Chapter 26

A FedEx package awaited Hugh in the lobby. As he walked back to the room, he tore open the envelope and extracted the newspaper.

He read the date and then opened to page three, where—if memory were to be trusted—the story took up half a page. His chest tightened as he prepared to view his sons’ faces.

Instead, he saw a pickup wrapped around a California cypress.

He confirmed the date: July 16 . . . He turned to pages four and five, six and seven. He went back to the front page, confirming that the page dates were not typos. He leafed through the entire newspaper, but found no coverage of the drowning. The family arrived at the Oceanside condo on July 14. He took the boys surfing the following morning, July 15. The boys died on July 15. The story was printed on the following day, July 16.

It took an hour to get through to the correct desk at the Oceanside Police Department.

“You’re absolutely certain?” Hugh asked.

“There were four beach rescues on July 15, but no reported drownings.”

“No one swept out to sea? Missing at sea?”

“No, nothing.”

“Perhaps the Coast Guard has different—”

“We would have that also, sir.”

Hugh turned off his phone and strode once again into that turbulent ocean seeking his sons. He was promptly swept back to shore.

The Irish bar on Sherman Way. The Irish bar with all the rules. No colors. No sleeveless shirts. No swearing. No baseball hats worn backward. No cell phone conversations. Strictly enforced. You didn’t fuck with the old bartenders. They kept sawed-off shotguns behind the bar, which had never been robbed—successfully. Hugh sat and drank, staring into the tea leaf eyes of his sons. Not black holes. Not pennies. Not the ivory-framed windows of some opportunistic sea creature. The living eyes of his sons. If he had moved an inch, he would have danced a jig. But the only move he made was to slide another bill to the bartender and nod his head at his drink. To the others arranged like hogs at a trough, he was invisible. The visible invisible. The party’s in my mind. Yet one white bearded Old Testament saint leaned into him and offered to take his burden. Facing the man, he reached between his thighs, drew up Enrique the Freak and slapped it on the bar. He halved the book and thumbed to page one thirty-seven. He placed his index finger on the highlighted text and in competition with Al Hirt’s trumpet read, “He smeared the mechanical crayfish with butter.” He smiled into the saint’s beard.

“Poor light to read in,” said the saint.

“Crayfish.”

“Yeah?”

“I promised my sons crayfish.”

“Like pets?”

“No, we . . . we were watching two crayfish in a tiny pool of water. My sons, Hitoshi and Takumi, wanted to catch one, but I said it was getting late.” Hugh closed his eyes. “ ‘Your mother will be getting worried.’ ‘Can you eat crayfish?’ Takumi asked me. ‘Yes.’ ‘What do they taste like?’ ‘Crab.’ ‘Crayfish, yum,’ Hitoshi said. I promised that in summer we would go camping at Big Bear Lake, where ten thousand crayfish lived. We would catch them and cook them.” Hugh opened his eyes. “But we never did . . .”

“That’s too bad.”

“Like Aaron’s grandfather.”

“Excuse me?”

“Aaron’s grandfather told him the story. My sons told Kazuki our story.”

“Umm . . .”

“We’d seen the crayfish in the water that shouldn’t have been there. Hitoshi and Takumi sipped from the honeysuckle . . . That moment, those moments . . . that’s all there is and he stole it. He stole it and he put it right here.” Hugh tapped the book.

“You’re a little hard to follow.”

“He stole my sons.”

“Who did?”

Hugh tapped the book again, harder. “Kazuki Ono.”

“Ah,” said the saint, as if that made perfect sense.

“Kazuki and his daughter, my wife.”

“Gotcha. A custody thing, huh?”

“In Japan they go back forever,” muttered Hugh.

“They do, huh?”

“Tradition. When a couple divorces, the wife and children go back to her father’s home and that’s that.”

“What’s that?” asked the saint.

“The father never sees his children again. It’s as if they don’t exist.”

“Sucks.”

“Yeah, sucks.”

“So Mr. Ono drowned them. Because let me tell you, I would have dug a tunnel. I would have parachuted down his chimney. I would have swallowed invisibility pills.”

“No stopping you, man.”

Hugh laughed. “But he killed me.”

The saint grinned.

“You want to see my grave? I have it out in the car,” said Hugh.

“Good luck, brother,” said the saint, patting the lunatic on his back and turning to a new arrival.

Hugh shoved the book back under his legs and continued dream drinking.

His sons were alive and would reunite with him. There was no longer the insuperable barrier of life and death. They would be . . . twenty-three, twenty-three! How much would they remember? Some would be lost, of course, but there would be enough . . . the ecstatic adventures, the plunge into mystery. The father comes back from the dead as well, considered Hugh, gripping tightly his drink. Everything had to be carefully planned. Should he try to speak with them first by phone? Skype? Should he just hop on a plane and fly to Tokyo? Walk there on the water? Could this all be true? Was he in a delirium? Was he back in that Oceanside hospital room, staring vacantly at that newspaper?

He pushed off the stool. Steady. The Irish bar with all the rules. He walked to the juke box, pressed his hands against the warm glass. As he scanned the columns of song titles, Johnny Cash roared from the speakers.

“I hear the train a coming . . .”

Hugh tapped out the beat on the warm clear glass.

It was all real and he would have his sons back.

Hugh lifted his hand to reveal a fly walking upside down on the other side of the glass. Looking for a way out . . .