License plates

Jamison was the last person to debate God's existence with me and now he's dead. Each night before he slept he would kneel and mumble a series of words I didn't understand while fingering a string of beads. He would talk while we watched the fire and ate whatever we could find.

He said God was watching and this was punishment for lifetimes of indiscretions. I laughed at his big statements and threw stones at the fire. He chastised me in a gentle way like a father would scold a child, looking at me down his face and that massive beard like a white, puffy cloud.

Nietzsche said God is dead. So is Jamison. This isn't a question I care to debate. God being dead or alive is irrelevant. I'm still here regardless of empty words screamed at the sky in the hopes of absolution.

The sun is pale yellow and cold as it rises. Our relationship is hopeless in winter. I can't stare at it for more than a few seconds and it doesn't heat the world around me more than an inconsequential amount. Even when I do stare, its outline lingers behind my eyelids.

The fire always goes out in the night. I must rise and add sticks to ensure I don't freeze. No matter what I do, no matter how much fuel I add, I still rise with ice crystals gluing my sleeping bag to the ground. Dew settles in while I sleep despite my best efforts.

I rise and roll my bag and continue along broken highways rich with history in the form of abandoned cars. I find one or two every couple of miles, like they were part of a long, steady caravan that petered out. Each is rusted and long since picked over by scavengers looking for metal or drops of gasoline or padding.

The best cars still have their license plates. I collect unique ones that I find by punching holes in either end of the plate with my knife and stringing them together before putting them in my pack. I only keep the truly exceptional ones.

I have one from Oregon with a tree on it, because that's where I lived before most of everyone died and I hit the road. Then there's the California plate that's deep blue with sunflower yellow letters. It's seemingly unremarkable, but reminds me of my dad's old Honda Civic. He lived in Redding and I visited him in the summer. He left that car parked on his lawn until it killed all the grass under it.

The last plate is one given to me by Jamison before he died. It's from Hawaii, which surprised both of us because it's so far away. He said he found it on the remains of a fancy car, a Mercedes carefully brought over the Pacific but ultimately ruined like all the rest. It was nice of him to think of me, despite all of our differences.

I like the Hawaii plate specifically because of its rainbow. I imagine it still on the car, a little slice of joy amid a sea of ruin and rust. When I think of it like that, no matter where I am it makes me smile.

The guestbook

Hazuki showed me to my room after we finished dinner. We walked along the onsen's carpeted hallways, past closed screen doors, and up a flight of stairs that led to a wooden door.

"This used to be our suite," Hazuki said. "I hope you like it. Sorry we don't have electricity."

The floor was a polished bamboo and so were the walls. My shoes squeaked as I walked. She pointed to a small futon mattress folded against the far wall. I nodded, set my pack down, and bowed my head to her. She waved off my thanks with a wry smile and the wave of a hand.

"I rise with the sun. I'd be happy to offer you breakfast if you're awake," she said.

"Food, shelter, all these favors," I said.

"I'm just happy to have someone back under my roof." She moved to the door. "Sleep well."

Unfurling the mattress, I sat with my sleeping bag wrapped around my shoulders. The room was dark so I lit one of my candles and used melting wax to secure it to the floor. My breath was a steaming fog that caused the tiny flame to momentarily flicker and bend before it righted and continued to project its weak aura across the bamboo floor.

I was tired but restless and didn't want to sleep, so I got off the mattress, picked up the candle, and walked circles around the room. The room was spare, with no wall decorations save a single framed picture of Mt. Fuji in winter covered with layers of snow. Under the picture was a small desk with no chair. I opened each drawer but found nothing.

I sighed. There was no guestbook, no clues as to what life used to be like here. I wanted a story of a married couple here on honeymoon preparing to do a midnight trek to the top of Mt. Fuji so they could watch the sunrise in awe. Or perhaps a group of three or four trekkers working their way through Japan, top-to-bottom, splurging for a couple of nights to soak in the sulfur pools and drink too much. These were the stories I missed, unremarkable on their face but exceptional in the light of how they didn't happen anymore.

Closing the last drawer, I retreated back to the mattress and blew out the candle. I closed my eyes, but sleep didn't come.

Rosanjin

We sat cross-legged at a low table and ate tinned pork and beans by candlelight. The walls of the onsen creaked like a massive bellows and the building sighed with each push of wind. The old woman clucked critically.

