… By now, it was late in the day. The sun had sunk low on the horizon by the time Seiichi offered his final prayer in the direction of the setting sun. He wanted Zenji to bless the work they had done together, and he reached into his coat pocket for the shaker with sanctified water. He meant to hand it to his son, but when he turned toward Zenji, the boy was gone. The only sign of the lad was the top of the ladder moving scraping back and forth against the eve, as Zenji hurried down it. Seiichi sighed as Zenji called up to him from below, “Gotta go, Pop! I’m late for . . . ”

 

Seiichi could not make out where his son was going, but it didn’t matter—the moment was lost. Letting go of his disappointment, Seiichi turned to face the nearest lightning rod and in the absence of his son addressed it as if the rod were his son. “Most human beings,” he said, “don’t believe the stones they walk upon are alive, nor do you believe that you are alive, or that the inner fire that attracts a higher fire is in all of us; but I know. I know, and I have great confidence in you.” Seiichi then blessed each of the lightning rods on the roof with the sanctified water and recited an appropriate passage from the sutras to inspire them in their task.

 

As Seiichi began his own descent down the ladder, a lone cloud passed overhead. In an inspired mood, Seiichi paused on the ladder and spoke to the cloud. “How I would be mocked by my neighbors,” he said to the cloud, “if I told them you were alive. Or if I revealed to them that the rake and hoe they use have their feelings hurt when they are carelessly cast aside. Alas! I am a coward who never dared to tell Haruki how much he hurt his worn-out old tractor by cursing at it when it didn’t start promptly. The human eye sees almost nothing; the ear hears even less; yet we foolish humans believe we see and hear all, and know all there is to know.” The cloud passed without reply. On his way into his house, Seiichi looked up at the roof and shouted at the lightning rods, “Don’t forget who you are! Remember—upright and erect!” Closing the screen door, he paused for a moment thinking he heard a reply. It seemed the lightning rods were calling back to him saying, “When the fire comes, we’ll be ready!”

 

But the fire never came to the Okawas. Though lightning raged in the sky above them as gods and demons fought fiercely in the storm clouds of late Spring, and their thunderbolts occasionally struck the neighboring houses and barns setting them ablaze, the Okawa residence was untouched. Everyone knows the Kansas sky is a playground for dark forces; that fierce storms and violent winds come crashing down onto the earth in torrents of contempt, rippling across the fields with the force of an ocean tsunami.

 

Above the Okawas, storm cells frequently churned the sky with whirlpools of fire and ice even in mid-summer. Winds ripped the roofs off of houses; hail beat exposed cattle to death, and lightning turned trees into flaming matchsticks; but the war in the sky always sailed past the Okawa residence. The demons tiptoed around the Okawa garden, so as not to harm a single leaf or blossom. Raging across the sky they always dodged the Okawa’s lightning rods, which were for them as fearful a defense as Seiichi’s chants and Nikki’s songs. On the day when an F3 tornado slashed through the neighbor’s field, hurling cows and pieces of his barn into the air, not a shingle on the Okawas’ roof was disturbed, and not a flower was plucked from their garden.