Year of the Goose

by Carly J. Hallman

  The man stood. “Good luck,” he said. “May the gods look favorably upon you.” He reached to the shelf and handed the boy a Watermelon Wiggler. “This one’s expired,” he said. “But I imagine you’ll make do.”

  Ah, the roads we walk, the strangers we follow!

  Many minibuses and stretches of railroad track later, I found myself in a city as dusty as that village, on a building site dustier still.

  I watched from the doorway as the boy I’d followed all that way marched into an office. A man sat in a computer chair, his feet propped up on his messy desk.

  “Is Subcontractor Hao in?” the boy asked the man.

  “I’m Subcontractor Hao,” the man said. “Whaddya want?”

  The boy, named Little Warrior, introduced himself and announced his vague connection to two workers already on the project. “I’ll work as hard as possible,” he said. “I’ve got to earn extra money to pay for my grandmother’s medicine.”

  The boss, after some prodding and convincing, agreed to hire Little Warrior. He gave him directions to the dormitory and told him to be ready to work after lunchtime—“And no, you cannot join us for lunch today. Work first, then eat. Dinner is at six.”

  Little Warrior smiled and marched out, head held high.

  Deciding that some hard labor might do me good, and wanting to follow Little Warrior’s noble example, I waddled up to Subcontractor Hao’s desk.

  “Ay, another one,” he muttered. He gave me a slow once-over. “You’ll do,” he finally said. He shook his head. “Ain’t got a hard hat that’ll fit that strange little head of yours, but you’ll do.”

  Forgive my poor penmanship. I write in the dark of night, the moon my only light source, my only companion. My days of toiling among the workers are finished, dear diary. I sing my lament now to you!

  You see, after some initial growing pains at the building site, I discovered my true talents resided in messengering and assisting. I soared up to the top floors and performed checks, inspections, deliveries. I passed on messages between those working on the top and bottom of the building. Additionally, my bill served as a most excellent screwdriver.

  Subcontractor Hao was eager to get everything wrapped up before we all headed home to celebrate the new lunar year with our families, so in the weeks leading up to the Spring Festival, we labored well into the night. We kept ourselves alert guzzling cans of coffee from the on-site commissary, where snacks, toilet paper, and other essentials were available for purchase, no cash necessary—our expenditures were deducted from our pay, which we would receive at the end of our work period.

  We consumed can after can of bean water and cream and sugar, and the blackness under our eyes darkened by the day, and our meat seemed to separate from our aching bones, but our hearts grew fat with excitement, with anticipation, with dreams of impending freedom.

  Payday morning arrived before we knew it. We waited, breath bated, outside Subcontractor Hao’s office. We waited for the familiar crackle of his BMW’s tires on gravel.

  Time ticked on.

  Cold sweat coated us.

  We waited.

  Only silence near us; in the distance, the sound of passing cars.

  When we couldn’t wait any longer, we banged on the door. We shouted. We waited even more, and when we couldn’t wait even more anymore, Old Meng kicked in the door. Someone else smashed the windows. We raided the office. No signs of Subcontractor Hao.

  We waited.

  The photographs he kept on his desk of his heavily made-up wife and his beloved German shepherd were gone. Only the photos’ frames remained, containing blank white sheets of papers. We examined the emptied frames, removed their cardboard backs.

  We waited.

  Opening drawers and peeking inside soon gave way to full-fledged looting—smashing glass, shoving into pockets anything worth a damn: Post-it notes, nubby pencils, individual wheels from Subcontractor Hao’s computer chair.

  When the door flew open, the wind seizing loose papers and scraps, sending a chill down all of our spines, we held our breath.

  We waited.

  Many of the workers had train tickets home, paid for with money borrowed from friends or relatives with the intention of paying the money back as soon as they received their salaries. Many of the men nursed well-earned visions of returning home with fat wads of cash, of paying for electric fans and new cell phones and hospital bills and tuition fees for their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters.

  These intentions, these dreams, hung palpable in the air, the strong winter wind no match for their sturdiness, nowhere near powerful enough to blow them away.