"Repairs are impossible in the winter. It's too cold and I'm too tired," she said. "Did you enjoy your bath?"

"River runoff got cold early this year." I flashed a thumbs-up. "First good soak in as long as I can remember."

"That pleases me greatly."

The building was one of three that sat in a valley between two of the smaller hills adjacent to Mt. Fuji in Sengokuhara. They were at the edge of town, after the graveyards, abandoned busses and cars, and the slim commercial district with its broken windows and walls covered with moss.

Hazuki was the woman's name. She inherited the onsen from her parents, who inherited her from their parents, and so on for enough generations until memory and time blurred together. Her family had always owned this onsen, she insisted.

"It's nice to see some things haven't changed all that much," I said. "I remember places like this. My father took me to one before he died. Down in Kyoto I think. The waters tasted savory."

"I wished for my son to take over for me." She left the thought unfinished because the rest was obvious. He was one of the unlucky ones, one of many.

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Benito."

"Tell me about him?"

Hazuki smiled, set her can down on the table, and then placed the spoon next to it. She rubbed her hands together.

"He was a sweet boy and so gentle. I raised him here as my parents raised me. He left here for Tokyo some years before this all began. He wanted to study Rosanjin and become a chef."

"Rosanjin?" I laughed. "What would the old master think of us now? Here we are, huddled here in the dark eating from tin cans."

"There's beauty here that doesn't require fine plates and exquisite preparation." Hazuki picked up the spoon and pointed it at me. "We share food together in spite of everything that has happened. And we stay true to ourselves and our old ways. That's beauty enough for me."

I shoveled a spoonful of beans into my mouth. It was cold and tasted like metal. Everything tasted like metal these days because we ate so much food out of cans.

The lion's head

The ceramic lion's head with the big ceramic mane stared forward while its mouth dumped a steady trickle of steaming water into the bright blue tile tub below it. In the past, an electric pump siphoned the excess water away so the tub wouldn't overflow. Now a crude drain was improvised where the tub met the far wall, and a sloping path no wider than my thumb drew away the water so the spring could flow without complication as it always had.

I lowered myself into the water and inadvertently yelped as the searing heat surprised me. The old woman heard my cry and slid open the screen door to check on me.

"Too hot?" she asked. She had removed her wool winter coat and boots and now wore a violet sweater that matched her sandals.

"Just perfect." She didn't move. "Yes, it is quite hot," I admitted.

"Good for skin and bones. And breathe." She pantomimed a deep breath, directing her hands up from her stomach to her neck. "Good for lungs."

I made a show of inhaling while nodding at her. The wet air was salty and sulfurous, like old eggs. I must have made a face because she suppressed a giggle.

"I'll get food together. You rest," she said.

"If you wait a few minutes I can help."

"You're my guest. First one in a long time. Try to relax."

She slid the screen door shut and listened until I couldn't hear her footsteps anymore. Then I set my head back against the cold stone tiles and watched the lion's head, which I decided was staring at me.

The look reminded me of nature documentaries I'd seen as a child. In the videos animals approached the water with shifting eyes and springy joints springy, ready to flee at a moment's notice at the sight of a predator. When they finally drank from the water they did so cautiously, much like the lion's head that faced me, with their mouths angled down but keeping their eyes locked on the horizon.

These scenarios were about prey, not predators. Lions didn't need to keep as close of a watch, did they? Yet this lion refused to take his eyes off of me. Those glassy eyes didn't move but when I shifted in the tub they were still watching.

National Geographic said lions were predators. They hunted and moved in prides, protecting each other and sunning in the savannah, fearing no creature. Maybe the roles were correct in this case. Was I the predator, and the lion the prey?

This was not my intent. I apologized to the lion, closed my eyes, and submerged myself in the murky water. As I went down I could feel my hair floating up above me, free from gravity. My scalp tingled. The woman said the waters were restorative; maybe this is what she meant.

Shouta's skeleton

Imagine me as a skeleton. My skull is pearly off-white, hard and hollow except for maybe a spongy fragment lingering in the back. Smile at me I'll smile at you because I don't have a choice. Look closely and you'll see every last little flaw over a lifetime of poor dental hygiene. Use my head as a bowling ball if you want; see if I stop you.

The same is true for the rest of my bones, bleached white, perhaps with slight brown-red stains that you can't see because they're on my back or under my legs. Even if those stains are not visible I want you to know that they're there.

