The Ryokan ReaderI live on the water. I’ve built a sort of a raft. I cut two
barrels in half and lashed a few boards on top. Simple.
That’s what I sleep on. As a matter of fact, I woke only a
short while ago. The sun starts me early. Away, thirty feet
or so, in the thickets of cattails the blackbirds have been
alarm clocking for me. After staring up at the blue
beginning of day, I sit up, stretch and fold myself into
meditation. When I have tuned my breathing to the world,
I’m ready to begin.
There’s not much on this raft with me. The barrel hollows
hold what I need. Under a slat in one on the left is a wooden
box I keep my manuscript in. That’s The Ryokan Reader book
I hope to get published, but if it doesn’t happen, oh well,
that’s all. Did Ryokan worry about that? I don’t think so.
He just let his words rattle leaves. It’s the time we live in,
I know. In a hundred years, maybe then. Maybe not. Just
let it go. Folded up next to it is my robe. I’ll dress in that
when I’m ready for land.
I take a deep breath and fall into the lake. That moment is
a lightning flash. I let it kill me. Then I have to force myself
down and down to the bottom. For a minute, I keep my
eyes open. Once the sediment has settled, I can be a part
of the lake. There’s a smooth stone I hold on my lap to keep
me here. I don’t need to breathe. It’s not unusual to see
a fat salmon ponder close to me. Just out of reach,
rainbow trout float with their porthole eyes watching me.
What a stillness though. I can stay underwater for a while,
I have learned to control the functions of this soul’s
body.
When I surface, the air brings me back to life in another
world. I hold onto the rough cut corner of a Rainier ale
barrel. That is my morning ritual.
Now I’m ready to go ashore. There are things I need to do.
I have to go into Seattle today. A seagull bats that way,
barely moving its pearl wings.
I have a friend named Bill Everett. He’s a policeman.
He drives along this part of the shore every morning.
If he sees me, he’ll stop. I don’t have to wait long.
The black and white cruiser pulled onto the snapping
gravel shoulder of the road and I went to the silver
metal door handle.
“Your holiness,” Bill said, gesturing a hand off the
steering wheel.
I laughed. You know there are people like him you need
in this day to day reality, they bring to life what a bee
knows going to the same flower every day.
Even the car seat remembered me as I settled in to the
springs. “How are you Bill?”
“Good. Good. Another day.” He set the car rolling.
He glanced at the flat blue. “You going to the city?”
I patted my wooden box. “For more poems.”
We got behind a pale gray sedan and followed it.
The road took the slow bending around Lake Washington.
Bill didn’t need to say much. We were just driving.
There are people like him you feel comfortable knowing
they’re in control. Think of those pictures of Franklin
Roosevelt at the post office.
I told Bill, “I’m thinking maybe I’ll see a matinee.”
“Oh yeah?”
Static crackled out the speaker. Sometimes I kidded him
about playing the radio instead. I know he liked Frank
Sinatra. I bet he sang when he was alone on the road.
“I got today’s paper for you if you want to see what’s
playing.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
He passed me the Daily Times. He had it rolled at his feet.
When I unscrolled it, I couldn’t help sighing.
Hitler Asks Japan’s Aid.
I skipped over that. I don’t live for that. I wish I could
deny this war, I wish it never happened. I never would
have started it. And Japan of all places. It breaks my
heart.
Oh, Betty Grable clung on the page I turned. The opposite
of war was always there too. I couldn’t afford her movie
at the Liberty though. Here’s more sock entertainment!
Double charged with more fun…Gags…Gals and laffs
than you’ve ever seen in years!
Bob Hope ‘Caught in the Draft’ is at the Music Box.
I’m a fan of Bob Hope. I’ve seen that film before, weird,
I guess it’s back again.
At the Capitol ‘Shark Woman’ is playing. The strangest
female creature man has ever known! Deep mysteries in
an ocean full of terror! Or else the Queen Anne is playing
‘The Lady Eve.’ I could see that again too. We’re in the
age of wonders.
Club Maynard has Zandra.
