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The Child in the Street
Tony Concannon
Once Arakawa started thinking about his dead son, he couldn’t stop. Tonight it had been the talk about the Boston Marathon that had gotten him started. It had been a stupid conversation, Ueda arguing that the Boston Marathon was not a true marathon because it didn’t go out and come back over the same course like the big Japanese marathons in Tokyo and The Fukuoka. Adachi had kept saying the Boston Marathon was the most famous marathon in the world. Both of them had been drunk. Arakawa’s son had run the Boston Marathon once, several years before he had been killed, but neither Ueda nor Adachi knew that. They didn’t know Arakawa well. His company sold semiconductors to their company and the three of them went out for drinks every few months. They knew his son, his only child, had died in America, but not much else.
Arakawa had left to catch the train home a few minutes after the argument. Once he started thinking about his son, he wasn’t good company. In any case, he had never been much of a drinking man. He knew the other two would go half the night. He was still thinking about his son when he got off the train at Mitakadai Station, the station closest to his home in the western suburbs of Tokyo. He went through the ticket gate and turned left into the street, which ran uphill for several hundred meters. Most of the shops near the station were closed for the night. In August it would be ten years since the death of his son but it still seemed as if it had happened yesterday. It had been a hot, humid evening like tonight when the call had come from America. Ahead of Arakawa in the dark street there was a little girl. Arakawa looked for her mother. The only open shop in the vicinity was the video rental shop. Headlights came over the top of the hill, where the police substation was. Arakawa quickened his pace.
“You’re going to get hit by a car,” he called out. “Come over to the side here. Where’s your mother?”
He stepped into the street and took by the hand the child, who couldn’t be more than three. He led her to the side of the street. The car went by.
“It’s dangerous to be in the middle of the street, you know,” he admonished gently. “Are you with your mother?”
The girl didn‘t answer him.
A young Japanese woman came out of the video rental shop. Her hair was bleached blond and she was wearing a short skirt. She walked toward Arakawa and the girl.
“She was in the middle of the street,” Arakawa told her. “It was dangerous. A car was coming down the hill.”
“Thank you,” she said. She took the girl’s hand from his.“I told you not to leave the store,” the woman began in an angry voice.
“I told you you could get hit by a car,” she went on, her voice shrill.
Arakawa, who had started back up the road, stopped and turned around. The little girl’s face was about to break out in tears. The woman was squeezing her hand.
“I told you not to leave the store.”
The woman suddenly slapped the girl across the face. The girl began crying.
“What are you doing?” Arakawa said. “You’re the one who should be slapped.”
The woman looked at him. On her face was a puzzled look.
“You should be watching your child so that she doesn’t go out in the street,” Arakawa continued. “She could have been killed. It’s your responsibility.”
“What are you talking about? What do you know? I told her not to go out of the store.”
The girl was sobbing. The woman took a pack of cigarettes out of her bag.
“You’re the one who should be slapped,” Arakawa said again. “You don’t even take care of your child.”
He started walking again. A few yards away he stopped and turned to the woman.
“You’re the one who should be slapped,” he said for the third time.
He turned away.
“Bakayaro,” came the reply.
He turned back.
“Bakayaro. You’re the one who should be slapped.”
He strode up the hill. He couldn’t hear what the woman was saying and he didn’t stop again. He couldn’t remember ever speaking so forcibly.
A policeman was standing on the steps of the substation at the top of the hill. It wasn’t the elderly policeman Arakawa spoke to every evening. This man was younger, taller and stockier. He had his eyes on Arakawa climbing the hill.
“What happened?” the policeman asked civilly when Arakawa reached the substation. Arakawa was on the other side of the street and he crossed over.“A little girl almost got hit by a car. Then her mother came out the video rental shop and slapped the girl for leaving the store.”
“What was the shouting about?” the policeman asked after a moment.
“I got angry at the mother for hitting the child. Then she got angry at me.”
Arakawa looked down the street. The mother and the child were gone.
