Katie Kitamura - Gone to the Forest

They pulled. Slowly the machine rose out of the water. With a grim expression, the men in the river dunked down below the machine and hoisted it above the river of fish. As they rose out of the water they were covered in grime to their faces. Decaying plant and flesh draped from their neck and arms. They shimmied through the dead fish, holding the apparatus above their heads, carrying and pulling it to shore. Then they dropped the machine onto dry soil and stood, reeking of rot and panting from their labor.

The river farm was in ruin. The men were too pleased with their labor to notice at first. They laughed as they wiped the river gunk from their bodies. Chunks of decomposing flesh. All the dying, all around them, became like comedy. They laughed and laughed from relief. They were almost giddy, they were content, as the rot fell from their bodies to the ground.

Into their laughter — his father’s cry, a terrible noise. He stood, staring at the machine. Slowly, the men turned and looked. It lay in a heap, groaning. Sputtering. Moaning in death throes. In actual terms the machine was silent but there was sound in the sight of the machine, sprawled out on the ground, legs collapsed, like a street thug had taken a club to each one of its joints.

Tom was also there. And he thought: it had been such a beautiful thing, the first time they had taken it out. They had carried it to the river and set it drifting. The legs had spread into the water like a living thing and it sat on the river aloft — the most astonishing thing they had ever seen. A miracle of technology and time. A piece of the future that had been shipped to their remote corner of the world. He had seen the farm’s beauty, even if he didn’t understand its role in the farm’s future, even if he also feared and hated its purpose.

Now the machine lay in ruin and it took the old man with it. They saw it happening, it took place right in front of them. They saw but it was still hard to believe. They looked at the machine. They looked at the man. They did not believe in his going. The sound, the sound of a man going — it was everywhere around them. But his face was stoic and his body straight. He looked stern and unforgiving yet. Then he turned and walked back into the house, leaving the men and the machine behind him.

BY THE WAGON, the old man puffs on the cigarette. He watches Jose continue preparations. Tom feels a churn of rage inside. From the outside, nothing is visible. But inside he is a jumble of half words and half deeds. He thinks: I have been running the farm in all but name. Leave and nothing here will change. You will see. The land will survive. Also the farm. The natives will stay here with me. And I will be fine, yes, I will be fine. He does not believe the words, which enter his head freighted in confusion.

The girl sits on the pillows and eats from the tin of lobster. Chunks of shellfish between her thumb and forefinger. She puts the tin down and wipes her fingers on the blanket. There it is: a real piece of baggage. Living and breathing as it is. Weighing the old man down as it is. Tom bristles just looking at her. She sits among the boxes and the bags and for the first time — through the cloud of rage and panic — Tom sees what his father is taking with him.

A multitude, an ocean of things. The girl is sitting on loot, on things taken — she rides high on the surf of things taken. The loaded wagon material proof of the old man’s departure. Tom cannot understand how it has come to this. Two weeks and a lifetime has been undone. He watches his father. The old man circles the wagon. He tests the ropes. The loading is almost done. He takes out his silver watch and checks the dial.

The old man is the same by most known measures. Remote, imperious, unknowable: the same as before. And yet the old man is entirely changed. Despite the disorder in his head, Tom understands something new about his father: that he is a man made visible by means of a backdrop. His father is a shape cut out against a landscape he has personally dominated and formed.

The shape is still the same. It is the backdrop that has gone, and with it everything that makes the man himself. Tom can hardly recognize his father. He cannot see him in the same way, especially now, now that he is leaving, now that he is already parted, has parted himself, from the land and property. It cannot only be Tom. Others must see him differently. A man in bad fortune. His dreams for the future looking foolish. A man without money, which is also ridiculous.

Tom does not know if his father is aware of how he looks. He does not think he cares. His father has been preoccupied. He has stayed to his study. Looking at papers, laying out maps, writing down figures. The old man making midnight telephone calls, the conversations muffled by the house’s thick walls so that Tom did not hear the matters being discussed. Although he eavesdropped carefully, diligently.

There was more: the departure of the three men, the day the ash stopped falling. Who left with promises of their return and the strong smell of brilliantine. That afternoon the girl crawled out from her room. She did not look like herself. She was pale and even thinner but the difference was in her eyes. Which had fallen back into her head. She was watching things from a distance, measurably greater than before.

There were other differences. The girl now stayed close to the old man. She was with him all the time. She sat inches away from him at dinner, fork clanging at his plate, fingers reaching for his elbow. The girl standing between the father and the son. Like she was the physical manifestation of the barrier Tom had often tried to deny, but that had always existed between them. As if she were now the guardian of that distance. Tom saw her sitting by the old man’s side. He saw her lift up her face to look at him.

They might have shared blood. The girl the old man’s daughter. The girl the old man’s son, as he might have been, the girl the old man himself. They would stay together. One and one being two. One and one and one on the other hand — it did not add up. Tom did not fit in. In the house there was sunlight and dust so thick it made patterns in the air. He passed the old man’s study, he saw the girl and the old man sitting side by side. Neither looked up.

Later, he came upon the girl alone. He stopped and she stopped, too. He looked down at her hand, it was hard for him to look her in the face. She was still wearing his mother’s engagement ring. He shook his head in confusion and looked up. Now at her face, which had been wiped blank. She knitted her brow as she looked at him.

“What has happened?”

He intended to sound firm. As if he had some purchase on the situation. He was aware of how close she stood. The fetid smell of her hair.

She shook her head. She had never liked Tom. And they had wanted her to marry him. They had believed this was the solution. Her eyes widened. Briefly. An instant later they receded and she recovered her distance.

Her eyes were once again blank. Not that Tom knew or understood. No details — the details sickened him. He knew that something had happened, that there had been an incident. In this backdrop of new catastrophe. He saw how the girl was and that was enough. He looked at her again.

“Please.”

She shook her head. She sighed: the sound like her lungs had broken.

“Do you know—”

She stopped. The girl meant nothing to him and even so. Tom swallowed and waited for her to speak. Her face was vague and she did not look at him when she spoke, her eyes wandered and wandered instead.

“The Rheas. The birds are big. The size of humans. They live on land. Too big to fly—”

She paused. Her brow crossed with confusion. She started again.

“A male Rhea has a dozen mates. He impregnates one bird and then moves on to the next. But he risks his life in defense of all his offspring.”