Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
Even If They Don’t Say Anything, Listen Good
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Up until now, I’ve walked out to the crash site about once a month. I’ve gone there most nights in my dreams, too. I know this is crazy, but I can still feel her. She’s so pissed off it fills my head. I don’t blame her.
Lately I’ve been thinking the only thing that will satisfy her is the ultimate sacrifice.
Last night, like usual in the dreams, everything was the same as ten years ago, from the glass on the ground to the voice in my head saying, “your old life’s over.”
(At the time I thought someone’d said that out loud, but there was no-one there yet: only me and that poor stranger lying on her side, who would never speak again.)
In the dream people drove right past. My wife went by.
I wanted to call out to her, because she’s the kind of woman who would stop for much less. I can tell she’s about to ask me for a divorce. She says I still tell her in my sleep, “it was an accident.”
In the dream that poor stranger never moves. Yet I always go to feel her pulse, just like I did.
Last night, she moved.
She turned her head slowly, and fixed her wide-open eyes on me.
“You have to,” she grated out, and tried again. “You have to. Let me go.”
Her head rolled back. I woke up.
I lay there a long time, cold sweat on my back. Then I slipped out of bed and got dressed and shaved until my cheeks hurt and left a note for my wife and started walking.
By the time I got there the sun was coming up. Nobody living was there to see a man talking to the trees by the side of the road.
“I am so very, very sorry I was so damned dumb,” I said. “I didn’t realize I was keeping you here. Man, that must have pissed you off.”
I waited, I didn’t know for what.
“I get it now: my penance isn’t suicide or coming here forever.”
The trees shook in a breeze that didn’t touch anything else. I saw it. I stood and waited until I felt her go. Then I went home to see if my wife’d let me put my arms round her and listen hard to her, even if she didn’t say anything at all.
Dr. Fujiwara’s Several Surprises
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Students at the Women’s Battle College had awaited the arrival of Dr. Fujiwara for months. They saw a tiny, wizened old woman in an indigo wrap jacket, sword stuck in her obi—not surprising. But she had short, spiky hair dyed fire engine red and wore jeans instead of hakama—quite surprising.
“Give my regards to your mother, Miss Mountain-root,” she said to Dana Yamamoto. She didn’t say “your mother the General” but all the students heard it.
“Your name isn’t Mountain-root,” pointed out Mirabelle Hayes.
“It is, actually,” replied Dana.
Dr. Fujiwara passed into the school. She (and the contents of her covered cart) disappeared for a week.
Monday morning, Martial Principles Class A arrived at the dojo to find a teahouse built on a cotton pad in the middle of the mat. Dr. Fujiwara waited beside it.
The door to the teahouse stood only three feet high. The students grumbled, finding they had to remove their weapons to avoid knocking them against the door frame; then the low height of the door forced them to bow as they entered. Crowded inside, they looked at each other curiously. Dr. Fujiwara had not become famous for making tea.
“Don’t,” said Dana when she saw Mirabelle gird herself to ask why they were studying tea instead of sword work. Mirabelle looked startled and kept quiet.
“You will wonder why I am teaching you about tea instead of sword work,” said Dr. Fujiwara, looking straight at Mirabelle. “I will tell you. I teach this for the sake of the dead. When I was young like you, I thought I had a calm mind, and knew how to do honor to my enemy. I thought I had compassion. I understood none of these things: I killed one hundred twenty-one people in duels or in battle against the Chinese before I understood,” she went on, nodding to Bao-Yu Zheng as she spoke. “Since then, I have taken only three lives, those of people who insisted there was no other way.”
No one breathed.
“Make no mistake, you are being taught the art of killing. Yet your teachers also teach compassion here; grammar and arithmetic too. Study only killing, and you will be only killers. Study all that they teach, and you may yet become honorable warriors.”
She did not seem to notice the silence.
“We will begin with the mixing of the tea.”