I look into my father’s face for an answer.
“Look around you,” Dad says. And I see Mom, Mrs. Maeda, the prime minister, all our neighbors from Kurume, and all the people who waited with us in Kagoshima, in Kyushu, in all the Four Islands, all over Earth, and on the Hopeful. They look expectantly at me, for me to do something.
Dad’s voice is quiet:
“The stars shine and blink.
We are all guests passing through,
A smile and a name.”
“I have a solution,” I tell Dr. Hamilton over the radio.
“I knew you’d come up with something,” Mindy says, her voice proud and happy.
Dr. Hamilton is silent for a while. He knows what I’m thinking. And then: “Hiroto, thank you.”
I unhook the torch from its useless fuel tank and connect it to the tank on my back. I turn it on. The flame is bright, sharp, a blade of light. I marshal photons and atoms before me, transforming them into a web of strength and light.
The stars on the other side have been sealed away again. The mirrored surface of the sail is perfect.
“Correct your course,” I speak into the microphone. “It’s done.”
“Acknowledged,” Dr. Hamilton says. His voice is that of a sad man trying not to sound sad.
“You have to come back first,” Mindy says. “If we correct course now, you’ll have nowhere to tether yourself.”
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper into the microphone. “I’m not coming back. There’s not enough fuel left.”
“We’ll come for you!”
“You can’t navigate the struts as quickly as I did,” I tell her gently. “No one knows their patterns as well as I do. By the time you get here, I will have run out of air.”
I wait until she’s quiet again. “Let us not speak of sad things. I love you.”
Then I turn off the radio and push off into space so that they aren’t tempted to mount a useless rescue mission. And I fall down, far, far below the canopy of the sail.
I watch as the sail turns away, unveiling the stars in their full glory. The sun, so faint now, is only one star among many, neither rising nor setting. I am cast adrift among them, alone and also at one with them.
A kitten’s tongue tickles the inside of my heart.
? ? ?
I play the next stone in the gap.
Dad plays as I thought he would, and my stones in the northeast corner are gone, cast adrift.
But my main group is safe. They may even flourish in the future.
“Maybe there are heroes in Go,” Bobby’s voice says.
Mindy called me a hero. But I was simply a man in the right place at the right time. Dr. Hamilton is also a hero because he designed the Hopeful. Mindy is also a hero because she kept me awake. My mother is also a hero because she was willing to give me up so that I could survive. My father is also a hero because he showed me the right thing to do.
We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.
I pull my gaze back from the Go board until the stones fuse into larger patterns of shifting life and pulsing breath. “Individual stones are not heroes, but all the stones together are heroic.”
“It is a beautiful day for a walk, isn’t it?” Dad says.
And we walk together down the street, so that we can remember every passing blade of grass, every dewdrop, every fading ray of the dying sun, infinitely beautiful.
ALL THE FLAVORS
A Tale of Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War, in America
All life is an experiment.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
For an American, one’s entire life is spent as a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle.
—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
IDAHO CITY
The Missouri Boys snuck into Idaho City around four thirty a.m., when everything was still dark and Isabelle’s Joy Club was the only house with a lit window.
Obee and Crick made straight for the Thirsty Fish. Earlier in the day, J. J. Kelly, the proprietor, had invited Obee and Crick out of his saloon with his Smith & Wesson revolver. With little effort and making no sound, Obee and Crick broke the latch on the door of the Thirsty Fish and quickly disappeared inside.
“I’ll show that little Irishman some manners,” Crick hissed. Through the alcoholic mist, his eyes could focus on only one image: the diminutive Kelly walking toward him, gun at the ready, and the jeering crowd behind him. We might just bury you under the new outhouse next time you show yourselves in Idaho City.
Though he was a little unsteady on his feet, he successfully tiptoed his way up the stairs to the family’s living quarters, an iron crowbar in hand.
Obee, less drunk, set about rectifying that situation promptly by jumping behind the bar and helping himself to the supplies. Carelessly, he took down bottles of various sizes and colors from the shelves around him, and having taken a sip from each, smashed the bottles against the counters or dashed them to the ground. Alcohol flowed freely everywhere, soaking into the floors and the furniture.
A woman’s scream tore out of the darkness upstairs. Obee jumped up and drew his revolver. Not sure whether to run upstairs to help his friend or out the door, down the street, and into the woods before he could be caught, he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Overhead came the sound of boots that no longer cared about silence, followed by the crash of something heavy and soft onto the floor. Obee cursed and jumped back, his big, dirty hands trying to rub out the coat of dust that just fell from the ceiling into his eyes. More muffled screams and cursing, and then, complete silence.
“Woo!” Crick appeared at the top of the stairs, the gleeful grin on his face limned by the light of the oil lamp he held aloft. “Grab some rags. Let’s burn this dump down.”
? ? ?
By the time the seven thousand people of Idaho City had tallied up the damage of the Great Fire of May 18, 1865, the Missouri Boys were miles away on the Wells Fargo trail, sleeping off the headache from hard drinking and fast riding. Idaho City lost a newspaper, two theaters, two photograph galleries, three express offices, four restaurants, four breweries, four drugstores, five groceries, six blacksmith shops, seven meat markets, seven bakeries, eight hotels, twelve doctor’s offices, twenty-two law offices, twenty-four saloons, and thirty-six general merchandise stores.
This was why, when the band of weary and gaunt Chinamen showed up a few weeks later with their funny bamboo carrying poles over their shoulders and their pockets heavy with cold, hard cash sewn into the lining, the people of Idaho City almost held a welcome party for them. Everyone promptly set about the task of separating the Chinamen from their money.
? ? ?
Elsie Seaver, Lily’s mother, complained to Lily’s father about the Chinamen almost every evening.
“Thaddeus, will you please tell the heathens to keep their noise down? I can’t hear myself think.”
“For fourteen dollars a week in rent, Elsie, I think the Chinamen are entitled to a few hours of their own music.”