Snakes Can't Run

by Ed Lin

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “I managed to cover up my problem with the voices for a while. One day our infantry unit was being brought to the front in a helicopter. We got shot down. I was treated as if I had a concussion, but they finally figured out that I was schizophrenic because I had no physical head injury. And because of that, my father got me back.

  “I didn’t want to come back, Robert. I would have rather died in Nam than come back here and live under his thumb.”

  “He really cares about you, Don. He asked me to look in on you.”

  “He asked you last, Robert. After he’d exhausted the patience of all our family and friends.”

  “Don, you told me you thought there were men behind the walls in your apartment.”

  “Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy.” He clasped his hands together. “In my mind, I know it’s completely irrational. But the constant voices, they overpower everything—reason, memory, thought. In the end, it’s these fucking voices that have managed to separate me from my dad, so it’s not an entirely bad thing.”

  “Don, you don’t take your medicine regularly, do you?”

  “I take it kind of at random.”

  “Even if you hate it, you have to take your medicine or else you won’t get better.”

  “But don’t you know, Robert, these pills don’t make the voices go away. They just make them a little softer. I can still hear them now.”

  Suddenly he stared at me in the eyes and his face took on a haunted look.

  “Shut up,” he said softly to the voices. Then to me he said, “Do you want to come with me to get more medicine? The store’s closing soon.”

  “Let’s go,” I told him.

  Outside Heavenly King Herbs a huge sign took up the entire space of the storefront window. Only one phrase at the top was in English: REINVIGORATION TABLETS, $20 FOR 10 DOSES. The rest of the sign was filled with increasingly outrageous claims in Chinese characters for what the tablets could do: “Cures headaches. Prevents blood-vessel inflammation. Stops sleepwalking. Regulates magnetic polarity. Heals arthritis. Burns fat. Fights cancer. Reverses aging process.”

  “Don,” I said, “how long have you been taking these bullshit tablets?”

  “About two years,” he said. “But of course not regularly, so maybe I’m not giving them a fair chance.”

  “There’s a fair chance that this medicine is bullshit,” I said, pointing at the sign.

  We went inside and Mr. Lee, the proprietor, greeted Don like royalty. “Mr. Tin, it is so delightful to see you!” he said. Mr. Lee was in his late fifties and dressed in a loose-fitting white linen shirt with cloth buttons. He had a white streak in his otherwise black hair that made it look like Pepé Le Pew’s tail. All along the back wall were closed drawers of dried herbs filed away like library cards. An ancient balance scale sat on the front counter, next to a mortar and pestle.

  Don nodded and kept his head down, his eyes on the scale, which was slightly tipped even though both pans were empty.

  “Mr. Lee, how are you?” I asked.

  He did a double take. “Are you Policeman Chow?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Oh my God, you look great!” said Mr. Lee. “Congratulations on being sober!”

  “Thank you.”

  He looked closer at my face and smiled. “You have a girlfriend now, right?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can see that you shave regularly!” He laughed. “I can see the little scars from razor nicks!” Then he asked Don, “Fifty more doses?”

  “Yes,” said Don.

  Mr. Lee dropped into a crouch and disappeared under the counter. I heard him open a drawer and rummage around.

  “Mr. Lee?” I asked.

  “Yes?” he said from the floor.

  “What are these tablets really doing for Don?”

  Mr. Lee stood up again and said, “Well, they’re helping him to manage his disorder.”

  “So you admit they’re not really effective! Those are some pretty wild claims you have in the window.”

  Mr. Lee put five small boxes on the counter. “Well, maybe those claims are fanciful, but they are part of an old poem, Robert. It’s merely a decoration for the window. Besides, the tablets really are doing something. They’re keeping him somewhat sedated so that he doesn’t try to kill himself.”

  “So great. Now he’s sleepwalking through life. How are you going to cure him, though?”

  “I can’t. He needs to go to a doctor.”

  “Meanwhile you’re making all this money off Don’s dad. You’re as crooked as this crappy balance scale.”

  “I’ve told him again and again that his son needs anti-psychotic medicine prescribed by an American doctor. You know what he did? He sent Don to an acupuncturist. His joints are working fine now. By the way, the balance is strictly ornamental. I use an electronic scale that’s less aesthetically pleasing.”

  “The anti-psychotic medicine, will it really help him?”

  Mr. Lee leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter.

  “It will help him manage, just like my tablets. I’m not exactly sure what Don has, seems like manic depression or schizophrenia. But you should know, Robert—there is no cure. Don will be on medication for the rest of his life.”

  “There’s nothing you have that can bring him back?”

  “Chinese medicines treat the body. Herbs can lick a sore throat, tennis elbow, or even nerve damage. But we’ve always had a stigma about mental and emotional diseases, to the point where we didn’t bother to try to come up with natural cures.”

  “Historically, how were the mentally ill cured?”

  “When they killed themselves or were killed.”

  He pushed the tablets to Don, who put a hand over them and nodded.

