Favor

Figure 1.

Shuhei grew up on the same road, and was the same age, and so was often paired together with Hideo, though throughout their long lives he found himself resisting the label "friends" but often referred to Hideo as "a former classmate" or "an old neighbor." Shuhei himself was troubled over this occasionally, why he should call him one thing at one time and something else at another? But the fact was that he had, from his early youth, struggled to contain his scorn toward the boy, who was self-effacing and dreamy and did not know how to carry himself with others, as one might not know how to carry a tune. God knew Shuhei had tried to help him, had protected him at school, for this was before the war, when the militarists were having their effect on the young minds of Japan. The boys, when they played, played rough, whether it was sports or verbal arguments or just plain fighting. And while most things came naturally to Shuhei, he also took pride in the fact that he worked hard at them. Hideo, on the other hand, did nothing but loaf, and while Shuhei practiced his kendo moves on the wooden dummy of an old coat rack, that strange Hideo could be heard in the neighboring yard, humming along as he sat peering clear-eyed into his bucketful of tadpoles, which he observed over a period of weeks as they metamorphosed.

Shuhei was stuck in the odd position of both protecting and despising his friend, or his neighbor, so that at school he would stand up between the moping Hideo and the bigger and rougher boys, who numbered as many as four and would half-encircle him, and when Shuhei intervened he had to withstand the shoves of four pairs of arms against his iron chest. Yet when it was only the two of them, Shuhei, despite himself, would occasionally find himself overcome with annoyance and would push the boy down. This will teach you! he would say as the boy fell to the ground. Hideo would stare back at him, wide-eyed and stunned, and nod and brush the dirt off his clothes. Shuhei would then find himself remorseful. For the next few days he would treat Hideo kindly.

Shuhei reminded himself that almost everyone disliked Hideo—and that the others were worse, much worse. So if Shuhei felt some resentment every now and again, it must only be natural, he reasoned. Why must he always have to play the part of the rescuer, defending Hideo, keeping the others at bay? And yet, looking back, he suspected that his two-faced treatment of his neighbor had its root in something else; though he could not have put it into words had he tried, he often could not shake the feeling that Hideo knew something that the rest of them didn't, by virtue perhaps of his maddening calmness in the face of everything, his apparent willingness to forgo a grudge and his selflessness even. There was, for instance, the matter of the ball, at school.

The cause for punishment was a single black rubber ball, the size of a plum. These were popular then in the schoolyard for baseball and for a version of baseball that featured two bases and pegging the runners. But the rubber was hard, and after games the boys would shuffle into class rubbing the welts on their arms and legs. A schoolwide ban had therefore been proclaimed, after somebody, throwing it at some unfortunate student in the lower grades, had knocked him clear to the ground so that he had slammed his chin down on concrete and bitten a sliver of flesh off his tongue. It was an accident, they all protested. Nevertheless, the announcement was made at the next morning's exercise: only soccer balls would be allowed on school grounds. No baseballs.

Of course it surprised Shuhei when Hideo brought one in, oblivious; even after Shuhei reminded him of the edict, the boy bounced the ball off the walls...