The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck

Author:Pearl S. Buck [Buck, Pearl S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6357-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-07-24T00:33:00+00:00

Chapter Four

TIME PASSED. Jiya grew up in the farmhouse to be a tall young man, and Kino grew at his side, solid and strong, but never as tall as Jiya. Setsu grew, too, from a mischievous, laughing little girl into a gay, willful, pretty girl. But time, however long, was split in two parts by the big wave. People spoke of “the time before” and “the time after” the big wave. The big wave had changed everyone’s life.

For years no one returned to live on the empty beach. The tides rose and fell, sweeping the sands clean every day. Storms came and went, but there was never again such a wave as the big one. Then people began to think that perhaps there would never again be such a big wave. The few fishermen who had listened to the tolling bell from the castle and had been saved with their wives and children had gone to other shores to fish, and they had made new fishing boats.

But as time passed after the big wave, they began to tell themselves that there was no beach quite so good as the old one. There, they said, the water was deep and great fish came close to the shore in schools. They did not need to go far out to sea to seek the booty. The channels between the islands were rich.

Now Kino and Jiya had not often gone to the beach again, either. Once or twice they had walked along the place where the street had been, and Jiya had searched for some keepsake from his home that the sea might have washed back to the shore. But nothing was ever found. The surf was too violent above deep waters, and even bodies had not returned. So the two boys, now young men, did not visit the deserted beach very often. When they went to swim in the sea, they walked across the farm and over another fold of the hill.

But Kino saw that Jiya always looked out of the door every morning and he looked at the empty beach, searching with his eyes as though something might one day come back. One day he did see something. Kino was at the door putting on his shoes and he heard Jiya cry out in a loud voice, “Kino, come here!” Quickly Kino went and Jiya pointed down the hillside. “Look—is someone building a house on the beach?”

Kino looked and saw that indeed it was so. Two men were pounding posts into the sand, and a woman and a child stood near, watching. “Can it be that they will build again on the beach?” he exclaimed.

But they could not rest with watching. They ran down the hill to the beach and went to the two men. “Are you building a house?” Jiya cried.

The men paused and the elder one nodded. “Our father used to live here and we with him. During these years we have lived in the outhouses of the castle and we have fished from other shores.

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