The Red Shark - Chapter 0010

Chapter 10 — The Father’s Return

A messenger hawk came over the wall in the middle of the afternoon, and by evening the whole compound smelled of grilled fish.

Nobody announced anything, but everybody knew what the hawk meant. Kazuo sent us in early. The mothers took over the kitchen and the main hall, and anyone under ten who came within reach was handed a tray, a broom or a baby.

I sat on the stone bench outside the hall with my legs dangling, because I’d already carried two trays and wanted to save my arms for the morning. A month of Kazuo had left every muscle I owned sore in a way I’d started to enjoy. Through the open door I could see lanterns being lit one by one along the beams, and I could smell rice, miso and something frying in oil.

Inside, the mothers were talking over one another.

Hanae was holding Kenji so Miyu could eat standing up, which new mothers apparently did at every meal. Kenji had the darkest skin of the three babies, a deep slate blue, and a grip Hanae kept demonstrating on everyone who walked by. “Look at this. He’ll want a sword before he can walk.”

“This one will want a war,” said Nagi, bouncing Taro on her shoulder. “Listen to him. He already screams like he’s declaring one.”

Akemi, whose hair was the color of dry wheat, had Yumi asleep against her chest. “Mine’s quiet,” she said. “Until she’s hungry. Then she latches on like she means to swallow me whole.” She laughed. “Arashi was the same, wasn’t he, Maluso? Like he wanted to bite.”

My mother was passing with a tray of rice, and she laughed loudly enough to turn heads. “He did bite. I had to switch sides fast.”

I became very interested in a crack in the bench.

Kenji, Yumi and Taro had been born weeks apart, but they already looked like a set, with the same gray-blue skin in three different shades, the same black eyes and the same fuzz of black hair. None of them had met their father yet.

The gate groaned just after dark.

It was the long, low sound of old wood, and everyone in the courtyard reacted at once. Toma dropped the pebble he’d been flicking at the wall. Haruto gave up on the puddle he’d failed to jump eleven times that evening. Kenta was the first to shout it. “Dad’s back!” Then the three of them, and every small brother within earshot, were running for the gate, their feet slapping through the wet courtyard.

The older boys tried to be dignified. Rokuta crossed his arms, announced that he wasn’t a little kid anymore, and then checked the gate every two seconds. Nao and Shun exchanged a look and didn’t quite manage to hide their relief. Daigo had been carrying a stack of trays almost up to his chin. He set them down carefully, straightened his headband, and didn’t run. He was twelve and a genin, and I think he believed that if he ran, he would turn back into one of the little ones.

I went inside and found a place against the wall where I could see the door. I wanted to watch him come in.

He came through the hall door with Toma hanging off one arm and Haruto off the other, and had to duck under the frame. His armor was the old plated kind, black and scuffed, with dried blood on it that didn’t seem to bother him. His hair was wet. He looked more tired than I had ever seen him. He stood in the doorway and took in the hall, the lanterns, the food and all of us, and his shoulders came down a little.

“I’m home,” he said.

The hall came apart.

My mother got to him first. He was far too tall for her to hug properly, so she hugged what she could reach, and he bent and put one arm around her. She said something into his chest that I didn’t hear. He only nodded.

Hanae was next, holding out a clean wet cloth before he had asked for one. “You smell like a battlefield.”

“I’ve just come from one.”

She snorted and wiped a smear of dirt off his cheek herself, as if he were one of her boys, and he let her.

After Hanae, the babies’ mothers came forward, and the hall grew quieter.

Miyu brought Kenji. “They all came while you were away,” she said. “He was the first.”

My father reached for him. I had watched him lift half a pond out of the ground, and he took the baby as if the baby might be the heavier of the two. His hand covered Kenji from neck to knees. Kenji had been fussing. He stopped and stared up at his father, black eyes to black eyes.

“He has your eyes,” Miyu said.

He ran a finger down the baby’s cheek. “He’s strong.”

Akemi brought Yumi over, barely awake. “She sleeps through anything,” she said. “Except hunger.”

Yumi opened her eyes, considered him, and made a small, offended noise.

“Complaining already,” my father said, and one corner of his mouth moved.

Nagi came last, with Taro, who was red-faced and furious at the world. “This one,” she said, “yells louder than you do when you’re angry.”

My father laughed. It was a short, deep sound, and so rare that the whole hall stopped to listen to it. Taro grabbed his finger and held on.

“Good,” my father said, mostly to himself, and looked at the three of them a little longer before he gave Taro back.

Then they fed him.

The table ran the whole length of the hall and still wasn’t long enough. There was grilled fish with coastal herbs, rice, miso, steamed vegetables, shrimp tempura, and warm sake for the adults. I counted, because I count things: twenty-six children, ten mothers, one father. Thirty-seven people, all talking at once, at least three of them crying, almost none of them sitting where they were supposed to.

My father sat at the head of the table with a cup in his hand. The three newest mothers had the places beside him and caught him up on everything he’d missed, from how often Kenji woke in the night to how Taro had screamed through his first bath as though somebody were trying to drown him. He ate slowly and listened to all of it.

Rokuta made his move when he thought no one was looking. His hand crept toward our father’s sake. Without turning his head, our father moved the cup out of reach.

“Don’t.”

“One sip! It’s a celebration!”

Hanae leaned across the table and rapped him on the head with a wooden spoon. “One more word and you’ll go to bed without dessert.”

The hall laughed. Rokuta laughed loudest.

My mother passed behind me and put another piece of fish on my plate. “Eat. You’re growing too fast.” She ran her hand over my hair on her way by. I ate the fish.

Later, when the noise had died down and the youngest were falling asleep on whatever lap was nearest, I slipped off the bench and went up to my father’s end of the table. Up close, he smelled of sake and smoke and the road.

“Father,” I said quietly. “Could I talk to you tomorrow? Just the two of us.”

He looked down at me. I don’t know what he saw. He nodded once.

“My office. Early.”

I went back to my seat with my heart going hard and my face still, and picked up my bowl.

Rokuta leaned over at once. “Secrets with Dad?”

“Training stuff.”

“Liar,” he said cheerfully, and stole my last piece of fish.

The party went on long after that. The mothers told the birth stories again for my father’s benefit, in more detail than anyone under twelve needed. Haruto fell asleep sitting up. Toward midnight Taro started screaming again, and my father lifted him out of Nagi’s arms and walked him up and down the hall, slowly, the whole baby lying along one forearm. Taro gave up before they reached the far wall. My father kept walking him anyway, long after there was any need to.