SATO!

It was hot the night everything changed, I was asleep with Father.  I was dreaming we were on the mainland and Mother was there and she looked radiant amidst the cherry blossoms we had come to see.  Dream Mother looked like Mother before she was sick.  Beautiful, with warm, loving eyes.  She put her hand on my cheek.  I tried to speak but no sound came out.  Then it was dark except for the moonlight coming through from the window in the big room.  Father's hand was on my mouth and his finger on his lips.  When he saw that I understood, he arose silently and motioned for me to get under the bed.  The bed frame was only six inches above the tatami, but I was small for five and easily slid underneath.  I was scared, but never doubted that Father would keep me safe. 

"What is going on?"  I wondered.  Before Father left the bedroom, he kneeled down and looked under the bed.  I knew he had read my thoughts.  My eyes had adjusted to the dim light and our faces were close enough for me to see the tiny flecks of black and grey stubble on his cheeks and head trying to catch up with his goatee.  He made no sound as he mouthed the name which had come to mean fear and inevitability in my home.  Sato!  And then father was gone.  I watched his feet as he walked catlike into the big room.  He slid the the bedroom door closed behind him.

There was silence.  Then there was chaos.  Two men grunting.  A vase breaking.  A voice not my Father's or Sato's pleading for mercy.  A sound like a bunch of celery breaking followed by a man screaming in pain, very loud.  The front door crashing open.  The screaming getting fainter. 

 Father came back.  His robe was torn.  His face was scratched and bleeding.  He held a gun in his hand which he did not have when he had left me.  He asked me if I was okay.  Before I could answer, we heard Sato shouting at his man outside.  "Is this a joke?!" Sato railed.  The man whimpered as Sato lit into him.  "A gaijin schoolteacher and his half-breed five-year-old  boy?!  Do I need to ask which one humiliated you?!" 

The whimpering man began to apologize to Sato.  I heard something like a firecracker and the man suddenly stopped whimpering.  He made no more sounds at all after that.  Sato spoke more quietly to his other men and neither I, nor Father, heard him.  But Father knew what he said.  I remember knowing that Father knew things he could not see or hear.  I could not comprehend adult deduction and did not think this was an ability shared by all adults.  I assumed it to be some type of special ability that Father, and maybe several other people in the world, shared.  

Despite this, I began to feel afraid, truly afraid, for the first time in my life.  "What if Father's magic fails this one time?   I could actually be harmed or killed," (unthinkable, before this moment).  That is what I was thinking  when I heard the footsteps of Sato and his men angrily approaching our house.

Father held my shoulders and looked deep into my eyes and told me, calmly and quietly, "Do exactly what I say."  My fear evaporated like ether.  Moments later, I barely remembered ever doubting him.  That is the truth.

When Sato smashed his fist on our front door, Father and I were already standing on the other side;  Father in his silk robe with Dragon on the back, and I, standing next to him, with pajama bottoms only.  No shirt.  It was hot.  Sato began shouting to Father, through the door.  "Michael-san!  Open the door."  Then, quieter, his face close to the wood, "Michael-san, let us in and I will be quick.  You will feel no pain.  I will care for the little one as if he were my own son.  He will grow to be a wealthy man and give honor to your worthless name."

Father swung the door open, catching Sato completely off-guard.  Sato had been leaning on the door and  almost fell into our house.  He caught himself and was shocked to see my father, unarmed and unafraid standing before him.  He was even more confounded to see me there, in the open, as fearless and unafraid as Father.

Father knelt down next to me and put his hand on my back.  I felt a surge of confidence.  At that time, I truly believed that Father was giving me some of his power, an action I was sure was forbidden by the alliance of gifted ones to which he belonged.  But this was truly a case of life and death, so they would have to make an exception, no?

Father and I exchanged a brief smile which we both maintained as we turned to look at the momentarily confused Sato and his men, all of whom carried guns of various types.  "Sato,"  My father began, "An honor.  You know my son, Daniel."

What happened next happened in no more than a second.  But time slowed to a crawl for me.  Father slid his hand down my back and pulled the pistol out of the waistband of my pajamas.  He stood up and pointed the gun at Sato's face.  I covered my ears, as Father had earlier instructed.  However, I ignored his other instructions.  To run away.  To not look.  I looked right at Sato's face and watched his eyes go round as a cow's with shock and fright for a millisecond, before his expression changed to that of a tiger about to spring.

Then Sato disappeared.  One moment, he was standing on my doorstep.  The next minute he was just...gone.

