"Walter! Walter!"
by Michael Little

It’s hard to say exactly what awakened Janice Yamada at three in the morning. She had been having a pleasant dream about Christmas shopping at Liberty House. Even though Macy’s had just taken over and the signs had been changed, in her dream it was still Liberty House. It’s amazing how many of Janice’s dreams took place at Kahala Mall.

Maybe it was the wind and rain of a late November storm that pulled her away from her dream. Perhaps it was the siren on the fire truck that was, at that very moment, racing up Kapahulu Avenue. Or, most likely, it was the sound of her husband, bumping against the side of the house, the wet side, right outside the second-floor master bedroom.

Janice sat up in bed and looked out the window. Sure enough, there was her husband, swinging in the wind. She stumbled to the window and opened it enough to yell out. Wind and rain blew into her face.

“Walter! Walter! What you doing out there?”

“Dangling!” came the reply. “No worry, I’m okay. The safety belt works good.”

“Oh, you give me heart attack,” Janice called. “Stay there, I’ll go move the ladder.”

“Never mind, I’ll pull myself up.” Walter pulled again, but made no progress. The side of the house was slippery from the rain. He promised himself, again, that he would start visiting the gym to work on his upper body strength.

Janice had thrown on her robe and was heading downstairs to rescue her husband when she heard the siren, much louder now. She looked out the front window to see the fire truck stopping in front of their house, its lights spinning and illuminating the rain. Neighbors were looking out their windows, and some had run out into the street to see what was up.

“Rats,” Janice said, using her favorite curse word, “somebody called 911. Walter, what am I going to do with you?” Walter couldn’t hear her, of course. He was busy dangling.

Kurt and Kristi were awake by now. Once he discovered there was no fire, Kurt, in his first year at UH, went to check out the fire truck. Kristi, a junior at Kaimuki High School, was checking out the firemen, even though she had a boyfriend already. Patches, the poi dog from the Humane Society, was helping by running about joyfully in the rain, barking away. The neighborhood dogs were all awake by now. Missy, the stray cat that had adopted the Yamada family ten years earlier, was the only one to stay dry that night. She remained indoors, more annoyed than curious, desiring nothing more than to go back to sleep. Everyone had an agenda.

This interruption of domestic tranquility need never have happened. The Yamada household, and the neighbors, would have enjoyed a peaceful night if only Walter had not been a conscientious homeowner. It was a few months earlier, on a warm Saturday morning in July, that Walter had decided to inspect the solar panels on top of his house. Janice had told him to call the company that installed the panels if he was concerned. “There’s plenty hot water,” Janice had said. Walter wanted to look, anyway, and he waited till Janice was out food shopping to take the ladder out of the basement and climb up on the roof.

Walter had not been up there once in the three years they had lived in the new house. There were no gutters to clean, and the roof was too new to worry about. Now he wore his old running shoes, which still had good traction, and made his way across the metal roof. Squatting next to the solar panels, Walter looked carefully at them. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see, but they looked all right. Reassured, he stood at the very top of the roof and looked around. That’s when it happened. Facing Diamond Head, he caught a terrific view of the crater catching the morning sun. Then he looked mauka and saw the mountains beyond the freeway, rising green and majestic against the blue sky. He saw these mountains every day, but this time he was like Columbus staring at the new world.

Walter stood and absorbed the island view from the top of his house. It reminded him of the days when the house was being framed, when he would drive over after work, after the carpenters had left, to check on the progress. He would walk up the stairs and sit on the edge of the second floor. There were no walls then, no roof, just the smell of new wood and the view. There on the second floor he was even with the tops of the neighbors’ mango and Chinese grapefruit trees. He told Janice it was like sitting in a tree house. Walter brought her there one evening and they sat silently together, watching the sun set over Waikiki. Janice said it was very romantic. She made Walter take her out to dinner that night, while the kids stayed home and ate pizza.

On the July morning that he went up to check on the solar panels, he stayed for the view. He was still there when Janice drove into the driveway. She opened the front door and called in for Walter to help her with the shopping bags from Times. Walter had asked her to pick up ice cream and cookies. What he didn’t know, and wouldn’t discover until dinner, was that Janice, ever vigilant about cholesterol, had found low-fat cookies and tasteless no-fat ice cream. Walter answered her call, but it sounded to Janice as if he were on the roof. Soon he was back on the ground, telling her what a spectacular view they had. Before dinner, Walter climbed the ladder again and stayed there to watch the sunset.

