by Da Chen
Mr. Gong asked me to cover the south end. He would watch the north. When we got there, I was amazed by the number of sparrows picking at the seeds. They were having a free breakfast, and were undisturbed by the two humans. From the bushes, where they’d been hidden, Mr. Gong took out a huge bronze gong, and two long bamboo poles with some shreds of red cloth attached to the ends. I eyed them doubtfully.
I decided to do something drastic for a change. I took the gong and started beating it while running along the field. The birds flew furiously away and I stood before Mr. Gong, waiting for him to praise my youthful energy. He smiled and asked me how long I could keep running like that. I said every ten minutes. He shook his head mildly, not at all impressed. He said that the farmers deliberately sowed ten times more seed than they needed—they had already thought about the birds, and knew that we couldn’t keep running forever.
I asked him what we should do. He pointed vaguely at the river nearby and asked me if I wanted to fish in the river to kill some time. I asked him if that was all right. Who was around to say it wasn’t? he asked. The cadre couldn’t come here to count how many seeds were missing. Mr. Gong would keep an eye on the road, and if I heard him beat on his gong three times, I was to jump out of the river right away.
That first day I swam for three hours, then napped for two. In between, I beat the gong for fun. The second day I was bored, so I sat next to Mr. Gong and chatted about my school. During the lulls, I would quietly play with his beard. On the third day, he started talking and I couldn’t get him to stop. He talked about language and how he loved the beauty of words. He used to write poems and prose. It was his prose that had made his wife fall in love with him at a college campus up north. His father had owned a little land, so he had come back after college with his wife and had volunteered to be a landlord. His wife had died an angry woman, but he was very proud of his sons because they were all writers who wrote better than he did. He had high hopes for them as poets. Then he recited some of their favorite lines, moved at times to tears. I forgot about the scorching sun and the boring, quiet, deserted fields, where we saw only an occasional fisherman sailing by in his bamboo boat.
I was getting so tanned that Mr. Gong fondly called me “Eel.” We set a nice routine for ourselves: I fished in the morning, while he napped at noon. Then I napped for two hours. Afterward, I would run around for half an hour scaring the birds, then we would talk and watch the sunset while waiting for the last bird to fly off. Soon we stopped separating when we walked down the street. Going to and coming back from work, I walked right behind Mr. Gong like his shadow, no longer afraid of being associated with him. We joked and laughed. He kept his shifty eyes alert, and, knowingly, we shut up when there were people around.
When my time of substituting for Grandpa was over, I missed the swims in the cool water, the naps in the vast quiet of the rice fields, and the conversations we had while watching the beautiful sunsets. I wished I were a poet like Mr. Gong, able to immortalize those moments in words.
YELLOW STONE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL sat a mile away down the street. It was an old Confucian temple with tilted roofs and lots of wood carvings on the walls. Ancient trees shielded the buildings from the sun, and there was a pond full of lotus blossoms.
When registration day came for the new school year, I got up early and studied my appearance in front of a piece of mirror, broken off from my brother’s bigger one. I was as dark as charcoal and as thin as sugarcane. My crew cut, Mom’s handiwork, had uneven furrows left behind by rusty scissors and a not-too-experienced hand, as though a clumsy farmer had plowed the fields. I didn’t mind it too much. The hair would grow again and the pain of having your hair yanked out by blunt scissors was soon forgotten. My sisters cut each other’s hair and Mom took care of the four men in the family. We saved a lot of money that way. The only time I had my hair cut by the barber was on the day of my grandma’s death.
The skin on my forehead was peeling like a snake casting its skin in the springtime. I rubbed hard, and pulled off the larger pieces, but I finally gave up. I would grow out of this terrible tan when the scorching summer changed to a mild, breezy autumn, with deep blue skies and thin white clouds that chased each other like lovers.
