East is East

But it was amazing. There they were, right where Roy said they’d be. And the thing was, Roy hadn’t even wanted him to go out—not after the Nipponese escape artist popped out of the trunk between them and tumbled headlong into the swamp. “What in god’s name was that?” Roy had said, scratching his head and gaping out across the boat pond to where Hiro Tanaka was cutting a clean frothing wake to the other side. Saxby hadn’t been able to answer him. He thought he was hallucinating. It was as if he’d thrown a ball up in the air and it hadn’t come down, as if he’d turned on the gas range and flames had burst from his fingertips. His mouth fell open, his arms dangled like wash at his sides. But then he recovered himself, then the impossible became possible and he connected the trunk and Tupelo Island and the ground beneath his feet, and the anger came up on him like a thousand little cars racing out of control through his bloodstream. “You son of a bitch!” he bellowed, charging into the water like a bull alligator and shaking his fist at the retreating swimmer, “you, you”—he’d never used the words before, never, but out they came as if they were the very oleo of his vocabulary—“you Nip, you Jap, you gook!” He was standing there, knee-deep in the water, shaking his fist and waving his arms and shouting, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you yet!,” when Roy took him by the belt and led him back to shore.

After he’d calmed down he told Roy the story, and that was when Roy put on his official face, the face of the second in command and de facto overseer of the Okefenokee National Wilderness Area with his offices in the tourist center at the Stephen C. Foster State Park and his unwavering allegiance to the mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles of the swamp, not to mention the Secretary of the Interior, a man who had more than a passing interest in law and order and public relations. “We can’t go out there now,” he said, “not after this.”

“And why the hell not?”

Roy looked offended. “Why, we’ve got to call the sheriff, the authorities. They’ll want to coordinate some sort of manhunt with our people on this end”—he was no longer addressing Saxby, but thinking aloud—”… of course he won’t get far out there before he’s stung, bitten and chewed half to death, presuming he doesn’t drown—and that in itself’s a big presumption …”

“Roy?”

“Hm?”

“I’m going out there just the same.”

Roy gave no sign that he’d heard him. “You say he’s Japanese?”

Saxby nodded.

“Well, you never know. From what I’ve heard of the Japanese—they’re pretty resourceful, aren’t they?” Roy tugged at the bill of his cap, stroked his nose as if it were detached from him. “Still and all, I’d wager they haven’t got anything like this over there, and resourcefulness can only take you so far, know what I mean?” He looked past Saxby to the low pine building that housed the tourist center and then back across the lagoon to the spot where Hiro had vanished in a vegetable embrace. “I’d say they’ll have him back here by sundown.”

“All the more reason to let me go—hell, the park’s still open, isn’t it?”

They both glanced at Roy’s boat: it was canted back on the trailer, the gentle surge of the water baptizing its slick fiberglass hull in one long continuous motion. This was Roy’s particular boat, the one he’d built himself for swamping, a marvel of poise and maneuverability. Their eyes fastened on the stenciled legend—the Pequod II—and both of them smiled. All round them were men with tackle boxes and coolers, their faces sun-inflamed, their eyes a squint of cracker blue. They glanced furtively at Roy and Saxby, the phenomenon of the amphibious Japanese no less marvelous than an eighty-pound catfish or a three-legged deer, but they went about their business as if it were the commonest thing in the world. Engines sputtered to life, boats cut the surface of the whiskey-complected water. For just a moment then, Roy relaxed his official face. “AH right, go ahead,” he said. “But you understand you’re on your own. I won’t be able to join you, not now. And if it gets bad,” he added, “I’ll come out there after you myself.”

And so Roy walked off toward the office and the telephone that would summon Bull Tibbets, Detlef Abercorn and Lewis Turco and a whole chin-thrusting, neck-stretching pack of intensely curious people representing the nation’s supremely curious press, and Saxby set out alone for Billy’s Island in Roy’s long low flat-bottomed boat.