. I sat up.

Michael was not on the beach in either direction. Instantly I knew something was wrong. I stood, scanning the trails along the cliff. It was late in the day, and all the other people had gone home. I jogged down the beach. Nothing. I doubled back, running the other way, my heart racing the longer I went without finding him. And then there: His clothes were piled at the foot of the bluffs. I spun and spotted him, way out on the flats, just where the water’s depth made him change from walking to swimming.

Michael was strong, but not a strong swimmer. And I could see his head, among the giant rocks, bobbing in the waves.

Before I had realized anything, or wakened all the way, I stood ankle deep in the water, shouting. “Don’t you dare, Michael Birch.”

His head swiveled toward me like a periscope. I had never seen his face whiter. Chalk. Talc. A ghost.

“Don’t you dare.” I yelled so hard my voice cracked. “Don’t you do that.”

Michael leaned his head aside with every stroke of his arms, awkwardly gaining distance. His kick sent up little plumes. It felt as if the whole world stood poised, about to roll down some enormous hill to destruction, and all it would take was the least nudge. But not if I could help it.

I tugged off my sneakers and started to shuck my jeans, then gave up and waded in fully dressed. The water was cold. Strong too, sucking me outward. Michael had heard me, and he paused, treading water, looking outward, then back toward shore. I ran in the shallows till it was too tiring, then flopped forward and began to swim—keeping my direction parallel to shore so the riptide would not yank me out too fast.

My husband kept turning, toward land and then away, trying to decide.

“Michael,” I yelled. “Don’t you—” But the water swamped me and I went under. It was hard to swim with wet clothes on. When I sputtered up to daylight again, the surf was rough enough that I could not see Michael. It frightened me. I surrendered, pointing myself straight out to sea, and let the undertow do the work.

By the time I was sixty yards out, I spotted him again. Michael had begun moving toward me. I breast-stroked in his direction. When the water was neck-deep on him, he began striding. I stretched my toes downward, but they did not touch. I finally reached him almost a hundred yards out, at a depth where he could stand but I had to keep treading water.

His skin was still white, and he was shouting. “All I want to know is if I will be OK someday. Tell me I will be OK.”

His face wore such anguish, hollowed and raw. I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

A wave slammed his back. “Then lie to me.”

He had a point. What would it cost me to give the man hope? Where was my loving lie?

My jeans were sodden and heavy, fatigue weighing me down too. How much longer could I keep treading water?

Then a wave broke over me, a huge salty gulp that left me sputtering. Without thinking, I grabbed Michael’s bare shoulders. Of course I was weightless to him, but holding him also meant I could quit working so hard. I held on with both hands. We were face-to-face in the swirling water.

I moved deliberately, but slowly, so he would know what I was doing before I did it—though I was not about to be stopped.

I kissed him.

It should have been nothing. He was my husband, for God’s sake. We had been together for twelve years.

Instead, it was everything. I kissed his cheekbones, I kissed his eyebrows, I kissed the hinge of his jaw. And then I held his face in my hands and kissed his lips, his lovely Michael lips that even with all of his body’s stony muscularity he could not keep from being soft.

The dog had followed me, and a wave walloped her into us. But Michael held me hard, staring as though he was drilling into my core. It felt like one of those moments with a patient when you know that what you say next will be indelible. So you try to find the courage to say the truest, rightest thing, and then you hope.

“You are going to be OK,” I told Michael, clinging to him. “You will not be the same, but you will be OK. You will even be happy again, someday. When that day comes, I will still be here. Right here.”

God bless that man: He placed one strong hand between my shoulder blades, pulling my body against him, and he kissed me back.

The ocean gulped and whirled. And Shouri swam circles around us as though she were in orbit.

SOMETHING HAPPENED
on the way up the beach. Maybe it’s simply that I was freezing, and needed more from Michael than silence. But my mood turned more sour with every step. By the time we reached his clothes, I was livid. This suicide gesture on his part might have scored well on Michael’s originality scale, but he had genuinely scared me and put us both in danger. I watched him start to dress, threading a leg into his underwear, but I was seething and shivering, so I started for the car.

My soaked clothes slowed me, and Michael caught up at the parking lot. He took my hand, but I shook him off and bustled ahead.

