The Heron Catchers (Pt 1)

(Editorial note: Due to WordPress formatting, the extract below is indented differntly from the original and may have lost clarity in the transposition.)

David Joiner writes: ‘The following is a draft of the first chapter of a 260-page novel I wrote in three weeks, and which now requires much revision to develop more depth, specifically of character and theme. The chapter admittedly needs work, so I bring it here with some misgivings.

As I revise this chapter, I plan to work most of all on the opening section, which I’m torn between keeping and starting later on. As usual when I start a novel, I feel I might be beginning earlier in the story than I should. But this is how novels get written – from overwriting to relentlessly paring down. Of course, for a first draft, none of that matters. I have 260 pages of plot, and that’s not a bad starting point.

The novel’s working title is The Heron Catchers. Like my last novel, Kanazawa, which Stone Bridge Press will publish in late 2021, it’s set in Ishikawa Prefecture. Although some of The Heron Catchers also takes place in Kanazawa, the majority of it unfolds in Yamanaka Onsen (where I spent a lot of time between 2017-19). My hope is to write a series of novels set in Ishikawa, though now that I’m based in the U.S. such hopes may prove unrealistic.’

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THE HERON CATCHERS

Chapter 1

“I wish you were coming with me,” Sedge told his wife on the morning he left for Wakasa Bay. “It’s not every day I turn forty. Doesn’t it bother you that we haven’t spent much time together away from the shop recently?”

Standing before their bathroom mirror, Nozomi tugged a thick black sweater over her head; static electricity flattened her long hair and she wet her hands to try to fix it. “We’ll celebrate later,” she said. “Besides, this is a good chance for you to get things out of your system.”

“What’s in my system that needs getting out?”
“You know what I mean. With business how it’s been, you’ve had a lot on your mind lately. A lot of stress.”
“No more than you’ve had.”

Was it the fluorescent light above the mirror or the effect of her black hair and sweater that made her face seem abnormally blanched – or had her face been like that all morning? As if noticing this at the same time as Sedge, she patted her cheeks until a pink hue rose in them.

Afterward she turned to him, and for a moment she frowned. “It’s not nice to stare.”
“I can’t help it. I try to memorize you at some instant every day.”

The briefness of her smile was equal to the briefness of the frown she’d just given him. Stepping into the hallway, she reminded him that he had to meet his friends at the station soon; their train would leave in one hour. “Please check to make sure I didn’t forget anything when I packed for you.”

Realizing that he’d never thanked her for doing that, he put his arm around her and said, “You’re perfect. Do you know that?”
“Don’t embarrass me.”
“What are you talking about? They’re the truest words I’ve ever said.”

Before leaving for the station, Sedge brushed his teeth. As he rinsed his mouth, he heard Nozomi wheel his suitcase to the front door.

“Sure you don’t mind if I’m away for two days?” he said.
“Mind? I’m the one who suggested it. Just a minute.”

He hadn’t wanted to celebrate his birthday with other people before doing so with her, but she had made the arrangements a week ago and, wrongly assuming that she’d come too, he’d agreed to them.

He heard the soft shuffling of her slippers as she turned the corner of the hallway, then the crinkling of a plastic bag. She returned holding a package for him to take along. “I would have made something especially for you, but since you’re going with your friends I decided to get this instead. It’s easier to share. And they won’t tease you this way.”

She handed him a box of senbei, each round rice cracker stamped with an image of a cherry blossom, whose season was a few weeks away. Whether it was to encourage their drinking, or to slow them down in it, she’d evidently guessed how they’d spend their time together. He thanked her and said, “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Stop it, already.” She shook her head and looked away from him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She pushed her hair behind her ears several times. “You need to get going. And so do I.”

He leaned forward to kiss her, then grabbed his suitcase and opened the door. “I still hope you’ll surprise me by showing up today or tomorrow.”

When he arrived at Kanazawa Station, his friends Shinji, Masa, and Ryotaro were waiting for him at the bus curb. They cheered as he stepped off the city bus, causing passersby to turn and look at him.

“I wish my wife were as kind and easy-going as yours,” Masa said as Sedge approached them. Shinji added: “Have you ever considered that she doesn’t want you around?”

