“I can’t promise much,” the man, Homer, said, “but if you can help me get these trees in some kind of order we can work something out. For the pay I mean. Maybe we can figure out a way to hold back the curl at least.”

“No place to live.”

“Oh I can take care of that,” Homer said. “There’s a little cabin. It’ll take some work. Maybe a roof. And a good cleaning.”

“Me and wife and baby?”

“Of course.” He paused and then said, “How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“No,” the man said, smiling now. “I mean the baby.”

“Ah,” Hiro said. He too smiled. “Raymond. Two month.” Then he stopped and said the last word again, the correcting s louder than the word itself: “Months.”

The young man nodded. “Raymond, huh?”

Hiro nodded. “Ray.”

“Good name, Ray. My uncle’s name.”

“American name.”

“That it is,” the man said. “Ours is about the same age, actually. James Herbert Wilson. We call him Jimmy.” He paused, as if in thought. Then he said, “You said your name was Hiroshi?”

“Yes, Hiroshi. Short is Hiro.”

“Hero?” Homer said, and so Hiro repeated it once more, pronouncing it not in the way the white man had but in the Japanese way, and to his surprise, this man, this Homer Wilson, said it back to him in much the same accent, his tongue striking just at the r so that the sound was nearly inaudible.

“Very good,” Hiro told him. “You could speak Japanese.”

“Maybe you can teach me,” Homer said, smiling. “That would be a thing to know, wouldn’t it? Me speaking Japanese.” He laughed then; his eyes returned to the tree and Hiro followed his gaze into the branches. The sun was up there, its light shaped green, shifting as the leaves wound along the tangle of branches. Komorebi.

THEY MIXED THE LIME SULFUR in a huge iron kettle that had been held in Homer Wilson’s shed for exactly that purpose and set it on an open bonfire they had gathered from the previous year’s pruning, the kerosene flashing up like a brief impossible star and then the dry foliage curling in the heat and, after many hours, the liquid in the great cauldron began, at last, to boil. The two women, Kimiko and Evelyn, watched from a distance for a time until the sulfur’s acrid reek stung the air so strongly that they were forced to retreat to their separate lives. Hiro and Homer watched them as they disappeared into the trees.