Echo on the Bay. Masatsugu Ono

      “Why would an Oita policeman be sent to Osaka?” said Dad, bemused. “They have nothing in common but the character O!”

      Toward evening the villagers would come outside to enjoy the cool air on the main road by the bay. The onshore wind blew wearily toward them, while the bay, holding tight to the smell of the sea, waited patiently for night. The police house was at the junction of the main street and a small side road, so people often stopped in front of our garden to chat with each other. The men who’d guided Dad’s car toward disaster—Hashimoto, Hidaka, Someya, and Iwaya, along with Iwaya’s dog, Shiro—gathered frequently and often talked for a very long time.

      Dad had begun to call them the Silica Four, a name he’d picked up from Mr. Kawano. Mr. Kawano had no sympathy for them at all, regarding them as living lazy lives at tax-payers’ expense. At the same time, they were all former students of his, so he seemed to feel some responsibility for how they’d turned out. Whenever he saw them, he’d stop his bicycle, walk over, and say something like:

      “Is this what my teaching’s done?”

      Then he’d stand, gazing at them mournfully, shaking his head for a full three minutes. The four of them would exchange embarrassed glances, laughing with exaggerated cheeriness. Even Shiro would seem embarrassed, looking up at Mr. Kawano, his tail between his legs, his front paws over his nose.

      But Mr. Kawano’s greatest sadness was Mitsugu Azamui. Mr. Kawano had raised him. Nobody in the village seemed to know about Mitsugu’s birth, but they all knew that, as a young couple, Mr. Kawano and his wife had taken him in. And the child they’d nurtured with all their care had ended up an alcoholic, living off benefits for what may or may not have been a genuine case of hand-arm vibration syndrome. In a sense, Mitsugu Azamui was, in human form, the antithesis of the capitalist society that Mr. Kawano hated—the end point of his criticism of that whole social system. But I don’t think this made him happy in the least. When he looked at Mitsugu Azamui, Mr. Kawano’s eyes were filled with pain.

      Mrs. Kawano—Kimie—had died some years before. People said she’d worried about Mitsugu until the very end. But Mitsugu, himself abandoned by his wife and children, had long since abandoned his adoptive parents. He never once visited Kimie in the hospital.

      But Mr. Kawano had never abandoned Mitsugu. Whether he lay drunk at the side of the road or at our house, it was Mr. Kawano who carried him home. Mr. Kawano always looked so sad as he was doing it.

      But whenever any of the Silica Four saw Mr. Kawano carrying Mitsugu, they felt relieved.

      “At least we ain’t as bad as Mitsugu!” they’d say. “Dunno how shenshei copes!”

      Tahara the priest had been in the same grade as the Silica Four at school and even now he was still a target of their mockery.

      “That priest’s a wuss, ain’t he,” said Iwaya one time when he ran into the other three on his way back from a walk with Shiro.

      “Lucky you’ve got Shiro to protect you.” They all laughed.

      “He always was a bit of a girl,” said Someya, adjusting his false teeth.

      “But he sounds like a man all right when he’s chanting his sutras,” said Hashimoto with genuine enthusiasm. “Kaaa-ttsu!”

      Hashimoto’s sudden shout in imitation of the priest boomed across the bay. Shiro barked in approval, wagging his tail happily. The Silica Four laughed, as though they were being tickled by Shiro’s fluffy tail.