‘Barnacle Bill’ at the Paramount. Or at the Neptune is
‘The Bad Man.’ I’m tempted to go there. That’s my
favorite movie theatre. I love to sit there before the film
begins when the holy stain glass lights glow. I should
go there.
Bill was obviously trying not to laugh out loud. He wasn’t
good at a poker face.
“What’s the joke?” I finally had to ask.
He kept it hid though, like keeping a dog under a carpet.
It wasn’t easy for him.
“Nothing.”
I tried to give him the paper back, but he took a hand off
the wheel. “No, you keep it. Look at it later.”
Something was up. “Thanks.” I bent that newsprint into
a square, set it on my wooden box and we kept getting
closer to Seattle. You could tell by watching the gradual
slash of trees and vines. Someday this will all be
skyscrapers, or maybe pagodas if we lose the
war.
Bill’s radio squawked a few more times before we got
into the city. He let it talk. We went until he coasted us
to the curb on Montlake Boulevard.
“Alright,” he said.
“Thanks Bill.”
“My pleasure.”
So I got out onto the cement carrying my box and
mysteriously funny newspaper. Bill left. He waved his arm
out the window. He got lost to me in traffic, cars and a
bus and trucks.
I crossed the street. I got into the shadows of big maple
trees and moved along the lawns. The reason I’m here
on the university campus is inside the wooden box.
Professor Ume can fill it with more Ryokan that I can
take home and translate. I passed a hedge full of roses,
until the cherry trees branching out over the little
trampled path took me to Eastern Hall.
When I say Hall, you shouldn’t picture one of those
brick and ivy covered affairs. Eastern is a wooden pagoda.
Green layers of Pacific Northwest moss cloth the roofs.
It’s been on campus since Ume helped build it way
back when. The tomatoes growing up along the cedar
shakes hadn’t ripened yet, they were still emerald green.
Too bad, I could have used one of them.
I stepped over the little arched bridge, waved at the
orange koi below. If they weren’t so colorful nobody would
ever notice those phantoms in the black water.
A heavy padlock was attached to the door.
I stood there and stared at it. It didn’t turn into a bird and
fly away. I knew what had happened, I’ve heard it would
come to this. Since the war started I’ve listened to the
things people say on buses, radio, in movie lines and
markets. I heard about the relocation centers, I couldn’t
believe it, but what can I do? We’ve all been dragged
into the dark times.
I turned, hoping there would be a note in the hiding place
where he sometimes leaves poems. With Ume gone,
where will I find Ryokan? The stone Buddha in the ground
cover held an urn which could be opened. A fog colored
slip of paper was planted inside.
Friend. They take me today. No poetry for a while. –Ume
It took me twenty minutes to get to the ship canal.
I followed its pour to the shell house where the school
stores canoes. Old Duwamish was sitting on the stoop
of the canoe house, he saw me coming and waved.
He stood up. He was tall.
“You going home?” he called.
“Yes. Do you have time to take me that way?”
He pointed his lit cigarette at the canoe under the willow
tree. “Sure, come on.”
So we went slow. Even if the world right now seems like
it’s falling apart and I’m not saying it isn’t, I’ve seen the
newsreels and I have terrible dreams, but I feel like I’m
holding the calm of the world in this wooden box and
I’m not going to drop it.
Old Duwamish was here long before they cut the locks
from Lake Union and the salmon run dried out. He
doesn’t say much and I don’t blame him. Everything is
in our mind.
We get along good though.
I’ve made slow travel part of my life. Paddling into
Union Bay, digging north for Sand Point, over the south
end of the lake, I can see a flock of crows go across
Mount Rainier. I look out across the blue water, at the
green hills, the mountain rising in the distance, I know
I couldn’t be luckier to be alive now.
About twenty minutes or so something occurred to me.
I unfolded the newspaper Bill gave me.
“Hey D, what’s the day today?”
“Friday.”
“I mean the year.”
It was probably good I was up in the bow. I didn’t have
to see his expression anchored on me.
“1942.”
“Oh great,” I told him.
