Koji swallowed the recurring ache and laid his forehead against the steering wheel. You’re not to blame, yeah. It was as if Mariko were right there in the air surrounding him, and he suddenly couldn’t breathe with the want of her. Koji sat up and reached for the rucksack next to him. He took out the shirt, needing to see it, feel it, the whiteness of the shirt against the darkness of the trees surrounding him that blocked out the daylight.

Only then did he feel better.

Ghost Voices

Ghost Voices

MARIKO, 1917

It’s Sunday morning and Koji is on his way down from Puli to see us. He keeps better time than a clock, and I’m expecting his truck to pull up to the house in thirty minutes. Ever since Franklin left, Koji has been a constant, helping us around the house, bringing Daniel more railcars and tracks, and answering all his questions. He even taught him how to play baseball a few years ago, which my son now loves even more than his trains. Who would have thought, yeah?

“How come you know so much about baseball?” I asked Koji back then.

He looked at me wide-eyed. “Nothing better to do on the plantation on weekends, not to mention the long afternoons after hoeing,” he says. “We still had energy to burn, yeah. We played baseball till dark, mostly against the Chinese and the Sakata boys. Real leagues, eh. Sunday afternoon games still big highlights.”

Now he spends every Sunday with us, watching Daniel at practice and playing on his school team. Coaching and strategizing during dinner. I feel at peace when we’re together, something I always struggled to find with Franklin. Every time Franklin came home, it wouldn’t be long before he was restless and edgy, as if he were just waiting for the next steamer to take him away from us again. It still leaves me uneasy thinking about it. I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I know now, I tell Nori, Franklin was always a hot spark, while Koji’s a slow-burning fire.

* * *

It’s just another Sunday afternoon with Daniel away at baseball practice. Koji has replaced a few rotting boards on the front porch, and now sits at the kitchen table watching me pluck a chicken, gray down rising into the air and floating back into the sink. We’re like an old married couple, and it feels safe and comfortable.

I remember once asking him, “Why haven’t you married?” It was a few years after he’d begun helping me to pick the mangoes. It was back when Franklin and I had been married two, maybe three years and he was away again. Koji was perched high atop a ladder, reaching for a branch laden with mangoes.

He stopped working and looked down at me. With the sun in my eyes, I could only see him in outline.