Everything else in here still has a place, too. The jeans and magenta nylon jacket keep out the cold, as does the new yellow sleeping bag. The tent is ragged but effective enough. I'm not picky when it comes to camping supplies. I just want something that almost works.

I laugh. Shouta, I say, why does a skeleton need clothes, or a backpack, or a tent to keep itself dry in a forest of endless damp? They're good for picking me out in the dark, which you might need since I can't tell you I'm in here. They're also symbols, but when did a skeleton need symbols. Those aren't for me. They're for you.

I sit cross-legged on my sleeping bag and take my leather Billabong wallet into my hands. It's smooth and worn out. My parents insist I replace it soon, but I ignore them because an old wallet is like an old friend. I accept it as it is.

The contents of my wallet is ordinary and spare. 5,000 yen in five notes is enough for a quick cab ride to the nearest village, perhaps 15 kilometers to the north and then east along a twisting road that borders the Jukai. There's also the receipt from my trip out here, for 110,000 yen, from a bit farther. The tent is dark because the forest is dark and I strain to see as the tent is opaque and blocks any light that percolates down through the trees and finds its way to me.

I dump the contents in my lap and set the money aside. The only other items remaining in my wallet are a bank card and my school ID. Both say my name. Shouta Doi. That's me.

I am my parents son even if they don't wish it anymore. I am here because of them and because of myself.

The forest is close and squeezes around me as branches press against the tent. Zipping the front flap doesn't help, as wind squeezes through microscopic gaps and find every millimeter of exposed skin. I shiver and my arms prickle with bumps as I slip into the sleeping bag.

Bravery

I buried what was left of Jamison naked under a pile of rocks while Bennett stood guard. The mound rose up to about my knees and was mostly porous red volcanic rock mixed with chunks of obsidian.

"Got any words?" I asked as I placed a final few stones around the mound's edges.

"Nothing to say that ain't already been said before," Bennett replied.

Bravery was the currency of the damned. Jamison and others I met on the road traded in risk. People like him put lives on the line for a reward that will keep them moving or that will keep others from encroaching. Fires dotted the horizon, and around them were men who stared at their cracked hands and weighed how much they had left against what it would take to lift them a little bit higher out of the dirt.

Bennett rolled a cigarette around in his mouth and spat. He wore Jamison's olive canvas duster jacket, blood stains and all, even though it ran nearly up to his fingers and fit loosely around his shoulders. I took the brown wool scarf and his old leather hiking boots which, although torn around the edges, were still strong in the soles and sturdy over the Modoc's rocky, rolling terrain.

I regretted the decision at first while stripping down our friend, but felt better as my toes and neck warmed in the biting, near-freezing wind. The rest of the clothing was ratty and covered in blood and dirt, but we took it anyway, dividing the load between our packs. The only piece we left behind were the remnants of Jamison's glasses, which were ruined beyond use by the force of the shotgun blast which he had taken fully in the face.

The man who killed Jamison smelled our fire and came looking for us. We heard his stumbling approach through the brush. Bennett doused the fire and we slid down into the wash downhill from camp. Jamison joined us at first, but then we saw the man. He was desperate and dirty, wearing a big back that bulged with mysteries and potential rewards. But he also caressed and drummed his hands on a humongous shotgun which shook as he held it out before him.

The man was dirty, stained a dark brown like he had been rolling in mud. His face was a wild whorl of black hair. The hair on his head curved down over his forehead and covered his eyes, and his beard curled up to the point where it almost covered his mouth. At the center was a bulbous nose that jutted out like a mountain out of the clouds. The rest of him was like the rest of us, thin and angular like a skeleton that wore skin.

Jamison urged Bennett to kill the man square away, but Bennett refused. He gave us a sour look and then worked his way back up the slope. I guess he wanted to try to catch the man flat-footed, but it didn't work. The man swung about as Jamison charged and loosed a blast. It sheared off the entire right side of Jamison's face. Everything below his neck kept moving forward, while what was left of his head rocked backward. The result was that he crumpled down on his knees and his arms splayed wide. his blood followed the slope of the slight decline and was thick enough to collect and begin to trickle downhill.

Bennett drove off the man us with a single shot from his Sig which hit true in the man's shoulder. The round was one of only 12 we had left, but given how big his shotgun seemed after it carved Jamison in half, it was worth the expensive and the extra noise.

