Sophie and the Rising Sun (13 page)
Read Sophie and the Rising Sun Online
Authors: Augusta Trobaugh
Tags: #Romance, #Literary, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
Miss Anne said:
I wondered what on earth the world was coming to, when a good, solid
American
man like my Mr. Oto had to be hidden away like a criminal. But on the other hand, his father certainly was Japanese, no getting away from that!
I watched him walk away, out onto my back porch, and I saw him glance at the begonias waiting to be planted. He looked at them for a long time before he went on down the steps and across the back garden.
Put an awful catch in my throat, that did!
And maybe that’s when I realized just how many Americans had been so deeply hurt by that Sunday that would “live in infamy.” All those fine young men killed, without any warning! And all those other Americans—like dear Mr. Oto—suffering, too.
And me! Yes, me suffering as well.
Why, I always thought that as they got older, ladies were supposed to have peace, at least. But my peaceful days were already over, even though I didn’t know it.
So that Sunday evening, only a week to the day after Pearl Harbor, I went about gathering all the things Mr. Oto would need to take with him, and I felt almost like a spy, myself!
And what about the lie I was going to have to tell, once somebody—anybody—asked me about where Mr. Oto had gone off to?
Why, I’d never told a lie in my whole life! At least, not really. Only little white lies to keep from hurting folks’ feelings. Like the time Ruth brought back that ridiculous, ugly hat from her shopping trip to Brunswick and wore it all the time. When nobody said anything about it—trying to be polite, you see—she got to where she’d come right out and
ask
!
“Why, I think it’s... fine!” I said, when Ruth nailed me about it.
That kind of little white lie. Sure were lots of us had to do that about Ruth’s hat.
But an out-and-out, bald-faced
lie
?
Never!
At least, never before.
That night, Mr. Oto never went to sleep at all, but he gathered his few items of clothing—most of them still filled with the crisp aroma of sunshine from hanging on the clothesline, carefully rolled up the watercolor portrait of Sophie as the Crane-Wife, and placed it safely in the small suitcase the doctor’s wife had sent with him when he first came to live in the cottage.
Afterward, he sat on the cot and tried to imagine exactly what the hour was by the movement of the ghostly finger of silver moonlight across his floor. At around two in the morning, he heard the back gate to the garden squeak ever so slightly, and before Miss Anne could even knock on his door, he was up and ready to leave.
They tiptoed back across the garden together, and he realized then that perhaps he would not work with the flowers again. How sad to be sneaking away like a thief in the night and leaving the plants he had tended so lovingly. And leaving Sophie. Leaving her to the silent might-have-beens.
How can I bear it?
Under the dark porte cochère, they entered Miss Anne’s car noiselessly, not even daring to close the doors until after she had backed out of the driveway and they had gone several blocks down the street.
“Did you remember to bring that old tarpaulin?” she asked into the darkness. “No telling what condition the roof is in, and you may need it to keep the rain off yourself.’’
“I remembered,” Mr. Oto said.
“And how about that liniment you use on your knees?” she asked.
“I remembered,” Mr. Oto repeated, wondering to himself how Miss Anne knew about that.
After that, Miss Anne said nothing more, and they drove in silence out beyond the end of town and down the same sandy road he and Sophie had walked on for the past Sunday mornings. When they passed that place where Mr. Oto knew the giant live oak was standing, his throat tightened.
“Now don’t you worry about a thing,” Miss Anne said, as if she could feel his sadness. “I’m sure people will come to their senses soon and realize that Americans are Americans... no matter where their families came from before they came here.’’
But, of course, that wasn’t what was making Mr. Oto sad, and so once again, he felt guilty. How could it be that at a time when so many other things should be on his mind, his only thought was of Sophie? And what about her? What would happen when she heard, as everyone else would hear, about his going away to Canada? Would she care?
On they drove, until, not more than two miles beyond the live oak tree, Miss Anne stopped the car and peered ahead of her into the darkness while the idling engine hummed quietly.
“It’s been a long time. I hope I can still find it. Used to be a big palm tree around here, and right on the other side of it was a little trail led off through the palmettos—not much more than a path, even that long ago. By now, it might be all grown over.’’
She shifted the gears and the car lumbered ahead, its blazing headlights cutting through the darkness to reveal increasingly thick undergrowth on either side of the narrow road. Then, another half-mile farther on, she stopped again.
“This has to be it,” she said, as if she were arguing with herself. “Shine the flashlight over there.” She directed Mr. Oto’s attention to the far side of the road. Sure enough, the beam of light pointed out a thin, sandy trail that led off into the underbrush. Still, he did not move, but sat silently until Miss Anne spoke.
“You go on ahead now, Mr. Oto. And be careful where you’re stepping. I’ll come back on Sunday night and leave more groceries for you right on the other side of that palm tree, where nothing will be visible if anyone comes along the road.’’
“And,” she added, “anything special you need, you just write it down on a piece of paper and stick it right in that same place.’’
“Thank you,” he said, and as quickly as he could, he got out of the car, ran across the road in the glare of the headlights, and shone the flashlight beam toward the trail. Then he turned and waved at Miss Anne before he went off through the palmettos, following a thin, overgrown path. Behind him in the darkness, he heard the grinding of gears as Miss Anne turned around and headed back toward town, where he knew she would take the turn in the road that would lead her all the way to Brunswick. And just for him.
Then there was nothing but silence, the sound of his feet in the sand, and his own breathing.
In the darkness and the silence that was broken only by the beam of the flashlight and by faint and mysterious scurrying in the underbrush, he moved forward along the sandy path, only occasionally raising the beam of the light to try and penetrate the velvet darkness ahead of him, throwing into relief palmetto fronds that tangled together like interwoven fingers and higher up, gray moss-beards in the trees—old Spanish ghosts waiting to drop onto him, to press him into the sand and chuckle triumphantly, “The enemy!”
