Free The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell

to be kissed and smiled at, to be comforted and reassured and made to feel safe again. But as I walked to him, I didn’t know what to do, he was so changed.
    When I reached him, he said nothing. He simply knelt so that he was my height, and then he held me to him tightly and I let myself be crushed by his wiry embrace. I could feel him shaking.
    In the evening, when he had showered and put on clean clothes, he had a dinner of noodles and tea. I stayed near him but out of sight, waiting for him to feel better. Finally, after he had eaten, I found him sitting on the pearwood bench by the large window that faced the garden. I sat down next to him without asking if he wanted me there, and when he looked at me and tried a smile, I took his hand and just held it for a moment, pretending that I knew how to comfort him. My mother had wanted him to go to St. Marie’s Hospital on Route Père Robert in the French Concession so that his physician, Dr. McLain, could just take a quick look at him. But my father wouldn’t consider it. So there we were, on a warm Saturday evening at home, staring out at willows and magnolias and the blackwood acacia.
    The evening was eerie. There were no cars on the streets, and the only sound was the cicadas. I thought of Will Marsh’s suggestion of cicada killers, and the idea made me shudder. Everything seemed alive in the garden: the plane tree in the corner moved slightly in the press of hot breath that passed for a breeze, and the huge magnolia in the center of the lawn nodded back, as though in private conversation. The willows and poplars along the back wall swayed like graceful women. I focused on the flower beds and said their names under my breath, names my father had taught me, practicing in case he should ask: poet’s narcissus, orchids, cathedral roses, the waterlily tulips he’d ordered from a catalog and planted as bulbs the day they arrived. I looked at the stone bench in the corner, under the plane tree whose leafy branches seemed like a kingdom all their own, and I wondered if any lizards were still out. It was the best place to catch them. And you could turn over the flat rocks that bordered the flower beds and find spiders and millipedes with red undersides and red dots on their legs, the ones that amazed me and frightened me at the same time.
    I was waiting for my father to speak, and finally he did. “We’re going to have to get rid of that acacia,” he said quietly, and he pointed to it below us. Its dark green leaves seemed somehow secretive in the dim light. “It was a mistake. In the right place it’s pretty well behaved, but down there, in all that confinement, it’s a troublemaker. The roots are too aggressive.”
    I nodded as though he’d said just what I was thinking.
    “It’s a bad actor,” he added.
    I nodded again. It was a phrase he used often for a plant or tree that did not do well where it was planted. We were quiet for a moment, and then, although I was afraid, I asked my question. “Who were they?”
    My father glanced at me, and I thought I saw some of his old look, an expression that was canny and knowing and appreciating the attention. He also looked exhausted and I immediately wondered if asking was a mistake.
    “They were Japanese,” he said simply, as though that explained everything.
    “But you’re friends with the Japanese,” I said. “You said that day at Jimmy’s. You buy and sell, you get them what they want—” I stopped when I saw him wince.
    “They want me to do more,” he said in a low voice. “They want me to collaborate.” He looked at me to see if I understood and I shook my head, wishing for once he didn’t have to explain. “To help them,” he said.
    “Help them what?”
    He laughed grimly. “That’s the question,” he said.
    “Are you going to do that?”
    He shook his head, started to say something, stopped. He seemed unable to answer the question, so I made a suggestion.
    “It’s complicated,” I offered,