"We need to get moving," Bennett said. "I didn't but wing him. He may be back." He dropped the cigarette and stomped it out. "Did you see the look in his eyes? Man was desperate."

"Which one?" I asked. "Give me just one more minute."

I didn't deal in bravery because it's finite. I never met a person who pulls it out of nothing like a renewable resource or the product of some alchemy. The unfortunate problem was that I met many who thought that the veins ran deep and could be mined endlessly with little or no cost. As we sat around the fire and ate scrounged food and meager meat from equally-weak animals, I asked Jamison how he felt. He assured me of his strength mostly. Through his toothless half-grin I got stories of raids before he hitched up with me and Bennett, and who he'd killed, and how he did it, gesturing wildly with frenzied hands, punching the air like he was locked in an endless battle. But his bodies betrayed him. His hands shook when still and eyes darted suspiciously, looking for any desperate advantage.

That's why Bennett and I ran and why Jamison died. Cowardice was safety on the plains.

Hid

Down in the wash no
Rain and no tears flowed over
Hot black rocks. I hid
Under young juniper, not
Watching as you slid on by.

White noise

I was on the plain. The land was mostly flat, with some bumps and rises between the few, bare juniper trees and pimply groupings of rocks. My camp was up against a larger boulder, a larger piece of dense, red lava rock. I used my pick to carve a depression in the rock against the ground in which I built a fire so the heat would reflect better.

The night was dark because the moon was gone. I ate half a can of sticky kidney beans and half a can of syrupy peaches and stretched out close enough to the fire to sleep on top of my sleeping bag and not freeze. When the wind kicked up later and the fire became a loose pile of embers then I'd slide under the the bag and huddle closer. But, for now, the breeze on the back of my neck was welcome with the flame pushing out at me.

When everything went away I missed the big things first. Hot showers, or hot water I didn't have to boil, came first. The world was dirty and I was too. Dirt stuck to me like my ragged clothes stuck to me like everything stuck to me and it was miserable. I missed my cell phone. The world was still at my fingertips, I suppose, but it was a whole lot smaller and more visceral and I depended utterly on it. Email and social media and inane-but-beautiful videos were reduced to figments of memory, and when I wanted to remember individual pieces they all ended up blurring together into an amorphous unit of what life constantly was.

Mostly I missed white noise. The sound of a dryer loosely spinning hot socks on a rainy day. The low hum of my refrigerator in the night as it kept perishable food cold enough to enjoy days or weeks later. The gentle in-out of someone you trust enough to let them sleep at your side. Now everything was soundless like always except for the wood popping and hissing in the fire. And I liked it that was because it meant I was alone and safe and nothing would be complicated or dangerous.

I slept on the ground and dreamed of a big bed, and breakfast cereal, and the morning news with inane anchors desperate for ratings to justify their opulent contracts and fancy suits, and washing machines and dryers, and the sound a can of shaving cream makes when you shake it up and press the button on the top and white lather explodes into your hand, and the whirr of an idling engine as you wait for something, anything, and you can't stand the sound so you switch on the radio and all you can find is commercial after commercial but you listen anyway because it's better than endless white noise.

Sticks and stones

"This is where my brothers and sisters rest," the woman said. I strained to hear her whisper of a voice above the steady wind. "And my parents, and theirs before, going back five generations, as long as we've lived on the feet of Fuji."

In my travel I've learned that cemeteries match their adjacent cities. Back home, I recall buildings and stones on wide lawns stretching out on the horizon in a blur of rock and fresh sod. Families lived apart, died apart, and were buried in plots connected only by endless highways and fading memory.

"What about your children?" I asked.

She didn't answer as she walked ahead of me. In Japan I found density and emptiness. This cemetery on the outskirts of Sengokuhara was more a cluster of miniature skyscrapers on a hillside surrounded by angled trees and choking vines. Each plot was a mix of black and grey stone of varying heights, and each ran up so close to adjacent ones that the dead couldn't help be neighborly and rub elbows. The yard was connected to the town by a leaf-covered path through the forest and next to a Buddhist temple and miles of pristine countryside.

I hurried after her. We stopped at a ground well water pump where she filled a mossy wooden bucket with frigid water. Then we walked down the cemetery's narrow lanes. When we reached the end of a row and hit the trees, we'd turn around and walk back and start over in the next one.

"Honda. Fukui. Akiyama," she said. "There are only so many families here. Some came once upon a time and lived until they were all gone. Others would come after and care for the stones. And then suddenly it was only me."