Sedge laughed with the others. He felt lucky to be in a marriage that, while not perfect, had caused him far fewer problems than the marriages of most of his friends.

They arrived in Wakasa Bay following lunch at a fish market in Obama. They were late by an hour, however, after missing the ryokan shuttle; Sedge had wandered away from the pick-up area to observe hawks screeching and circling above a saba catch being unloaded in the small harbor. Perhaps because he was paying for the trip, his friends didn’t complain, but only reminded him that this was a birthday celebration and not one of the birdwatching excursions he often went on.

The ryokan stood on a crescent-shaped beach, all hard brown sand and dotted with sun-bleached canoes that the beginning of March made too cold to use. The placid water of the bay, ringed with low forested mountains, stretched out ahead of them. Not a wave rippled its dark blue surface. Fishing boats floated offshore, anchored at even distances from each other. Ryotaro had told Sedge on the shuttle that Wakasa was famous for squid and pufferfish, and Sedge remembered Nozomi promising that they’d feast on both over the next two days.

Nozomi’s brother Takahashi had married a woman whose family ran a traditional ryokan an hour south of Kanazawa, in a hot spring town called Yamanaka Onsen, and Sedge found it strange that she hadn’t arranged for them to stay there. When he’d asked about it, she laughed and explained that since he and his friends were bound to be noisy and drunk for two days, it was better to foist them off on a ryokan somewhere else.

“Just to be safe, I sent you to the next prefecture,” she’d said. “It’ll be a nice change to stay on the coast, won’t it? Not in the mountains where Takahashi’s ryokan is.”

Her choice of accommodations had given him the same kind of glumness he might feel after learning that she’d thrown away an old letter he’d written her.

“But why did you make the reservation where you and I stayed before?”
“Because I know how much you liked it and I thought you’d enjoy going back with your friends.”

He couldn’t argue with this, yet he was disappointed she didn’t feel that new memories he’d form without her might cheapen those they’d formed there together in the past. She often told him he was too sentimental.

On the shuttle, Sedge’s friends teased him again about how Nozomi had sent him away for his birthday rather than arranging to celebrate it together.

“She trusts you more than our wives trust us,” they told him. “She’s given you the ultimate gift: money and freedom to do whatever you’d like with us.”

Sedge reminded them that she had insisted on running their ceramics shop this weekend and that they would celebrate together later.

“We didn’t know you had so much money tucked away,” Shinji said.
“We don’t,” he said. “I’m trying hard not to think about that.”

Shinji asked Sedge what kind of trip they’d be taking now if Sedge had arranged it instead of Nozomi.

“I’ve wanted to go birdwatching for a long time,” Sedge said. “But someplace more exotic than Fukui. Okinawa, maybe. Or Karafuto.”

Shinji laughed. “You told me once that ‘birdwatching’ could have more than one meaning in English.” He explained it to Masa and Ryotaro, adding: “It’s a euphemism for something I think we’d all like to do. Which would be fine by me, but in your case I wouldn’t compromise your marriage. You’d be hard-pressed to find another woman as good as Nozomi.”

Though among his friends, he felt lonely without Nozomi. He knew he was being childish. But for some reason he couldn’t shake the feeling. He was surprised he felt so strongly about her absence.

They checked into the ryokan and, after complimentary tea and wagashi at a lacquered table near the entrance, were led through the long quiet hallways to their rooms.

To Sedge’s surprise, he had his own room while the others shared a suite. The different accommodations embarrassed him – until he saw their suite, with its large rooms, two sofas, and private bath overlooking the ocean. His friends seemed quite satisfied with it.

Alone in his room as he changed into the ryokan-issued yukata he found there, he thought again how strange it was that of all the places where Nozomi might have arranged for them to stay she had chosen here. They had stayed at this ryokan together shortly before their marriage six years ago. It had been her idea, an impulsive one, after they’d spent the day at Tojimbo and Wakasa Aquarium; later they got drunk on sake at an izakaya, which made their return to Kanazawa by train unappealing. She turned lachrymose late that night as he undressed her in the dark by the window, where he thought that the coruscating lights of the squid boats on the horizon and the small waves breaking against the shore had mesmerized her. As he led her to their futon, she revealed to him that a high school friend had jumped off the rocks at Tojimbo and killed himself. Tojimbo was known throughout Japan as a suicide spot. When he asked why she’d wanted to visit it, she shrugged and said she’d heard it was beautiful. In all these years she’d never been, she said, and started crying. That night became the most awkward of all those they had spent together until then. It also taught him the effects that alcohol had on her. He found out later from Takahashi that the suicidal friend had been her first lover. He thought she’d been fifteen at the time.

