Window seat

It has to be twenty years since I’ve ridden the Shinkansen this far. I’m doing it for you though, Adam.

Well, let’s be a bit more accurate. I’m doing this for your busted up 21-year old son. And for your 17-year old daughter. And for your now crumpled ex wife. You kind of brought us here. You made this happen.

I thought it was odd when you moved this far away from Tokyo. All the way down this country. And to do what? To volunteer for a village fire department, to pick up random truck driving jobs, to work at a fishery union I heard. To be alone…that’s really what you wanted, right? The Seto Sea is nice and all, but this is a four-hour bullet plus local trains from everyone you know.

Hey that’s all fine if you simply came down here and stuck with your plan. But that’s not at all what you did. You came here, drove some trucks, and then…

You’re such an ass.

I think you know I always liked you despite the waves that have regularly followed in your wake. With your thick-framed crooked glasses, huge American smile, lazy eye, and kid-like blonde hair, as well as your manic pushiness and sometimes scary loud voice. You bent a lot of noses over the years. A lot.

But not mine somehow. I don’t know why I was always the one who could tolerate you, who defended you when others curled their lips. Now I’m the only one from the old crew going down from Tokyo today to your tiny shitty port town in nowhere Japan.

The others grimaced when I suggested they could join…But hey they did ask me to give their best to your family! I don’t think it was the distance of the trip, Adam. Sorry, just saying.

It fucking kills me to think what if your son and daughter find an empty hall this evening.

“My dad was an ass. My dad had few friends.” Is that what they are going to think tonight…and for the rest of their lives? It’s not true. I sure pray that room isn’t empty.

Further and further west. Kansai Paint, Wacoal, Mizuki Farm, Marusho Denki, Tonen…a clowny Japanese guy in a pink wool blazer who stands up and gets off at…Osaka Station. Of course.

Just yesterday, several days after I heard what you had done, I read an article saying people like me, people left behind to pick up pieces and to sweep the shit up, should never get mad at people like you. Never it said. We don’t understand the pain it said. There’s incessant clanging in the subject’s head it said. We should just accept that life blows. And say nothing. Move on. But you know what? I’m white hot pissed. And I’m in my shitty black polyester suit and dumb white dress shirt going to the ass end of this country to help SWEEP UP.

You had meds. You were caught long before you fell. Professionals got involved and tried to help. And then of course—oh it’s all so damn cliche—in a few short months you stopped taking your scrip. You were all better you said. You felt better, more you.

Except you, I’m really sorry to say, is a hugely messed up thing, Adam.

Shin-Kobe. Himeji is next. Daihatsu, Sumitomo Facilities, “SAITO” for Prefectural Governor, Kobe Custard Crème, Kose Cosmetics. An old man walking a lumbering Akita.

Hey here’s something that should give you pause, big guy. Your son called me a year or so ago. Me! He was searching for answers, for what he could do. He was like 19 or 20 or something, a lost, grappling Bambi in your headlights. And what could I tell him? I said I don’t know, I really don’t know, I know nothing….and then I weakly suggested that being your son he could beg you to start taking your meds again. I had nothing else to suggest.

The two of us, bankrupt, ended our call. We said talk to you soon. I’ll talk with him tonight.

And now we are here. Well, more to the point, he and I and your daughter and your ex wife are here, and you’re not. And I’m on a shitty Shinkansen in my polyester black suit, traveling three quarters of the way down this country to make sure the room this evening isn’t completely empty.

Here’s the hardest part to reconcile. You were a very good person, Adam. I knew that from the day we first met. A bull in the china shop of life who bent noses, yes, but with more care and love in your heart than anyone can be expected to manage. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I cannot have an empty room for your kids.

Fuck you. I mean that. Your son and daughter now go through life with a departed dad and a big stain of an asterisk on your memory. Yes, I know, I’m not supposed to blame you or get angry. I’m expected to understand that there is incessant clanging and that life sucks.

Allow me the shortcoming.

OKAYAMA. Don’t forget your belongings. Exit to your right.