I put on a white shirt—a hand-me-down from Jin—and ran to school. The red poster in the schoolyard said that Mr. Sun was to be our new teacher. The tuition was three yuan, a staggering amount on the Chen economic scale. I checked the information twice, wrote it down for Mom to read, and parked myself by the window, watching parents take their kids by the hand and march happily to the teachers to register. It was an all-cash deal. They came out laughing, the kids jumping up and down with a bunch of new books in their hands. It was all cozy for them, but I had to find some resources for my education. I knew well enough that we would be out of rice and yams in a matter of weeks. Dad was away at camp and the food ration kept going down each day. Mom was saving every fen for food. There was no money for tuition. The three yuan I needed would buy us ten pounds of rice, or a hundred pounds of yams. How much knowledge could it buy?
I went home with a lump in my throat. I knew the routine well. I would go to Mom and tell her about the tuition. She would tell me how much money she had left for the whole family, a few yuan at most. She would say to go ask for an extension or a waiver of tuition. Then I would have to go meet my new teacher, begging on my knees. Even if an extension were granted, the teacher would mention the tuition fees every day in class until everyone would know how poor I was. He might even keep me after school, lecturing. It had happened to my siblings, and all the while they would be going to school without textbooks. Kind students would let them copy from their books. Now it was happening to me.
I went home, feeling defeated, poor, and pathetic. Mom knew why. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and gave me fifty fens and told me it was a stretch for the family already. I didn’t need to be told. A poor child knew what it meant to be poor. We didn’t ask for much, and sometimes we didn’t even ask.
She said that I should beg for an extension. I asked her just how long would the delay be. She said until the piglets were grown and sold to the buyer from the south. That was something to hope for, but the mother pig was still pregnant. I took the money with a heavy heart. It was a pound of flesh off the family fortune, but only a small piece of the tuition.
I pinned the fifty fens to the inside of my pocket lest I lose them, and ran back to school. I parked myself below the window again and had a good look at the teacher. He was a thin man with short, curly hair like feathers. He seemed your regular, boring, stiff-necked young educator who had read some books. He was shaking hands with the parents of my classmates, smiling and smoking.
I slumped against the wall, feeling depressed. The world was unfair. Everyone in my class seemed to have young parents with money. They chatted, laughed, and socialized with the new teacher. Their manners were smooth, their clothes were nice. It was a very special occasion for them, and a milestone for the kids. Some of the parents were so influential in the little, deprived town of Yellow Stone that being the teacher for those kids could mean a lot of back-door favors.
Take that fat butcher from the commune with his fat boy, who now sat with the teacher. He was so rich that he took out a thick wad of large bills and casually pulled out two large notes. The teacher had to clean out the drawer for change. I could imagine what they were saying.
Cute kid.
Thanks, but he’s naughty.
Can’t be that bad.
Needs a good teacher like you to discipline him.
No problem, pal, I’ll take care of it. What line of business are you in, by the way?
Oh, I sell meat. Come by anytime. I’ll give you some real lean meat through the back door.
Deal.
The butcher put out his greasy hand and the teacher took it. No doubt the fat boy would be well taken care of in class. He would act like a spoiled brat with the teacher’s blessing. He was the one with the meat da
ddy, so he would win each time. And good meat would be forthcoming on holidays, the New Year, and special occasions. The teacher would be sorry when the fat boy finally graduated. That was how it went.
And what did I have to offer? Nothing. Grandpa was dying, sick in bed. The doctor said he might live a few months with the proper medication. Tough luck. Medicine was expensive. No money, no life. Dad was digging in the mountains somewhere, camped in an old, windy temple. And I had only fifty fens in small coins. My personal appearance was shocking—a pumpkin head and a ten-year-old patched shirt. And I personally hadn’t eaten any meat since New Year’s Day.
The thoughts tortured me and I squirmed in shame and humiliation, but I had to face reality. The teacher could throw me out with a sneer on his face. That was fine, I had thick skin. A poor child couldn’t afford to have thin skin. Only rich boys and well-to-do girls with cute little butterflies in their hair could afford to have thin skin.