The phone in his room rang, and when he picked it up he heard Shinji and Ryotaro in the background.

“We’ve just opened two bottles of sake,” Masa said, “one Kokuryu and one Born. Come over as soon as you can.”
“Is that all we’ll be doing this weekend?” Sedge asked, the worry in voice authentic.
“What else is there to do? Don’t worry, we’ll take breaks to soak in the baths and eat.”
“Give me a minute,” Sedge said. “I want to take some photographs of the room and my view of the bay to show Nozomi later.”
Masa laughed. “Don’t blame us if when you get here we’ve already started celebrating your birthday.”

Laughter erupted over the line again.

“What did I miss?” Sedge said.
“Shinji just opened a third bottle; he says we need to air the sake to make it taste better. We have our work cut out for us over the next two days.”

*

Sedge awoke the next morning to waves breaking beyond the window of his room. He had a splitting headache, his mouth felt dry and foul, and he couldn’t piece together when or how he’d returned from the ryokan’s karaoke room. He remembered only that Masa had invited four female guests to join them, and that the lack of seats in the cramped room meant they had to sit on the men’s legs. Sedge’s right thigh ached this morning from where a young woman had perched on it for perhaps an hour.

He kicked off his blanket and reached for a thermos of ice-water, from which he drank three glasses in succession. He felt grit between his toes and noticed what appeared to be sand collected at the far edge of his futon. Had he taken a walk along the beach at some point, or had the sand been there all this time?

In a small mirror by the bathroom he saw that someone had written in lipstick on his forehead, the message appearing backward in his reflection: Happy Birthday, Seju. Last night the woman on his leg had joked that his name sounded like a type of Korean alcohol, baekseju, and she had called him that for part of the evening. The word meant “100-year wine,” but since Sedge was only 40 her nickname for him changed to sashipseju – “40-year wine.” He was unable to recall when the woman had written this. Had it happened in his room? Had she come here with him and done it? Washing it off, he decided that he didn’t want to know.

It took him several minutes to locate his phone, which had nearly drained of battery since yesterday. In answer to a final message he’d apparently sent to Nozomi – “Just saw ibis fly over bay. A little drunk now, but going to find it if I can. And bring it back to you, my love.” – she had replied at 2:30 a.m.: “Take care of yourself, Sedge.” He felt guilty now imagining that he’d awakened her with his drunken nonsense.

He didn’t remember sending it, nor did he recall seeing an ibis fly over the bay. Had he really tried to find it for her, as if he could keep up with it in the dark of night? He hated having drunk so much that conscious hours had vanished from his memory. He had experienced blackouts before, but not for several years.

Before he could send Nozomi a new message, the phone in his room rang, nearly sending his head flying off his shoulders. It was Shinji. Breakfast was about to be served in the dining hall.

Almost as an aside he said: “It’s a good thing the security guard noticed the canoe missing on his rounds last night and found you. I don’t think we should drink again today. It got all of us in different kinds of trouble.”
“I went canoeing last night?” Sedge said, glancing back at the sand scattering the foot of his futon. “Where did I go? As drunk as I was, I couldn’t have taken it out very far.”
“You don’t remember?” Shinji said. “I was up until four a.m. trying to calm down the hotel manager.”
“Thank you for helping me,” Sedge said. After a pause he asked: “Why the hell did I drink so much?”
“You were despondent for some reason, but this morning you sound like your normal self again. Hurry up and come to breakfast. We’ll fill you in on the details in person.”

When Sedge saw his friends at the breakfast table, already digging into their small dishes, more of the previous night came back to him. He didn’t think he’d done anything to be ashamed of, though he recalled that his friends had seemed tempted to go further than singing with the women who had joined them – and who had said that they were married, too.