“Time flies.”
“You want to hear a funny story?”
Duwamish started laughing already.
I turned to look at him over my shoulder. What a sight.
He’s laughing and I didn’t even start my joke. The beads
of lake water ran off the paddle.
“What?” I said.
“I was thinking of Jack Benny.”
He was still laughing. I can’t compete with that. Forget my
story. I looked back at our green water.
Only in my head I think it’s kind of odd. Bill Everett is a
joker. He gave me that newspaper exactly one year old.
He’s been holding onto that gag for a full year! What a card.
Today is July 19, 1942, not July 18, 1941. What a
difference.
“Rochester…” Duwamish said, sending us along.
I don’t wear a watch. I don’t know how long it took, but
the dot I saw worked its was into being my raft.
“Looks like you have a visitor.”
“Yeahh.”
A woman with long black hair sat there. She was wearing
a blue bathing suit.
Duwamish gave a whistle as we neared.
“I wonder who she is. I don’t know her.”
Duwamish started another laugh.
“Jack Benny again?”
“Nooo…” he laughed.
I didn’t expect this. As a matter of fact, she was beautiful
to see. She leaned forward on her bare knees and raised
a hand to shade out the sun.
Behind me, three silver navy planes roared in a tight
formation towards Sand Point. I watched them too.
I was used to the loud thrum coming and going night
and day.
When I turned back to her, she was focused on me with
the thousand candle power of a lighthouse.
Duwamish was still chuckling as he took hold of my
raft.
She nodded to me. “My name is Akari. Professor Ume
sent me here.”
“Ume?”
“He has a special assignment.” She reached over and
took a waterproof satchel from one of the barrels.
“May I show you?”
There wouldn’t be a lot of room with two people on
board but that didn’t seem so bad.
“Well, go on,” Duwamish gave me a push. “Three’s a
crowd.”
I clambered up there. Akari caught my arm as the raft
tipped. “Thanks.” She made me a little nervous though,
elegant as she was, there was something about her that
seemed like one of those Thrilling Amazing Monthly
cover girls. She let go of me and ran her hand to the
satchel again.
“Professor Ume needs you to translate this by tomorrow.
He believes the work you do could affect the outcome of
his sentencing.”
“What? With poetry?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he wanted you to have this too.”
I watched the pearls of her bracelet click and turn as
she reached back into that treasure bag. But what she
took out I could feel my soul crash at.
Old yellowed parchment. I knew the swirled calligraphy
on it from the years of making its meaning mine. It was
writing like the scrolling watery surface of Lake
Washington. “Ryokan…” I whispered.
“Yes.” She held the brittle wonder out to me. She put it
in my opened hands.
I closed my eyes. I would have tried to speak but at
that moment a P-38 pursuit aircraft came roaring off
Sand Point. I know birds and I know airplanes. I’ll admit
these things can disrupt meditation but when I’m
underwater or in the right state, they just don’t matter
to me.
Akari jerked her look at the sky and as she did so,
her face became steely and grim.
I don’t blame her really. They’re loud, but soon gone.
When it had blurred to nothing in the air, I dropped my
eyes to the lake. I could see the tiny point of Duwamish
going gone. I didn’t even know he had left. I didn’t get
a chance to say goodbye or thank him.
The Ryokan paper stirred on my hands. I held it like a
butterfly. “Is this for me?”
“Professor Ume says so.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say…I will do everything I
can for him.”
“You must take these to make poems tonight. Tomorrow
morning I have to carry them away.”
It would be no different than any other night on the raft,
translating by candlelight, only tonight Akari was here.
I agreed though, of course.
I wasn’t sure where to put Ryokan’s calligraphy. Of all
places most unlikely, I finally reached into the barrel
near our feet and took out a comic book. My friend
Leonard McKenzie gave it to me. He’s young, he still
reads these things. The Sub-Mariner, it’s called.
On the cover he’s lifting a submarine and swinging
a torpedo. I settled the ancient page into that newsprint,
closed the covers and replaced it where it had
been.