The next day was a Sunday, which meant church in the morning. The minister preached on Noah and the ark, and Walter stopped daydreaming about his roof long enough to hear some of it. When Walter returned to his daydream, he saw his house as Noah’s ark, and himself the captain. True, it did not have two of every animal, just the one dog, one cat, and the occasional gecko on the wall. The true captain, in fact, was Janice, who managed the finances and the crew. She used the sermon time to plan her latest campaign against Walter’s high blood pressure. The next time Walter was on the roof, Janice would be in the galley, watering down the shoyu.

When he returned from church, Walter began building a small wooden platform on top of his house—something flat where he could put a lawn chair, large enough for a futon for napping or watching the clouds by day and stars by night. He looked up the word “cubit” and decided that seven cubits would be the right length.

And so it began. Walter spent more and more time on his roof. One night he fell asleep on the futon and spent the night there. Janice scolded him in the morning and made him rig a safety belt and promise to wear it when he was napping or sleeping on top of the house. That way she could sleep soundly.

After that, Walter slept there regularly. One Saturday night he climbed down the ladder and tapped on the bedroom window. Janice, who had been in bed reading her latest romance novel, opened the window, slid the special screen to the side, and pulled Walter in. It was the best date they had enjoyed in years.

“This reminds me of the Robin Hood movie,” Janice said to Walter in the dark. They had watched the classic together on AMC a few nights before. With the lights out, Janice imagined herself in the arms of Errol Flynn. Walter, his eyes closed, was busy imagining that it was Olivia de Havilland in his bed. Whatever was playing in their heads, the evening was a big hit. This led to a Saturday night ritual, which always began with Walter tapping on the window. Only the fantasy would change, depending on which movie they had watched that week. One week Walter would be Tarzan. The next week he might be Cary Grant in that Hitchcock movie about the cat burglar.

Walter’s decision to live on top of his house did not go unnoticed. Patches would bark at Walter whenever he saw him climbing the ladder or walking on the roof. It was Janice’s theory that the dog did not want to be on that ladder, much less the roof, and he apparently thought it was a foolish place for Walter to be. Missy ignored this peculiar human activity, as long as she was fed regularly and received some petting from Kristi. What was the big deal about walking on roofs anyway? Cats had been doing that for hundreds of years.

Kurt and Kristi wanted to know what was going on. Why had their father begun living on the roof? Kristi, who read a lot of magazines, asked if it was a midlife crisis. She was concerned when she brought friends home and they would spot Mr. Yamada up there. She always explained that he was inspecting the roof, or the panels. “He does that a lot,” Kristi’s boyfriend said one day, and Kristi just smiled, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into the house. Kurt, however, took it all in stride, and whenever he backed the car out of the driveway to go paddling, he would wave up to his dad.

The neighbors were more curious. This was the biggest thing to happen on their quiet street since … well, maybe it was the biggest thing ever. At least once a year they would hear brakes squealing and then two cars crashing down on Kapahulu. That excitement would be over quickly. But Walter, well Walter’s show was there every day. When he began constructing his platform, he received lots of free advice from the neighbors on both sides. One suggested that he put a rail around the platform, advice that Walter ignored. Then the next-door neighbor’s wife suggested that his little roof house needed some plants. Walter chose to ignore that one as well.

The only addition Walter made to his platform came after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September. Walter anchored an American flag on his roof house. The stars and stripes flew proudly in the trade winds that swept down from the mountains. That was the week that Walter stopped wearing his casino hat and began sporting a new navy-colored hat with the American flag on the front. The man next door remarked that Walter would be the first to spot any terrorists if they threatened their Kapahulu neighborhood. The neighbors were also looking forward to mango season rolling around the following year. Walter would be there to spot the mangoes in the highest branches.

For now, Walter had a great view of the street. On Saturday mornings he would see their mailman coming along in his small truck, then running up to houses when he had something that wouldn’t fit into the mailbox. Walter noticed that the mailman always seemed to have a special delivery for the young woman who lived up the street in back of one of the houses.

One day in October, a few months after Walter had risen to his new station in life, Janice’s cousin Alice came visiting from the Mainland. Alice arrived at the Yamada house on a Saturday morning, so she was treated to the full Walter show. She was speechless. Nobody had prepared her for this. Walter, who was giving all his attention to a couple of frigate birds soaring high above, didn’t see her walk up to the door. Janice greeted Alice and the two sat in the living room to catch up on the latest news. It took about ten seconds for the conversation to turn to the subject of Walter.

“Janice,” Alice said in a low voice, leaning toward her cousin, “what is Walter doing on the roof?”