"You take care of this all by yourself?" I asked.

We stopped at a set of stones in almost the exact middle of the cemetery. In the center of the cluster was a massive rectangular stone that rose above my head and was carved with characters I vaguely recognized. Secured to this larger stone were five brown wooden stakes bundled together with string and marked with red, painted characters. Running out in front of it were two lines of smaller, egg-shaped stones that only came up to my knees. Each was marked with a single character painted white into the carved rock face. The ground beneath them was a mix of black and white pebbles of every imaginable shape. A white wooden fence bordered the entire plot.

She began by washing the headstone using the water in the bucket and a small ceramic cup that was placed at the headstone's base. The water looked to vanish immediately as it hit the stone, turning to minuscule droplets that reflected the sunlight, making them shine like stars. She did this for each stone, moving from large to small. Once each was wet, she took a rag out of her jacket pocket and wiped the stones, moving from the largest to the smallest but not ignoring any of them. She then removed a bundle of incense from another pocket.

"Got a light?" she asked.

I pulled out my copper zippo and flicked it to life. She briefly held the incense sticks in the flame until they caught and began emitting a pungent rose smoke that stuck in the back of my throat.

"My honored parents and grandparents always go first," she said as she traced a pattern with the smoking sticks before setting them into a holder at the headstone's base. "And the rest of my family. Then I can move on to others."

I stood on my toes, looked over her head, and swiveled around. There must have been over 50 plots in the entire cemetery, some more ornate than others, featuring statues of Buddhas taller than me that towered over the diminutive woman.

"All of them?" I asked.

"Each and every one." She smiled. "Their memories and spirits deserve nothing less."

Bennett

I buried Jane in the later winter when the ground was still firm and radiated trapped cold like an ice chest. My hands ached as I chipped away at the ground with the shovel and scattered clay-rich earth in small pellets. Bennett offered to help but I refused, and he gave me a skeptical look that made me want to turn the shovel end-over-end and bash in his face until it was his blood that stained the ground and his life that snuck away into the hard-packed earth. But that wouldn't bring back my wife so I kept digging and my hands kept hurting.

She was covered in the near-transparent brown shawl that she wore under her two sweaters and black bomber jacket. It was a gift from her mother almost two decades ago and provided little extra protection against the elements, but she looped it around her neck every day all the same. She said it reminded her of how life once was, that different time I was convinced was utterly gone but she insisted would return if we held onto hope and held onto each other through the dusty days and bitter nights.

"You're going to bust your stitches if you don't let me help you," Bennett said.

"Get fucked," I said.

Bennett snorted and dropped his shovel at my feet. "Be that way," he said. "I'll take care of the basics while you deal with this. Don't come crying to me when you rip yourself apart and are leaking like a stuck pig and I have to put you back together all over again."

Our camp was pressed up against a copse of gnarled, bare juniper tree, shielded from the wind that usually came from the west. At its center was a circle of small, chipped granite stones that surrounded steaming coals and red embers from our dying fire. Bennett sprinkled fresh straw on the coals and blew air until it caught, then added sticks and small logs until the fire was going again full-bore.

He walked to the creek that bordered the camp and was little more than a few trenches of shallow water running down the old wash. He filled a metal cylinder that used to be a short garbage pail with water and returned it to the fire, setting it within the circle's perimeter to boil. He then walked back over to me.

"It'll be ready in about ten minutes," he said.

I didn't respond and kept digging. After every few cuts of the earth I glanced over at Jane's body. The shawl was thin enough that I saw everything except her eyes, which I knew were closed but were still somewhat obscured by the cloth. She was pale and drained, strength spent fighting an infection that swept quickly and that we were without the strength to cure. So goes existence outside of life and time.

I swung my hands up and struck the ground once more and felt a splitting pain in my side, like I was about to open up and dump everything left inside of me into the hole I'd been digging. I doubled over, one hand still on the shovel, the other clutching dirt.

"Jesus Christ take it easy," Bennett said. He threaded his arms under my armpits and lifted me up. I dropped the shovel and let him walk me back to camp. He pushed me down onto the ground facing the fire. "Old fucking fool." He spat, fished a bent cigarette out of his pocket, and lit it with his silver zippo lighter that reflected the fire and made it flash in my eyes. "I'm going to finish this and you're going to sit right there. Then we'll have a look at your stupid stitches."

