Short Story: "How to Dispose of an Amplifier"

Three days after my father died, I found myself having to dispose of an amplifier in Kawanaka.

Kawanaka is an entertainment district that spreads along the west bank of the Asahi River, which flows through City A in A Prefecture in the northern Tohoku region. For a while after the war, it was said to be the largest of its kind in Tohoku, with restaurants, cabarets, movie theaters, and geisha houses crowding the narrow streets.

All that remains now are low-rise mixed-use buildings, signs rusted by the river breeze, and stories about how great it used to be.

Even so, the lights would come on when the sun went down.

There were people who drank, and people who served the drinks. When the night ended, empty bottles, food waste, and faces that couldn't be shown in the daylight were brought out through the back doors.

My father's shop was on the edge of that Kawanaka.

Snack Ruby.

My father used to say he hated the name because it sounded like a woman's, but he didn't want to spend the money to replace the sign left by the previous owner, so he used it for thirty-two years.

I wasn't closing the shop because my father died.

My father died after it had already been decided that the shop would close.

His liver had been failing for a long time. It seems that for the last month, after serving water-diluted whiskey to customers, he would go into the kitchen and vomit by himself.

According to the agreement with the landlord, I had to vacate the shop by six the next morning.

From nine in the evening, I wrapped glasses in newspaper, poured bottles down the sink, and moved the chairs outside.

When the alcohol mixed, it had a terribly sweet smell.

Whiskey, shochu, plum wine, brown liquors I didn't know the names of. Mixed with the smell of rotten oil rising from the drain, the whole shop became like a giant stomach.

Even past one in the morning, Kawanaka was still open for business.

Every time a door opened, laughter, perfume, and the smoke of grilled chicken skewers drifted in. Men in black coats called out to drunken customers, and women in thin dresses ran from shop to shop.

Each time, I remembered that my father was no longer in this town.

It wasn't exactly that I felt sad.

It was just that Kawanaka without my father resembled his body after he had died.

The shape was the same, but it didn't respond to anything.

The amplifier was in the very back of the counter.

It was a black wooden box, about knee-high. Inside were two large speakers. It weighed nearly forty kilograms.

When I was seventeen, I spent all my summer job money to buy it.

I thought that if I could just play loud music, I could go somewhere other than here.

When I graduated from high school and left for Tokyo, I left the amplifier behind because it was too heavy.

My father kept it in the shop for twenty-five years.

On top of it sat an ashtray, paper napkins, and a toothpick container.

The amplifier wasn't a musical instrument anymore; it had become a low shelf.

At one-thirty in the morning, Saeki arrived.

He was the man who played drums in my band back in high school. Now he works for an industrial waste collection company.

He was wearing a navy blue work uniform layered with winter gear and a black hat. At forty-three, Saeki was a little thinner than he was at seventeen, and much more hunched over.

"Sorry I couldn't make it to the funeral."

"It couldn't be helped with work."

"I've been hauling people's lives around."

Saeki looked around the shop.

Then, he looked at the amplifier.

"It's still here?"

"It became a shelf."

"This thing?"

"Apparently, customers even used to rest their feet on it."

Saeki squatted in front of the amplifier and pressed his finger against the fabric on the front.

There was a cigarette burn on the fabric, and in the corner, there remained a star I had drawn with white paint when I was seventeen.

The lines were shaky, and the lengths of the five points were all different.

"You didn't erase it."

"I guess he just didn't pay any attention to it."

Saeki stood up.

"Shall we carry it?"

We grabbed the handles on the left and right, and I counted to three before lifting.

It didn't budge.

"Are you holding it?"

"I'm holding it."

"That side isn't off the floor."

"My heart isn't off the floor either."

"You can't carry trash with your heart."

We set it down once.

From under the amplifier, cigarette butts and two 100-yen coins appeared.

Saeki picked them up.

"Oh, an inheritance."

"Should we split it?"

"The tax office is a pain, so no."

The second time, it lifted.

We turned the amplifier sideways and carried it to the entrance.

It wouldn't fit through.

About ten years ago, my father had remodeled the shop's counter. The aisle had become fifteen centimeters narrower.

The amplifier had become too big to get out of the shop.

"Did he remodel the shop after he put it in?"

Saeki said.

"Looks like it."

"Then how was he planning to get it out?"

Maybe my father never intended to take it out.

I started to say that, but stopped.

My father was a man who didn't think about the future.

The shop, the alcohol, his illness—it was all the same. He continued things he knew would cause trouble later, for the sole reason that he could just deal with the trouble later.

The amplifier, too, was probably just heavy.

If you leave heavy things where they are, a reason for having placed them there is born.

Saeki brought a toolbox from his truck.

"We have no choice but to take it apart."

He used an electric screwdriver to remove the back panel.

