election, the four men got along well. They certainly enjoyed being as rude as possible about each other, and used the foulest language, even when children were around. But it was only a bit of theater. After all, they’d all been born in the same small village and had known each other their whole lives. They weren’t suddenly going to start hating each other. Their friendship couldn’t be switched off like a TV. But family relationships were more difficult. When things turned sour there was no way back. You could see that from Yoshi-nī and his sister, Hatsue. The four men all agreed on that uncomfortable fact.
They arrived very early in the morning. I was leaving for volleyball practice just before 7:30 when I heard voices. They were standing outside the house, chatting.
“Dad!” I shouted. “They’re here!”
Dad appeared through the front door in a hurriedly pulled-on pair of track pants, his hair sticking up at the back of his head.
“You’re very early, gentlemen,” he said, easing down the ski-jump tufts of hair.
“Shenshei,” said Iwaya, “we thought that if we’re goin’ to town maybe we could um…” He gestured—a turn of his right wrist.
“Huh?” Dad said, imitating the move. He was still sleepy.
“Pachinko, shenshei,” said Someya. “Why don’t we play some pachinko?”
“Ah! Pachinko!” Dad said happily. “Sounds good!”
Then Mom appeared.
“How about some tea?” she asked.
“Great!” they all said. “Thank you!” and trooped into the police office.
“If only we’d waited until we got to town to go to the pachinko place there,” said Dad.
They’d gone to the pachinko parlor on the highway this side of the pass. Iwaya and Hidaka had both won 30,000 yen there the previous day and they swore it paid out better than the one in town. Someya agreed, without giving the matter much thought. It had just been remodeled after a change of ownership. “Places like that always give better odds,” he’d said.
“I should have known we’d be taken for a ride,” Dad groaned.
“People who forget the past repeat the past,” said Mom coldly. “You shouldn’t have gone at all.”
Dad sat in red-faced silence.
When they’d come out of the pachinko place the sun was already down. The western fringes of the hills were turning from indigo to black.
“We should at least have left before dark,” said Dad with a heavy sigh.
Keiji was keen to hear all about it. He’d often said he wanted to see the animals that came out along the road up in the hills at night. Mom had said we couldn’t have pets because of Keiji’s asthma—which was maybe why he was so interested in animals. He was always watching nature programs on TV or looking at books about animals.
“There are no lights on the road up there,” said Dad. “It was pitch black.”
“Must have been scary,” said Keiji.
“Not really—there were five of us in the car—we were enjoying ourselves.”
“But wasn’t that part of the problem?”
“Yes,” said Dad, glancing at Mom. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“And when you came out of the tunnel…”
“Yes. It was just after the tunnel. I saw a kind of flash in front of us.”
“Their eyes?”
“Yes. There were deer on the road.”
“I wish I could have seen them. I’ve never seen any in real life, never seen a monkey, never seen a boar. How many deer were there?”
“Three, I think. One of them was small.”
“Did the big ones have antlers?”
“No.”
“So, they were does, then. One of them must have been the little one’s mother.” Keiji was proud of his knowledge. “And that’s when it happened?”
“Yeah. It was stupid. The other guys in the car all shouted when they saw the deer. ‘Hit one, shenshei! Deer! Hit one!’”
“Mr. Hashimoto said he’d hit one before, right?”
“Yeah, I think so. He hit it, kept the meat, and ate it. But just then—in the car—we’d been talking about a boar.”
Keiji looked astonished.
“Somebody hit a boar? Who?”
“Didn’t I tell you? It was Ken, the guy who runs the Bungo Strait guesthouse—you know him, he sometimes brings us fish. He saw a boar on the road one day and thought to himself, ‘A bit of stew would be good,’ and drove straight at it. The car hit it hard, and the boar flew up into the air and landed in a heap on the road. But it wasn’t dead. It was only pretending. It lay there, waiting for Ken to get out of the car and walk over. Then it jumped up, ran straight at him, knocked him over, and pinned him to the ground. The boar’s front trotters were on his chest and he couldn’t move. It was so heavy he could hardly breathe. The boar was snorting angrily through its nostrils and Ken thought he was going to be eaten, but he was saved at the last moment. Just as he’d given up all hope, a car came by. When the boar saw the car, it calmly walked off toward the hills. As it was leaving the road, it turned around, looked Ken straight in the eye, and gave a scornful smile. Then it disappeared. When Ken got back to the car, he saw there was a terrible dent in the front. And he was covered in fleas from the boar. He was scratching himself for days!”
“Boars aren’t carnivores, Dad,” Keiji corrected him with a momentary frown. “And I wonder if they really smile.” His eyes were now sparkling with curiosity.
“Well…” said Dad, with a shrug. “But anyway, they coaxed me into it with their shouting: ‘Hit it! Hit it!’ I shouldn’t have listened. I suppose I must have been thinking: It’s not a boar; it’s a deer. It won’t cause any damage… And there were no other vehicles around. ‘Hit it! Hit it!’ they kept shouting and before I knew what I was doing I had the accelerator flat to the floor. Then there was a terrible noise and I slammed on the break. As soon as we stopped, everyone jumped out of the car and there was something lying on the road.
“But it wasn’t dead, was it?”
“No. When we got close it hopped up and ran off.”
“After being hit by a car…amazing!”
It was the second time Keiji had heard the story, but he looked just as surprised as he had the first time.
“Yeah,” said Dad. “Then we went back to the car. It was in a hell of a state. The bumper was bent, the left headlight was broken, and there was a dent in the hood. The other four were laughing their heads off. ‘The deer was tougher than the car,’ they said.
