Little Yokozuna Read online

  "Well," said the old priest. "Let me explain. Do you know that a true Japanese garden is designed for philosophy as much as for beauty?"

  "Yes," said Owen Greatheart. "We know that."

  "Then you also may know that it is a place for enlightenment," said the old priest, "where an unexpected view may surprise you into a deep insight, a truth you've never known before."

  "We know that," said Owen Greatheart. "We wanted to build one at home, a little one in our living room. That's why we were at the museum," he said, turning to Basho, "looking for ideas. It was for our dad's birthday."

  The old priest chuckled. "A little one in your living room," he said, as if to himself. "A little one in your living room. These gaijin." He seemed more entertained than displeased by the idea. "So," he went on finally, after shaking his head for a while, "for you to have universal insights, your garden must be bigger than itself."

  "Bigger than itself?" said 'Siah. "Nothing's that big. That's silly."

  "No, it isn't, 'Siah," said Owen Greatheart. "I get what he means. A stone can represent a mountain, a little pagoda can be a temple, a bed of white gravel can be a river, or the sea. Each small thing means more than it looks."

  The old priest looked at Owen Greatheart. "Good," he said. "Very good."

  "But so what?" said Owen Greatheart. "There are gardens everywhere made according to this philosophy. Why can't we see this one?"

  The old priest paused.

  "It's just another philosophical garden," persisted Owen. "Please? Onegai-shimasu?"

  The old man sat very still, as if deep in thought. Flies buzzed, while invisible birds chirped and beeped, rustling the foliage. The monkey rolled several somersaults in the pathway, ending up seated rightwise and scratching his scalp with a shrewd squint.

  "This Garden," the old priest finally continued, as if there had been no pause, "is not like other gardens."

  Owen Greatheart rolled his eyes. "Everyone says that about their own garden," he said.

  "Other philosophical gardens simply represent the Universe," said the old priest, ignoring the comment. "And so in a sense are also gardens of a thousand worlds. But in this Garden, the whole Universe is truly contained."

  "I don't understand," said Owen Greatheart.

  "Everywhere" said the old priest, "is here. Here you find every Place that is."

  "So it is a gateway!" said Owen Greatheart. "We can go through here to find Little Harriet. That's what we want."

  The old priest looked at him. "Oh, it's a gateway all right," he said. His voice sounded regretful.

  "Perfect!" said 'Siah.

  "Don't you see what that means, foolish children?" asked the old priest. "There are infinite places in this Garden. When you enter, you do not know where it will take you."

  "Cool," said 'Siah.

  "Not cool," said the old priest. "The possibilities are endless. It could take you to New Delhi or Philadelphia, Mars or Mercury, Heaven or Hell. It could take you to the Andromeda Galaxy, or to another universe altogether. How do you know if it will take you to this Little Harriet of yours? It could take you inside one of the cells of that lizard on that tree. Would you enjoy that, little boy?" he asked 'Siah.

  "Sure!" said 'Siah, looking eagerly at the bright blue lizard.

  "Bah! There's more," said the old priest, now annoyed, but obviously calling up all his inner disciplines to hide it. "Once you get wherever you get, then how do you get back? No one has ever returned out of this Garden. There are fairy tales of some who returned, bringing glories or horrors from some other world. But the true tales are of the ones who were lost forever. You go in and you never return"

  "But we don't want to come back here," said 'Siah. "Once we find Little Harriet, we just want to go home. That's OK if we can't get back here. No offense"

  "What makes you think you can find your way home from that lizard cell, or from Alpha Centauri?" asked the old priest. "What has given you the impression that you can choose your destination from this Garden at all, even to find Little Harriet?"

  "Well," said Owen Greatheart, staring hard at the old priest, "we are experienced at this. We've been traveling through garden gateways for days. That's how we came from Boston to here. And we've been able to stay right on Little Harriet's trail, right up till the last time."

  "So?" said the old priest.

  "So," faltered Owen Greatheart. "Well, I've just assumed that we'd be able to do the same thing again. However we did it before."

  "And how was that?" said the, old priest. "Think! You are making the mistake of judging this Garden by all the other ones you've seen. But even consider them. So far you've only been traveling the local train lines, so to speak, from one little stop to the next, and you must confess that you have no real idea how you got here. And this, my friends, isn't just another little train station. This is Haneda International Airport, or maybe Cape Canaveral, with no return flights.''

