The Book of Kane and Margaret: A Novel by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi

Author:Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
Format: epub

the thief’s body

Kio Joyful was the name claimed by the imaginary creature who haunted Yoshikane Araki’s dreams during his Gila River camp years, 1942 to 1945. Kane was six-years-old and unconscious when Joyful’s name first emerged from his lips. The cries began as whispers, Joyful, Kio Joyful, Kio Joyful, and then intensified into howls. Kane sobbed and his clothes darkened with sweat. Then Kane twisted himself partially awake, Joyful, Kio Joyful, his throat inflamed, and the name fell agonizingly like burning sand past his mouth.

Kashi and Yoshi Araki had no remedy for their son’s misfortunes. Shaking him out of the trance did not lessen the frequency of Kane’s dreams. Tinctures, tonics, cold compresses, massages, and acupuncture provided no discernable impact. The Arakis asked the interned Reverend Kenichi Toguri to perform religious healing and cleansing of their Butte Camp barracks. Toguri spent three days and three nights on his knees, humming, praying, gesturing, spreading his anointing oils, igniting his safflower incense, but Kio Joyful relented for neither man nor God. Kio Joyful, Kio Joyful. The words lived like a set of black wings roosting in the planks and rafters of the Araki family barrack.

Kane’s dreams of Kio Joyful began in a stifling train car on the Araki family’s four-day journey from Tulare Assembly Center to Gila River. With no opportunity for bathing, passengers filled their dress socks, blouses, dress coats, kerchiefs, and pork pie hats with their daily sweat. An earthy musk, a scent like sour flowers thickened the air. In cars that held children and the infirm were the acrid smells of urine and infection. The passengers who succeeded in falling into a shallow, troubled sleep managed just a few hours. Like a shrewd mosquito, Kio appeared the moment Kane nodded off in the heat and his exhaustion.

At the beginning of all his Kio Joyful dreams, Kane walked through his family’s avocado orchard on the Central Coast of California. The day was uncomfortably bright, damp, airless. Kane’s shirt gripped his skin the way a darkened peel of fruit clings to its too-ripe flesh. In the distance, standing before a green-black copse of trees, Kane saw a uniformed man waving him over. The man was holding a small object that glinted blindingly as it struck sunlight. A pocket watch? A mirror? A ring of keys? By the time Kane approached close enough to make the object out, it was too late for him to turn and flee. Kio Joyful held out a needlepoint knife.

Kio was a dwarfish man, perhaps six inches taller than Kane. He was immaculately dressed in a dark blue tunic and trousers, a flattop cap and horsehide ankle boots. But the spotlessness and formality of his attire only worked to contrast the most monstrous face Kane ever had witnessed. Kio Joyful had the yellow-orange complexion of a marigold. His face was broad, his ears pointed, his nose flattened. His most gruesome features sprung from his mouth. Kio had both a set of buckteeth and a pronounced set of upper canines that resembled fangs.

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