The 47th samurai

“There were some rough times. Yes, some people died. Nothing I could do about it, unfortunately. But that’s not it. I have to tell you, there’s a child I wanted so much to help. And I couldn’t, not really. So she’s lost. Not dead, just lost. That’s all. I’ll tell you more sometime, not now.”

“Well, I’m sorry. A child would be nice,” said Julie. “Liven this place up. I might even love a child. Tired of living with a grouchy bear, how much worse could a child be?”

Not even Nikki, who’d come home for a spell, could really get through to him.

“Something about a child that he didn’t want to talk about has him all hurting,” her mother said, “and he’s too goddamned stubborn to take a rest and get some help.”

“He’ll be all right. You know him. He comes back from everything.”

“But someday he won’t, and maybe that day has come.”

“No, he’s fine.” But even as she said it, she didn’t believe it: her father was somehow there/not there at once, as if a hole had been opened, then lightly covered over.

A child? What child could that be?

So the three lived in the nice house on the outskirts of Boise, and from a distance, everything seemed fine. The doting father, the handsome wife, the beautiful daughter, now and then in town at a fine restaurant or off to the movies. Why, it looked so fine; there was plenty of money and the three of them so bright and attractive you’d have thought, Those are America’s aristocrats, not of birth but of skill and strength. They are so blessed with health and courage and even some wealth and so proud of each other. They are the best we make.

He cut, he cut, he cut. First day was the worst. Each cut brought an increment of pain. His stamina was way down too, and he wasn’t as hard as he thought he’d be. He’d lost a lot. By the end of the first hour, he breathed hot and hard through dry lips. Over the next few days, it got a little better, and by the third day he stayed out even as a squall blew through, pelting him with ice particles.

It looked like today might bring more of the same, though the heat he’d raised was insulation against the rain and the cold. In the distance, of course, stood the mountains, dark to the point of purple, their peaks lost in the low strata. The prairies between them and him had turned yellow in the winter, dried out and cleansed of wheat or let simply go if they were only grass, so the whole earth had a yellowed, used, even dead feel to it. Yet it was so western: nothing at all looked like it could be of Japan or the East, just rolling hills and plains and the scars of the mountains lost in the dark clouds thirty miles to the east.

It was about four when he saw Nikki’s truck. What was that damned girl doing all the way out here? He’d driven her out to look at his land once late last summer, before all this, but she’d not returned since and there’d been no talk of a visit that morning or any other morning. He was surprised she even knew the place, for it involved a cutoff and a couple of u

Nikki’s truck pulled up at the foot of the slope, and Bob came down to greet her.

He could see his daughter in the driver’s seat, laughing. Then he saw she had a passenger, and the door opened and out climbed Susan Okada.

Something went off inside him; it might have been a sense of hope. He took a deep breath.

“Well, lookie here, the lady from the embassy.”

“Hello, Swagger. I had to come.”

“My god, it’s so great to see you!”

“You saved my life. I never thanked you.”

“You saved the child’s life. I never thanked you.”

“The child’s life is thanks enough.”

“Fair enough.”

“You deserve a report on how it all shook out.”

“I been wondering.”

“Well, to start with, the Japanese government clamped down on it right away. The fight, the deaths, never reported. No scandal. They got there and closed it all down. They don’t want it public.”

“It would take a lot of explaining.”

“And they don’t like to explain. But two days later, Major Fujikawa and Captain Tanada surrendered to the authorities.”

“Good lord!”

“Yeah. They felt they had to do it. Japanese thing, don’t ask.”

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“Not known yet. Depositions have been taken and all have been released on administrative leave while the government figures out what to do. You might think, eighteen men are dead, including a multibillionaire, huge deal. But seventeen of the eighteen are low-ranking yakuza who could have died in any of a hundred squalid ways and the eighteenth is Miwa. But dead, Miwa has no power, no heirs, no legacy. And it turned out he had some unsavory foreign co

“Can you help the officers?”

“There’s not much I can do. Maybe it’ll work out. At least they won’t be ordered to commit seppuku.”

“That’s something. And how about you?”

“Well, it worked out to my advantage. Long story, still classified, but as I said, Miwa had some contacts that had lots of Agency people worried, and getting him out of the picture-well, you got him out of the picture-worked out to my benefit. I’m going to get a promotion. I’m the new queen.”

“You were born to be a queen, Okada-san. Glad I helped. Still, I have to ask about the child. Is she-Is she all right?”

“She’s better. She’s sleeping through the night.”

“I guess that’s the important thing. Still, I wish I had seen her one last time. There at the end, it was so crazy, I just lost sight of you and her. You just disappeared. It was so sudden.”

“I got her back to my place and then we got her back into the system. She’s safe now.”

“I just hate the thought of her in that hospital.”

“She’s not there anymore.”

“Oh, they found someone to take her? Well, ain’t that nice. I suppose that’s all for the best.”

“She went on a long trip.”

“She went to gaijin?”

“There was no one left in Japan. We had to look hard to find someone to love her.”

“I hope it’s a good family.”

“I know it’s a good family, Swagger-san. Nikki!”

She called, and Nikki climbed out of the truck, delighted, holding a wrapped but lively bundle that twisted in her arms mischievously, and he recognized Miko.

She looked over at Swagger and her eyes filled with something.

“Miko, it’s the Tin Man. He came and rescued you. He helped you so much.”

The child looked at him, then buried her shy eyes in Nikki’s chest, then found the courage to look again, decided it was okay, and smiled.

“Hi, there, sweetie,” he said. “Don’t you look swell today? Oh, you’re a peach, I’ll say.”

“Here, give her a hug,” Nikki said, handing the child over.

She squeezed him, he squeezed her.

“It’s so nice to see you,” he said to her, now worried that his daughter and Okada-san might see him cry. Big guys don’t cry, it was a rule.

“It’s so nice that she’s here.”

He was trying to put it together. Somehow Okada-san had taken charge of the child and was bringing her-well, where?

“You say that now, but maybe you’ll change tunes in fifteen years when she brings home a boyfriend with fishhooks in his eyebrows,” Okada-san said.

“What?”

“It’s very tough for a foreigner to adopt a kid in Japan, but it turned out that Miko tragically fit all the criteria. When I found that out, I couldn’t just leave it alone. So I went to the ambassador, who went to the prime minister, and maybe someone whispered something in someone’s ear about certain behind-the-scene occurrences. Anyway, there’s still paperwork to catch up on and some pro forma interviews, but everybody concerned thought it was better to get her over here sooner rather than later and play catch-up on the other stuff. Swagger-san, say hello to your new daughter.”