The boom was deafening.  My ears rang even though I had covered them.  I knew little of guns, "But, could a pistol be so loud?"  I wondered.  My whole body felt light it had gotten a gentle, yet firm push by some unseen hand.  "More of Father's magic, "  I remember thinking.  Had there been fire?  There was a cloud of grey smoke where Sato had been, yet Father's gun (which he still held out as if Sato were still there) did not have any smoke coming from its barrel.  With his outstretched hand on the pistol grip, Father drew the gun closer and stared at it with disbelief.  He held the barrel in his other hand.  He said one word, "Cold."

Father, bewildered,  looked up at Sato's men, standing outside the doorway.  There were two.  Neither man pointed a weapon at Father.  A third man appeared from the left.  He wore a shotgun strapped to his shoulder, pointing down.  Smoke wafted out of the barrel like exhaust from a tailpipe on a not-to-cold day.  The man who killed Sato, one of Sato's own lieutenants,   entered our house and approached Father.  The man looked down at the pistol which Father still held in his hands.  "May I please have it?" the man said.  "It was my brother's."  Father did not hesitate, offering a slight bow of his head as he handed the pistol to the man who killed Sato.  The man pulled his own handgun from a holster on his hip.  He tossed it into the air a few inches and caught so that the handgrip faced away from him.  He offered it to my father.  "Please accept this gun," The man said as he bowed a bit deeper than my father had.  "and forgive my brother's trespasses.  He was a good horse being ridden by a ruthless driver and suffered greatly for it."  Though Father knew the customs of our country, sometimes he would look to me for guidance, even I was so young.  Father glanced at me and I gave him a barely perceptible, emphatic nod.  Father took the gun and thanked the man and told the man that he and I would honor the memory of his brother, forever.  He went on to tell the man who killed Sato that he would retell the story of this day to me, often, and instruct me to do the same with my children and so-on generation after generation.  The man and his brother would be remembered as heroes to all who bore my Father's name.

The man stoically held back tears as he gave a very low bow and said something that only Father could hear and which Father never shared with me.  Then the man left.  Father closed the door behind the Man Who Killed Sato.  I remember that I started to walk to the window.  I wanted to watch them take away Sato's body, which I still had not seen.  Father placed a hand on my shoulder and I stopped in my tracks. I looked up at his kind, green eyes and he shook his head.  Sometimes, he gave me advice, too.

The next morning, everything had changed.  All of the villagers, and I mean every single one, not only treated father as an equal, but as an elder statesmen, though he was not yet forty-years-old.  Not a single old woman spoke ill of my dead mother like they did every day of my life, up until then.  No children laughed when Father erred when speaking Japanese.  They would take him aside and politely correct him, before bowing and walking away, respectfully.  It was like Father turned Japanese that day.  So did I.  Though at a distance, any Japanese stranger would assume I was pure Japanese, as I possess none of my father's Western traits, except for the color of our eyes, I had always been called "Mongrel, " by children as well as adults. 

 Let me be clear about this mistreatment.  This harassment was not a regular occurrence, it was constant.  I cannot remember a single day that neither Father nor I was insulted, verbally.  At Mother's funeral, a priest muttered something under his breath, which Father heard and did share with me, though I will not share it with you. 

But all of that was before The Night The Man Killed Sato on Michael-san's Doorstep.  Every Friday, from that day forward, one of Sato's men would come to Father's school, the school Father and Mother had built, themselves for children with various differences who were once shunned by villagers, often their own parents.  The man would "demand" the school's weekly "tax", the very "tax" which Father had repeatedly refused to pay Sato and his men which led to the events of The Night Everything Changed.  Only this time, Father paid.  

He made a big show of giving Sato's man the envelope, bowing low.  Sato's man would take the envelope and wag a threatening finger at Father who appeared frightened, then relieved, as the man exited with the envelope.  The children in the classroom mirrored Father's emotions, until the man left.  Then they all smiled as if they had been watching a play - which they were.  The envelopes were empty, of course.

And the children would plead for the story and Father would "refuse" several times before relenting.  We must have heard that story hundreds of times.  I never grew tired of it.  Neither does my five-year-old girl who requests it far more often than once-a-week.

Father is nearly 80, but in good health.  He lives in Santa Monica and does Tai Chi at Dorothy Green Park, nearly every day.  I know he is grateful that the universe spared him the burden of killing Sato himself.  I have asked him many times if he would have fired a bullet into Sato's head, had fate not intervened.  His answer is always the same.  Silence.