The Dead Are More Visible Read Online Free PDF Page A

further flurries from the boughs. When I emerge some time later from thoughts of lobbing a football with my father in such weather—striving for and never quite achieving that ideal, high-floating, hosanna spiral—I see she’s deputized her little acolytes George and Dorothea to help. I break up a minor fight (Edmund Oyama vs. the Phantom), reconvene the kids and organize a game of animal tag (all animal names to be yelled in English), and still Yukon persists with her project. From time to time she glances over, pretending not to look. Clumsy, comic espionage. I smoke another cigarette, this time finishing the job.
    People will tell you, “I don’t want a child because it just seems wrong to bring a child into a world like this.” High-minded horseshit, in my view. A cut-rate cliché. When has it not been a troubled world? People have children or don’t have them for their own selfish reasons, and that’s fine and natural. No need to dress up the option as a philanthropic gesture.
    For a long time I used that same excuse myself. At teachers’ college and in the years after, in the States and Mexico and two Asian countries. With several women who were interested in complicating our connections, maybe for worse, maybe better, who could say? It meant the end of those affairs, and now, instead of being generationally webbed into the world—which no longer sounded like a trap—I found myself peripheral, placeless,the owner of an accent nobody could pin down, a citizen of departure lounges and unfurnished rental units.
    As I pivot my toe on another dead butt, Yukon slowly approaches. George and Dorothea trail. Something is up. Normally Yukon will run up to me, abruptly stop, take my hand, speak gravely. Now in her cupped and sunlit hands something is hidden. She holds it near her chest with great care and ceremony, as if it’s a robin’s egg, or a living chick. She extends her hands. They open slowly. I see a yellow rose. She peers up at me with a squint, the sun in her eyes, a shy grin. “Here, Sensei.” I bend closer, reach out: it’s a rose of yellow leaves. She has foliated the leaves in tight, concentric circles, perhaps around a pinecone or a stone or a plum pit. The full shape and the involutions are convincingly floral. A living flower out of dead leaves. I take it from her gently. A red hair-tie near the bottom seems to hold it together. I grip it there, pinched tightly, to hold it together.
    Phrases for emergency
“I am looking for my son and daughter. Have you seen them anywhere?”
“I have not. I have been hiding.”
“Hiding! Friend, this is no time to hide!”
“Who would not be afraid at such a time?”
“Only think of the needs of your neighbours! Many call out for your help!”
“I will aid you in looking for your children, then. I resolve to help.”
“I am grateful.”
“When did you last set eyes upon them?”
“This morning, when they left for the school.”
“Where would they have gone at the sound of the sirens?”
“To the shelter, it goes without saying! But the shelter lies in ruin.”
“Is there anywhere else they could be?”
“Perhaps in the forest. Perhaps they have hidden there.”
“Shall I come to assist in your search?”
“I should be much obliged. I should not like to search for them alone.”
“In next to no time we shall find them!”
“Come, let us proceed now.”
“We shall. Be of good cheer.”
    The floating world
    I may have been jilted professionally, but not sexually, not yet. On Monday, when I went into the school to empty my small desk—and to inform Eguchi that I would be flying to Canada within the week and would need my final paycheque before then—she suggested, awkwardly but frankly, that I should stay with her at least a couple of times before I left. In spite of the firing, I was too amused, and maybe flattered, to turn herdown. Men are easily flattered; I should have seen that she was merely feeling in advance the loneliness of a vacant bed.