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Snow Falling on Cedars

Sparknotes

Chapter One

Hisao Imada was small enough most of the time, but he looked evensmaller bundled up in his winter clothes, his hat pulled low and hisscarf across his chin so that only his mouth, nose, and eyes showed.Ishmael knew he would not ask for help, in part because San Piedropeople never did, in part because such was his character. Ishmaeldecided to park at the bottom of the grade beside Gordon Ostrom'smailbox and walk the fifty yards up South Beach Drive, keeping hisDeSoto well out of the road while he convinced Hisao Imada to accepta ride from him.

Ishmael had known Hisao a long time. When he was eight years oldhe'd seen the Japanese man trudging along behind his swaybackedwhite plow horse: a Japanese man who carried a machete at his beltin order to cut down vine maples. His family lived in two canvastents while they cleared their newly purchased property. They drewwater from a feeder creek and warmed themselves at a slash pile keptburning by his children-girls in rubber boots, includingHatsue-who dragged branches and brought armfuls of brush to it.Hisao was lean and tough and worked methodically, never altering hispace. He wore a shoulder strap T-shirt, and this, coupled with thesharp-honed weapon at his belt, put Ishmael in mind of the pirateshe'd read about in illustrated books his father had brought him fromthe Amity Harbor Public Library. But all of this was more thantwenty years ago now, so that as he approached Hisao Imada in theSouth Beach Drive, Ishmael saw the man in another light: hapless,small in the storm, numb with the cold and ineffective with hisshovel while the trees threatened to come down around him.

Ishmael saw something else, too. On the far side of the car, withher own shovel in hand, Hatsue worked without looking up. She wasdigging through the snow to the black earth of the cedar woods andthrowing spadefuls of it underneath the tires.

Fifteen minutes later the three of them walked down the road towardhis DeSoto. The Willys station wagon's rear right tire had beenperforated by a fallen branch still wedged up under both axles. Therear length of exhaust pipe had been crushed, too. The car wasn'tgoing anywhere-Ishmael could see that-but it took Hisao some timeto accept this truth. With his shovel he'd struggled defiantly, asif the tool could indeed change the car's fate. After ten minutes ofpolite assistance Ishmael wondered aloud if his DeSoto wasn't theanswer and persisted in this vein for five minutes more before Hisaoyielded to it as an unavoidable evil. He opened his car door, put inhis shovel, and came out with a bag of groceries and a gallon ofkerosene. Hatsue, for her part, went on with her digging, sayingnothing and keeping to the far side of the car, and throwing blackearth beneath the tires.

At last her father rounded the Willys and spoke to her once inJapanese. She stopped her work and came into the road then, andIshmael was granted a good look at her. He had spoken to her onlythe morning before in the second-floor hallway of the Island CountyCourthouse, where she'd sat on a bench with her back to an archedwindow just outside the assessor's office. Her hair had been woventhen, as now, into a black knot against the nape of her neck. She'dtold him four times to go away.

"Hello, Hatsue," said Ishmael. "I can give you a lift home, if youwant."

"My father says he's accepted," Hatsue replied. "He says he'sgrateful for your help."

She followed her father and Ishmael down the hill, still carryingher shovel, to the DeSoto. When they were well on their way downSouth Beach Drive, easing through the flats along the salt water,Hisao explained in broken English that his daughter was staying withhim during the trial; Ishmael could drop them at his house. Then hedescribed how a branch had hurled down into the road in front ofhim; to avoid it he'd hit his brake pedal. The Willys had fishtailedwhile it climbed the snapped branch and nudged down into thedrainage ditch.

Only once, driving and listening, nodding politely and insertingsmall exclamations of interest-"I see, I see, yes, of course, I canunderstand"-did Ishmael risk looking at Hatsue Miyamoto in therectangle of his rearview mirror: a risk that filled all of twoseconds. He saw then that she was staring out the side window withenormous deliberation, with intense concentration on the worldoutside his car-she was making it a point to be absorbed by thestorm-and that her black hair was wringing wet with snow. Twostrands had escaped from their immaculate arrangement and lay pastedagainst her frozen cheek.

"I know it's caused you trouble," Ishmael said. "But don't you thinkthe snow is beautiful? Isn't it beautiful coming down?"