Akari smiled. She had to know I didn’t have much.
What I did have was everything that mattered to
me.
“Akari. Behind you, in that barrel is my Japanese dictionary.
I’ll get my paper and pencil and we can begin.”
We worked. That is, I did. She watched the sky, seemed
fascinated by the planes. When it was dusk, we brought
out candles and lit them around us. As the lake cooled
to blue, they gave us our light to continue. I pulled out
a blanket for her. She must have been getting cold.
The times that I did look away from the poems,
she was next to me in the egg white of candles.
“You are almost done?” she said when I broke from
the page to notice the water was black around us.
The lights of Seattle had dimmed for the war.
In case a Zero happened to stray ashore,
I guess.
“I’ll be done by dawn,” I told her. While I wrote,
I looked up now and then to keep track of a spider
making a web between the barrels.
I didn’t know she was so warm until she drifted a
hand to rest on me. I left my pencil on the word mountain
and looked at her candlelit face.
“Is it true you can hold your breath underwater like
the fish?”
“Well, I can’t live underwater, but I have trained my
breathing. It’s a monk’s practice.”
“Hmmm.” Then she reached back in her bag. “I read
this newspaper about you.” She took out the article that
had appeared in a Seattle Daily Times some lazy Sunday
some time ago. It was one of those features they like to
print on local characters. Not too flattering I didn’t think.
I came off like some holy carny. It did manage a sentence
to note I was a premier translator of the zen poet Ryokan.
That’s my life, I had told the pretty reporter, but would
that sell papers?
“It says you can hold your breath for seven minutes.”
I nodded. “Sure. It’s true. Actually, everything is connected.
If you can—”
“Tell me, I wonder…” she leaned closer, “Have you ever
been hypnotized?”
“Hypnotized? Like on the stage? Like in the movies?”
where, I thought, some poor sap was always getting
led astray so easily.
We both looked out at the darkness at the approach of
another engine. She had me jumping at airplanes now
too.
It wasn’t an airplane this time. I recognized the running
lights of Leonard McKenzie’s Chris Craft cleaving
towards us.
“A boat!” Akari sat up surprised. “Police?” She looked
ready to dive.
“No, no. It’s my friend Leonard. He’s just a kid. He’s
probably bringing me some food. He likes to look
after me.”
Her hand came away from the edge of the raft.
I noticed a twine hanging off there leading into the
water. Odd. She must have suspended something
there.
Leonard got here quickly. He slowed the boat in time
so he rode the wake in and I caught the sleek mahogany
bow. The polished wood reflected our candle flames.
We rode the last curl of wave. I tied his boat to
us.
“You got company tonight?”
I put a hand on Akari’s shoulder. It had grown ice cold.
“This is Akari. This is my pal Leonard.”
It was dark but she seemed to wrap the shadows even
tighter around her. From far on my raft, she murmured
acknowledgment.
“Listen,” the boy continued, “I wanted to bring you this
supper we had tonight. And also I wanted to tell you that
I may not see you for a while.” He passed me a basket
from home, the slatted weave of it was pleasantly
hot.
“Why not?”
“I’m joining the Navy tomorrow.”
“What?” I asked, as Akari hissed back another mile
of an inch.
“Who knows,” he joked, “Maybe they’ll station me at
Sand Point.”
“Leonard…I’m surprised.”
“I just wanted you to know so you don’t go looking for me,
wondering. I—” he shot a look at Akari who I guess looked
pretty ominous after all. “I’ll leave you now.”
“You take care Leonard,” I told him, taking the ropes
off the cleats. I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t get
yourself hurt, okay?”
I couldn’t hear what he told me over the sudden roar
of his boat. When he pulled it away, we held on to the
waves, before he whirled it and growled it back across
the wide lake. I watched the white stern light twinkle
away and blink out in the distance. I remember when
he first started to see me here, he was only a kid then,
not much older now.
She moved close to me again. The thick shadows fell
off from her shoulders, she drew a bright necklace
off her breasts and held the chain up to me. “Have you
ever looked at the sun?” Made of gold, it seemed to grab
every bit of candle, moon and starlight to sparkle.
