Incensed

by Ed Lin

  the mid-autumn festival: a time to love, declared the ad.

  I trudged on about four blocks to Qiangang Park, which was pretty big for a neighborhood park and included an outdoor pool near the obligatory temple to Mazu. My apartment was on the second floor of a generic concrete building that had sprouted up in the 1990s. From the bedroom I had a great view of a lighted small dirt patch in a neglected section of the park. It’s a decent apartment with unwarped floors and gets quite a bit of light. Plumbing’s in great shape, too. I couldn’t understand why the preceding tenants had all broken their leases. Not until my first weekend.

  Every Friday and Saturday nights, a pack of stray dogs entered the park and the alpha fought off challengers on that dirt patch. Dogs of all sizes, shapes, colors, and hair lengths let loose with howls of laughter and pain like partying teenagers in American films. It was loud enough to rattle my windows. Nancy refused to stay over on weekends. “Those are incarnations of evil spirits!” she declared.

  At about three in the morning, the alpha would pull his head back and wail a saga. He had the general shape of a German shepherd wrapped in knots of long, dirty white hair. His head fringe hung at a rakish angle over his face, covering one of his eyes. By the end of the night, he was often splattered in blood. He would lick it off and smile at the moon. I named him Willie after Willie Nelson.

  I watched Willie after his victories. At first I hated him for presiding over all that noise but I came to admire the beast as a decent fellow. The dog wouldn’t kill his defeated rivals, as was his right to. Not only did he forgive them, he seemed to grant them high ranks in the pack as a consolation prize.

  How could Willie be an evil spirit?

  The Council of Agriculture, which was responsible for rounding up strays, showed up only during the big ferret-badger rabies scare. They were supposed to vaccinate the dogs, as well. But when the guys left their truck for a dinner break, Willie led his top dogs into their cab through an open window and pissed all over the interior. The COA workers called a tow truck and took a cab home. It was all caught on security cameras.

  Not only is CCTV the nation’s top crime-fighting tool, it doubles as source material for cable news programs and talk shows. One news station created an animated meme of giant dogs pissing on things, including the Taipei 101 skyscraper, the face of the head of the COA, and the full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, turning it yellow.

  So what if my bedroom was a box seat to dog mischief? It was still an improvement from my old home, the one in the benignly sleazy Wanhua District that I had grown up in. That was an illegal building that had burned down to the ground more than a month ago. Seems like a former life.

  When my parents died, I had been saddled with a family debt related to my grandfather’s gambling habits and a loan from a local crime boss to cover losses. The jiaotou, as these neighborhood bosses are known, was really paying himself back with his own money, since he ran the gambing parlor as well.

  Gambling has been a fixture in Taiwan since Chinese people arrived en masse in the 17th century and it’s been a hard habit to break. Organized criminal activity to support gambling and other vices took root under the Japanese colonizers; after they left at the end of World War II, Taiwanese took over.

  Jiaotous are local-level guys. Maybe they have a dozen guys and five blocks under their control. They were Taiwanese Taiwanese. Benshengren, descended from Chinese who fled China when the Ming Dynasty collapsed in 1644. They also have aboriginal blood, since nearly all the Chinese who came over were men. Benshengren also speak Taiwanese and only resort to Mandarin Chinese under duress.

  The big gangs in Taiwan, the ones that operate on a national level, are mostly staffed with so-called mainlanders, descendants of Chinese who came over in waves after World War II and the Chinese civil war.

  One may think that after seventy years there wouldn’t be much difference between the two largest populations of Taiwan, or that the tension would not be noticeable on a day-to-day basis. But memories are long and the past remains present. We worship our ancestors, after all.

  Some benshengren are still bitter about their perceived mistreatment at the hands of the mainlanders during the forty-year martial-law era. Mainlanders say benshengren are looking for ways to segregate themselves, which is interesting because that’s what benshengren say about the Hakka, an ethnic minority originally from China. And don’t get anyone started on whose fault it is that the indigenous people of Taiwan continue to be marginalized.

  There are many issues we all have with each other and past grievances are stoked every election as the country tears itself apart.

  An old friend told me once that criminal organizations offer more stability than the government, and without all the fake promises and red tape. Whenever there are natural disasters in Taiwan—earthquakes, hurricanes, or mudslides—who are the first people on the scene with food, water, blankets, and medical supplies? The gangs.

  The rare times that there are stabbings, it’s gangsters killing each other. The police and the community at large don’t have problems with that. Gangsters by code use knives and swords. They disdain guns, which any dissolute amateur can use. No honor in using them.

  Taiwan’s gangsters operate outside the law, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a sense of integrity for the profession.

  In fact, after the fire that destroyed my old house, the jiaotou who had inherited the lender end of my family debt slashed what I owed and later wiped it away altogether. We had always gotten along on a superficial level, but I was taken aback by his newfound charity. The guy even sent me a little housewarming gift basket when I moved out of Nancy’s place and into the Qiangang Park apartment. Nancy had said I didn’t have to move out, but I felt weird living there, maybe because I’m old-fashioned in the sense that I believe a man should really have his own place. I was also against staying there because a rich married dude had given Nancy the apartment while she was his mistress. He was in jail now for bribing officials, otherwise I would totally be kicking his ass on principle alone.

