Astride a Pink Horse Read Online Free
him.
“Who was our visitor?” she asked, holding a pair of aviator sunglasses that she hadn’t been wearing on her arrival in one hand.
“A reporter,” Bosack said, turning to face her. “And you can be jack-sure he’s just the first of ’em.”
“He seemed to stare at Dr. Reed and me from behind those sunglasses for quite a long time. Think we’ll see him again?”
“Absolutely,” said the sheriff, watching Cozy’s truck move slowly along the highway shoulder and knowing as he watched the dually’s retreat that the man behind the wheel was no doubt staring through sunglasses directly back at them.
She could hear Rikia down in the basement making his strange guttural airplane sounds as he piloted an imaginary World War II Japanese fighter in a dogfight over the Sea of Japan. It always upset her when her forty-eight-year-old cousin cloistered himself in the basement to play mindless toy airplane games for hours on end. But Kimiko Takata knew better than to interrupt him. Any intrusion ran the risk of sending him deeper into his fantasy world, a world filled with samurai warriors, long-dead and mostly forgotten Japanese fighter pilots, and above all honor. A world he could sometimes remain immersed in for days.
If left undisturbed, he would come up for air in thirty or forty minutes. She knew his routine. After all, Rikia Takata was a man of rigid routine. And when he came upstairs, they’d have plenty of time to talk about the news flash she’d just watched crawl across the bottom of her television screen. Time to discuss the unwelcome intrusion that had sent her rushing to her medicine cabinet for Pepto-Bismol and two aspirin.
Unaware of Kimiko’s distress, Rikia remained at the imaginary controls of a Mitsubishi A-6M, known commonly as a Japanese Zero. He was sequestered in a musty cellar in a quaint Queen Annecottage in Laramie, Wyoming, engaging the American enemy in another air battle. Rikia’s lengthy groans and high-pitched nasal whines rose from the cellar as he clutched a U.S. F4U Corsair model airplane in his right hand and an A-6M in his left.
Shigeo Fukumoto, Japan’s most famous World War II ace, was piloting the A-6M, and a less skilled American pilot, as always, was behind the controls of the Corsair. A low-pitched groan rose from the pit of Rikia’s stomach, becoming louder and louder as he swirled the planes around in a circle above his head, then swung them up and down through the air. Inch by inch and second by second, the A-6M closed in on the Corsair’s tail as the
rat-a-tat-tat
of machine-gun fire reverberated from Rikia’s tongue. Suddenly the machine-gun fire stopped as the Corsair, hit and out of control, spiraled toward the top of a nearby Ping-Pong table, emitting flames and smoke from its tail, and disappeared into the choppy waters of the Sea of Japan. Smiling, Rikia whispered, “Justice.”
Skimming the tabletop to make certain of his kill, the ghost of Shigeo Fukumoto then nosed his A-6M skyward to disappear in an imaginary curtain of clouds.
Erupting in a near-sexual climactic sigh, Rikia set the two model airplanes down on the Ping-Pong table, stepped to his left, and recorded another chalk mark and Fukumoto kill on a blackboard he’d mounted as a teenager on the basement wall. He’d recorded thousands of kills since then, but his kill number for the year stood at fifty-three.
Emotionally drained, he moved the two model airplanes he’d been playing with to their respective Japanese and American ends of the Ping-Pong table to join planes from other Allied and Axis nations.
A very nervous-sounding Kimiko opened the basement door and called out, “Rikia, come up here, please, and now! It’s important!”
Rikia frowned, stomped to the foot of the stairs, and yelled up to the woman who’d pretty much raised him, “Can’t it wait?”
Staring down at her slightly built, unshaven cousin, Kimiko said, “No, Rikia. It can’t!”
Shaking his head and
“Who was our visitor?” she asked, holding a pair of aviator sunglasses that she hadn’t been wearing on her arrival in one hand.
“A reporter,” Bosack said, turning to face her. “And you can be jack-sure he’s just the first of ’em.”
“He seemed to stare at Dr. Reed and me from behind those sunglasses for quite a long time. Think we’ll see him again?”
“Absolutely,” said the sheriff, watching Cozy’s truck move slowly along the highway shoulder and knowing as he watched the dually’s retreat that the man behind the wheel was no doubt staring through sunglasses directly back at them.
She could hear Rikia down in the basement making his strange guttural airplane sounds as he piloted an imaginary World War II Japanese fighter in a dogfight over the Sea of Japan. It always upset her when her forty-eight-year-old cousin cloistered himself in the basement to play mindless toy airplane games for hours on end. But Kimiko Takata knew better than to interrupt him. Any intrusion ran the risk of sending him deeper into his fantasy world, a world filled with samurai warriors, long-dead and mostly forgotten Japanese fighter pilots, and above all honor. A world he could sometimes remain immersed in for days.
If left undisturbed, he would come up for air in thirty or forty minutes. She knew his routine. After all, Rikia Takata was a man of rigid routine. And when he came upstairs, they’d have plenty of time to talk about the news flash she’d just watched crawl across the bottom of her television screen. Time to discuss the unwelcome intrusion that had sent her rushing to her medicine cabinet for Pepto-Bismol and two aspirin.
Unaware of Kimiko’s distress, Rikia remained at the imaginary controls of a Mitsubishi A-6M, known commonly as a Japanese Zero. He was sequestered in a musty cellar in a quaint Queen Annecottage in Laramie, Wyoming, engaging the American enemy in another air battle. Rikia’s lengthy groans and high-pitched nasal whines rose from the cellar as he clutched a U.S. F4U Corsair model airplane in his right hand and an A-6M in his left.
Shigeo Fukumoto, Japan’s most famous World War II ace, was piloting the A-6M, and a less skilled American pilot, as always, was behind the controls of the Corsair. A low-pitched groan rose from the pit of Rikia’s stomach, becoming louder and louder as he swirled the planes around in a circle above his head, then swung them up and down through the air. Inch by inch and second by second, the A-6M closed in on the Corsair’s tail as the
rat-a-tat-tat
of machine-gun fire reverberated from Rikia’s tongue. Suddenly the machine-gun fire stopped as the Corsair, hit and out of control, spiraled toward the top of a nearby Ping-Pong table, emitting flames and smoke from its tail, and disappeared into the choppy waters of the Sea of Japan. Smiling, Rikia whispered, “Justice.”
Skimming the tabletop to make certain of his kill, the ghost of Shigeo Fukumoto then nosed his A-6M skyward to disappear in an imaginary curtain of clouds.
Erupting in a near-sexual climactic sigh, Rikia set the two model airplanes down on the Ping-Pong table, stepped to his left, and recorded another chalk mark and Fukumoto kill on a blackboard he’d mounted as a teenager on the basement wall. He’d recorded thousands of kills since then, but his kill number for the year stood at fifty-three.
Emotionally drained, he moved the two model airplanes he’d been playing with to their respective Japanese and American ends of the Ping-Pong table to join planes from other Allied and Axis nations.
A very nervous-sounding Kimiko opened the basement door and called out, “Rikia, come up here, please, and now! It’s important!”
Rikia frowned, stomped to the foot of the stairs, and yelled up to the woman who’d pretty much raised him, “Can’t it wait?”
Staring down at her slightly built, unshaven cousin, Kimiko said, “No, Rikia. It can’t!”
Shaking his head and
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