  Old Shopkeeper Lu, who operated the commissary, strode through the blown-open doorway, his round cheeks red. “Where’s that rat bastard? He owes me five hundred yuan!”

  Little Warrior, holding a smashed lamp, explained the situation.

  Old Shopkeeper Lu pondered for a moment. “Well, if he disappeared then it’s you bastards who owe me money! You inherit his debt! It’s the law!”

  Oh, dear diary, I didn’t care about my own pay. What would a goose like me do with a few thousand yuan anyway? I’d been the beneficiary of billions. I’d tasted life’s luxuries.

  But for these men, these hopeful men!

  I devised a plan, whispered it to Little Warrior; he alone could understand me, had served as my translator for all those weeks. We would protest, demand that the bastard boss come back and give us what was rightfully ours. We would draw attention to the crime that had been committed, to this atrocity. We would lay down in the busy road in front of the site until the police listened to our complaints and tracked the bastard down, shook him down for all he was worth.

  The majority of the workers stood with us; the remainder camped out in the dormitory, prepared to miss their trains, hanging on to the false hope of Subcontractor Hao’s return.

  We waited until the light turned red, walked to the middle of the street, and lay down on the chunky white stripes. Honks rang out in reaction, car horns wailing. Their light was still red.

  We didn’t move.

  The light turned green.

  We didn’t move.

  Shouting heads popped out from car windows. A few drivers attempted to maneuver around us, onto the sidewalk, where bicycles had already staked their claimed. One car, a Volkswagen, crashed into an electrical pole.

  The workers murmured encouragement to one another. A dense crowd of onlookers assembled. I stared up at the sky, coal gray. The city police turned up in full riot gear. One of them pulled out a spatula-like tool and attempted to pry Little Warrior’s head off the pavement. Little Warrior jerked away.

  “Whaddya want?” the cop spat.

  “Money!” Little Warrior shouted, vigor in his voice.

  Old Meng, next to him, piped up, providing a more intellectual explanation, detailing the months on the job and the boss’s sudden and convenient disappearance once pay came due.

  The cop feigned interest, hacked a phlegm oyster onto the ground beside my bill. A belligerent driver swerved onto the sidewalk, taking out an old lady riding with a flat-faced Pekingese in her bicycle’s basket.

  Things weren’t going well. I prayed to the gods for an idea.

  They answered.

  I whispered to Little Warrior, “Tell him that if he doesn’t do something, we’re going to burn the building down!”

  Little Warrior gasped, barely audible among the sounds of blaring horns. The cop somehow heard it and turned to peer at him.

  This was my cue to slip away. I flew onto the site and found the cans of gasoline Subcontractor Hao stored at the eastern edge. We had to show the world that we were serious, that our threats weren’t empty. Subcontractor Hao’s office was easy. A bit of gasoline, a lot of papers, a knockoff Zippo lighter, boom, done.

  My plan may have been ill conceived. Admit your mistakes! Own up to them. Cherish them. They are your most honorable teachers.

  Yes, I failed to calculate the wind’s streng
th or direction, and I didn’t intend for the fire to spread, but oh, spread it did. The few foolish, camped-out workers sprinted from the dormitory, clutching their hastily gathered belongings to their chests.

  Stunned, I flew back to the street junction, where the protestors remained flat on the pavement and where those dozens of SWAT officers now stormed, armed with batons and handcuffs and pepper spray. A mass struggle and arrest session followed. Even the wind took sides, as the building we’d spent so long piecing together went up in flames. Sirens moaned. One of the steel support beams came crashing down onto a neighboring shopping mall, killing dozens standing in line at the ice-cream window outside a McDonald’s.

  I followed the white cars and flashing lights to the police station, where I attempted to turn myself in. The officers paid my confessions no heed. Honk, honk, honk was all they heard, was all most anyone heard, everyone but Little Warrior.