Each time Bennett struck the ground with the shovel he made a whooping, grunting sound which reminded me of long rally in a tennis match, only with one participant missing. I didn't watch him finish digging the hole, and instead focused on the fire, holding my hands out in front of me and waiting for the inevitable pops and sizzles as the wood caught, cracked, and oozed beads of sap. My side burned and throbbed, and I reached for the bottle of Jim we scrounged at the old grocery down the road. We drank half of it the night before, and the remnants sloshed around as I chugged several generous gulps.

"It's finished," Bennett called over to me. I pulled the bottle back from my lips and bourbon dribbled down my chin and onto my shirt. I struggled to rise but moving made me feel like I'd split in two. By the fire, the water in the metal cylinder began to boil and shoot up steam. "Don't get up you idiot. I'll come fetch you."

The laughing men

I followed the woman until the road beneath our feet split into grooves wide enough to have your feet slip into them and touch the sandy dirt between the chunks, and then farther still until the cracked pavement gave way to a path of small pebbles, each roughly the same size, each polished and shining like a star. Clouds held back the moon, and the only light came from a wind-up electric lantern the woman wore about her neck that swung like a pendulum as she moved.

We approached a series of gates that marked the entryway to Sengokuhara Shrine on the town's western border. Painted various strengths of riotous candy apple red that refused to dull through weather and time, the wooden gates reflected the lantern's light like mirrors. Each time we went under a new one, I'd look up and and feel like an ant sneaking under a loose staple. They were remnants from a different time, placed by the spirits of our ancestors to remind us not to forget that faith held the world together long before us and would continue to do so long after our deaths.

The woman stopped at a small fountain at the edge of the shrine where she used a metal ladle to wash her hands and then mine with near-freezing water. Once clean, I tucked my hands into my coat pockets and followed onward along a dirt path lined with mossy rock and covered by a slick carpet of leaves of every conceivable color. Despite her age, she moved at speed because, even with only a weak yellow light as her guide, the trail's bends, divots, and steps were burned into her mind through years of repeated travel. I tried to follow her close, but fell behind as she sprung along the path and dipped beneath a distant rise. Blinking, I found myself in darkness and came to a standstill.

I took out my flashlight and switched it on only to lurch backward as the beam fell on a laughing man down on the ground. I spun around and there was another, eyes closed in hilarity, mouth and teeth wide in an irrevocable grin. They were statutes of course, buddhas paid for by the town's erstwhile residents over as many generations as the town used to exist. That didn't alleviate my surprise or the feeling that the men were somehow amused with my situation. I arced the flashlight across the hill that rose out of the path and saw dozens more ascending to the tree line hundreds of feet away, all waiting for me to notice them so they could laugh at a lost little man far from home, all wearing the faces of dead men and women who had not lived to see how the world changed.

Hearing movement up the train, I turned the flashlight and found the woman standing next to me. The lantern in her hands made a whirring sound as she wound it up until it flickered back to life.

"You must come now," she said. "The cemetery is this way."

Entering the black sea of trees

I struggled over porous volcanic boulders as I lit out from the trail. Sharp edges and shooting sticks tore my clothes, and the wet rocks rubbed my hands raw as I tried to steady myself over the mossy patches that hid in shadows and found their way under my boots. My hands stung as I wiped them on my shirt, and I noticed the dots of bloody mud they left behind.

It was the early afternoon when I entered the forest. Under the dense canopy with the shadows it cast down, it might as well have been twilight. The seemingly permanent cloud cover made it even darker, and I found myself squinting and trying to make out the way forward. The trees also failed to hold back the drizzle that continued to fall. Instead of hitting me directly, water wormed its way along, sliding down wood and vine, clinging to everything it touched until it hit the forest floor, transforming the patches between volcanic rock into muddy bogs that made a sucking noise under my boots as I stepped in them.

The tent was hidden under a stately tree surrounded by a copse of spindly trunks, pitched at the bottom where roots bigger than I am pushed out of the ground and formed a small hollow. Despite its bright tangerine color with blue accents, I would have missed it if I walked ten feet farther left or right. I lowered myself down a slick slide of wood and vine until I faced the tent and the higher ground was level with my head.

Debris littered the crater under the roots. A tattered, overturned backpack covered in dirt and half-eaten by mold sat before the tent; its pulped contents of papers and clothing emptied on the ground were still visible, but long-decayed from their original shapes. I pushed at a brown mass next to the bag with my foot, which caused it to spread open and revealed that it used to be a leather wallet.