  11

  SOME STUPID GANG KID SHOT ANOTHER ONE INSIDE THE PAGODA Theater on Elizabeth Street. The theater typically had a live Chinese opera show onstage before the film. They started shooting right when two scholars were singing about what qualities made a virtuous man.

  When the shots rang out, everybody either hit the floor or ran out into the street. By some miracle, only one gang kid had been shot, a bullet through the chest. They had such bad aim usually only bystanders were hit.

  After the gang kids had run off and the ambulance had taken the victim away, everyone filed back into the theater and settled back into their seats. There had been a delay in getting the movie up and the audience was getting ready to riot or, worse, demand their money back. Giving out full refunds was a nightmare to Chinese businessmen, worse than having paying patrons shot on the premises.

  When Vandyne had arrived on the scene, the movie had just started and the owner behind the box office window refused to stop it. If he did, he told Vandyne, the audience would kick in his door and drag him and the cash register out. He assured Vandyne that all the eyewitnesses were still inside and that it was best to talk to people after the show.

  “So what’d you do?” I asked Vandyne. We were leaning against our desks in the squad room, eating Chinese beef jerky out of a plastic bag.

  “He asked me if I wanted to sit down inside and I said, ‘All right.’ Then he wanted to charge me for going in! Of course I wouldn’t pay, so then the guy pulled up a chair for me and I sat by the exit doors.” Vandyne screwed his face up and said through his teeth, “I’ve been chewing this thing like five minutes. It’s like a baseball mitt. And it tastes like chewing gum and red pepper flakes!”

  “Part of the pleasure of the hot-fruit flavor is in the chewing,” I said. “Would you rather have curry beef? There’s also chicken jerky. Maybe that’s more your speed?”

  “No, man, I’ve been chewing on it so long, something’s gotta give soon.”

  “So, back to the theater. The movie ends, everyone comes out and just avoids you.”

  “Well, I’ve learned that it’s easier to talk to the younger Chinese because the older ones . . .�
��

  “I’ll say it. They’re scared of black people.”

  “I see that sometimes. Anyway, nobody young or old would talk to me. So that was a bust. I went to the hospital to talk to the shooting victim and they told me to come back in a few days. So this morning, I went in and saw the young man.” Vandyne suddenly smiled. “Okay, there it goes! This piece of meat is breaking up!”

  “So what did the kid say?”

  “Wouldn’t tell me anything. In front of his mom and dad, he put on this act like he was at the movies with his friends while they were at work. Those friends of his that were sitting around that room, well, let me put it to you this way—we’ve got all of them in our mug books. So after the parents left I said, ‘Don’t you want to get those guys back?’ Probably the wrong thing to say, but he just smiled and said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’ I think we can count on at least one more shooting this summer.”

  “Depends on when he’s getting out.”

  “Bullet missed his lungs, went out through the side. He’ll be out in less than a week.”

  “Why do these kids think they live in such a hopeless world?”

  “It’s capitalism,” said Vandyne. “They’re programmed by TV. They see these people flaunting their cash roll, jewelry, and cars.”

  “Those goddamned kids are going to study and work hard to get what they want.”

  “How hard did you study and work, partner?”

  “Not that hard and I never got what I wanted. So let my example be a lesson to them.”

  “You talk like your life is over. You still have thirty, forty years to achieve something.”

  “Right now, man, the only things I’m focused on are snakeheads. They’re basically slavers, you know that? They hold people in prisons they call safe houses while forcing them to work off their debt. Nobody would cry if a snakehead got his neck broke while ‘resisting arrest.’”

  “Chow,” said Vandyne. “Let’s get real. They should suffer through our justice system and have their names splashed all over the media.”

  “What if they got off?”

  “Then we didn’t have a good enough case against them. If we don’t have a presumption of innocence and we just went out shooting people we thought were bad guys, then it’s going to be like Nam. Just going into villages and wiping them all out.” Then he walked over to a garbage can at English’s empty desk and spat out the beef jerky.

  Vandyne left to get to work on the hopeless task of trying to talk to potential witnesses around the Pagoda.

  “How come I can’t get a line out?” I asked English. I was trying to track down remaining members of the San Francisco association that my father had belonged to.

  “Is this phone call work-related?” he asked.

  We didn’t look at each other as we continued to talk.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it long distance?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not trying to call China. It’s continental U.S. We can’t call out of state anymore?”

  “Well, we’re having a little dispute with the phone company right now. This call can’t wait until you get home?”

  I shook my head. “I need to call California during business hours.”

  “Well, just unplug your phone and use the jack under Lumpy’s desk. He had a pal at the phone company who set up the line back in the fifties for permanent free service.”

  “What did Lumpy have to do in exchange?”

  “You don’t want to know. Hell, I don’t want to know. Could have been anything. Shit, it was the fifties. If Frank Serpico thought cops in the sixties were bad, they were Girl Scouts compared with the bulls in the fifties.”

  I brought my phone over to Lumpy’s desk and found the jack on the floor. English and I continued to not look at each other.

  “What kind of cop was Lumpy?” I asked.

