Incensed

by Ed Lin

  I couldn’t go to the police. One more strike against Mei-ling would probably land her on the hooligan database for life. Then she could kiss her high-school diploma bye-bye.

  Chong! I thought we’d reached an understanding. He had been plotting against me the entire time. I even fed the guy and let him drink my beer. What a fool I was.

  Mei-ling had me conned, as well, saying she didn’t care for Chong anymore. I of all people should know that young love dies hard.

  “Do you know the guy who owns the motorcycle?” asked Tai-ming. His tone suggested he was fishing. I gave him what he wanted to know.

  “That’s her ex-boyfriend,” I said. “I’m sorry, make that current boyfriend.”

  He nodded like an idiot and stood up. Our ride in the time machine was over.

  I touched his arm and said thanks.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maybe, I thought, maybe it was just a little joyride for the day. A romp at the love hotel. Mei-ling might turn up at the night market, sheepish and apologetic. Hell, I would even settle for a smug, defiant, and drunk teen as long as she came back.

  C’mon, girl. I did make fun of you but really I’ve been trying to help you. I don’t deserve to be treated like this and I certainly don’t deserve Big Eye coming down on my ass.

  I could feel hope dying in my chest with every passing hour I stood in front of Unknown Pleasures. Dwayne playfully twisted my arm behind my back but all I did was sigh. He released me immediately.

  “Hey, Jing-nan, what’s going on?”

  “I have a problem. A big one.”

  “Big one, eh?” He said under his breath, “Is Nancy pregnant?”

  “Gan! No! It’s Mei-ling!”

  “Mei-ling’s pregnant? I’ll kill the guy!”

  “She ran away,” I howled. “With her ex-boyfriend!”

  Frankie raised an eyebrow. He was too far to hear, but maybe he was reading our lips. I wouldn’t count anything out with him.

  Near the end of the night and in the depths of my despair, Frankie came up to me and touched my left hand lightly. “You’re not upset about me taking time off?” he asked, already knowing that wasn’t the case.

  “No, not at all,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you’re wondering why.”

  “It’s none of my business, Frankie.”

  “I want to tell you, Jing-nan,” he said. “I’m going to burn incense for Chiang Kai-shek.”

  I was speechless. The Generalissimo had presided over the martial law era that saw Frankie wrongfully arrested and jailed.

  Frankie, as a teen, had met Generalissimo Chiang while serving in the orphans’ brigade. Frankie drew admiration from the old soldier by showing off his arm tattoos. The ones that he had only recently removed.

  “Why, Frankie?” It was none of my business but my curiosity had gotten the better of me.

  “I had a dream,” he said.

  Dwayne took a seat, put his elbows on the table and held his head up with both hands like a little kid. Frankie didn’t tell stories much and when he did they were awesome.

  “The Generalissimo came to me and saluted. I saluted back. Then he bent his head forward in a small bow and when he straightened up again, his face was wet with tears. He apologized for my jail sentence and said that he was suffering for all the injustices he knew about but didn’t stop. I said that I didn’t believe he was sorry. The Generalissimo got down on all fours and banged his head against a stone until he bled. What could I do? I tried to help him up but he refused to get off his hands and knees. I said out loud that this was the strangest dream I ever had. He looked up at me and said it wasn’t a dream. When I protested, he said that he remembered me as a kid with the arm tattoos and that one stroke was missing from the character for ‘country.’”

  Frankie paused to unwrap a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. Neither Dwayne nor I could breathe.

  “I checked my arm when I woke up,” Frankie said. “The ink is almost completely gone now but I could see that a stroke was missing in that character. I’d never noticed before.”

  “Gan!” said Dwayne.

  “You must’ve known, on a subconscious level,” I said. “You’ve been hiding it from yourself.”

  Frankie leaned over to me. “Jing-nan, did you know on some level that Chong wasn’t going to give up on Mei-ling?”

  “He had me completely fooled,” I said.

  “Who had you fooled?”

