Lawson Fusao Inada

This one appeared to me in a dream, was forgotten, only to reveal itself on the shower wall this morning. It must have been the water. • That one was on the full moon last night, clear as a bell. Someone projected it there. • This one was on the ground, on crunchy pine needles. The moon projected it there. • I forgot about that one . . . How was I to know it would be significant? • Every time I see this one, I'm angry. It doesn't diminish, either, from that first time. • Oh, that one! To tell you the truth, I never actually saw it, but I could feel it as it was described to me by a blind person over the phone. • This one I spotted on the back of someone's shirt in a crowd before she disappeared. • That one evolved, and is still evolving, on that big, flat rock over there; something scraped it, scratched it, the heat cracked it, the frost coated it, tiny plants took root, sheltering insects, and it rained, and it rained, and by the time I showed up, a butterfly had just flown off. • Not this one again. It makes me so sad . . . • I was glad to receive that one as a gift. So glad, in fact, that I went and had some copies made. • Believe it or not, this one has a sound. Just listen. • Oh, boy—that one! I'll never go there again. • This one often arrives in the smoke of incense. • I tried to turn that one over— it burned my hand. • This one I tried to discard— unsuccessfully, obviously. • That one speaks to me of space, and negative space, of open and filled spaces, and the among that comes between. • Whereas this one is the opposite— you get the picture. • Oh, my goodness— I've never seen that one before! • This one, from what I gather, is an accident. • That one, however, is intended. • This one took some getting to— waiting for the thaw, for instance— but it was well worth it. • That one, well, you can have it. • Whenever this one comes my way, it's déjà vu, but I'm ready for it. • That one is owned by the dentist. • This one has been proven to be a fake, but I still like it. • Alas, I lost that one once, in childhood, and it took me until now to find it. • If you can only have one, choose this one.

We are both strong, dark, bright men, though perhaps you might not notice, finding two figures flat against the landscape like the shadowed backs of mountains. Which would not be far from wrong, for though we both have on Western clothes and he is seated on a yellow spool of emptied and forgotten telephone cable and I recline on a green aluminum lounge, we are both facing into the August sun as august as Hiroshima and the autumn. There are differences, however, if you care to discover, coming close, respectfully. You must discover the landscape as you go. Come. It is in the eyes, the face, the way we would greet you stumbling as you arrive. He is much the smooth, grass-brown slopes reaching knee-high around you as you walk; I am the cracks of cliffs and gullies, pieces of secret deep in the back of the eye. But he is still my father, and I his son. After a while, there is time to go fishing, both of us squatting on rocks in the dusk, leaving peaks and tree line responsible for light. There is a lake below, which both of us acknowledge, by facing, forward, like the sun. Ripples of fish, moon, luminous insects. Frogs, owls, crickets at their sound. Deer, raccoon, badger come down to drink. At the water's edge, the children are fishing, casting shadows from the enormous shoreline. Everything functions in the function of summer. And gradually, and not by chance, the action stops, the children hush back among rocks and also watch, with nothing to capture but dusk. There are four of us, together among others. And I am not at all certain what all this means, if it means anything, but feel with all my being that I must write this down, if I write anything. My father, his son, his grandsons, strong, serene. Night, night, night, before the following morning.

Memory is an old Mexican woman sweeping her yard with a broom. She has grown even smaller now, residing at that vanishing point decades after one dies, but at some times, given the right conditions— an ordinary dream, or practically anything in particular— she absolutely looms, assuming the stature she had in the neighborhood. This was the Great Valley, and we had swept in to do the grooming. We were on the move, tending what was essentially someone else's garden. Memory's yard was all that in miniature, in microcosm: rivers for irrigation, certain plants, certain trees ascertained by season. Without formal acknowledgment, she was most certainly the head of a community, American. Memory had been there forever. We settled in around her; we brought the electricity of blues and baptized gospel, ancient adaptations of icons, spices, teas, fireworks, trestles, newly acquired techniques of conflict and healing, common concepts of collective survival. . . Memory was there all the while. Her house, her shed, her skin, were all the same— weathered— and she didn't do anything, especially, except hum as she moved; Memory, in essence, was unmemorable. Yet, ask any of us who have long since left, who have all but forgotten that adulterated place paved over and parceled out by the powers that be, and what we remember, without even choosing to, is an old woman humming, sweeping, smoothing her yard: Memory.

for The People The people don't mention it much. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— that concentration camp on their reservation. And they avoid that massive site as they avoid contamination— that massive void punctuated by crusted nails, punctured pipes, crumbled failings of foundations . . . What else is there to say? This was a lush land once, graced by a gifted people gifted with the wisdom of rivers, seasons, irrigation. The waters went flowing through a network of canals in the delicate workings of balances and health . . . What else is there to say? Then came the nation. Then came the death. Then came the desert. Then came the camp. But the desert is not deserted. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.