I’d left my phone behind to be free of it for the day, but as soon as we’d opened the doors I checked my messages, playing them on the speaker. There was just one, from Cheryl. I listened while sitting sideways and wiping sand off my feet.

“Hi Deborah. I know it’s Sunday and your first day off in forever, but Professor Reed is in active decline. I’m happy to do my shift but thought you’d want to know just in case. The old guy is on his way out.”

Ouch. And there it was. I sat there with my foot in my hand. Nothing to do but accept.

Michael flopped soggily into the passenger seat, his color back to normal. If anything, he looked a bit ruddy. A chilly swim will do that to a man. “Sorry, lover,” he said. “Is this professor one of yours?”

Oh, it was a point of entry, wasn’t it? An overture to show that now, finally, he remembered I had a job, a life, a heart. But the answer that came out of me was salty with spite.

“Lover?” I said, starting the car. “Isn’t it a little late for that?”

“DID YOU HAVE ANY DINNER?”
Cheryl asked.

I was sitting at Barclay Reed’s bedside in wet clothes, listening to his breath. It was uneven, deep then shallow then deep. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“When did you last eat?”

“Lunch. A picnic. But really, I’m all set.”

“All right then. Call me if you need anything.”

I waved without taking my eyes from the bed and its skeletal occupant. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Twenty minutes later Cheryl was back with takeout Chinese. When I protested, she wouldn’t listen. “You need your fuel,” she said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

I put the bag of food aside. “It will be too short for me.”

IN AUGUST OF 1997,
the selectboard of Brookings, Oregon, entertained an unprecedented motion.

“Whereas in view of his international efforts at peacemaking,” the proposed resolution read, “his courage demonstrated in times of peace as strongly as in war, his generosity, his humility, his disinterest in seeking fame or gain from his actions, his repeated financial support on behalf of children at the county library, and his many gifts and gestures to demonstrate affection for the people of this city and region, therefore do the people of Brookings, Oregon, hereby declare, decree, and ordain that Ichiro Soga is an honorary citizen, now, from this date forward and for the rest of his life.”

The proclamation’s language came from Tom Hacker, an attorney in town also known as a skilled banjo player. The original idea, however, and the motion introducing the proposal for formal consideration, both came from a senior selectman, the white-haired man at the end of the table: Donny Baker III.

Retired from business by then, prohibited by his wife from flying more than fifty miles away from BOK, occupied with his two grandchildren during their monthly visits from Portland, Donny had turned to public service not out of political ambition, but to fill his now ample free time. According to an election interview in the
Pilot,
Donny’s goal was “to give back to this community that has been so kind to my family over the years.”

In response to Donny’s motion, the usual vituperative letters appeared. His phone rang often late at night, but when he answered, the callers hung up. Had he still owned the nursery, a boycott might have ensued. For some, the passage of more than five decades was immaterial. Soga’s wartime actions would never be erased by his peacetime conduct.

Over the summer the debate proceeded, but in a decidedly even fashion. Every letter to the editor received a response from Donny. When a VFW post announced its opposition to Soga’s honorary citizenship, although Donny was not a member and lacked the military credentials to become one, he marched into the clubhouse on three consecutive nights to debate any and all present.

“If free airfare a couple years ago didn’t get him here,” Donny told Piper Abbott, who now served as editor in chief of the
Pilot,
“this honorary citizen thing ought to do the job right quick.”

At a selectboard meeting in August, following discussion of bonding for water-line improvements, Donny hijacked the agenda. He snapped his fingers at board chair, Amy Burgoyne, until she formally recognized him.

Donny stood. “We have argued about this guy long enough,” he said. “We need to make a plan before it’s too late. Passing this resolution would be the town of Brookings finally being as generous as Soga.” He glanced at his attorney friend Hacker, in the back row of the public seats, who gave him a slow nod. “So now I move to call the question.”

Perhaps the lawyer had educated Donny in Roberts’ Rules of Order. Calling the question requires the chair to end debate and bring the issue to a vote—provided the call is seconded. Ben Rosen, one of the three younger men who had purchased Donny’s nursery business, promptly raised his hand. “I second the motion.”

