The Cicadas' Cry

TRAIN

rushes along the remnants of the old river. Buttoned up sararimen swayand grimace in the afternoon rush hour and tiny school children in white pithhelmet-like hats amble on and off the train at every station. They all look full of life and darkness, all with jet hair and smooth cheeks. I lean, tired, on the doorand eventually disembark at a little busy station in the suburban commercialborough of Koganei. The Tokyo eventide slams me in the face with all its heatand perfume. I cross the platform, down the stairs, and pass through the gates likeone of a million complacent cattle. From the station I make my way past thesweatshop drone of the pachinko parlor and gradually into a more verdantterritory, lined less with ramen shops and parked bicycles and more with familyhomes and trees. It's here that they catch up to me, those old cicadas.Under the hot summer sun, already listing in the sky, I remember themhanging lazily in the trees, singing a melancholy song. With each step I think backon times long past, summers played to the cicada's cry—resonant and electrical. Iremember long intense bike rides around the old neighborhood, green neat lawnsof one of Chicago's boroughs—the Ukrainian village. I remember how afterplaying tag on the jungle gym at Western play-lot I would always be overtaken bythis feeling of heat and sweat—a soiled thirst in the warm summer evening, as thecicadas sang their last song, giving it up to the grasshoppers on their fiddles andthe katydids. Fireflies would be about, roaming the thick air currents stirred up bycars droning by. And from somewhere in the distance I could hear firecrackersand after a time smell their scent. I rested on cold concrete steps—my friends and

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I and our bikes rested.We were a gang. There was Sergei, a ruddy-faced Ukrainian boy with ahaircut done at home with long scissors and a bowl. Sergei spoke in sloppyEnglish but we could always understand him. He went to summer school in thevillage. The place was flanked by a tall Orthodox Catholic church. Its copperdomes, covered in verdigris, sat atop high bell towers. I never ventured inside— my family was Roman Catholic—but the fear the place inspired in me from theoutside made me glad of it.I'd often see Sergei returning from school in his black trousers and whiteshirt, in late May, just as the days were getting warm. He never dared to doanything fun, and risk soiling his pristine duds. I felt outclassed by that uniform, asmy catholic school required a much less elegant pair of navy trousers and a lightblue polo shirt. Our shoes were the same, always a beat up pair of black leatherones, with frayed laces coming loose and worn rubber soles.Besides Sergei there was also Stan. His family was of no single descent— equal parts Polish and Irish and German. He was an older brother to a girl Sergeiand I both detested. We had no reason to, but she was a girl and we were boys, sowe did. Stan was really just a jerk who picked on us because we were younger.With a big build and crew cut and round wire-rimmed glasses—he was neither atough guy nor a weakling. He was a few years older than us, but at our age adifference of a year or two seemed more like a decade.Finally there was I, skinny and tall—knees often scraped and bruised.* * *A summer for a kid is a blissful lifetime spanned between two eternities of catholic-pain and school-misery. A kid is born in late May and dies in September.Our lives revolved around those hot summer months. At times a kind of pleasantboredom set in and the search for something to do began. It was then that wewandered around the village, vagabonds or nomads scavenging pastimes like freshkills. Sergei would seldom come along seeing as he had no bike, so often it was

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Stan and me—or me all alone.We cruised the back alleys of the village and all its green avenues. My bikewas a mountain one with 18 speeds and thick tires wide as elephants' feet. I felt sofree gliding down smooth asphalt streets, sitting atop the seat. But I neverwandered out of the village on any forays. While the village was safe and lush theneighboring areas did not have the same charm to us. To the west was HumboldtPark, a Puerto Rican neighborhood with cracked sidewalks that we irrationallyfeared in those days. To the east was Wicker Park, far from home, all bars and big streets with lots of cars. And to the north and south were other parts of the greatervillage but we were too afraid to wander too far from home or cross any big streetsto venture there. Our meanderings were limited to a perfect square between theavenues Western and Damen to the west and east, and between Chicago Ave. andAugusta Blvd. to the south and north. It was in this square that we tried to keepcool in the heat and pass the time.It didn't take a lot of exploring to find the old warehouse on the southeastcorner of our turf. We didn't know what purpose it once served and we didn'tcare. To us, its derelict concrete loading dock and rusting steal doors were awelcome sight—an oasis in a desert of green lawns and red-bricked three storyhouses. It was here we found fun and refuge, as we tore up and down the lot. Toour minds, its asphalt was cracked and ancient as the pyramids or the sphinx. Stanoften complained of those rough conditions since his bike was built for the roadwith tall slender tires and a svelte frame built for speed on the smooth open road.The old warehouse's loading dock had a ramp leading up to it so we couldride up on the dock on our bikes. At about four feet high, the dock wasn't thatdaunting but a jump from it on a bike was a daring feat. For a long time I couldn'tattempt it. It wasn't until once under an off-noon sun a promising breeze andoptimistic blue sky, I went for it. I rolled up the ramp onto the dock and peddledhard and steady, then riding along the edge of the long dock I coasted and themoment before my leap wound on for longer than it should have. I wonder now if I had actually felt the peace I so vividly remember riding on the edge of the dock.I leaned to my left towards the edge, and right as the front went over I