On and on, deeper and deeper into the brush, until he began wondering if perhaps Miss Anne had been wrong about how far it was from the road to the cabin. Worse, perhaps the cabin wasn’t even there anymore, had fallen in upon itself long years ago. Or maybe it had never been there at all.
And what would happen to him if that were true, he wondered. Daylight would come, eventually, after he had walked all night trying to find a place that didn’t even exist, and he would have to find someplace to hide, where he could wait until the dark came again and then... what? Go back to Miss Anne’s house in town? No. He couldn’t endanger her by going back. Besides, by tomorrow, she probably would have started telling people that he had gone to Canada. Would have lied for him.
No. This time I will not dishonor those who have trusted me
.
As if in confirmation of his resolve, the sand became firmer under his feet, and slowly, the palmettos thinned, the scrub pines grew taller, and he could smell the river somewhere ahead of him, the fertile-sour aroma of black mud alive with fiddler crabs.
When he shone the flashlight beam ahead of him once more, its long finger of light barely touched the weathered side of a small shack built up on concrete blocks near a grove of live oak trees hung with moss. A shack that blended in with the gray trees and the gray moss almost completely. Miss Anne was right. It was completely concealed and far away from where anyone would come to fish in the river. With a feeling that was a mixture of elation and of a certain sadness, Mr. Oto had to admit that no one—other than Miss Anne, of course—would ever know where he had gone.
As it turned out,
Matilda was the first one to ask Miss Anne about it, of course.
“Where’s your Chinaman gone off to?” she demanded of Miss Anne in her typical straightforward manner only a few hours after Miss Anne had returned from her early— and solitary—drive to Brunswick and back.
“Why, he’s gone to Canada,” Miss Anne answered quickly, and she silently berated herself for not even thinking about Matilda and how she would notice—right away—any change in the household or the routine of the days. But as far as people in the town were concerned, Miss Anne knew that Mr. Oto had always been so quiet and unobtrusive, it would be a few days before anyone noticed he was gone. Miss Anne had been depending upon a few days of respite before she had to start telling the lie. But she had forgotten about Matilda.
“Good riddance!” Matilda bellowed, startling Miss Anne out of her thinking. “Didn’t like that Chinaman one little bit. No, ma’am, not one little bit!”
Matilda said nothing more and neither did Miss Anne, but later in the morning, when Miss Anne passed through the kitchen, she heard Matilda slamming the iron down hard against the ironing board and muttering, “Canada... humph!’’
Sophie made herself wait
until Wednesday before she walked past Miss Anne’s house, hoping to see Mr. Oto working in the garden. Of course, she knew that Miss Anne was trying to keep him out of sight. He had told her that much himself. But still, she hoped to catch a glimpse of him and didn’t wonder to ask herself why. And when she couldn’t find him anywhere, a feeling of disappointment crept over her, as if the sun had suddenly gone behind a cloud.
“But Miss Anne is wise,” Sophie whispered to herself as she went on down the sidewalk. “She is protecting him. And he probably
needs
protection, right now, at least. So I know he’s safe, and that’s all I need to know. Besides, I’ll see him on Sunday. He promised he would come!”
And in that way, Sophie comforted herself.
She tried her best to stay busy,
but that next week turned out to be the longest week of her entire life.
When she tended her crab traps, the mere perfume of the salt marsh brought with it the crisp aroma of his spanking-clean shirt, and when she worked in her garden, it was
his
strong, brown fingers that tended the plants so carefully. The poetry she read aloud arrived in her ears bearing his precise, gentle voice.
On Saturday, when she went to the hardware store to buy light bulbs,
he
seemed to be standing beside her, holding a packet of pink petunia seeds and smiling. So she bought light bulbs, but she also bought a new packet of pink petunia seeds, which she propped against the sugar bowl on her kitchen table.
And finally, when Sunday came, she was awake long before daylight. So that in the quiet warmth of her own kitchen, she sipped her tea gratefully and studied the seed packet with joy.
As soon as the sky had turned a bright gray, she started for the river. On the way, she plucked a small twig of baby-pink bougainvillea and carried it along until she reached the sanctuary of the riverbank. Then she stuck the sprig of flowers into her hair.
Because she had arrived so early, the river still held the last remnants of the night, with the light pale and uncertain, wavering through the
trees in milky glimmers. And the face of the river was uncommonly smooth, so that she placed her paper and paints in the chair and walked to its very edge.
Across the expanse of smooth, silver water, the seemingly unending sea of golden sawgrass, with the blades barely distinguishable in the early light, and far up the river, a massive live oak that arose from the golden grasses and in whose slate-gray branches perched a multitude of snowy egrets, like white candles in a twilight cathedral.
Near her, a quick swishing sound in the water, where a fish briefly rippled the surface, and then she looked down at her own reflection in the ever-enlarging rings on the disturbed surface. Her dark brows undulating in the moving water and the pink flower in her hair like a wavering, pink sun arising over her left ear. Behind her, Mr. Oto’s face appeared, the gentle eyes and the Botticelli-cherub smile so delightfully misplaced in the broad, oriental face.
She turned, but he was not there. Only the silence and shadows all around her.
She even tried, then, to start her painting, thinking that once again, she would attempt capturing the distinct characteristics of the sky over where the river and the ocean came together, but her mind refused to take seriously any of the lines or the colors she anticipated putting on the paper. Instead, only his face moved before her, gently undulating as if it were reflected in the deep, dark water of the slow-moving river.
The long minutes dragged by—becoming decidedly less lovely because he was not there. The minutes became hours.
“Grove?” she whispered to the empty riverbank. “Grove? Where are you?”