Read Ransom for Free Online Page B

treetops.
    He scanned the riverbanks and then ran to the spot where the plane had gone over the trees, but there was no sign of the operator. He went through the trees and, at the top of the levee, startled a young couple in matching running suits holding hands on a bench. When he asked them if they had seen an airplane, they looked at him fearfully, as if he himself had just fallen out of the sky.
    * * *
    â€œ
How is your head?
” the girl asked DeVito when he opened his eyes.
    â€œShut your face,” he said softly.
    She didn’t understand. Lying on the futon beside him, she had been watching him sleep, wondering if he
was
asleep. The tight set of his eyes and mouth made him appear to be lying in wait, ready at the slightest sound to leap up and strike out.
    Last night, after he was carried out of the bar, she and her friend had walked him through the streets. He wanted to go back in and fight, but she lied and said that the police were on their way. DeVito took her back here to his rooms on the motorcycle, went out again, and returned near dawn, slipping into the futon beside her. She pretended she was asleep.
    â€œ
What time is it?
” he said now.
    She told him it was almost noon.
    â€œ
Make some breakfast
,” he said. With one motion he was on his feet, standing nude beside the futon, looking around the room as though he expected to encounter an intruder.
    While she cooked the rice, he put on karate gi and went outside. Taped on the mirror over the sink was a quotation typed on a sheet of rice paper: “It is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and to make your everyday stance your combat stance.”
    When he came back half an hour later, breakfast was ready. After she cleared away the breakfast things, he drew a pitcher of water at the sink and told her to come outside.
    The temple grounds were deserted. Beyond the wall, over toward the main temple, she heard the sound ofsomeone raking gravel. She did not understand why he lived in the temple compound. He was very strange, this gaijin.
    In the courtyard next to a sawhorse was a case of empty beer bottles. Placing one of the bottles on top of the sawhorse, he half-filled it from the pitcher. “Hold this,” he said, handing her the pitcher. As he stood in front of the sawhorse, drawing deep breaths, the distant sound of traffic from Nishi-oji Dori gradually seemed to underline the silence of the temple grounds. The raking had stopped. She felt sleepy. Several minutes later, a limping pigeon on the roof of the Hon-do caught her attention, and she didn’t see him strike, though she heard the unbroken bottle hit the sand.
    After his third attempt, he stormed behind the house and came back with an armful of bricks. “Get a towel from the house,” he said. When she returned he had arranged the bricks in two stacks. He laid the towel on top of the first, knelt down in the sand and placed his right hand on the bricks, raising and lowering it slowly.
    DeVito shouted as he smashed the bricks. He held up the broken pieces for her inspection. The second stack he broke with his head. When he turned to look at her, his forehead was cut and bleeding. He smiled.
    â€œYou’re hurt,” she said.
    He said, “But we’re having fun, aren’t we?”
    He allowed her to wipe the cut with the towel and then told her to set a bottle on the sawhorse. This time, he knocked the neck off without spilling a drop.
    * * *
    When Ransom finished his run, Kaji, the landlord, was waiting for him in front of the house. Kaji lived downstairs, and at first he had been reluctant to rent to a gaijin, having no experience of them and speaking no English. Now he was almost too enthusiastic a neighbor. He frequently came up to apologize for obscure nuisances or oversights he imagined Ransom to have taken to heart, and his wife was always sending up food. They had two preschool children, boy and girl, who rolled around in