“You’re more alive than I expected,” Ryotaro said to Sedge as he sat down, his voice gravelly from last night. “You must still be drunk.”
“I couldn’t imagine anything worse right now,” Sedge said.
“I’m glad you had the sense to wash the lipstick off your face before coming to breakfast,” Shinji said, grinning behind a mouthful of food. “You were a sorry sight all colored in red.”

That seemed to answer the question of where the face-painting had happened, which relieved Sedge. Masa added: “I hope you didn’t photograph yourself in your room last night and send it to Nozomi.”

The comments came too quickly for Sedge. He shook his head lightly as he snapped his chopsticks apart, then prodded at the food laid out before him. The conversation shifted to the women they had been with in the karaoke room. Apparently they hadn’t entered the breakfast area yet, and the consensus was that they wouldn’t manage it.

Listening to them talk, the fog over his memory lifted an inch. He saw again, as in a damaged reel played back to him, a woman on his thigh removing a lipstick from her purse and applying it to her lips. The color had struck him as garishly red when she’d entered the room, but later her face had grown flushed with alcohol and it seemed at that point to suit her. She’d been younger than her friends, perhaps in her mid-twenties. She had smiled at him as she’d moved her lips back and forth to even out the color. He remembered, too, the pressure of something warm and waxy creep across his forehead – it had been her who had written on him with her lipstick. Someone had asked her for it, perhaps to write more on him or to draw a lewd picture, but she wouldn’t relinquish it, nor did she continue painting Sedge’s face. What she had written had apparently struck her as enough, or perhaps she’d realized that anything more would stretch beyond a joke into humiliation.

He felt distressed by what Nozomi would have thought if she had seen him last night – hopelessly drunk and with a pretty, young, alcohol-flushed woman in his lap, her lipstick scrawled across his forehead. It had been his most mortifying moment as a married man, and he regretted it. Why had he let Nozomi persuade him to travel here in the first place?

The more he tried to convince himself of his own innocence last night, the more he wished he hadn’t agreed to go on this trip. He’d been hurt when Nozomi suggested that he celebrate his fortieth birthday with his friends, who were really only acquaintances to him, rather than with her.

His friends grew more boisterous recollecting last night, and whenever new guests entered the dining area their voices dropped and they looked in that direction. As they’d predicted, the women from last night never came.

Sedge turned to Shinji and said, “What’s this about me taking out a canoe last night? I can’t recall a thing.”

Shinji’s laughter was flecked with a different quality than before, as if it had been a source of worry for him.

“You really don’t remember?”

Sedge shook his head, feeling increasingly that he’d rather not know what had happened.

“When you left the karaoke room, you announced that you were turning in for the night. We wanted to escort you to your room, but you insisted on finding your way yourself. About an hour later we went back to our room, and at around 3 a.m. the hotel manager called to say that one of our party had taken a canoe onto the bay without their permission and did we know about it. You had entered the water without paddles, and the current carried you out a few hundred meters. Thankfully, it didn’t take you out to sea but only deposited you on a rocky shore, dead asleep.”
“Dead drunk and asleep,” Masa said.
“You mean to say that you don’t remember it at all?”
Sedge wondered at his inability to remember. “What do you suppose I was doing?”
“You said you wanted to go to Tojimbo.”
“And not because of a bird?” he said, glancing at his phone, on which he’d recently seen his message to Nozomi.
“Ah, that’s right,” Shinji said. “You claimed to be following an ibis to Tojimbo. What was that about?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Sedge opened his phone screen and checked his call log. To his surprise, he had called Nozomi several times. One call had lasted fifteen minutes.
“I hope I didn’t say anything bad to Nozomi when I talked to her.”
“I doubt you did,” Masa said. “You’re not that kind of drunk.”
“I agree,” Ryotaro said. “You were awfully clear-headed, I thought, considering how much you drank.”

Though these comments reassured him, he still wondered what they had talked about. Too ashamed to confront Nozomi with his lost memories, however, he decided to ask her when he returned to Kanazawa.

He finished half of his breakfast, then went by himself to the hot spring baths. He settled in the rotenburo, with its unobstructed view of the bay, hoping to sweat out the impurities from last night.

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Part Two will follow shortly. For samples of David Joiner’s previous writing, see his piece on Izumi Kyoka or this extract from his forthcoming novel entitled Kanazawa. For information relating to his Vietnam novel, Lotusland, see here.