  Despair overwhelmed Owen Greatheart, as he realized how little he knew about what he was doing. What were they doing here? He covered his eyes, feeling weary.

  "I don't think you really know," said 'Siah to the old priest. "Have you ever actually been in this garden?"

  "No," said the old priest, smiling. "Not beyond this bend."

  "How can I ask this in polite Japanese?" said Owen Greatheart, looking up again. "How do we know that you're not just an old fraud? We know so many priests."

  The old priest merely smiled, and answered the wrong question. "There is no way to ask that question in polite Japanese," he said. "Now, tell me your story. Why are you here? Maybe it will help us all understand."

  Owen Greatheart sighed. "Well, maybe it will," he said, without conviction. He considered a moment, and began. "It's like this. We are seven brothers and sisters, and we live near Boston, Massachusetts."

  So he told the story, just as he had started to do earlier with Basho the monkey. He told of the museum garden and Little Harriet's chipmunk, how all of them had rushed behind the lantern and found themselves in some indescribable sense being swallowed up by the garden, then ending up to their amazement in a small walled garden in an unknown country, with no Little Harriet in sight.

  "And then what?" asked the monkey.

  "We ran out of that garden," said Owen Greatheart. "There was no one around. It was hot and sunny, and there was a dusty country road running by. We could smell wood smoke and cooking food, but everyone must have been working in the fields. We ran all around the garden and the house it was attached to, but there was no sign of Little Harriet. There was a sound like really faraway thunder in the distance, way up the road. We ran in that direction and could see what looked like a cloud of dust way far away, like might be behind a big truck on a dirt road. Then Q.J. found something."

  "Q.J. is another brother?" asked the old priest.

  "A sister," said Owen Greatheart. "She's thirteen."

  "We call her Quiddity Jane," said 'Siah. "It's a private joke."

  "What did she find?" asked the monkey. "Tell the story, tell the story."

  "One of Little Harriet's sneakers," said Owen Greatheart. "From that we knew she had gone that way, so we started to run. Somehow we knew that she was in that cloud of dust."

  "Somehow I know it also," said the monkey. He frowned. "I think I begin to see a certain hand in this."

  "Hush, monkey," said the old priest.

  "We walked and ran forever, it seemed like," said Owen Greatheart. "Like in a dream. We got so tired that our legs were like rubber, but we didn't seem to need food or sleep. Something strange happens when you travel the garden gateways. The time doesn't seem to make any sense. That time, days and nights seemed to pass, but some of the days seemed to last forever, and other ones only seemed to be an hour from sunrise to sunset. We began to see people now and then, villages sometimes and workers in the rice paddies, but we ran on and on and on, and that cloud of dust never seemed to get either closer or farther away. Until after about ten or eleven of those s
trange days, the thunder stopped and there was no dust cloud ahead anymore."

  "He was waiting for you," said the old priest.

  "Yes," said Owen Greatheart. "We stopped running and began to walk on more cautiously, wondering if it made sense to sneak up on whatever or whoever had Little Harriet. But then we came over a rise at last, and there we saw him standing in the middle of the road, directly in front of a great gate, a torii. He had Little Harriet in a sack over his shoulder, with just her head sticking out. We couldn't tell if she was dead or alive or unconscious or anything."

  "Oni" said the monkey. "A demon warrior. I knew it."

  "I guess," said Owen Greatheart. "His armor was red and blue with gold designs all over it, and his helmet had a leaping lion on the top. His mask was black like coal with a huge bushy mustache under the nose and a ferocious gaping mouth. He was gigantic, as tall as two of me. He laughed at us."

  He fell silent. The old priest watched him. Even the monkey said nothing.

  "Then he smote us with some kind of power," said Owen Greatheart. "He waved his sword at us and it was like a blast of fire so we couldn't stand up. I think it knocked us out, because when we looked again he was gone. With Little Harriet."

  "But the great gate, by the road," said the old priest. "There was another garden there, inside?"