Dust had piled up inside, and two speakers sat there silently. The wire insulation had hardened, and there was red rust on the metal.

Saeki pressed the cone with his finger.

"It might still play."

"What's the point of playing it?"

"Just play it before we throw it away."

"Is there any meaning in that?"

"If we only kept things that had meaning, there would be nothing left in this shop."

An old guitar appeared from under the counter.

I didn't know whose it was. It was a cheap red guitar, and one string was broken. On the back of the neck, "Nao" was written in permanent marker.

Maybe it was one of my father's customers.

I held the guitar.

The strings were rusty. When I pressed them with my fingers, they felt gritty.

I plugged the amplifier into an outlet.

I flipped the switch.

A low hum crawled across the shop floor.

"It's alive."

Saeki said.

"It's just the power."

I sat on a chair and tuned the five strings as best I could.

The first sound I played was terrible.

The bass was distorted, and the treble cracked. The fluorescent light flickered, and the glasses on the counter rang faintly.

Still, it made a sound.

For twenty-five years, having ashtrays placed on it, being kicked by drunken customers, and inhaling my father's cigarette smoke, the amplifier still made a sound.

Saeki tapped the counter with his finger.

It was a steady beat.

I played a song I had written a long time ago.

It had no title.

It was just a song that repeated four chords. There were supposed to be lyrics, but I couldn't remember a single one.

Only my hands remembered.

My fingers knew where to press next before my brain did.

Saeki missed the beat during the second verse.

He had made the same mistake at the high school culture festival.

I laughed.

The sound grew louder.

Because the shop was small, there was nowhere for the sound to escape. It hit the walls and ceiling, wrapped around behind the counter, and made the empty liquor bottles vibrate.

The wall next door was knocked on three times.

Saeki didn't care and kept tapping the counter.

I played the final four bars.

At that moment, blue sparks scattered deep inside the amplifier.

The sound tore.

The smell of burnt dust rose, and the hum stopped.

The shop suddenly felt larger.

"It's dead."

Saeki said.

"Your song must have been pretty annoying to it."

We took the amplifier apart.

We removed the back panel and took out the two speakers. One rusty screw wouldn't turn, so Saeki broke the wooden frame with a hammer.

We destroyed the thing we had just confirmed still worked.

The sound of the wood splitting was drier than the performance just now.

When removing the last panel, the metal fitting slipped and cut my right hand.

Blood came out from the base of my thumb.

The wound wasn't deep, but it bled a lot.

Three drops fell on the floor.

The door opened.

The woman from the shop next door poked her head in. She was wearing a large hoodie over a silver dress.

"There's a complaint."

"We're already finished."

The woman looked at my hand.

She went back to her shop and brought back a bag of ice and a white towel.

"Please use this."

"Thank you."

"What were you doing?"

"I was throwing away a shelf."

The woman looked at the broken amplifier.

"That's a noisy shelf."

She said only that and went back.

At four-thirty in the morning, the amplifier was taken out of the shop.

Once the box was broken and the speakers were removed, each piece wasn't that heavy.

Kawanaka had begun to close up for the night.

The sign lights were going out, and the women were changing from high heels into sneakers. Food waste was piled up behind the sushi restaurant, and a drunken man was being shoved into a taxi.

On the main street, there was still the smell of alcohol and perfume.

Once you stepped into the back alley, it became the smell of oil, vomit, and detergent.

A cold wind blew from the river.

Saeki's collection truck was parked at the end of the street.

In the cargo bed were piled broken chairs, a refrigerator, artificial flowers, and a sign with the shop's name on it.

They were all things that someone had once paid for, chosen, carried in, and made the face of their shop.

Now, everything was distinguished only by weight.

We loaded the amplifier parts onto the truck.

Finally, the front panel with the white star remained.

Saeki picked it up.

"Are you taking this back with you?"

"I don't need it."

"Really?"

"I said I don't need it."

Saeki tossed the front panel into the cargo bed.

The white star faced upward.

The compactor came down.

The wooden frame snapped.

The speaker metal bent, and the black fabric tore. There was no special sound.

It was the sound of a machine breaking.

The white star disappeared between the artificial flowers and the refrigerator.

"Why did your old man keep it, anyway?"

Saeki said.

"Because it was heavy, I guess."

"Just that?"

I returned to the shop.

Only the wall where the amplifier had been was square and white.

Even the cigarette smoke my father had inhaled for thirty-two years hadn't reached that spot.

I wiped the blood off the floor.

The rag turned a faint red, and then the color of alcohol and grease.

I didn't touch the white square.

At six in the morning, I handed the keys to the landlord.

On the street, the sound of stacking bottles continued. The women from the shops were leaving, and the cleaners and delivery workers were coming in.