  I whirled around to see Captain Huang, holding a half-eaten fried pork chop in his left hand while pointing at me with his left index finger. “You’re not easily tricked, are you, Jing-nan? In fact, you’re the one who’s usually trying to pull a fast one.” He wasn’t happy and looked like he was losing sleep. His normally baggy eyes now exceeded the carry-on limit.

  I smiled and nodded. The captain had called me “Jing-nan,” but only Johnny was here now. “I thought you’d be here earlier for dinner, Captain,” I said. “I still have some chicken-anus skewers. I understand they’re your favorite.”

  Captain Huang sucked his teeth noisily. “I just came by to tell you that I caught Big Eye’s daughter’s music act,” he said. “I knew about the show and I was considering pulling the plug, since you didn’t have a permit. But Orchids was really good. Me and all the boys were into it.”

  “How did you know the show was going to happen?” I asked.

  “I saw it pop up on TaiPride.”

  “Why is everybody going to that site?”

  He casually tossed the remains of the pork chop on an otherwise clean table. He was trying to push my buttons, trying to get me to overreact so he’d have an excuse for giving me lumps. “I do research online to keep abreast of potential disturbances. It’s a convenient place to see when and where unsavory types are gathering. Well, I’ll see you later, Jing-nan.” The captain pointed at the pork chop and the small skid mark it had made. “How about we clean that up?” he said and walked away.

  “What a total asshole,” muttered Dwayne, articulating my thoughts perfectly. Frankie said nothing but made some knives shriek against the sharpening stone.

  I brushed aside the encounter and cleaned off Captain Huang’s pork chop from the table. I put all thoughts about Mei-ling on the backburner along with the chicken gizzards.

  When I heard the sounds of the brooms sweeping out closing stands I imagined I could hear her footsteps in them. I left Unknown Pleasures earlier than I usually did, as if I were escorting Mei-ling home again.

  “I should’ve known,” I wailed to Nancy. “That little bastard Chong!” She was lying in my bed, typing away at her laptop yet again.

  “You have to tell Big Eye,” she said for the seventh time.

  “I will if she’s not back by the morning,” I said, also for the seventh time.

  “You should tell him now. The more time Mei-ling and Chong have, the farther away they can get.” A chime rang out as she saved her file. “Wait, I understand now. You want them to get away. You want to see the girl get away from her controlling father and get to be with her boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks. That’s very romantic of you, Jing-nan.”

  Was that true? After all, I wasn’t ideologically opposed to Mei-ling and Chong being together.

  Then I thought about where that left me with Big Eye. He couldn’t flat out kill me, could he? I was his nephew, after all! What would he do to Chong and Mei-ling when he found them? I was sure he would find them, too. Chong would get the worst of it, I’m sure. A broken arm? Both legs?

  “What should I do?” I asked Nancy, sure that the distress was plain on my face.

  “Call Big Eye now. Tell him what happened. Maybe he won’t be mad.”

  “Now, let me make sure I understand this properly,” Big Eye said on the phone. He was one of those guys who became joyfully detail-oriented when seized by anger
. “Chong picked up my daughter on his motorcycle at the Zhinan Temple and you’re telling me about it now, nearly twelve hours later.”

  “I thought she might come back,” I said weakly.

  “She’s not answering her phone?”

  “She isn’t.”

  “Listen, my little nephew. We have to talk in person. Get your ass on the high-speed rail to Taichung. Leave right fucking now and you’ll make the eleven p.m. train. I’ll see you at the station.”

  “Big Eye, that doesn’t make any sense. Taichung would be the last place they would go. Don’t you want to start looking here?”

  His words were pleasantly marinated in menace and he ended the call with, “I’m going to make some phone calls immediately but in the meantime, get on that goddamned train and I’ll see you very soon.”

  “He wants to see me in person, Nancy,” I said.

  “He probably just wants to gouge your eyes out.”

  “Nancy, this isn’t funny. My cousin could be in serious danger.”