  “Jesus, I’ve heard stories. You know, a long time ago Lumpy was a real crack detective. He was a one-man army, busting up drug and prostitution rackets all over the Lower East Side. He had the right pocket in his pants tailored to be extra large. That way, he could stick a notepad in there and write down license-plate numbers and other details without taking his hand out of his pocket.”

  “Damn, that’s amazing.”

  “But it all fell apart one day when he was about to collar a pretty notorious pimp. When he grabbed the guy and turned him around, he was looking right into his own father’s face.”

  “Did he bring his father in?”

  “No. The story goes that he let him off, destroyed all his notes about the case, and bounced around different precincts. Finally ended up festering here in the detective squad. Spent his last years slumped over his desk calling up Dial-aJoke in cities across the country. He could have made the inspector rank, but instead he ended up being a lousy precinct detective.”

  “Being a precinct detective isn’t lousy.”

  “It’s the lowest form of a detective, Chow. Don’t get caught up in the yuk-yuks of Barney Miller. When you get your gold shield, don’t waste too much time. Get yourself on the Anti-Crime Unit or something else. Just get the fuck outta here.”

  “I promise,” I said. I picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone. I spun the numbers slowly into the rotary dial.

  An old man answered with a warbling, “Hello?”

  “Hello, who am I speaking with?” I asked in Cantonese.

  I heard a sudden inhale. “Oh, I never hear plain speech anymore! So many Fukienese in my neighborhood now!”

  I’m sure the man was exaggerating, as change-averse older Chinese are prone to do. When Cantonese people overhear some Fukienese, the reaction is, “There goes the neighborhood!”

  “Hello, Uncle. I’m the son of Ah Chow, also known as Ah Chin. Are you Mr. Lau?”

  “Yes, yes, I am. Of course I knew your father. You sound like you’re calling from far away. I can hear my voice echo like we’re talking across a great divide!”

  That was a profound observation. This man speaks like a poet, I thought. I only read poetry by accident, but, still, I liked his voice.

  “My name is Robert Chow. I’m calling from New York City.”

  “Ah, Old Chow said he would send a son someday to visit me. I did hear he passed away a few years ago. I was so sorry to hear it. He was such a dear man and a hard worker. He did all he could for our association, even trying to set up the New York branch, but I guess it was destiny for everything to fall apart.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. It figured. The father I knew could barely keep himself together.

  “You know by now that he came over as a paper son of someone in the association and that he had to pay that debt back. It took many years.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. If he hadn’t paid up they would have hunted him down and knifed him like he needed breathing holes in his back.

  “Your father said he had many bad memories. The things he saw and the things he had to do. Say, I’ve been keeping a box of your father’s belongings from his early days in the country. It was too much for him to take across the country.”

  “Mr. Lau, what do you have?”

  “Some papers, some books, and I think a diary.”

  “A diary?”

  “I’ve never read it, out of respect. Your father kept telling me to get rid of everything, but he was just worried that it was too much trouble. It really wasn’t, I assure you. I’ve kept everything locked in a briefcase, just waiting. I knew you’d show up someday!”

  What in the world did my father write about? I thought about his picture, that young man looking back at me, ready for the rest of his life, ready to pick up all the gold nuggets that were rumored to be strewn around the streets in America. He couldn’t have known that he’d be spending decades paying back the association for sneaking him into the country.

  He didn’t know that he was being set up for heartache, disappointment, and bitterness.

  “How did you know my father, Mr. Lau?”

  “You’re no
t going to believe this, but we came over on the same boat. It was a long ride and we were friends for life. I didn’t see him after he left for New York, but we wrote to each other at least once a month all the way to the end.

  “When we got here the U.S. immigration officials had us locked up on Angel Island for a month or two, bringing us out for questioning a few times, to see if they could catch us in a lie. But we were both young, we had great memories, and we kept our stories straight. Boy, I tell you, they did not want us to come into this country!”

  I glanced back at English, who was drinking coffee, staring at a wall.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Well, when are you coming?”

  “I’m sorry, what do you mean ‘coming’?”

  “Don’t you want to pick up your father’s stuff?”

  “I was actually hoping that you could mail it.”

  “I can’t mail it. I think it’s too heavy.”

  “Could you take it to a UPS office or something?”

  “I don’t know how to do such things,” he said, laughing.

  Chinese people laugh a lot, though rarely to express that they find something funny. Laughing is more like something to do when you’re done with your sentence and want to expend the leftover air in your lungs in an inoffensive manner.

  Lau went on. “I’m an old man. I don’t know how to box and ship things. It’s too complicated. Please forgive me.”

  I begged him to try. But when I had to tell him my address three times, I abandoned all hope. Lau had a great memory, but his brain was full. Nothing else could be added.

  “I will try to do this, Robert. I will do my very best.”

  I felt the defeat already plainly in his voice. “Thank you very much, Uncle.”

  After I hung up, English came over and sat on the edge of Lumpy’s desk.

  “Who was that?”

  “An old friend of my father’s.”

  “What’d you talk about?”

  “Well, hell, I’ll tell you. My dad came over to this country illegally. I am the son of an illegal immigrant.”