Katie Kitamura - Gone to the Forest

Tom and the girl sit in the kitchen. Tom leans forward. If the old man dies that will be one thing, he tells her. But what if he recovers and lives? His father looks out the window and does not seem to see the change in the land. He talks to Tom about what they will do next year. He tells him about the improvements that must be made. They will open the fish farm once the water runs clear, they will add another pool, they will open up new trails, maybe a second lodge.

Tom does not think the old man sees the change in the country or the change in his own body. Tom does not try to convince him otherwise. He does the opposite. It is like playing a game of charades. He tells and he does not tell, he does not see why he should do either. The image of the father is gone, but Tom is still afraid of him. Afraid for him. That part of the relationship remaining intact. Tom drinks his tea and asks the girl how much the old man knows, how much he remembers.

She shrugs. He knows plenty, she tells him. He knows more than you know, more than you and me put together. He tells her this cannot be the case. He asks if she has been listening to what he has been saying.

She shakes her head. You have known him forever. How can you know him so little? He is lying in the bed but there is nothing weak about him. He is lying in the bed and he is going but until he is gone the old man is still there. Do you understand?

He understands. He looks at the girl. He becomes more attached to her by the day. Also to the child growing in her belly. Toward whom he feels proprietary. His idea of what life will look like after the old man’s death being tied up in the woman, also in the child that is not his own. She heaves her belly around the house and now she stops to catch her breath, she holds her belly in her hands like she is worried it will fall to the ground. Her skin is growing dull and her hair dry. She looks as if the child inside her is draining her of life, the growing child and the dying man.

Tom asks if she is getting enough to eat. If she is getting enough rest. He tells her she should try not to worry too much. She tells him that she is fine. Everything is fine. Thank you for asking. She knows that he is doing his best. His best is not good enough but she sees that it is something. They are beginning to grow tired. They are starting to be ground down by the old man’s dying.

Both slept poorly the night before. The old man could not stop coughing and called to them continuously — for water, for light, for a goddamned cigar. The girl brought him one and then he ignored both her and the cigar. He is beyond cigars. They know this. She knew this when she brought it to him and still she brought it to him. She allowed herself this. She thinks it must be hard for Tom, Tom who would not have brought the cigar and will therefore never be free.

She thinks: Tom does not know how to love the old man so he loves the land instead. She had seen this from the start. His emotion toward the old man unresolved. His feeling long misdirected. Even now, he would like to stay on the farm. In this house, in this room, at this table if possible. He clings to the land and the farm and really he is holding on to his father. Whom he hates and loves in equal measure. A wave of pity and she reminds herself that the problems of the farm have long been in place. Some of them too long to solve or change.

The girl leans forward.

“How much money is there?”

He looks up.

“Money?”

“Yes. Money. How much money is left?”

He shakes his head and looks blank. His expression is stupid, stupid without thought or pretense. Which cannot be right. The old man said there was more to Tom than met the eye. He said that Tom could be canny, on occasion. Good with money. Good with numbers. He had left the farm — not in good hands but in hands that would do. That was all he said. But the girl listened.

The girl listened and that is why she knows that Tom knows more than he is letting on. She believes this because she needs to. The old man will die. And then what will become of them? She has staked a great deal on Tom’s good hands. On the protection of the land, however reduced it may be. She sits with her knees apart to accommodate her belly, she sits back into her chair. She clears her throat to show she means business and takes a good long look at him.

“The money.”

Tom appears startled by the sharpness in her voice.

“There is not much.”

“How much?”

“Very little.”

“What has happened to it?”

He shrugs.

“There was not that much to begin with. There was not money. There was land.”

“How much land remains?”

“There are still some pastures.”

The old man is wrong. His son is an idiot. He stares at her and does not know what he is saying. She leans forward.

“Tell me what is left.”

“They took almost everything.”

“Tell me what is left.”

“Enough for a small farm. That is what we are. A small farm.”

She can see that it pains him to say this. He is not without vanity. He is not a man without want. But that want is small and it is compromised, it has undergone a lifetime of atrophy. She sees that she will need to do the wanting for both of them. She leans back and looks at him. She wills her voice steady.

“But there is still land.”

“Yes.”

“And in what condition, since the eruption and the ash?”

He does not reply. He blinks and then wets his mouth.

“I haven’t looked.”

“Are the cattle able to pasture?”

“They tell me that it will be fine.”

“Who tells you this?”

“The farmhands.”

“Which ones?”

“The farmhands.”

She looks at him and knows that he has no idea. It has been too much for him, he has not spent these past months drawing up business plans. There have been other things to worry about. Well and he has been through hell but so has she. She hoists herself to her feet, panic rising.

“We will go and look. Now.”

“We can’t leave him alone.”

“Of course we can.”

He licks his lips nervously.

“Right now we need to take care of him. We agreed, remember? That is what we need to do.”

She shakes her head.

“I will wait for you at the stables. We will bring Jose.”

She goes out into the hall and looks for Jose. Jose does not like her. She knows that he does not like or trust her. But he listens to her. He does as he is told. Having been the first to realize the old man was dying. The question is only this: who will come out on top? The son or the girl or the two together? She can see the question vibrate inside him. He is armed with the instinct to survive and it is ugly, but then she herself is the same. The two of them understand each other.

She walks out into the entrance hall. From here she can see the other wings, the wings that have been closed, sitting in darkness, windows shuttered. She thinks about the old man’s talk. He is half in delirium but is still more shrewd than the rest. It is not crazy to imagine there is money in the house. They would have to give up the cattle but they could take visitors, visitors who would fish and ride and pay like before, once sanity has been restored to the land. It is not impossible to think this might happen.

She quickens her pace as she leaves the hall. She reminds herself that she is looking for Jose.

She finds him outside. Tending the kitchen garden. Working over the pea shoots and the beets and the asparagus and the lettuces. Things that grow and that she knows nothing about. She stands in the garden in her robe and slippers and realizes how little they leave the house. It is warmer than she expected, well into spring. She watches Jose bend over the plants. She wonders who has told him to tend the garden, who has remembered to do that.