“The child wandered out of the store?” the policeman asked.
“Yes. It seems so.”
“This is a dangerous road.”
“That’s why I thought the mother should be watching the child.”
The policeman nodded slightly to himself. Then he said, “Thank you.” He did not bow.
Arakawa crossed back to the other side and continued home. He lived about 20 minutes away. He generally enjoyed the long walk, which took him past farm fields and across a brook, but tonight he was upset from the argument with the woman and his mind was still on his son. He’d been surprised when his son had told him he was going to run a marathon. His son had never been much into sports. He had been an outstanding student and he had entered Tokyo University on the first try from high school. After graduation he had gone directly to graduate school in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arakawa hadn’t been opposed or even surprised at his son’s non-traditional path-his son had always loved English and America. When his son had completed his doctorate, he had begun working in the laboratories there. Arakawa and his wife had attended the graduation, the first time either of them had left Japan, and they had been introduced to their son’s fiancée, an American woman. Again, Arakawa hadn’t been opposed to what his son had wanted to do. His future daughter-in-law had spoken no Japanese but she had been gentle. She had also graduated with a doctorate, and she had a job in the same laboratory. She was a runner and she had introduced his son to the sport. They’d even run the marathon together.
He was still thinking about his son when his wife greeted him in the entrance of their home. She was a short, thin woman. She kept herself busy by taking classes at the local community center. Tonight her cheeks were flushed and her eyes more vital than usual, signs she’d been drinking, as she did almost every evening he wasn’t home.
“There was a little girl in the street by the video rental shop,” Arakawa told her when he had stepped out of his shoes and into the slippers she had put out for him.
“I thought she was going to get hit by a car, so I pulled her over to the side,” he went on, following his wife into the living room. “Then the mother came out of the video rental shop and got angry at the little girl and slapped her.”
Dinner was waiting on the table.
“That road’s dangerous, especially at night,” his wife said.
“I got angry at the mother for slapping her,” Arakawa said as he sat down on the big cushion in front of his place at the table.
“She was probably just trying to teach the girl not to wander away by herself.”His wife went into the kitchen. She came back into the room with the teapot. She sat opposite him and poured him a cup of tea.
“Did you eat?” she asked as she uncovered the food on the table.
“I’m not hungry. Just make me some ochazuke.”
She got up again. Her movements were always sudden when she had been drinking.
He looked at the clock. It was quarter of ten. The news came on at ten. In the corner of the room was the little altar with the picture of their son. On the wall above it were pictures of his deceased parents. Every morning his wife made an offering of rice at the altar.
He was staring at the picture of his son when his wife brought a bowl of rice into the room. She placed it in front of him and sat down for the second time.
“Did you drink much?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“It’s still hot,” his wife said.
“It’s going to rain.”
“I was talking about the rice.”
He blew on top of the steaming bowl.
“That woman looked like she worked in a bar,” he said.
“What woman?”
“The woman whose little girl ran out of the video shop and almost got hit by a car.”
“How do you know she works in a bar?”
“It’s not important where she works. She shouldn’t have slapped that little girl and made her cry.”
“She just wants to teach her so it won’t happen again.”
“You shouldn’t hit a child that small.”
He picked up the bowl of rice and blew on the top of it again.
“They were talking about the Boston Marathon,” he said.
“Who was?”
“The men I went drinking with.”
She nodded.
“Koichi did great to finish that time,” she said a few seconds later, her voice different.
Arakawa looked at his wife. He knew she was going to start crying uncontrollably. He’d known it as soon as he’d brought up the marathon. “He never liked sports,” she went on. “I never thought he would finish.”
Tears were welling in her eyes. The drinking never helped.
“He always worked hard at everything,” Arakawa said.
“People should know not to drink and drive,” she said.
“America’s a different country.”
“It’s a stupid country.”
She was crying hard now, her shoulders shaking. He knew the sobs would start soon. When they did, he moved around the table and held her.
