The Mushroom Man, fiction by Sharon Hashimoto
“The Mushroom Man” was published in a Raven Chronicles chapbook, The Girl Who Always Thought It Was Summer, Vol 7, No 1, 1997. It will be published in our upcoming anthology, This Light Called Darkness, Selected work from 1997-2005.
The Mushroom Man
by Sharon Hashimoto
Labor Day weekend.
And the air is rich with golden leaves that ride upon the wind. Dusty, sun-dried browns turn mushy, muddy wet black with hazy fog and misty rain. On cool clear nights the moon hangs low, glowing cheddar cheese yellow. And V-shaped flights of birds point arrows to the south.
Labor Day weekend, and the whispers begin.
Port Townsend. Shelton. Cascades.
Whispers that echo like wind through the trees, raining secrets that soak deep into the mind. Whispers that pour like rivers from overflowing mouths down Rainier Avenue and Jackson, Empire Way and Genesee. Whispers that speak of mushrooms.
"Last year, we only found about two dozen . . ."
". . . hope it rains . . . much too dry . . ."
"The Ogawas went last week . . ."
"Uwajimaya is selling them at five dollars a pound!"
Creamy, brown-speckled-caps with firm stems, smelling of pine and dark rich earth. Cooked in butter. Steamed in rice or soup. Frozen and hoarded like gold coins locked deep in icy safes. Sent by some to far away Hawaii, California, the East Coast—to be opened and relished by a black-haired, brown-eyed people. Found even in lean years, in ample abundance, by Osam.
"Osam? Tall, skinny . . .with horn rim glasses?"
"Didn't he work for the City?"
"You know, Toshio's middle son."
"He found how many?!" they would exclaim, their voices rising on the last note and lingering on the air with the tone of gentle wind chimes. "Where?" they would murmur, jealous of his riches, "Where does he go?"
And he would nod, smile and say nothing while passing out generous quantities to friends and families who knew better than to ask. Too many battles had been waged over "secret locations." Too many whispers and secrets had built walls between friends, made enemies among families.
Sure-footed Osam, whose journeying feet travelled far, past dull red mushrooms with shiny tops and fragile porcelain-white mushrooms that dipped in the center. Keen eyes would spot treasure hidden beneath a mottled forest floor. And clever fingers would probe deep beneath tree roots to expose tender young buds.
Sam to some. Osam to others. Papa to me.
He was a centipede of tall long legs that walked swiftly down the rain-drenched streets of Seattle. Towering stilts that wandered deep into the woods, over decaying logs and padding softly over brown-green moss. Legs I used to hug tight and smile at the face that floated among the clouds above mine. Sweat and grass and the odor of trees and branches and the creek about him. That was Papa. Against the cool rubber of his boots, I would always smell mushrooms.
He was mountains and magic and memories—a mystery in the fine chain that bound me to him, and to Grandma and Grandpa. Sometimes he was sad and sometimes he was old, his eyes hungering for something distant, far-off. And watching him dreamily patch his worn faded boots, I would think questions at him, never daring to ask out loud. Where do the mountains begin, where do they end? Papa, do you know? How do you get there from here? Then feeling my eyes upon him, he would look up and push his glasses back up his narrow nose. His thin, even voice still tinged with smoky thoughts would remind me that homework must be done before bed.
A quiet man. A comfortable man. A quiet and comfortable house.
But some nights I would wake, snapped out of sleep like a rubber band. Listening to the house waiting, like the silence before a thunderstorm. Smothered and imprisoned between blankets and sheets, I would lie, feeling the tension run like electricity throughout the house. Then, just after midnight. Hushed, roughedged voices would claw the night. The edge of a broken glass, it cut and made my dreams bleed into the dark.
Mama and Papa. Mostly Mama. Talking in broken Japanese. Whispers in bits of English.
" . . . don't like you going by yourself. Why can't you take somebody with you?"
"Dare?''
"Davey . . . Sam . . . Big Joe . . ."
". . . hanashimasu . . ."
"Yes, about my secre . . ."
"Shush! You'll wake the children!"
And the ricocheting emotions would bounce off the walls, always returning to me as I hid, buried in my bed, feeling the shadows hovering near. Then I would dream of dark clammy places that would yield to sweaty sheets and pillows thrown in fear upon the floor. Even morning sunlight and skies of robin egg blue would not chase away the autumn feelings in the air.
Where does Papa go?" I once asked Mama as she packed a chicken-filled Tupperware and a thermos into a sturdy cardboard box.
"Tomorrow? East to Mercer Island, all the way down 1-90. To Easton, I think. To the Olympics, maybe, on Sunday. And back to work on Monday."
"Olympics. Easton." I murmured softly.