  I entered my apartment and was greeted immediately by thumping from the ceiling. The people above had installed a Japanese-style floor of raised wood planks over a hollow center. The trapped air pocket acted like a layer of insulation that kept the floor cool during hot summer days and warm in the winter. The downside, borne entirely by me, was that every step my neighbors took sounded like a beat of a tom-tom drum. Apparently they were having a stomping party right now, at one-thirty in the morning. I fought back the only way I knew how. I lifted my stereo speakers to the top of my dresser, pointed them upwards and cued up a live recording of Joy Division covering “Sister Ray.” It was the loudest music file I had.

  I unbuttoned and peeled off my shirt, which was sweaty in the back and greasy in front. I was normally against wearing a collared shirt, but Nancy said I should look nice in case I was on television during the eating contest. I showered, snaked into a V-neck and light cotton slacks, and brushed my teeth as “Sister Ray” played on. The track was only about seven and a half minutes long, but I had it on repeat. I hoped my neighbors’ hollow floor acted like a subwoofer and throbbed like a bass cabinet under their feet.

  I was chuckling as I imagined their furniture jerking around from the sound waves when an insistent knock came at the front door. Oh, shit. I’d only ever blasted music at my neighbors, not confronted them in person. That would be rude. Taiwan is mostly a passive, non-confrontational place.

  More knocks.

  I had no idea what these neighbors looked like. Maybe it was a really big guy. Maybe he wanted to punch my lights out. I should take a weapon to the door, but something not too threatening, in case it was actually, say, an older woman. I grabbed my toothbrush in my right hand. It didn’t look very threatening, but I could poke an eye out with it, if I had to.

  My apartment door had a peephole that had been painted over on b
oth ends.

  “Who is it?” I called out.

  “Jing-nan?” I didn’t recognize the man’s voice. He didn’t sound big or angry.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Are you complaining about the noise?”

  “What? No. Just open the door.” I could hear his fingernails tapping impatiently.

  “It’s really late,” I said. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “Fuck this,” said the man. I heard something rattle in the lock. I dropped my toothbrush and grabbed at the chain lock. Before I could slide it into place the door swung open.

  I backed up as two men intruded. The guy in front was of a medium build, about the same size as me. He wasn’t happy. The man behind him stood at about six feet three, his muscles spread out over his large frame like the multiple trunks of a banyan tree. The big man had a dull look in his eyes that said, “I would lose zero sleep over your death from prolonged violence.”

  “Jing-nan,” said the man who was my size. “Your uncle sent us, so there’s nothing to worry about. Call me Whistle. This is Gao.” His teeth were stained red from chewing betel nut. A ring of keys and lock picks danced around his hairy knuckles.

  Contrary to what he said, I became even more apprehensive at the mention of my uncle. “My no-good brother,” as my father used to refer to him. I hadn’t seen him in maybe fifteen years. He had the Chen family habit of accumulating debts. He partially paid them off and then, after a brief cancer scare, he skipped town. There were rumors that he had established himself on a remote island in the Philippines, doing who knew what.

  Whistle lifted an open hand to me. “Jing-nan, we have to go,” he said.

  “Gonna use the can,” grunted Gao as he pushed his way past me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Whistle.

  “We’re taking you to your uncle,” he said, surprised that I wasn’t able to figure that out. “He has to talk to you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Taichung City!” said Whistle, surprised that I hadn’t known that, either. Taichung, true to its name, “central Taiwan,” is located above the center of the island, to the southwest from Taipei. It’s about a two-hour drive.

  “Couldn’t I talk to him on the phone?” I said, not meaning to whine.

  “Jing-nan!” Whistle chided. “He’s all the family you’ve got! You know what time of year it is! You have to see him in person!”

  I licked my lips. “Is he in trouble?”

  “Of course not. Now, let’s go. Put on some clothes and shoes, not sandals.” I heard a loud hocking sound echo in the bathroom, followed by the toilet flushing.

  I can’t pretend to understand how families work in other cultures. I know American kids can’t wait to move out of the house and that they see their grandparents only a handful of times a year. In Taiwan we live in the family house basically until we’re married. You see your grandparents every day because grandma cooks for the entire family and grandpa’s parked on his favorite chair by the window, reading newspapers and eating roasted melon seeds, piling the shells on an already-read section. Your aunts and uncles and their kids are probably living in another room or in an adjacent apartment where the adjoining door is never locked.

  I remember in one of the Godfather films someone says to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. In Taiwan we keep our family even closer than our enemies.

  Just hearing about my uncle brought up these feelings of familial ties and the inherent duties. He might indeed be no good but that wasn’t a reason not to hear and obey him. We shared the same name, blood, and fate. It was actually strange for us not to be in touch and our reunion was timely considering the Mid-Autumn Festival.

