Sato Sushi

This short piece I wrote for a writing class on Character development. The assignment was to create a short scene with two characters from things I recently read, and then add a third character of my own creation. The first character in our scene is Hugh Glass, the main character from the Revenant. Glass is a hard frontier man who wants revenge and to get his gun back from the men who betrayed him. He has a strong relationship to the American frontier, which both awes him and tries to kill him continually. The second character is the persona Walt Whitman adopts for his collection of poems in Leaves of Grass. In it he is an explorer, of both the physical landscape of frontier America and of the more philosophical  experience of nature, and a zen like reveling in life itself as it is. In our scene both are wildly out of place in a small fishing town in Japan, Onjuku. Sato owns and runs Sato Sushi, the one restaurant that is reliably open in Onjuku. Glass wants to take a boat out of Onjku and back to America. Walt wants to have a friend to talk to. Sato just wants to have a calm night so he can leave early and go to bed. 

Scene:

Glass ducks his head through a Noren curtain labeled “Sato Sushi”, and surveys the interior of the bar. Six wooden barrels sit in front of a low counter made from dark wood, smooth with use. Manning the counter stands a stocky Japanese man with a bandana across his forehead, a blue apron, and a large knife in one hand. Sato he assumes. Behind him white Sake bottles fill the wall, each with a script of characters on its front. A tall white man in a cotton shirt and triangular beard sits hunched over the bar. Sato looks from Glass and back again to his previous white customer, waiting for someone to explain the impossible level of foreigners in his shop. Glass ignores his gaze and sits down. Squinting at a menu on the wall, Glass realizes has no idea how to read Japanese and after days of hiking over the Boso peninsula, he’s too hungry to care what he eats. He puts a handful of coins on the counter and says “whatever you have”. Sato continues to stare for a moment before taking the coins and saying in Japanese to no one in particular “I don’t understand one word of what you are saying, but grilled mackerel and sake for you, please wait a moment”. Watching the exchange, Walt chuckles and sits up from his drink. “The sailor, the trapper, the traveler. I welcome him as I welcome myself!” he blurts in the direction of Glass, throwing his arms wide as he speaks. Glass offers no response. “Captitain, O my captain, your trip is completed here! Come share your tale.” Glass glares at him and says sharply “I am a captain no longer, nor my trip finished. Where may I find passage across the Pacific, back to America?”. Walt ponders a moment then addresses Sato as he delivers a plate of grilled fish. The exchange between Walt and the proprietor continues and as Glass eats, Sato's muscles tense, and lowers his voice, almost hissing his answers. Finally, Sato storms off into the back, ending the conversation. Walt watches him leave before turning to Glass “The mysterious ocean ebbs, bringing impalpable breezes and storms as black as night to us. We must wend these shores until this storm passes before moving on”. Glass’s look sours and he takes a long drink of the fragrant sake. He'd rather travel alone, but it may be helpful to travel with this man who speaks and knows the local ways, and there is safety in numbers for what he is facing. Glass extends his hand across the empty seat between them and says “The name is Glass”