  She crossed her arms. “I’m sure she’s fine. It sounds like Chong really loves her. Big Eye is what you should be worried about. Until he gets a hold of her, he might . . . slap you around a little bit.”

  I stepped into my left shoe. “Slapping. I can handle slapping.”

  The high-speed rail station was actually in Wuri District, a suburb outside of Taichung’s city proper. It was very appropriate that I was bringing my worries to Wuri.

  Outside my window I saw lit shades in lopsided buildings teeming together and then whizzing by. Sometimes there were long and bleak stretches of rice paddies reflecting the night sky. Seeing this representation of the universe made me feel small, insignificant, and helpless. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things who I was, the things I cared about, the people I loved. The sky would be dark at night and light in the morning.

  Then I had something of an epiphany. If the universe was indifferent to each person, it was all the more important to be who you wanted to be, do the things you cared about and be with the people you love because you had to live your life in a way that mattered to you.

  I found myself more accepting of recent events. Nancy was absolutely right. I supported Mei-ling completely if she wanted to be with Chong, even if it meant living on the run for the rest of their lives. I couldn’t stop someone from being with the one they loved and neither could Big Eye. Maybe it was up to me to stand up to Big Eye and tell him to back off and leave them alone or he was going to lose his daughter forever.

  The train was silent and brutally efficient at bringing me to my uncle. It was only an hour station to station. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say to Big Eye, but as Mei-ling’s big cousin, I had to have her back. I could step up and have a man-to-man talk with her father. I wasn’t a boy anymore.

  They picked me up at the station in the bulletproof SUV—Whistle, Gao, and Big Eye. I thought we were headed to the house but then we took a detour down a dark alley. Nobody said anything.

  We rolled to a stop near the end.

  Big Eye pulled at his pants near the knees.

  “I don’t know how to say this to you, Jing-nan,” he said. I was watching his hands. Those rings could really hurt my face.

  “I’m sorry,” I started. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t stop Mei-ling from being with the guy she loved, but you can’t either.”

  Big Eye snorted. “What the hell are you talking about, Jing-nan? There’s nothing to be sorry about. No. We’re beyond that.” He tapped Whistle on the shoulder and the radio came up. A talk show with a rich and famous adherent to the I-Kuan Tao religion was taking questions about his faith. “You shouldn’t expect to become rich,” someone on the radio said, “but if it is in your fate, you will be.”

  Gao stepped out of the vehicle and held the door open.

  “Give your phone to Gao,” said Big Eye. I did as I was told. I guess he wanted to go through my history to see if I was lying. I had nothing to hide. Gao closed the door and walked into the shadows.

  Big Eye gave me a tight one-arm hug and pulled me over to his face.

  “Listen, Jing-nan,” he whispered in my left ear as the rich man on the radio continued talking, “Chong is gone.”

  “I know he was missing for a while, but apparently he came out of hiding and took Mei-ling.”

  Big Eye gave a wry smile and loosened his grip on me. “Chong didn’t take anything or anybody because he is dead. He’s been dead.”

  I shifted in my seat. There was only one reason why he would know.

  “He came to see me a few days ago.” Despite his former expressions of disgust and racial hatred for the young man, Big Eye seemed genuinely shaken as he explained. “He said that he had tried to put Mei-ling out of his mind after seeing you. Couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to be a man about it so he came straight to me and said he wanted to be with my daughter. I said no. Chong lost his temper. Things spun out of control. He called me a ‘Big Brokeback.’ How the fuck could he have thought that he could talk like that to me? The kid ended up dying.”

  Big Eye patted me and moved away. The radio blabbed on as we sat in silence.

  My uncle was a murderer. The realization cut across all my memories of him. The hands that had fed me candy when I was a child had blood all over them. I had never thought that he was capable of such horrors. I think I could accept gambling, prostitution, and even loansharking if he joked about his misdeeds and shrugged. But killing? No.