Her fingers turned it a little each way. Did I hear music
too? There is a band shell on the other shore, last week
Cornelius Barter and his big band played there.
This music though was dreamy and maybe I was
dreaming, maybe this whole thing was a dream.
Perfectly clear, I saw a box, a little bigger than mine.
It was green, it was trapped underwater. Inside of it
was something so important, I couldn’t fail. I had to
lift it, I had to swim with it, I had to bring it to her.
For the end of these dark times, the sun in my eyes
commanded me, for Ryokan.
The next thing I knew, it was dawn and she was softly
pressing me. “Wake up. Wake up.”
“What?”
“It’s time,” she said.
Somehow I seemed to know just what to do. I slipped
my legs out of our blanket. Yes, I noticed the black
dragon tattoo move on her hip as she stirred the blanket
back. I’m sure these were all clues, but I’m no detective.
I don’t want to play Sam Spade. I just want to unravel
those old words of snowy mountain paths. I let myself into
the water. Treading, without a word, I took the white boat
bumper from her. She must have taken it off Leonard’s
Chris Craft when nobody was looking.
“Go.”
I paddled. A breeze crossed the water with me,
arching little rills of fingerprints on the lake. Did I have
to call back and ask where I was going? No, something
told me already, long ago it seemed I knew. When I
finally stopped, I held onto that bumper and waited.
My legs pumped lazily staying me.
It wasn’t a long wait either. Everything was happening
on time. What began as a bee-like drone humming
from the east became a yellow airplane, a Piper Cub,
shining in blue gray morning. I began the breathing
exercises I do before a descent.
It looked no bigger than a toy, then larger, I could see
the pilot nestled in the cabin. Its bright yellow rippled
reflection across the green smooth water, over me,
when a rifle shot ripped a clank into the side of it.
It fell like a bird off a tree. A terrible loud smash tore
into the seamless cool lake. Before it sunk, disastered
there like a photograph, I went down.
The sound underwater was of dry ice frying. I followed
that shriek. It wasn’t far. It had crumpled into the arms
of a dead apple tree. Back in 1917 when the lake level
shifted, water poured in from Lake Union, all kinds of
things were disarrayed. I’ve found old cars, orchards,
a house with a porch and now there was a yellow
airplane stuck in a tree.
I kicked and pulled myself over to the crash. It looked
like a perfect catch in a wooden glove. Bubbles rose
from the wing tips, the propeller stirred its last.
The clamshell doors had popped open, for a second
I thought the pilot might have bailed out, but no.
There he was, slumped forward in his seat. I grabbed
the cool metal frame and looked in. A bullet had
pierced the pilot’s neck, a thin stream of blood
ribboned out, up. Behind the corpse, tied with straps
onto the backseat was my green box.
I pulled it loose. The ceiling of the airplane was pooling
red. Akari urged me back. I could see her calling me,
I had to give her this box. She picked the right person
for the job alright, I live for carrying a box. Without
breathing I left the dead airplane and swam back.
When I broke the surface, I wasn’t more than two yards
from the raft.
I saw her throw herself in and felt the water churn from
her landing next to me.
“Do you have it?”
“Yes,” I gasped. It was heavier than ever now, I was glad
to let her grab it so I could claw to the raft. I was coughing,
water and air mixing in me.
But she was off. She carried the box in a splashing hurry for
shore.
I caught the raft. I could only hold on weakly. She was
kicking away, almost there. Everything would be okay.
I rested my face on the platform so I could catch my
breath.
There was a commotion in the sky, or maybe it was
the sound of those powerful navy motorboats coming
this way. I was so tired it didn’t matter much. I couldn’t
move. All I could see was the tumbled blanket and on
top of it a sniper rifle with scope, her rein of wet rope
tying it to my raft, and my wooden box, cracked open
so the poems were free to spill into the lake.
cover illustration: rustle frost
double diver drawings: aaron gunderson
plane picture & story: allen frost written in summer 2008