  Whistle and Gao brought me to their Infiniti SUV, which was parked around the corner in the shadows. It was customized with tinted windows. I took a seat in the back. Whistle got behind the wheel and Gao heaved himself into the shotgun seat. He wasn’t armed with a shotgun, though. He was armed with a handgun that he checked before stashing it somewhere under his seat.

  Yep, I thought, these guys sure know my uncle.

  My neighborhood is never completely quiet at night, but all I could hear inside the car was Whistle making faint slobbering sounds as he chewed gum. He was probably banned from chewing betel nut (and spitting out the juice) while inside the SUV.

  I noticed that the tint seal was bubbling in a few places. I tapped my finger to a double bubble. The glass was unusually thick—more than two inches.

  Bulletproof.

  Just a few months ago I would have been scared out of my mind being in the company of armed criminals. A lot has changed since. I’ve been beat up, shot at, and I even whacked some guy in the head with the butt of a gun. It sounds like a video game but in real life, fighting is exhausting and you feel bad about the people you hurt—even the bad people. Once you experience something like that, it’s easier to remain calm in times of distress.

  Then again, I wasn’t being kidnapped. Presumably these two guys were my uncle’s henchmen, and presumably my uncle wished me well. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, but I had good memories of him, despite my father’s misgivings. “Younger Uncle” was how I was taught to address him, but his friends and people in the neighborhood called him “Big Eye.” It was an odd little nickname, because he didn’t have big eyes at all. In fact his eyes were often narrowed and shifty.

  Come to think of it, he had a pretty mean-looking face. Yet my uncle was also very generous with me and laughed easily and louder than anybody else. He had given me candy and chocolate. The night before he took off, he asked me if I had what it took to be a man. I said I did, and he let me try cigarettes and beer, turning me off to smoking and drinking for years. Could that have been the plan?

  I looked out the bubbly dark windows and watched streetlights and buildings whip through my dark reflection.

  Way too late to call or text Nancy. I probably wasn’t in danger, but I wanted to let her know where I was. I tried to write her an email to explain that I’d been called away to visit my uncle. Everything I came up with sounded like I had been abducted and like it was written under duress. In the end, I settled on: “I have gone to visit my uncle because he is having personal problems. I should be back soon but I’m not sure when. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  I copied Dwayne. Frankie didn’t trust email. He didn’t like putting anything in writing because your own words could be twisted and turned against you. If I’d been a political prisoner like him, I’d probably feel the same way.

  All three of them would understand. Long-lost relatives could pop in at a wedding, a funeral, or near the Mid-Autumn Festival, as it turns out. My girlfriend and friends would only be alarmed if it turned out to be the last message they ever got from me.

  We circled up a ramp to the highway and passed by a roadside betel-nut stand. I watched a so-called betel-nut beauty, dressed in a hot pink halter top and matching miniskirt, standing frozen in the glass window. I thought about my first and lost love, Julia. She had been working as a betel-nut beauty, or posing as one, when she was murdered.

  When I was just a kid I was so sure I was going to marry that girl. The pain of losing her for good made me a man better equipped emotionally.

  The streetlights passed at a regular pace that entranced me. My eyelids constantly slid shut. Rain began to fall and I watched droplets of water shiver across the windowpane. The last things I saw before I fell asleep were blurry flashes.

  I stood before an offering table that was adorned with burning incense, plates of fruit, and a bunch of other sacred objects I’ve never understood the purpose of. Smoke from the joss sticks obscured everything beyond the table but I could feel that my old classmate Guo was near. While he was alive, I used to refer to him by his childhood nickname, Cookie Monster.

  “Jing-nan?” he asked. “Is that really you?”

 
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Where am I?”

  “You’re standing at one of the doorways between the world of the living and The Courts.”

  “What are ‘The Courts’?”

  “I’m being judged and punished for all the wrong I’ve done in my life,” said Guo. He had made some mistakes in life; one of the last ones had been pointing a gun at me. “Jing-nan, the gods here are all mainlanders! And they’re really loud and mean!”

  “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time, Cookie, er, Guo. But why are we talking?”

  “I had to see you to apologize for trying to kill you,” he said. With all sincerity, he added, “I’m very sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “You have to say that you forgive me, or it doesn’t count!”

  “Okay, I forgive you.”

  “Thank you, Jing-nan. Please allow me to apologize to you 9,999 more times.”

  “What!”

  “Ten thousand times every day for the next ten thousand years.”

  “I’ll be dead by then, Guo.”

  “That doesn’t matter! All of the dead are apologizing to each other as we try to work our way out of this maze.”

  “I forgive you to infinity,” I said. “Please consider the issue closed.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Guo said sadly. I dimly felt my physical body sway and recognized that I was dreaming.

  “Say, Guo,” I said, “while I’m here, could I talk to Julia?”

  I sensed fear in his response. “You want to talk to Julia? Before your parents? Jing-nan, how could you put anybody before your father and mother?”

  “Well, why the hell am I talking to you, then?”

  “I’m here to grovel,” said Guo. “Under any other circumstance, you should be paying respects to your family. Nothing’s more important!”

  I woke up with a start.