  "Yes, yes," said Owen Greatheart. "Of course. We went in the gate and once again felt that cool mountain breeze. We followed it to a garden, one with a waterfall and red maples. We knew he must have gone that way. We walked around the garden until we found the source of the breeze, a bamboo grove in the deep corner. All we had to do was walk in and we found ourselves in another place entirely, a little courtyard garden in a city of some kind."

  "The next train stop," said the old priest.

  "Yes," said Owen Greatheart.

  "Excuse me," said 'Siah, nervously. No one paid him any attention.

  "Then," said the old priest, "how did it go the next time? Did you run like the wind and find him just disappearing into the next garden gateway, with a mocking laugh over his shoulder?"

  "Something like that," said Owen Greatheart.

  "And every other time also?" asked the old priest.

  "Yes," said Owen Greatheart. He stared at the ground between his feet.

  "Do you not see how you have gotten here?" asked the old priest. "Was it your mastery of the gardens that kept you so long on the track of your Little Harriet?"

  "No," admitted Owen Greatheart at last, still not lifting his eyes. "He lured us. The demon never really let himself get out of sight. He wanted us on his track, for some reason." Why? he wondered, completely befuddled. Why? Why any of this?

  "Giving you the illusion," said the old priest, "that you were somehow in control of where you were going."

  "Yes," said Owen Greatheart. "I see, of course, that we're hopelessly lost. But this garden is still our only hope. It's the only known gateway we have, and it's a powerful one. And if the demon warrior wanted us on his trail this far, won't he maybe use this garden to get us back on it again?"

  "You assume," began the old priest, "that..."

  "Excuse me!" said 'Siah again, louder.

  "What's the matter, 'Siah?"asked Owen Greatheart. "Do you have to go to the bathroom again?"

  "No" said the little boy in a trembly voice. "I was just wondering. Should that big mound of moss be moving like that?"

  CHAPTER 7

  Sumo Lessons

  Meanwhile, Kiyoshi-chan was having the time of his life. It was Saturday afternoon, and he had taken Knuckleball to school with him that morning. His teacher Takashima-sensei had trouble keeping other students focused on their work with the strange gaijin boy in the back of the classroom. They kept swarming around Knuckleball all day, touching his yellow hair and laughing as if he were an especially clever animal in the zoo. They ooo'd when he took a bite of cookie and aahh'd when he drank his milk, and then kept asking him for his autograph on their school notebooks. Knuckleball pulled his battered cap down over his eyes as if to hide from his celebrity status, but Kiyoshi-chan couldn't help reveling in this new glory, added on to his great sumo victory earlier in the week.

  But the real fun came in the afternoon, when the two boys ran up the walled street and into Kiyoshi-chan's yard for a whole half-day of freedom. It had taken almost no time for them to discover that they were friends, and they had already found many points of common interest. Kiyoshi-chan had borrowed a Knuckleball-sized baseball glove from one of his friends and they had already played an endless game of catch in the tiny yard, counting in Japanese up to six hundred forty-six catches without a miss and having to start over. "On Sunday," Kiyoshi-chan said afterward, "we will play baseball with my friends, at the school ground."

  Now, though, on Saturday afternoon, the game was sumo. They drew a ring in the smooth-swept dirt of the yard, and then the lessons began. First, Kiyoshi-chan tried to teach Knuckleball the differences among the seventy kimari-te, or proper winning techniques, of sumo.

  "Techniques? I thought it was just two big blobs running into each other, like in football," Knuckleball said. For him, baseball was the only true sport on earth.

  Kiyoshi-chan laughed, and taught him yorikiri, and uwatenage, and kawazugake, and uchimuso, and yobimodoshi, and hatakikomi. He taught him the advantage of sukuinage, which is done from an inside gripping position, over tsukiotoshi, which is done from outside. He taught him the difference between oshidashi, tsukidashi, waridashi, and okuridashi.

  "Can't I just make up my own way?" Knuckleball asked. "Some of my own kimari-te?" Somehow he couldn't get Kiyoshi-chan to understand the question. There seemed to be seventy kimari-te and only seventy. When Knuckleball repeated the question, Kiyoshi-chan was still bewildered, so Knuckleball tried to demonstrate.

  "What if I just do this?" he asked, faking one way with his head, sidestepping, and pushing Kiyoshi-chan out from behind.

