Wind Sprints by Dennis Ralph

Author:Dennis, Ralph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cutting Edge
Published: 2023-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

Nine o’clock at last. I tugged on my overshoes and my topcoat and went down the hallway and the two flights of narrow stairs to the main entrance hall. I walked down the steps to the side walk, holding onto the railing because there was ice under the snow drift. Then, after I’d crossed the sidewalk and stepped off the curb into the street, I was more certain of my footing and I could lift my eyes and look around me.

The houses on the block were old and they faced, in the future, the threat of urban renewal. They needed painting and they’d weathered quite a bit. Now, in the snow and ice, in the still morning street where nobody moved, I thought, God, it almost looks like Japan that winter.

I was there stationed at Atsugi. In that little town of Otsuka-Mammachi where the houses hadn’t ever been painted, where they’d weathered to the colors of driftwood. That winter it snowed several times and I’d stand at the second floor window and look out across the bare winter fields at the weathered houses and the winding road passed beyond the courtyard. I’d compare the real life in front of me with the Japanese prints I’d seen and I’d think, yes, yes, that’s the way it is, that stillness caught by the artist in a way that a photograph couldn’t.

At that moment a police car, chains pounding down against the ice and slush, rounded the corner and passed me while I waited. The driver looked at me, turning to face me and I put up a hand and waved and they went on past. So, it was not Japan after all. It was New Haven and it was Christmas.

Of course, that was it. What had been bothering me about the letter. Japanese. That, with the carefully lined out paper. Flashing across my eyes, held there for the moment it took me to register the images, I knew how the letter had been written.

An afternoon in Raleigh. Elaine asks, “Wouldn’t you like to write your daddy a letter and thank him for the doll he sent?”

“Yes, Mommy.” But Evadne has no enthusiasm.

Her mother does. She lines out the paper, one sheet for the letter she will write and one for the copy Evadne will make.

Laboring over the letter, the unaccustomed ballpoint pen awkward in her small hand. “What is this word, Mommy?”

“Japanese.”

“It’s a long word.”

“Yes,” Elaine says.

And there are shorter words. I love you. Evadne writes the words without questioning, without protest. When the letter is addressed and sealed and stamped, placed on the table near the front door, Evadne sighs like a child who has suffered.

“My hand hurts and I don’t like writing letters.”

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