After the Quake Read Online Free PDF Page A

like this when they held their hands out to the flames, thought Junko.
    “I understand you’re from Kobe, Mr. Miyake,” Keisuke said in a cheery voice as if the thought had suddenly popped into his head. “Did you have relatives or something in the Kansai earthquake last month?”
    “I’m not sure,” said Miyake. “I don’t have any ties with Kobe anymore. Not for years.”
    “Years? Well, you sure haven’t lost your Kansai accent.”
    “No? I can’t tell, myself.”
    “I do declare, you must be joking,” said Keisuke in exaggerated Kansai tones.
    “Cut the shit, Keisuke. The last thing I want to hear is some Ibaragi asshole trying to talk to me in a phony Kansai accent. You eastern farm boys’d be better off tearing around on your motorcycles during the slack season.”
    “Whoa, I sure rubbed
you
the wrong way! You
look
like a nice quiet guy, but you’ve got one hell of a mouth. And this place is Ibaraki, not ‘Ibaragi.’ All you Kansai types are ready to put us eastern ‘farm boys’ down at the drop of a hat. I give up,” Keisuke said. “But seriously, though, did anybody get hurt? You must have had somebody you know in Kobe. Have you seen the news on TV?”
    “Let’s change the subject,” Miyake said. “Whiskey?”
    “You bet.”
    “Jun?”
    “Just a little,” Junko said.
    Miyake pulled a thin metal flask from the pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to Keisuke, who twisted off the cap and poured some whiskey into his mouth without touching his lips to the rim. He glugged it down and sucked in a sharp breath.
    “That is
great
!” he said. “This has
got
to be a twenty-one-year-old single malt! Super stuff ! Aged in oak. You can hear the roar of the sea and the breath of Scottish angels.”
    “Give me a break, Keisuke. It’s the cheapest Suntory you can buy.”
    Next it was Junko’s turn. She took the flask from Keisuke, poured a little into the cap, and tried a few tiny sips. She grimaced, but chased after that special warm feeling as the liquid moved down from her throat to her stomach. The core of her body grew a touch warmer. Next, Miyake took one quiet swallow, and Keisuke followed him with another gulp. As the flask moved from hand to hand, the bonfire grew in size and strength—not all at once, but in slow, gradual stages. That was the great thing about Miyake’s bonfires. The spread of the flames was soft and gentle, like an expert caress, with nothing rough or hurried about it—their only purpose was to warm people’s hearts.
    Junko never said much in the presence of the fire. She hardly moved. The flames accepted all things in silence, drank them in, understood, and forgave. A family, a
real
family, was probably like this, she thought.
    Junko came to this town in May of her third year in high school. With her father’s seal and passbook, she had taken three hundred thousand yen from the bank, stuffed all the clothes she could into a Boston bag, and run away from home. She transferred from one train to the next at random until she had come all the way from Tokorozawa to this little seaside spot in Ibaraki Prefecture, a town she had never even heard of. At the realtor’s across from the station she found a one-room apartment, and the following week took a job at a convenience store on the coast highway. To her mother she wrote:
Don’t worry about
me, and please don’t look for me, I’m doing fine.
    She was sick to death of school and couldn’t stand the sight of her father. She had gotten on well with him when she was little. On weekends and holidays the two of them had gone everywhere together. She felt proud and strong to walk down the street holding his hand. But when her periods started near the end of elementary school, and her pubic hair began to grow, and her chest began to swell, he started to look at her in a strange new way. After she passed five-foot-six in the third year of junior high, he hardly spoke to her at all.
    Plus, her grades were nothing to