The Electrical Field by Kerri Sakamoto Read Free Book Online

looked weathered, old. She yanked them away. I thought of the game I’d seen children play with one another, palm to palm, sliding them away fast to slap the tops of one another’s hands. Squealing from the excitement of it, the violence.
    “Satisfied?” she blurted. She balled up her hands and tucked them in her armpits. “Now go,” she ordered, as if she knew the place, had been here before.
    I inched the car into the lot, branches scratching at its sides. The first time I’d driven right in. It was barely big enough for ten cars; the parking lines were long faded or ground in with dirt. We rolled over roots of trees that broke the asphalt like grasping fingers.
    “Over there,” she said, pointing to the farthest edge. The trees fractured the light coming in. The ground was dappled where Sachi pointed, whitish in spots over the gravelly asphalt. She opened the car door and fresh air drifted in, a slow invasion.
    How I longed to be back on my porch with Sachi, feeding her milk and cookies, whispering a harmless word in her ear. “There’s nothing here,” I said.
    “What if Tam left something?” She raked her fingers in rows across her palms.
    “Don’t be silly. Tam wasn’t here. Why would he—”
    She slammed the door before I could say more, leaving me alone with my hasty words; alone in this private place, a forbidden place where too many things had happened. Who else had known about this spot? Only the boy and dog who’d found them, Chisako and her hakujin friend. Now the rest of the world. From a distance it was just a cluster of trees at the side of the hill; in winter it was an island frozen over. The trees drooped down now, the bushes curled in thickly, knit up the sky except for a circle at the very top. A place where the sun was kept out and the wind was buffered.
    Sachi was tiptoeing carefully between two trees opposite one another, looking for something; the tattered ends of the yellow police ribbon trailed from their trunks waist-high. I was queasy thinking of Chisako, remembering the stretch of unmarked skin over her ribs she’d shown me that afternoon weeks ago, what I hadn’t seen. Whatever it had been, it was too late to know. She and her Mr. Spears were dead.
    I didn’t want to know what had happened to them here that day. I’d warned her, I could hear myself telling Chisako, exactly what I’d dared to say. At the time worried that I sounded like an old busybody schoolteacher with no life of her own.
    I looked down through the steering wheel I gripped; my feet were still perched on the pedals. Inside, the air felt close.Through the dirty windshield I saw Sachi crouched low to the ground, her head twisted back with one eye masked by her hair; she stared straight at me. She wanted me to come to her, I knew. She needed my help, she wanted it. Without a word, she was asking me to. I didn’t know what she was looking for or why I had brought her here where Keiko never would, would not have let her out the door if she’d known. I looked back.
Yes, I’m coming.
I grabbed my handbag and fumbled for the door handle.
    When I reached her she was crouched to examine a spot by her foot, a rust-coloured stain. She recoiled from my outstretched hand the tiniest bit, high-strung as ever. “Sachi?” My voice a whimper. All around the stain were overlapping footprints, even a dog’s paws stamped into the dirt-covered asphalt. In the early morning just three days ago the police had arrived, ambulance, newspapers, the boy with his dog, pointing, leading them in. There were traces of white powder sifted in with the dirt in no particular pattern. Sachi shuffled forward on her haunches, sniffing at the ground as the dog must have. I grabbed her elbow and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled back.
    “You can’t do that to me!” She shook herself free, then snapped to the ground again. She dragged her finger across the stain, a delicate arrangement of dust that dispersed easily. I tried to grab her