For the Love of

The sirens wailed and grandpa’s knotted feet shuffled through the hallway. “Kenji? Kenji-chan!” He peered into the tidy room where his grandson’s tatami reclined and furrowed his brow.

Kenji was sleeping in nothing but a shirt and a pair of yellow underpants. He was only four, but ever since Grandpa was injured in the fishing accident (foot and back wrenched in a lay net) grandpa couldn’t lift large loads.

The sirens shrieked nearby but everyone who lived in the house was out to work. Sleeping Kenji depended on grandpa.

The old man flattened his hands like spatulas and tried scooping the boy up but the boy rolled over to his front and grandpa’s back cracked. “Aaah! Kenji-chan!”

The sirens cried along with the old man. His withered hands gripped the boy’s shirt and like a giant crane, he pulled Kenji into the air and threw him over one shoulder.

Kenji stirred a little, but Grandpa didn’t stop. He plopped the little boy inside a basket—the same basket used to hold his tools and food bundles, and pedaled as hard as he could.

The sirens were still roaring, beneath the growling of an angry sea. Grandpa wondered what someone could have done to make the ocean bristle like that. Sweat dripped onto his hands as he gripped the handlebars and he swore it was salt spray. He pedaled faster.

Miles and miles he pedaled, until he could no longer hear the sirens, until they were both safe.

Kenji tossed, swished, twinkled.

© M. Lee / All rights reserved