Shogie, Washington, June 8, 1952

Shogie is small and sleepy. Utterly incapable of hiding a murder. Until it did.
 

A quiet town that possesses everything young poets most desire – foggy mornings, rainy afternoons, quiet evenings that spark up here and there with fireflies. But Shogie has chosen, willfully and defiantly, to remain obscure. It boasts of no famous sights, no famous buildings, no famous people. It doesn’t boast at all, except occasionally of excessive rainfall. And so it is that no tourists come. They would rather go to Carnation with its waterfall or to Edison with the grand A&P supermarket. While in Shogie, the forests remain untamed, the waterfront undeveloped, and the shops humdrum.

Even so, Shogie gets its share of visitors. Tourists no, visitors yes. They appear like a swarm of drunk bees every September, students at the University of Shogie, known among locals as Shuni. A small town with a large university, picturesque but remote. That’s what the disappointed parents always say: picturesque but remote, not picturesque and remote.

She didn’t kill herself. She couldn’t have.

Cowards stayed silent with blood on their hands.

And soon death will come again …

The words from the letter beat their wings against my skull as I cycled into Shuni’s tall, spiked gates. My heart thumping with fear. And guilt.