From a distance, at night, they seem to be industries—all lit up but not on the map; or, in this scientific age, they could be installations for launching rocket ships— so solid, and with such security, are they. . . Ah, but up close, by the light of day, we see, not “pads” but actual paddies— for these are simply silos in ricefields, structures to hold the harvested grain. Still, they're the tallest things around, and, by night or day, you'd have to say they're ample for what they do: storage. And, if you amble around from your car, you can lean up against one in the sun, feeling warmth on your cheek as you spread out your arms, holding on to the whole world around you, to the shores of other lands where the laborers launched their lives to arrive and plant and harvest this grain of history—as you hold and look, look up, up, up, and whisper: “Grandfather!”

I.“Before the War” “Before the war” means Fresno, a hedged-in house, two dogs in the family. Blackie, the small one, mine, lapped at his insides on the floorboard, on the way to the doctor. Jimmy, my father's shepherd, wouldn't eat after the evacuation. He wouldn't live with another master and pined away, skin and bone. With feelings more than pride, we call him our one-man dog. II. Mud Mud in the barracks— a muddy room, a chamber pot. Mud in the moats around each barracks group. Mud on the shoes trudging to the mess hall. Mud in the swamp where the men chopped wood. Mud on the guts under a loaded wagon— crushed in the mud by the wheel. III.  Desert Songs 1. all that we gathered Because there was little else to do, they led us to the artillery range for shells, all that we gathered, and let us dig among dunes for slugs, when they were through. Because there was little else to do, one of them chased a stray with his tail between his legs and shot him through the head. 2. shells A desert tortoise— something mute and hard— something to decorate a desert Japanese garden: gnarled wood, smooth artillery shells for a border. When a guard smashes one, the shell cracks open and the muscles ooze. 3. it is only natural The pheasant is an Oriental creature, so it is only natural that one should fly into camp and, famished by rations and cans, break out in secret, native dance over a fire, on a black coal stove. 4. song of the 442nd Caged creatures have curious moods. Some of them choose to be turned loose in a group, to take their chances in the open. 5. steers Because a dentist logically drives a butcher truck, I rode with my father to the slaughterhouse on an afternoon. Not hammers, not bullets, could make him close his eyes. 6. he teaches He jerks the eyes from birds, feet from lizards, and punishes ants with the gaze of a glass. And with his sly gaze, his child's face, he teaches what has its place, and must be passed on to others. IV. Song of Chicago When the threat lessened, when we became tame, my father and friends took a train to Chicago for factory work, for packaging bolts. One grew a mustache and called himself Carlos. And they all made a home with those of their own— rats, bedbugs, blacks.

When the river rose that year, we were beside it and ourselves with fear; not that it would do anything to us, mind you—our hopes were much too high for that— but there was always that remote, unacknowledged possibility that we had thrown one stone too many, by the handful, and that by some force of nature, as they called it, it might rain and rain for days, as it had been, with nothing to hold it and the structure back, and with everything to blame, including children on into late summer and all the years ahead, when it would be ours to bear, to do much more with than remember and let it go at that—some mud, some driftwood, some space of sky as a reminder before getting on with the world again; no, the balance was ours to share, and responsibility for rivers had as much to do with anything as rain on the roof and sweet fish for supper, as forests and trembling and berries at sunrise; thus it was, then, that we kept our watch, that we kept our wits about us and all the respect we could muster, sitting in silence, sleeping in shifts, and when the fire died, everyone was there to keep it alive; somehow, though, in the middle of the night, despite our vigils, our dreams, our admonitions, our structure, our people, and all our belongings broke free with a shudder and went drifting away— past the landing, the swing, the anchored cages, down through the haunted rapids, never to be found; when we awoke that morning, the sun was back, the river had receded under our measuring stick, and everything had been astonishingly replaced, including people and pets, the structure intact, but in the solitude of all our faces as we ate, the knowledge was there, of what we all had done, and that everything would never be the same.