The Drowning God by James Kendley

saw him alive again.

 
    CHAPTER 7
    G otoh rose wearily from her front stoop as Takuda approached. “So, you prayed for your family?”
    He bowed. “It’s been a long time, but one never forgets the sutras.”
    â€œOh, ­people forget,” she said. ­“People in this valley have forgotten truth and piety.” She shook her head violently, as if she were being attacked by insects. “Awful, awful place. You asked me earlier what happened to me. I’ll tell you what happened. I watched all the good ­people die. The good ­people like your father all died. The Naga River valley sucked their lives away. Your father lost one son to the river, then he lost his grandson to the canal, and then he lost his mind.” She bared brown teeth at Takuda. It might have been a smile, but it looked painful. “Even your father’s faith wasn’t enough in the end. The Naga River valley kills the strong outright. The weak just move away.”
    Takuda nodded. He was relieved that someone had finally said it aloud. “It’s true. I was a weak and cowardly young man. I could have stayed to help make things better here.”
    The grimace faded, and her face fell back into lines of worry. She eased herself back down to her stoop. “Oh, I’m a stupid old woman.” She sighed. “No, no, of course you couldn’t have stayed here. Your wife would have died of grief, just as your mother did. Wait, your wife is the old-­fashioned girl—­” Gotoh made jabbing motions at her own throat.
    Inwardly, Takuda winced. “Yes, she tried to take her own life.”
    Gotoh nodded. “You see, I know these things happened to someone, but it’s all getting more and more confused. Sometimes I don’t remember your father’s face, or your mother’s. When tragedy comes after tragedy for so many years, it all runs together.”
    He sat on the stoop beside her. “What about your family? What happened to them?”
    She made a dismissive gesture. “They moved away, and I never heard from them again. That happens, you know. ­People who move away from here never come back, and they hardly even write. When you try to find them, they’ve already moved again, as if memories of this awful place keep driving them farther away. The old man is my only family now. When he dies, I’ll sell this house and get an apartment down in the city. I’ll move while I can still walk. Maybe I’ll only be able to live on my own for a month, but I’ll be out of the Naga River valley. Maybe they’ll put me in a home in the city. At least I won’t die here.”
    Takuda didn’t know what to say. No one would buy her house. It was a rotting hulk on a dead-­end street of a dying village in a dismal valley.
    Perhaps she had the same thought. “You were right to leave. I should have left, too. I was a fool to stay.”
    Takuda pitied the woman. She had been one of the bright and energetic middle-­aged worshippers who had made up the core of the temple lay organization. She had always been in the center of volunteer activities, celebrations, and annual cleanings. Takuda’s father had said of her, “She works harder than anyone else at the temple.” Then Takuda remembered overhearing his mother’s reply: “Of course she works harder than anyone else at the temple. She has to make up for her husband.”
    Her life was blighted just because her husband didn’t go to temple? It didn’t make sense.
    â€œLife was good here once, despite everything. You know, right here at the last bend of the canal, that’s where everybody used to tie up to make out.” She grinned like a backward child, her mind decades in the past. “More babies were conceived in those flat-­bottomed boats than under the blankets, I assure you. And at the end of the summer, during the festival for the dead, the canal would