  Captain Huang had mentioned those bodies found in a sugarcane field in Taichung and I’d been so sure there was no way Big Eye was involved. How naïve of me. Not just about that one crime but about my entire relationship with my uncle.

  I wished now that I had never reconnected with him. When Whistle and Gao first came for me I should have run down the fire escape and hid in the alley.

  Then I wouldn’t have met Mei-ling. Wait, who the hell picked her up on the motorcycle? Big Eye was wondering the same thing right from the get-go. Gan, maybe she was in a lot of trouble!

  My thoughts then turned back to Chong. That poor guy. Why did he think he could reason with a shark? My uncle had killed him. That confused kid who’d sat in my kitchen for fifteen minutes or so was now gone forever. What did Big Eye do? Shoot him?

  Big Eye snorted and reached into his jacket. I jumped.

  He smirked as he produced a flask and offered it to me. I shook my head and he took a long pull. Big Eye was troubled by the murder. I could see that. He’d probably just lost his temper and got carried away.

  Wait, what was I thinking? I was trying to rationalize how my uncle killed somebody.

  I wasn’t ready to talk to Big Eye yet, so I returned to listening to the I-Kuan Tao celebrity on the radio.

  “It’s the true heavenly way,” the man declared. “I’ve been involved with different religions in the past. This is the first one that makes sense and has compassion.”

  Without a pause, a chipper female doctor’s voice came on the air to deliver a commercial for hair-transplant surgery, saying a middle-aged man could look and feel young again and do well in online dating. Listening to this stupidity helped me find my mettle.

  I turned to Big Eye. “You made a big deal about Chong disappearing. That was a cover story. You knew exactly where he was.” My uncle swished his flask thoughtfully and said nothing. “Are you absolutely sure that he’s dead? Is it possible that he recovered and met up with Mei-ling?”

  Big Eye tapped my nose with the edge of his flask. “You think I don’t know what dead looks like, little Jing-nan? Chong’s already on his next incarnation.”

  “Where’s his body?” I asked, my voice shredding and betraying me.

  Big Eye snapped the flask shut and put it away. “That doesn’t matter, Jing-nan. Let’s worry about who the fuck did pick up my little girl.”

  “Did Chong an
d his boys ever work for you?”

  He tapped his fingernails against the flask. “We might have contracted some low-level stuff to them,” he said.

  “He told me you made the Indonesians fight one another.”

  “I didn’t do shit! What do you think poor people do when money starts showing up? Divvy it up evenly?” Big Eye put away his flask and closed his eyes. “I have to think.”

  The last trains back to Taipei, high-speed or conventional, were long gone. I’d have to wait until the morning for a ride back. Whistle and Gao were needed to attend to some unspecified matter, so they dropped off Big Eye and me at the house for the night. Big Eye set me up in a small room crowded with vintage kendo practice swords decorating the wall.

  The futon was a traditional one, stuffed with cotton and lacking modern adjustments for comfort, such as springs. The two pillows were filled with buckwheat chaff. The towel-like summer blanket was probably also traditionally Japanese.

  Do you know people who are so obsessed with a culture that they have appointed themselves as the guardians of its traditions against change? Big Eye didn’t want to be a contemporary Japanese. He wanted to be who the Japanese were a century ago, those of the powerful, blindly ambitious Great Empire of Japan who drove their own people into poverty as the military overreached. I can understand his obsession. If I lived in a century-old Japanese-style house, I’d have to be pretty psyched for that era, too.

  I disrobed and put on a set of static-free cotton pajamas I found in a drawer. I dropped into the futon and rubbed my eyes. When my focus came back I noticed that the kendo swords were all pointing at me, accusing me of losing Mei-ling and causing Chong’s death.

  I turned on my side and closed my eyes.

  Who picked up Mei-ling? The ghost of Chong? Another boyfriend she had had on the side?

  What was it like growing up in this house with this father? One thing was for sure. A man fascinated by Imperial Japan was bound to be a disciplinarian. A harsh one.