"What's that?"
I watched her carefully as she fitted paper plates and napkins beside the thermos. "Do we get to go?"
"Linda's going to Sally's birthday party tomorrow and you have a piano lesson."
"When do we get to go?"
And Mama stopped her quick, butterfly-like movements to stare at me. She frowned and her eyebrows were straight lines across her forehead. "When do we get to go?" her quiet voice mocked mine. "When he asks."
She sat down heavily in the kitchen chair that wobbled because one leg had been bent, then sent me to the basement shelves for a can of olives. Anxious to escape her mood, I tramped half-running down the steps, jumping the fourth stair to the bottom.
"Please walk up the, stairs," she shouted down to me.
"Yes Mama."
But I knew she was remembering . . .
Butter and heavily scented pine cut fresh that evening had run like bright streamers of heavenly aromas that lit up the house. Papa had smiled and bubbled, a bright yellow balloon, as he carried in four boxes of freshly picked mushrooms.
"So many . . ." Mama had whispered, her voice filtered softly around, through, and under themountains of mushrooms. Quickly she had rolled up her sleeves, sorting the young buds from the wormy, blossomed mushrooms. I had watched her washing, cutting, dicing, cooking, freezing mushrooms in a thousand and one ways.
Puzzle pieces, I had thought to myself. Each gently gathered and somehow fitted into the quiet man leaning with one hip against the kitchen table. Part Mama. Part me and Linda, Grandma and Grandpa. Forests filled with pieces.
"Matsutake . . ." I had whispered. Mushroom man. Grown wild. Hidden in dark burrows beneath fallen trees. Dormant, but full of quiet secrets that touched me like the flying seasons. I had smiled up at Papa, not seeing the awful grayness creep into my father's face as his hands fluttered upwards to his chest before collapsing on the floor . . .
Winds blow chill on September days and the bright fall sun no longer warms my face and arms.The rain falls soft like chilly, early morning dreams and half-recalled memories that I try to forget. Falling leaves drift like Papa's rising voice, arguing with the doctor, with Mama, with the strange voices that called to him from the past. That sometimes call to me.
Sometimes I sit in Papa's dusty room where he hung his compass and hip boots from a long nail pounded deep into the wall. The feet of his boots always swing when I enter searching for the light switch above the naval clock that used to keep perfect time. Sunlight has dulled the calendar painting of green grass in a green Japan with temples and women in kimonos. A picture of a very young Mama and Papa as a young man with old eyes is pinned to the wall. They stand before a row of dilapidated houses painted like neglected crops in a barren land. Mama says it was taken in Heart Mountain, that she remembers little of it. I look at her eyes in the picture and see how they have faded and dulled since then. Haunted eyes, I think to myself.
I remember Papa, sitting bent in his chair, after his illness and the sudden quietness that filled the house. Of the smell of mushrooms that lingered for days. Of Mama's thin and worried face.
One Saturday I will always relive. Half-waking before the sun rose and listening for the birds that were no longer there, flown south to warm sunny lands. Wondering what had wakened me, I yawned and eased onto my side, heard the bed creak quietly beneath me. Mind drifting, I lay muffled in the soft sounds of the early darkness. But distantly I heard again the soft shuffle of boots on hardwood floors and the final sound of a door closing, and came suddenly awake.
I remember that evening and the phone ringing. Twice long, one short. Mama crying softly in her bed. Uncle Jinx and Aunt Fumi speaking with quick looks to the neighbors:
"His heart. It was his heart."
". . . but where?"
"The south slope of Mount Rainier. Deep inside. Past the lumber roads and trails."
"She begged him not to go . . ."
“. . . so stupid . . . so stubborn . . ."
"Greedy?"
"What then?"
"Maybe . . . I don't know."
Labor Day weekend, and the whispers begin.
#
“The Mushroom Man” was first published in Home To Stay, Asian American Fiction by Women,edited by Sylvia Watanabe and Carol Bruchac, Greenfield Review Press (1990). Also published in Raven Chronicles, Vol 7, No 1 (1997).
Sharon Hashimoto's first book of poetry, The Crane Wife (co-winner of the 2003 Nicholas Roerich Prize and published by Story Line Press), has recently been reprinted by Red Hen Press. Her work has appeared in American Fiction, The American Scholar, Barrow Street, Louisiana Literature, North American Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Shenandoah and other literary publications. Her second book, MORE AMERICAN (Off the Grid Press, 2021), won the 2021 Off the Grid Poetry Prize and the 2022 Washington State Book Award in Poetry. She is a recipient of a N.E.A. fellowship in poetry. Recently retired from Highline College after twenty-nine years of teaching, she writes poetry, short stories, and is currently at work on a novel.