  I met his eyes. I remembered the first time I saw him, wearing that ratty backpack, waltzing into that snack shop, a child. He sat now on this bench, handcuffed and sedated, a man. He shook his head, dismissing me, urging me onward.

  His goodness, the goodness of the people! The people who took the fall!

  Forgive me, dear diary, as I’ve written many times of maintaining an honest record. I must therefore retract some of my earlier claims. I must admit that, yes, Little Warrior tried to turn me in. That all the arrested workers tried with him.

  The detectives responded in increasingly incredulous tones. “A goose? A goose made you do it?”

  “What, bird flu go to your brains?”

  “I’ve heard some crazy things in my time, but this!”

  Laughter erupted throughout the station, much the way my fire had started, born in crackles and sparks before erupting into a glorious blaze. The entire station chortled and guffawed, falling on the floor, clutching their overfed bellies, laughing and snorting and farting and crying. Even—after sufficient time had passed—even our arrested men couldn’t help but smile.

  Fifteen of the workers were handed life sentences, sent to labor camps. Five more, who were deemed ringleaders, were handed the death penalty. Destruction of private property, arson, manslaughter, obstructing traffic’s natural and steady flow, illegal employment, use of an unapproved fuel source to start a fire, general mischief and hooliganism, illegal migration/residency, disturbing the harmonious society, public gathering without a proper permit—the list of their crimes, oh, it went on and on.

  5.

  THE SHED, THE SECRET, THE TREATISE

  We are disillusioned. We are burned out.

  We hail from near and far.

  We step forward, hiding no longer behind masks of cash and clothes and luxury cars.

  We come unveiled.

  We seek new truths, new paths to fulfillment.

  We seek avenues unexplored.

  We are the ex-millionaires, and we would be the future of this great country, if we gave a damn about this great country’s future.

  IT CAME TO WANG IN A DREAM. HIS DREAM-SELF, POISED ATOP THE roof of his old Hair Inc. headquarters in Shanghai, on a cushion, meditating, breathing in, out, existing within the present moment but remaining keenly aware of his Heads, exercising and swallowing vitamins and sprouting strands in the building below. In, out. Something fluttered before his face, landed in his lap: a red autumn leaf, written upon with ink, sent for him. June 5, that was the message, the entire message, and upon receiving that message, he jolted awake in bed.

  He would’ve forgotten it, dismissed it altogether, but this was modern times and this message wasn’t to be contained within one medium. He received it afterward also in the waking world: he became strangely fixated with a stone on an afternoon walk, one of a thousand stones, and when he turned it over, he found nestled in the damp ground below it a folded-up note bearing only: “June 5.” One morning, on his way to pick up bread from a neighboring baker, he came upon two villagers playing some game of their own invention, something involving throwing a stone and singing old commercial jingles, and just as he walked past one of them announced the current score, six to five. Six five. June 5. He’d wake as dawn broke, jolting from one of those falling dreams—body tensed, wet with sweat—and always at the same time, 6:05. June 5.

  He understood the message the instant he received it. This was the date he was to be removed from this earth, to be reclaimed by those shadow people with their white light, their loving warmth.

  Until that date, he waited.

  The ethos that underlies our actions is simple: We believe every act of corruption spawns immeasurable evil, and we spurn its dark practices. We reject the notion that life, in order to be meaningful, must be oriented toward the setting and achieving of goals.

  June 4. Morning’s sunny fingers reached through the windows, shook him awake. It was late, seven or eight. A damp earthiness hung in the air. Next to him on the kang, Stefan snored peacefully.

  This cozy home they shared was truly a farmer’s home, a nest where they’d lived out their past months, fully intending to remain alone. But life had other plans, and there’s no real way to get lost anymore. Like pigs to a feast, others appeared, their eyes desperate, their mouths drooling, their intentions clear. A veritable city had sprung up around this simple home, fantastic flames born of a modest spark.

  He rose, crawled over his corpse sleeper of a boyfriend, stretched, and hobbled outside toward the outhouse. Birds chirped. A breeze blew. From somewhere far away wafted the faint song of some happy couple making love and enjoying it immensely, judging by the over-enthusiastic timbre of their moans.