I adjusted my belt, made sure my pee hole wasn’t open, and gingerly stepped into the teacher’s office. I would go there and beg the hell out of him, though I was prepared for the worst. The window looked reasonably large and there was a patch of soft grass for landing.
“So you are Chen Da,” he said, to my surprise.
“Yes, sir. I have a problem.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Excuse me?”
“I meant, we all have problems.” He was smiling.
“Yes, well, you see, I only have fifty fens for the tuition…”
“And you want to register?”
“If I could.”
“What’s your story?”
“We’re waiting for the piglets to grow.”
“How big are the pigs?”
“Young.”
“How young?”
“Not born yet.” I waited for him to grab my neck and toss me out.
“Okay, write a note down here about the pigs and I will register you.”
I looked at him in disbelief. A wave of gratitude swept through my heart. I wanted to kneel down and kiss his toes. There was a Buddha somewhere up there in the fuzzy sky. I took his pen and wrote the promise on a piece of paper.
“But I cannot give you the textbooks now. It’s a school rule.”
“That’s fine. I can copy them from others.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I was thinking maybe you could use my last year’s copy, but it’s messy, it has my handwriting all over the pages.”
If I didn’t mind? Who was this guy? A saint from Buddha’s heaven?
I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to say. I kept looking at my feet. I had rehearsed being thrown out the window, being slighted or laughed at, but kindness?…I wasn’t prepared for kindness. I nodded quickly, and ran off after saying a very heartfelt thank-you and bowing so deep that I almost rubbed my nose on my knees.
Mr. Sun, the new teacher, came from a village at the foot of the Ching Mountain. He had a sunny personality and was an outdoors kind of a guy. In the morning, he and his wife watered the vegetables, then he walked to school. I soon began to tag along behind him like his shadow every morning. He told me many stories during those walks.
He elected me to be the monitor of the class, a bold political decision on his part, and had me lead the revolutionary songs at the beginning of every lesson. I was that 1-percent exception in our harsh reality. I was never supposed to be a leader among other students. I was born with a political defect that no one could fix. But once in a while they threw a bone out to us, a bone that we chased around with enthusiasm. I was grateful for this bone. I played with it, poked it with my snout, and cherished every moment of being tempted before I sank my teeth into the juiciest part.
I’d arrive early with the teacher and hit the books. In my spare time, I helped the slower students catch up. I was the captain of our basketball team and a formidable singer in school-wide competitions. Once I sang so loud that I was hoarse for the next three days. I read classical stories to the whole room, while my teacher sat in the back and graded the homework, stopping occasionally to nod with approval.
Late in the afternoons, my new friends—Jie, Ciang, and a few others—would urge me to tell them some more stories. We would climb over the short wall in the back of our school and throw ourselves into an ancient orchard. It was a little paradise.
Our spot was a huge lychee tree with low-hanging boughs. Each of us had a favorite sitting spot. Mine had a back support and a small branch to rest my feet on. The comfort helped the flow of the story. Sometimes Jie would rub the soles of my feet, which was good for another twenty minutes. And each time I threatened to end the story they would beg for more and more, and I would have to stretch my imagination and make a short story longer and a long story go on forever.
My popularity went unchallenged till one day a big-eyed boy showed up at our door for late registration. I hated to admit it, but he was good-looking. He was there for five minutes and the girls were already giggling at his sweet smile and nasty winking. During break, I sat in my seat, heaving with anger and contempt for this sudden intruder. I contemplated the proper step to take. I thought of going to him and introducing myself as the leader of the class. It was, after all, my territory, and I deserved a certain courtesy and respect from him. You can’t just walk in and ruin everything. If he was a decent man (my keen observation of him during the last hour made me feel this was unlikely) then I would give my blessing, offer my protection, and help him settle in on our turf. I was, after all, a nice guy with a big heart. I welcomed any bright man as my friend, but no way was I going to walk up to him and shake hands. He was surrounded by a fan club, admirers who were fawning over something he was wearing. The girls lingered and giggled. The place was out of control.
