The Heat of the Sun

swung the wheel sharply, trundling off the road on to a rugged track. The jeep jolted violently over
potholes.
    ‘What’s the idea?’ I said. ‘I’ve a plane to catch.’
    ‘One of the sights – well, one I like to see.’
    A sign ahead of us read RYAN RANCH , but this was no ranch, or was a ranch no longer. We drew up before a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Inside, across a
tussocky field, was a line of barracks.
    ‘There’s a good view from here,’ said Trouble.
    ‘View of what?’ I said, but in a moment more I knew. A siren sounded, and lines of bowed, ragged-looking figures shuffled towards a parade ground. They were far away, and only slowly
did I register that all of them had black, sleek hair and Oriental faces.
    ‘Japs,’ I said, as if I werer surprised.
    ‘Americans’ – Trouble tore open a pack of Lucky Strikes – ‘of Japanese descent. Up at Los Alamos there are rumours we’ll use them for radiation research. Of
course, we wouldn’t do a thing like that. We’re Americans. But you see why we need public relations.’
    Gazing at the prisoners, I thought of Nagasaki. How strange they had seemed, the days I spent there! I thought of Trouble as he was then and as he was now. I looked at the track behind us: red
earth, rocks, scrubby vegetation. My mind made a jump and I said, ‘You don’t want to be here.’
    Trouble lit a Lucky and tossed the packet to me.
    ‘I have to be somewhere.’ He looped the fingers of one hand through the chain-link fence. ‘There’s an expression in Japan: Shikata ga nai. It can’t be
helped. Oh, well. Too bad.’
    I said softly, ‘What are you saying?’
    ‘Only the senator protects me, you know.’ Trouble’s grip on the fence tightened – painfully, I thought. Many times he had perplexed me, but I thought I was on the brink
of revelation as he turned to me in that red morning and said, ‘What would you say if you never saw me again?’
    My heart plummeted. I was frightened, but only said again, ‘What are you saying?’
    He grinned. ‘Just kidding. Come on, slowpoke! We’ve a plane to catch.’
    ‘ I have, you mean.’
    ‘Me too. I’m coming to Carmel! It’ll be like old times.’
    ‘Hey – Sophie Tucker.’
    I nudged Trouble. The radio was low under the clamour of the bus. It was crowded: up front, a party of soldiers on leave sprawled at odd angles over several seats, guzzled beer, and played cards
with many a guffaw, many a scuffle. Girls at the back shrieked and laughed and encouraged the soldiers if they came that way. A college boy, earnest behind horn-rimmed spectacles, read Karl Marx
until a GI told him to lighten up and flung the book from the window. The summer afternoon was deep and long, and Sophie Tucker foghorned out the one about the blue river, blue river... did it hold
the memory of a vanished dream?
    Trouble had not stirred. His head had fallen against my shoulder. The night before, in Los Angeles, we had reeled from bar to bar. It had been like the old days: I hadn’t laughed so much
in years. I almost suggested we didn’t come to Carmel, but I couldn’t let Aunt Toolie down.
    Heat shimmered from the road and beat through the bus’s metal roof as we wound our way up the California coast. On one side was a vista of powdery, pale rocks; on the other, the blue
Pacific, foaming whitely.
    I thought of all the time that had passed – thirty years, since we were boys at Blaze; for me, thirty years largely wasted. What had I done? First I had thought I would be a poet, then a
novelist; I was over forty and was neither. There are those, I suppose, who seize life early, who see at once what they should become and how to become it. For others, all is hazy. Perhaps we are
empty: still, we feel there is a core in us we can never quite grasp.
    I closed my eyes. Again I was a boy at Blaze: I would always be a boy at Blaze. But not Woodley Sharpless, bookish Woodley with his bad leg. I was one of the Townsend twins, sprawling in the hay
with Trouble in the back of a farmer’s truck as we trundled down a road that led from Burlington, Vermont. Wild exploits had filled the night before, but never mind, it was another day; the
sun shone and the boys were coming home.
    ‘Uncle Grover?’
    I tapped my uncle’s arm and he started. In bright sunshine, the little man had been sitting at the wheel of a red Cadillac Series 62 convertible, plump fingers laced across his paunch.
‘Dear me, I am sorry! Rather too