A bank president with an MBA from the University of Portland, Amy Burgoyne was no fool when it came to anticipating political consequences. Therefore, to protect everyone from the exposure of a roll call, she conducted a voice vote. Although there were several nays, the proclamation carried by a decisive margin.

After the meeting, Donny Baker picked up his wife and they drove down the coast to the shrine’s highway marker. They hiked to the site with the slow gait of people in their seventies. Upon arrival, they sat with their backs against the stone monument, looking out at the forest and Soga’s tree. There they remained until the sun passed noon and their stomachs were grumbling. As they ambled back down the path, Donny’s wife wiped leaves and pine needles off his backside. All that remained was ceremony. On September 22, 1997—fifty-five years and thirteen days after Soga’s first mission over the Siskiyou Forest—Mayor Nancy Brendlinger signed the proclamation naming him an honorary citizen.

Soga received the news of his new citizenship in bed. There is no record of his reaction. He died eight days later.

When Donny Baker III learned of Soga’s death, he drove out to BOK, climbed aboard his plane without starting the engine, and sat there till long past dark.

IN OCTOBER OF 1998,
Yoriko Soga traveled to Brookings on her own initiative, without the benefit of free airfare or an invitation from anyone. She arrived without fanfare. She had a task to perform, one last errand at her father’s request.

The owner of a transportation software business that employed seventy people, Yoriko was unquestionably an accomplished woman. Her husband was a physician, their two daughters were in college, and the family divided its time between a fine if snug apartment in Tokyo and a quarter-year share of a beach house on Kanucha Bay in Nago. She was fifty-three and wore gold earrings and bracelets, plus a necklace of black pearls.

The only person aware of her arrival was Donny Baker III, because he had developed a correspondence with Soga family. He met Yoriko at the airport and drove her directly to the memorial shrine parking area. Once they had parked, she changed out of low-heeled business shoes into running shoes and embarked up the trail. Wheezing a few steps behind, Donny followed her gamely to the site where those innocents had died.

The stone marker was unchanged but for the slow spread of copper-colored lichen. By contrast, Ichiro Soga’s redwood now stood twenty-six years taller, its lowest limb extending well over her head.

“Did you know my father?” Yoriko asked, gazing up through the branches.

Donny leaned against the redwood’s trunk. “Not as much as I’d hoped to.”

“Yes?”

“Most of my life I had certain ideas.” He fiddled a fingernail in the bark. “Your father made me think. . . . I guess that some of them might have been wrong.”

“He made many people think,” she said.

“Yeah, well. Now that I figured the guy out, I could have used another conversation or two.”

Yoriko bowed. “He lived eighty-six years, sir.”

“I had things I needed to say to him.”

“It is a good full age, sir.”

“I know.” Donny spat behind himself. “So why do I feel ripped off?”

“Yes sir,” Yoriko said. “That is one of the things death does expertly.”

With that, she knelt before the stone shrine, and from her shoulder bag produced a black lacquered box the size of a brick. It resembled the small one into which her father had placed his fingernails and hair all those years previously, so that should the mission fail he might still be buried in Japanese soil. Now, obeying her father’s instructions, she opened the box. She reached her hand in and scooped. There, at the foot of the monument and in the shade of the tree, she spread Ichiro Soga’s ashes in the dirt.

The
Pilot
was on hand, a reporter and photographer standing at a respectful remove. Rather than a long story and large photos, however, for once the coverage was characterized by restraint. A photo of a woman kneeling, a few lines of text beneath. Otherwise, her visit went without further mention.

Improbably, Yoriko spent the night at the Baker house, in Heather’s childhood room. The following morning Donny listed his airplane for sale. In fact, he never flew again. When his term on the selectboard ended, he did not seek reelection. He has not appeared in the public record since, even to this day.

That afternoon he drove his guest to the airport. There were no witnesses to their parting. She returned to Japan, and the Soga family’s sojourns to Brookings came to an end.

While Yoriko’s trip was the last gesture, however, it was not the last word. The full, unapologetic, and unfortunate spectrum of human nature appeared in a letter to the editor of the
Pilot
on October 21, a few days after her departure.

“I wonder,” wrote Tom Vanderlinden. “Why do we honor someone who tries to set fire with a bomb?”