I picked up the wallet and cringed because it was sticky between my fingers. Inside was more of the same rotted paper, old green and blue Yen notes mashed together so they would never matter again. Only one object within was intact, a white plastic Mizuho Bank card from 1999 in the name of Shouta Doi. I pocketed the card and dropped the wallet.

"Shouta?" I asked of the tent. "Anyone home?

The tent's front flaps were only partially zipped. I crept closer and took out my flashlight, pushing it awkwardly ahead like a weapon. I grabbed the zipper and held my breath as I slowly threaded it down. Condensation gathered on the nylon fabric jumped to my hand and wet my sweater sleeve as they passed. I parted the flap and stuck my flashlight and head inside.

A sunflower-colored sleeping bag dominated the tent's interior. Around it was a collection of half-full water bottles, foil food wrappers that reflected my flashlight's beam back at me, opaque and empty medicine bottles, and more musty clothing stained brown with dirt and green with mold. A folded piece of paper was placed on the middle of the sleeping bag. I snapped it up and shook it open; inside were a few scrawled characters written lightly in ink.

The note read: "Times are done. This is the only option. If you have found me, I am sorry."

Sunbursts

Stolen sunbursts in
Tiny gloved hands explode and
Scatter in the wind.
The child squeals as leaves fly for
Others to gather them next.

Ain't no one here

Smoke plumed up from the eastern horizon as we drove north along Goose Lake's western shores. Josiah fretted upon seeing it, sticking his head clean out the window and screaming back at me over the roaring wind as we clipped along, yelling whether the town had gone up. I told him to tuck his damn fool head back in the car and stop his worrying. From the angle, the smoke originated from somewhere deep over the hills and into the brush flats that rolled out into far eastern Oregon.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Damn sure I'm sure. Now get back in here and sit tight," I said.

The dirt roads up from the lake wound through the countryside. Not once did we see another living soul, neither driving along nor toiling in the fields along farms that were either abandoned or whose owners cowered out of sight. I had never seen anything like it before and neither had Josiah, because when I glanced over his head was back out of the window, whipping front to back, staring as long as he could at the driveways and small tracks between fields to prove to himself that things had truly gone quiet.

When we left the farmland and hit Highway 140 it only got worse. Road was never exceptionally busy, but you could expect a steady trickle since it was the main line through the woods between Lakeview and Klamath Falls. But empty? I flipped on the radio and turned through, but was met by silence across the dial. I cranked the volume until the car's stereo hummed and popped with static, but there was still nothing so I switched it off.

"Ain't no one here," Josiah muttered.

"I'm starting to see that," I said.

The family shrine

I rode my bicycle up the hill in a low gear, hauling my life in the attached carrier behind me. The journey was all the more arduous through the carpet of leaves, a crimson and bright yellow blur that obscured the road's cracking concrete and lined the entire way into Sengokuhara. Rain began to fall as I hit a small flat, and I stripped off my shirt and pushed on, enjoying the cool drops on my back and the slight autumn breeze that shook the trees and brought even more leaves to the ground.

By the time I crested the final rise and came into town my lungs burned and head swam. I walked my bike the first few blocks past rusted tour buses and cars abandoned this same season ten years before, when the leaves fell, people came to watch, and the world ended. Abandoned storefronts lined with shattered windows were long picked-over, and I didn't even bother stopping to wade through overturned shelves in the rotting carcass of what once was.

About a mile into town I crossed a bride over a small creek, only to stop short when I reached the other side. Behind me, leaves spread wildly and swirled in the wind. Ahead, they formed orderly piles along the road's edge. Not far ahead, a frail, hunched woman holding a long push-broom beckoned to me.

"Did you do all this?" I asked.

"It wasn't so hard," she said in slow, halting English. "Little bit every day. Keeps up the strength."

She held out her and I took it. Her skin was thin like paper, but the strength of her grip startled me as she squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.

"Come with me," she said, letting go of my hand. "You must be tired."

I pulled my shirt back on and we walked along the road. Decaying houses collapsing under trees and seasons of neglect rose high into the hills to our left. Opposite, streets still covered with leaves led the way to massive temples of stone that gave way to rolling hills that led to the base of Mt. Fuji.

"Stopped at the bridge, but I still have a ways to go to get to the cemetery and my family's shrine," she said.