As I burned with jealousy, a negative feeling that as a leader I tried hard to suppress, the hotshot kid broke through the crowd and walked over. He looked straight at me with those attractive, intelligent eyes of his. At that moment, my heart softened. No wonder the girls had lost their minds. I couldn’t help being impressed by the clarity and sense of purpose in his eyes, that straight nose, so sculptural and defined, and that square, chiseled jaw. Had he been a general, I would have followed him into battle and fought until the end.
I stood up with what little dignity I had left and extended my hand to meet his. We shook hands. That was when I saw the buckle. He had this shining buckle the size of a large fist that he wore around his waist. There were five stars carved on it. It shone in the morning sun, obviously the result of a lot of polishing by a proud hand.
“I heard you’re the Tau-Ke.” The top man. His diction was imaginative.
“Hardly, hardly.” High praise called for a humble response, but I was flattered nonetheless.
“I think this would look really good on you.” He took his belt and buckle off and handed them over to me, just like that.
“No, no. You wear it.”
“I’ve been wearing it since my dad came back from the Vietnam War.” He had the casual art of name-dropping down pat.
“Your dad was in the war with the Americans?”
“Sure, he has lots of medals and was at Ho Chi Minh City. White Americans. Okay, okay, okay.” He even spoke English.
He studied the buckle carefully. A wall of classmates had gathered behind me, watching the exchange.
“That belt has a little history to it,” he continued.
“What history?”
“My dad wore it in the war. It’s been hit a few times but it’s so strong and tough you can’t even see a dent. I’m talking the super-bullets from the American weapons.”
I was sold on the spot. He became my best friend and we named him “Mr. Buckle.” He took the nickname in stride.
I showed him around the seedy part of town, the bushy burial grounds where the ghosts roamed, named all the dogs he should watch out for, and warned him about the dangerous spots to avoid. I pointed out fruit trees that were safe to steal from and helped him
with his homework as part of my duty as the class monitor. He, in turn, let me use his buckle. Then he took to wearing his dad’s army uniform to our house in the morning, and we would exchange our clothes. I wore his green jacket with the neat cartridge pockets, his dad’s oversized boots, and a marvelous army hat. I tromped around the school like an idiot, feeling great. I imitated the nasal accent of a general and talked with my head high and hands resting on my belt. The afternoon stories in the orchard soon all had something to do with the Vietnam War. It was much easier to create a story wearing the right costume. I told the stories, spoke the lines, and acted at the same time. My friends, including Mr. Buckle, laughed, cried, and cheered until they peed their pants.
But I still felt small twinges of jealousy. He was the only boy who dared cross that invisible line, and spoke openly to girls in class. They squirmed in his presence. They loved to be with him, but were shy, a sign of captivation. But as our friendship deepened, my admiration for him grew. I watched his moves closely. He looked moody in class, and had this way of focusing on your eyes when he talked to you. He walked tall, staring straight ahead. Confidence emanated from him. When he smiled, he didn’t open his mouth from ear to ear like an idiot, but tantalized you with a glimpse of white teeth. When you asked him a question, he knotted his brow into an intelligent frown. The guy wrote the book on proper body language.
One day Mr. Buckle formally invited me to visit his home. I tagged along and found myself standing before the threshold of a grand town house near the hospital. His dad was a retired hero from the war and was now the party secretary of the hospital, enjoying a hero’s retirement at an early age. The door of the house opened suddenly, and there stood Mr. Buckle, senior. Tall and handsome, a man’s man. He had a big smile, large eyes, and thick eyebrows, a picture-perfect hero. It was obvious where the son had gotten his good looks.
“Come on in, Da.” The father even knew my name.