HEIDI NAYLOR
MACK AND NATALIE HAVE GOTTEN VERY COMFORTABLE IN IDAHO Mack’s new atlas was gilt-edged, cloth-bound and hand-sewn; two-hundred creamy pages – must have cost a fortune. “So lovely,” Natalie said, “the colors intense, like Japanese woodblock prints.” What he needed was not an atlas but a new truck. They’d been saving up, keeping the old one running. They sat at the dining table, in evening light. She rubbed his calf with her stockinged foot. Mack turned the page to an orange peel of the globe. “Did I ever mention,” he said, “how world maps in Asia are Sino-centric? China on the left, Japan. The Pacific down the middle.” “That makes sense,” she said. “You see the world from your own perspective.” Mack had seen the world in Japan. He’d taken the bullet train, the Shinkansen, across the prefectures. He said Japanese were formal, eager, on the same team. Homogenous. Team Japan. He’d lived in Germany too, until his money ran out. Bussed tables for a week and scythed a Bavarian wheat field for train fare. He’d stood at the Berlin Wall, when they still had that. “Let’s see,” he was saying. His finger traveled over the page. “South America. Paraguay.” “Wellspring’s doing a community water system southeast of Asuncion,” he said. 7
