Boy Underground

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“Permission to offer advice you didn’t ask me for,” he said. “Yes. Please. I need all the advice I can get.” “Good. Because clearly the world is making you very unhappy.”

I felt a miniature lurch in my stomach. I wondered if he was reading my thoughts, and if he already knew more than I wanted anybody to know. “How do you know that?”

“Do you think our pain is invisible to others? It’s not. Yours is right there in your eyes and on your face. And now that you’ve told me you were waiting for something important and didn’t get it . . . well . . . let’s just say it’s very common to want to know how everything will be resolved. We have all these situations in our lives that have not yet wrapped up, and we want to know how they will end. It can drive us crazy, wanting to know. But life will always be incomplete. Our situations with people and things will always be in progress. By the time you find out where your friend lives now, there will be other situations in your li...

I breathed for a moment, trying to take in everything he’d said. It ...

“I don’t know how to do it any other way.” “I understand,” he said. “Of course you don’t. You’re just a young boy. I’ve had eighty-six years to practice living. And you’ve had . . . ?” “Fifteen...

“Enjoying the world just as it is. Understanding that many things are incomplete. Allowing it to be so. One day there will come a time in your life when you know how everything has ended, but, unfortunately, that will be the day you die. On that day, even if you are waiting for an answer to something, you will know how that story ended: you died before learning. But you don’t want this to be the day you die. Nobody does. Those are your two choices. You can be alive...

“Yes,” I said. “I guess it does. ...

“I know. Your problems don’t go away just because I told you this. But you knew that. You knew you wouldn’t come talk to me and walk awa...

“That’s true, I guess.” “Just practice, Steven. Practice accepting that things are incomplete. Practice accepting that the answer at the moment is that you do...

“You can accept something you hate.” I connected with his eyes again, and saw the patience there. Saw the way he cared about my turmoil. “How do you figure? That makes no sense.” “Did you think to accept something means t...

“No, my friend. To accept something means you stop trying to fight with what is. You stop trying to change things that are outside of your control to change. That’s exhausting. You must be very tired. Some things are impossible for us to change, and any time we try to do something impossible, it’s going to wear us out. It saps our life force. Our energy. Maybe you hate a thing more than anything. But it’s what is. To ...

“Whoa.” My head literally felt a little spinny. “That’s a lot to take in.” “It is.” “I’m going to go home and think about that.” “You do.” “Thank you for the tea.” ...

I would drop by many times in the months after that. Well into the following year. But in that moment I had to go home and settle my poor tired brain. And think. Think about what it meant to stop f...

That woman could grip the life out of a grudge.

Also my dad stopped trying to reach out to me, wherever I had gone. He just gave up and left me alone.

But I don’t really say any of that like it was a bad thing. I had turned my back on them, and they simply returned the favor. It didn’t even feel like a big change. It felt more like we went from pretending we were a real fam...

And whether the truth is happy or sad, I’ve found there is value ...

When I got my first look at the place, it changed me. I really don’t know how to explain it better than that. It was like . . . I knew there was a war on, but suddenly, here it was. It had come home to me. It was right in front of my eyes. This was an army installation during wartime. It was something I had always known was happening, but was now able to see for myself, close up.

It’s different when you see it for yourself, and close up.

The closer we got, the more I was able to take in details. The thing I remember best was the contrast. The stark, frightening-looking barracks lined up in rows. The workers picking in the fields in the hot sun. The big guns in the guard towers. Soldiers standing ramrod straight between rows with their weapons brandished over their shoulders, the long bayonets pointing up at an angle. And power poles. So many poles. So many lines. But, behind that, the ethereal mountain range. The blue sky shot through with c...

I saw an American flag high on a pole, and it was flapping wildly in the wind. Viciously. But I don’t remember feeling the wind on my face. I must have, but I don’t remember it....

“Sorry,” my driver said, “but this is as far as I go.” “I’m not going to Independence,” I said. “Oh? Where’re you going, then?” “Here.” He pulled into the entrance without answering. I could t...

Of course, Gordon Cho had been right. When you can’t know a thing . . . when it’s incomplete, and you can’t make it complete, then you have to accept it. But I had a chance to know.

I’m ninety-four years old, and the older I get, the less I know. I mean that in a good way. Seems most of the trouble in this world stems from the things we’re so sure we know. Now that I’m old enough and experienced enough to know I know nothing, the world is a constant, pleasant surprise, and the things I allow life to bring me are consistently better than anything I might have sought—or even imagined—for myself.

I like to think Gordon Cho would be proud. Or that he is proud. Depending on your beliefs about a thing like that.

Suki picked us up at baggage claim in San Francisco International Airport. I noticed that he walked with a cane now—one of those aluminum canes with a tripod of three legs at the bottom. That was new. But, otherwise, he didn’t look any different. He didn’t look any older. We came out to visit about every other year, and he never looked any older. Then again, once you hi...

We stopped when we saw each other, and beamed from a few steps away, and shared that initial moment that was happy and sad all at the same time. It used to be all happy, but as the years and the visits have gone by, I think ...

Nick died at age eighty-two, his second wife two years later. His daughter is still alive, and sends us a card at Christmas, but I don’t claim to see her much. Suki’s wife is gone, and his children, grandc...

Suki and I embraced, then Suki and Levi, and we waited for our bags to come up, watching the moving belt spin...

“I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this,” Suki said. “But I made a mistake. I didn’t realize that tomorrow’s the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. I wasn’t planning very well, and I didn’t think about it until after we arranged your visit. But don’t worry either way, because if you don’t want to do it, it’s not a problem. I can go later. I don’t have to do it on the e...

“If you’re inviting us to go,” I said, “I’m honored. Where is she buried?” He seemed surprised that I asked. I could see it on his face. “Manzanar,” he said. “I thou...

“I didn’t know they buried people on the site. And the graveyard is still there?” “Oh yes. Everything is preserved. It’s a historical site now. Well, not everything. The barracks have all been torn down. But there’s a visitors center. And the graveyard is kept up. I didn’t know how you would ...

It’s funny, the different things we remember. It’s not always the most important parts.

I’ll admit she might have been influenced by our Magic-Shrinking-Old-Man Syndrome. When you get to be our age, gravity is not your friend, and it’s hard not to end up looking like some kind of forest elf.

I went silent for a time, thinking yet again about my conversation with Nick about people being “level.” I realized I did that a lot in my teen years. Tried to be the savior. It wasn’t really the first time I’d made the observation, but it might have been the first time it occurred to me that I was probably the one I had really wished I could save. I wondered if all saviors were like that. Lost.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” I asked Suki in a low voice. “All those people coming through and staring at your grandmother’s grave?” “No,” he said. “They should know. I want them to know. Later than one would hope, for people to know, but at least they finally do.”

Maybe living long is the best revenge.

Or maybe it’s not the length of our lives that counts the most.

I think that, even though I don’t know if I’ll see him again or not, it feels okay that I don’t know. I decide I can accept that our story is incomplete. I allow it to be so.