  To be fair, what was there not to enjoy? It was a paradise, to be sure. Everything this village had, aside from a few dozen of the original mud houses, its people made themselves and enjoyed making. They grew and raised and preserved and cooked their own foodstuffs, sewed and patched their own clothing and linens, tended to their own scrapes and wounds. Here, there were no worries about money, no blood-pressure-spiking competition, no scrambling for limited resources.

  Just laughter, music, art, joy.

  His healthy stream dribbled to a stop, and he shook himself dry, zipped, spun, took a step. Or tried to take a step—his foot slipped out from underneath him, slid back, sunk into the trough. His body careened toward the ground. He braced for impact, caught himself evenly with both palms. He lay there on the outhouse floor, unmoving, his bare foot immersed in a swamp of human shit and piss. A second passed before shock subsided. He stabilized his torso and pulled his poor appendage from this quicksand. He didn’t get up.

  He blinked. He saw red.

  He was in no state to make decisions, but luckily, his voice took the lead. He bellowed first as a way to claw out from what shock lingered, and then out of agitation, and then one final time, just for drama’s sake. He roared Stefan’s name, but that was a man who could sleep through the end of the world.

  He was on his own.

  His wrists ached. The skin on his palms stung. His mind spiraled. He shouldn’t have come in here, he should’ve just pissed in the yard like Stefan always did if we’re going to live like farmers… If we’re going to live like animals is more like it. But even cats keep it in a box.

  He lugged himself upright, grimaced, and stepped, carefully this time, from the outhouse. He scurried past the shed, grabbed the metal bucket, and bent over to turn on the water spigot. The rusty faucet sputtered. Nothing. More sputtering. Three fat drips, taunting him, plopping one after the other on the grass below. Ha, ha, ha. And then more nothing.

  A sigh rose from Wang’s lungs, escaped his lips, burdened the air around him.

  This, it was this.

  All was fucking paradise until you went to take a piss, slipped, and fell into slimy shit slop like a common hog. Until you wanted nothing more than a wash and couldn’t even get your goddamn water to work. Until you craved a succulent bite of hairy crab and were left to make do with some old hag’s bitter berry jam or some other similar
DIY snack atrocity. Until you longed to unwind with some luxury shopping followed by a cocktail at a swanky hotel bar with a glittery city view—as if that were so much to ask—but were left to alleviate your stress by chanting out your feelings in a drum circle. This. He was fucking sick of this. The inconvenience, the filthiness, the haughty and delusional people who acted like their semi-self-deprivation deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. If they really wanted to live like peasants, how about they hop in a time machine and replay some famines. How about they go around beating and humiliating each other for not being Nationalist enough or Communist enough or whatever-the-political-flavor-of-the-day-was enough. How about they really do without.

  And surely none of these neo-peasant jokers was stupid enough to truly relinquish everything, to actually “do without”—certainly they still retained deeds to their multiple properties and access to bank accounts in the Virgin Islands. Their real lives hadn’t been ejected; they were just on pause. All of these people were posers, this paradise a fraud.

  And if he was going down that road, well, once upon a time, he’d felt something like love for Stefan, some pattering in his chest that could well have been explained away by heart palpitations, but lately that warm, excited feeling had devolved into something resembling dread. The bastard was always so cheerful, so far and obnoxiously removed from the reality of any given situation. If Wang dared complain about anything, Stefan responded with a chirpy “Look on the bright side of things.” Please. If he wanted to feel all optimistic and wonderful, then why would he be complaining in the first place? There was something to be said for the power of commiseration. Commiseration was an important bridge between human beings. Suffering could not always be allayed, but at least it could be understood, empathized with. The ability to complain and feel as though your complaints were heard and comprehended—all too often that was better than being handed a solution.

  Though right now, with fecal matter caked between his toes and sweat pooled on his upper lip and this goddamn water spigot blowing air, he had to admit that a solution would also suffice.