The Plum Rains and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

instead of a proper sash. His hair wasn’t trimmed; he stank of urine and chewed off his fingernails like a creature gone feral ; and fuzz darkened his upper lip and chin. The boy had the comfort of the tree’s shade and a half-filled water gourd. Piles of stool littered the ground behind the tree in an arc, the radius of which was the length of the hemp rope that restrained him.
    Hasegawa asked the feral boy why he was being punished, and he said because he stole food.
    Why did he do that?
    When his father was absent, his stepmother denied him his share. And even when his father was home, she gave his stepsister the best bits while he got only the worst.
    Where was his father?
    The boy didn’t know.
    Why didn’t his father defend him?
    The boy didn’t know that either.
    Hasegawa handed him a rice ball and the feral boy bit into it. You want me to cut you out of your rope?
    The boy said he didn’t want that.
    Because it would anger your stepmother? Hasegawa squatted down beside him. At least you’ve got tree shade. And water.
    You’re samurai.
    That’s right.
    You know about things.
    Some things.
    The feral boy swallowed then said he’d been told that a stabbing tool could be fashioned out of a sharpened length of green bamboo. He said it was his understanding that anyone could do it. You just had to get the angle of the bevel right. He said there was said to be a place in a sleeping woman’s neck where her death was easily reached.
    Hasegawa glanced up at Old Koda the Viper then turned his attention to the meadow grass heating in the sunlight, with swallows darting above it taking insects, and scarlet clumps of spider lilies growing near a rill. And you want to know where it is?
    He bit into the rice ball again. They said you just slide it in.
    Who says that?
    I forget his name.
    And you think you could kill a person?
    The boy chewed with his mouth half-open, flecks of rice on his lips, his gaze unwavering. I guess that’s what we’re talking about.
    How old are you?
    Old enough.
    You think so.
    The boy pointed at his own neck. Just show me where it is.
    Hasegawa rose to his feet. He looked down at the feral boy gnawing on the rice ball in his grubby fist. Did he have any other siblings?
    Just the one. The stepmother’s own daughter.
    And you want to hurt her too?
    Hurt them both. But start with the stepmother. Just slide it in.
    You don’t need to know about things like that.
    You mean you won’t say. The feral boy grinned up at the two men. You’re some poor kind of samurai, aren’t you. I guess you just chop cabbages with those blades.
    Cut him loose, Koda said.
    He said he didn’t want that.
    I heard what he said. Viper Koda was straddling the boy with a slash knife in his fist, and the hemp rope came open, the severed ends lying on each side of him. You want to be tied up, you do it your own self, he said.
    The two samurai continued on into White Rock Village, accompanied by the endless cacophony of cicadas shrieking their summer urges. Horses fitted with pack frames were crowded in a corral, all their heads facing the same direction. Hasegawa stopped to scratch one on the nose. Koda stood watching him do it.
    I guess probably you don’t even think that a horse has a Buddha-nature, Hasegawa said.
    I don’t remember expressing an opinion about it, said Koda.
    I was just thinking about last night.
    Probably you’d be better off thinking about something else.
    Probably you’re right.
    They set out walking again.
    But, still, I guess you could look at the matter two ways, Hasegawa said. One way, that everything has the Buddha-nature . A horse, a dog, a man. Everything. And the other way, that only a man can have a Buddha-nature and everything else has something different. Of course, whichever way you choose, you’d still have the question of how you would know. But then I guess you’d always have that question anyway. How you’d know, I mean.
    This some kind of new concern for you? said Viper