  Kiyoshi-chan stood with his hands on his hips, looking hurt. "That is tricky sumo," he said. "Tricky sumo is not good sumo. It is not worthy of a true yokozuna"

  "That's weird" said Knuckleball. "In basketball we trick people all the time. It's called faking the guy out of his sneakers."

  "This is not basketball," said Kiyoshi-chan, offended now. "This is sumo."

  "Wow," said Knuckleball, laughing. "Can't you even compromise a little? Let's just have some fun with tricky sumo."

  "No!" said Kiyoshi-chan.

  Knuckleball shrugged, realizing that Kiyoshi-chan was serious. "OK," he said. "Sorry. Teach me more."

  So Kiyoshi-chan taught Knuckleball to do tsuridashi, which is when a wrestler lifts the other up by his great belt and sets him down outside the ring. To demonstrate, Kiyoshi-chan managed to lift Knuckleball up an inch or two off the ground by his belt loops and wobble over to the edge of the ring. Knuckleball whooped and wrapped his legs around Kiyoshi-chan's so he couldn't be put down. They wavered there, swaying with laughter, until they both finally collapsed in a giggling heap.

  "Whoo-boy,"said Knuckleball, picking up his glasses and putting them back on. They were so bent by now that they made his whole face look lopsided. "Ouch. I'm gonna have to call that a wedgie-dashi."

  "What is wedgie?" asked Kiyoshi-chan.

  "Never mind," said Knuckleball. "What's next?"

  But after three or four more kimari-te, Knuckleball threw himself down on the doorstep of the house.

  "I can't remember all of these," he said, laughing. "Can't we just sumo?"

  Still Kiyoshi-chan was firm. "You must learn it properly" he said. "Let me just teach you one more thing. Without this we can't sumo at all."

  But this one thing was the hardest of all. He tried to teach him the proper way to do the tachi-ai, the first great charge of the wrestlers.

  "First you squat down," he said, "like this."

  They did so, sitting on their haunches with their backs straight and their hands on their knees.

  "OK," said Knuckleball. "That's
easy. Now who says Go?"

  "No one says Go," said Kiyoshi-chan.

  "Oh, you can," said Knuckleball, misunderstanding. "I don't care who says Go. Or Annie will come out and say Go for us. Hey, Annie!"

  "No one says Go," said Kiyoshi-chan.

  The door slid open and Annie stepped out. "What's up, Knuckler?" she asked. "I'm helping with dinner." There was the smell of meat and other things cooking, a special meal of katsu-donburi for the two foreign guests.

  "No one says Go," said Kiyoshi-chan, for the third time.

  "What do you mean, no one says Go?" said Knuckleball to Kiyoshi-chan. Annie waited, sensing something between the two friends.

  "No one does," said Kiyoshi-chan. "The two rikishi must harmonize their readiness together. They must both sense when the other is ready to fight, and after they both touch their fists to the ground, they begin."

  "No one blows a whistle?" asked Knuckleball.

  "No," said Kiyoshi-chan.

  "No gun, or buzzer?" asked Knuckleball. "Doesn't the referee stamp his foot, or clap his hands, or yell, or something?"

  "No," said Kiyoshi-chan. "True sumo wrestlers are able to know the proper moment. Without this, you cannot be a true sumo wrestler."

  Knuckleball hesitated. "But," he said, "we aren't true sumo wrestlers. We're just two kids sumo wrestling in your backyard. Can't Annie just say Go this time?"

  "No, please," said Kiyoshi-chan. "When I sumo, I am no longer Kiyoshi-chan. I am Taiho himself."

  "So who's Taiho?" asked Knuckleball. "I've never heard of him." Annie shrugged and turned to go back into the house.

  "Of course not," said Kiyoshi-chan. "Americans know nothing of sumo."

  "That's not true," said Knuckleball. "I watch sumo on TV and check it online lots of times when there's a tournament going. I like Akebono, the yokozuna. He's about seven feet tall and weighs a ton. And two other yokozuna are Taka-somebody and his brother Wakasomebody. I can't remember their whole names. And Musashimaru is almost a yokozuna. So there."

  Kiyoshi-chan looked sideways at Knuckleball, wondering if he was joking." "There is no Akebono," he said. "Or Taka-Waka-somebody. Only Taiho and Kashiwado."