The boughs in the fir trees hung heavy with it, the fence rails andmailboxes wore mantles of it, the road before him lay filled withit, and there was no sign, anywhere, of people. Hisao Imada agreedthat it was so-ah, yes, beautiful, he commented softly-and at thesame moment his daughter turned swiftly forward so that her eyes metIshmael's in the mirror. It was the cryptic look, he recognized,that she'd aimed at him fleetingly on the second floor of thecourthouse when he'd tried to speak to her before her husband'strial. Ishmael still could not read what her eyes meant-punishment,sorrow, perhaps buried anger, perhaps all three simultaneously.Perhaps some sort of disappointment.

For the life of him, after all these years, he couldn't read theexpression on her face. If Hisao wasn't present, he told himself,he'd ask her flat out what she was trying to say by looking at himwith such detached severity and saying nothing at all. What, afterall, had he done to her? What had she to be angry about? The anger,he thought, ought to be his own; yet years ago now the anger abouther had finished gradually bleeding out of him and had slowly driedup and blown away. Nothing had replaced it, either. He had not foundanything to take its place. When he saw her, as he sometimes did, inthe aisles of Petersen's Grocery or on the street in Amity Harbor,he turned away from seeing her with just a little less hurry thanshe turned away from seeing him; they avoided one anotherrigorously. It had come to him one day three years before howimmersed she was in her own existence. She'd knelt in front ofFisk's Hardware Center tying her daughter's shoelaces in bows, herpurse on the sidewalk beside her. She hadn't known he was watching.He'd seen her kneeling and working on her daughter's shoes, and ithad come to him what her life was. She was a married woman withchildren. She slept in the same bed every night with Kabuo Miyamoto.He had taught himself to forget as best he could. The only thingleft was a vague sense of waiting for Hatsue-a fantasy-to returnto him. How, exactly, this might be achieved he could not begin toimagine, but he could not keep himself from feeling that he waswaiting and that these years were only an interim between otheryears he had passed and would pass again with Hatsue.

She spoke now, from the backseat, having turned again to look outthe window. "Your newspaper," she said. That was all.

"Yes," answered Ishmael. "I'm listening."

"The trial, Kabuo's trial, is unfair," said Hatsue. "You should talkabout that in your newspaper."

"What's unfair?" asked Ishmael. "What exactly is unfair? I'll behappy to write about it if you'll tell me."

She was still staring out the window at the snow with strands of wethair pasted against her cheek. "It's all unfair," she told himbitterly. "Kabuo didn't kill anyone. It isn't in his heart to killanyone. They brought in that sergeant to say he's a killer-that wasjust prejudice. Did you hear the things that man was saying? HowKabuo had it in his heart to kill? How horrible he is, a killer? Putit in your paper, about that man's testimony, how all of it wasunfair. How the whole trial is unfair."

"I understand what you mean," answered Ishmael. "But I'm not a legalexpert. I don't know if the judge should have suppressed SergeantMaples's testimony. But I hope the jury comes in with the rightverdict. I could write a column about that, maybe. How we all hopethe justice system does its job. How we hope for an honest result."

"There shouldn't even be a trial," said Hatsue. "The whole thing iswrong, it's wrong"

"I'm bothered, too, when things are unfair," Ishmael said to her."But sometimes I wonder if unfairness isn't ... part of things. Iwonder if we should even expect fairness, if we should assume wehave some sort of right to it. Or if-"

"I'm not talking about the whole universe," cut in Hatsue. "I'mtalking about people-the sheriff, that prosecutor, the judge, you.People who can do things because they run newspapers or arrestpeople or convict them or decide about their lives. People don'thave to be unfair, do they? That isn't just part of things, whenpeople are unfair to somebody."

"No, it isn't," Ishmael replied coldly. "You're right-people don'thave to be unfair."

When he let them out beside the Imadas' mailbox he felt that somehowhe had gained the upper hand-he had an emotional advantage. He hadspoken with her and she had spoken back, wanting something from him.She'd volunteered a desire. The strain between them, the hostilityhe felt-it was better than nothing, he decided. It was an emotionof some sort they shared. He sat in the DeSoto and watched Hatsuetrudge away through the falling snow, carrying her shovel on hershoulder. It occurred to him that her husband was going out of herlife in the same way he himself once had. There had beencircumstances then and there were circumstances now; there werethings beyond anyone's control. Neither he nor Hatsue had wanted thewar to come-neither of them had wanted that intrusion. But now herhusband was accused of murder, and that changed things between them.

Continues...

Excerpted from Snow Falling on Cedarsby David Guterson Copyright © 2003 by David Guterson. Excerpted by permission.
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