“I don’t know,” Janice said. “I haven’t checked on him this morning.”

“He has a little house up there,” Alice said, as if Janice hadn’t noticed. “And a flag.”

“Of course,” Janice said, as if the whole world knew. “He likes it. He even sleeps up there.”

“What?”

“He’s happy,” Janice said.

“You mean he doesn’t sleep with you? Poor thing.”

“Oh no, he doesn’t sleep up there every night.” Janice remembered that it was Saturday, which meant Saturday night was almost here, which meant movie fantasy night in the master bedroom.

“That’s a relief,” Alice said. She leaned forward again. “But aren’t you embarrassed? Your husband living on the roof?”

“Oh sure, it was difficult at first. It’s not easy being in the spotlight. Even if it is a small neighborhood spotlight.”

“I bet,” Alice said.

“But I’m used to it now,” Janice said. “He’s happy, happier than I’ve ever seen him. And the rest of our life is the same. We still go to Vegas three times a year. I made him promise not to sleep on the roof of the California Hotel. I didn’t think he would, but you never know with Walter these days.”

“Did you win last time?”

“No, we deposited again,” Janice said, “but we always have good time.”

“How’s your job at the school?”

“Same old thing, still school secretary. I like the kids. Most of them anyway.”

“And Walter’s still an accountant with the state?”

“Of course,” Janice said. “It’s not like he’s quit working and become a hippie.” Janice laughed at the absurdity of such an idea. Walter a hippie.

“You know, Alice, Walter was my first boyfriend. We went through high school together, then UH, then both going to work for the state. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything unusual.”

“Until now,” Alice said, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. Walter was up there somewhere, on the roof, breaking all the rules.

“True,” Janice said. “But don’t you see? We needed something like this. One step outside the routine lives we led up to now. Walter’s taken that step for both of us.”

“It’s a weird step,” Alice said.

“But a good one. And a courageous one. For Walter it was like going to the moon.” Janice sat back on the sofa, relaxed and content.

“You know,” Janice said, “I could never do something like that. Walter surprised me. It’s been a long time since he surprised me. He’s my hero.” Then she smiled, thinking of Walter tapping on the bedroom window.

Weeks later, on that stormy night in late November, two firemen ran around to the back of the Yamada house, where they saw a middle-aged man up on the second floor dangling from a rope tied to his safety belt. One fireman would have been enough for this job. Or even no firemen. Janice could have moved the ladder into position to let Walter climb down. The two firemen were there, however, so they did their job.

After they had Walter safely on the ground they asked him what had happened and why he had been on the roof in the middle of the night. Walter explained patiently that he liked to sleep on top of his house, that it was a good place to watch the moon and stars. The firemen looked up. All they could see was rain falling from the dark sky. Walter gazed into the heavens, and for a moment he saw through the darkness, and there were the constellations in all their glory, shining down on him and his little house that sat on top of his big ark.

For the next two weeks, following all the excitement, Walter led a quiet life. He slept in the bedroom. He went up on the roof twice to inspect the platform, and the flag. Janice had not told Walter to stop sleeping on the roof, but she had told him more than once that night after the firemen left, “Walter, you gonna give me heart attack.” Maybe Walter took her words literally. Whatever the reason, he stopped sleeping on the roof.

Walter and Janice were preoccupied with the excitement of Wahine volleyball for those two weeks. They were longtime season ticket holders. The Wahine were rolling in the NCAA tournament, and Walter and Janice were right there with them in the arena, wearing University of Hawaii green and cheering on the girls.

After the last home match of the season, after the Wahine had beaten their rivals from Long Beach State before a raucous sellout crowd to send the team on to the Mainland for the Final Four, Walter and Janice returned home. Janice made low-fat snacks while they waited for the replay of the game to start on TV. Soon after, Kristi came down the stairs and caught her parents kissing on the sofa. She covered her eyes and continued on to the kitchen. When she came back into the living room, Walter and Janice were sitting more properly and watching the game. Kristi went upstairs and talked to her girlfriends for an hour, and her boyfriend for another hour. Kurt was in his bedroom playing a computer game; the world wouldn’t see him again for hours. Patches fell asleep by the sofa. Missy was upstairs on Kristi’s bed, getting her strokes while Kristi talked on the phone. Downstairs, Walter sat with his arm around Janice, watching the same match they had just seen in person, as the two commented on every play. The Wahine won again, of course. It was doubly satisfying.

The next day Walter spent the entire day on the roof. That night he slept there too. But not before tapping on Janice’s window like the mighty Tarzan he was. And it wasn’t even a Saturday night.