Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/172

162 each other they exchanged amiabilities before passing on.

“Isn’t the water splendid?”

“Wonderful! So lovely and cold!”

Automobiles threaded in and out of the crowd.

The hillside and valley were clothed in bright green, and this green was deeply resented by the women and old men left behind in Yotani.

“What next?” they exclaimed. “Our village used not to be a place for idlers and wasters to amuse themselves in. Where are our Miesimas and Kuroses and Ozawas?”

Old man Ogawa was sixty-three years of age. His back was crooked from age, but he was convinced that there would never be any improvement in the life of the peasantry without the Peasant Union. One night, leaning on his stick, he left his hut quietly and dragged himself to the house of Todoroki at Simati.

“Well! Do the police still visit you?”

“They do sometimes, but we only have little children at home nowadays, so they have to go away again.”

Todoroki’s wife, astonished to see the old man, helped him into the house.

“I’ve come to Simati to have a talk with the young ones. They have taken away our best men, at their best age, but that doesn’t mean we must lose all hope.”

“Have you come about the union, father?”

“Yes, I have. What would Hamamato think of us? He brought the union to our village ten years ago. I was fifty-three then, and I went to