Ghost Month

by Ed Lin

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said. “I don’t know if I would have answered if I did.”

  He cocked his head, and I think he smiled. “Did you hit your head, Jing-nan?”

  “No.”

  “Come here. Let’s put your bike in the bed. We can sit there, too.” I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t have much of a choice, either. Even if Nancy were awake, it would take too long for her to come by and scrape my carcass off the road. I looked at my dirty knees and my right palm, which I noticed had sprung a small rivulet of blood.

  “So you had those little punk kids mess up my bike,” I said. “Too bad they didn’t finish the job. I’m still alive.”

  “Actually, they executed it perfectly. We figured the wheel would fall off right around here. And that piece of shit doesn’t go fast enough for you to get seriously hurt, anyway.”

  The road wasn’t completely deserted. I made sure that the several cars rubbernecking got a good look at my face in case the American tried to disappear me. I was tired, sweaty and thirsty.

  “Could you give me a hand here?” I asked.

  Another man popped out of the cab. It was the Taiwanese guy with bad skin who had dropped me in the elevator. “Jing-nan,” he said, slapping my back. “Sorry about that thing before.” I went to one end of the moped, but the Taiwanese said, “Let me grab that.” He lifted the moped onto the truck’s bed by himself.

  I went back for the loose wheel, expecting both guys to get back in the cab, but the American remained in the truck bed. He really did want to sit with me.

  The truck bed had seats built in against the back panel of the cab. I sat down and noticed circular scrape marks around a grommet in the floor for another seat, or maybe a mounted gun. We snapped on seat belts.

  The American tapped the roof of the cab and we pulled out onto the road. He eased back in his seat and lit up a cigarette. After a few puffs, he spat over the side. He crossed his right leg over his left knee and folded his arms behind his head, as if we were in his living room, which happened to be in a mild wind tunnel.

  “You must be a contractor with some American agency,” I told him. I wanted to say “the CIA,” but that could escalate things quickly. “You should be in Iraq.”

  “Jing-nan, the less you know, the better.” He took a quick drag on his cigarette. The annoyed look on his face told me I had hit at least a partial truth. “I’ve been trying to elbow you out, but you keep coming back in, like one of those tropical bugs that won’t stay squashed.”

  “I could call the cops on you for what you did to me.”

  A thoughtful look came over his face, and he wiped his chin and mouth. “Don’t you have enough trouble with the police?” He chuckled and flicked his cigarette over the side, sending glowing ashes into the wind. I looked at my scraped hand and brushed gravel bits off of it.

  In English he said, “You gotta learn to be more careful, Jing-nan.”

  I said back in English, “Are you taking me home?”

  “We will, but I want to show you something first.”

  “Are you sure you’re not going to shoot me and dump my body someplace?”

  “There are people who want you dead, Jing-nan. They think you’re out to fuck up their operation. But I see you as you really are: a little lovesick bastard hung up on his old girl. I get you, because I know some other guys like that.”

  The Taiwanese driver turned onto National Highway One, heading east toward Keelung.

  “You know that I’m an ABC. I’m here on American business.” Behind his face a steady stream of silhouettes of shacks and factories went by, an animated story of Taiwan’s too-rapid industrialization.

  “What kind of American business are you on?” I asked.

  “We work best with nondemocratic governments. More stable than governments subject to free elections. That wasn’t a problem for most of Taiwan’s history. Now that you allow political candidates from all these dissident political parties, and they actually win elections, we’ve had to partner with, uh, nongovernmental agencies that are more stable and discreet.”

  A series of double-trailer trucks driving away from Keelung groaned by in the opposite lane.

  “Nongovernmental agencies?” I asked.

  “Organized criminal groups, Jing-nan. There are gangs here that are three times as old as Taiwan’s democracy—gangs that were formed by mainlanders after the Chinese Civil War.”

  I wanted to know how he fit into all of this. After all, ABCs could join these gangs, as well. “Are you a criminal?” I asked.

  He folded his arms and licked his lips. “I handle the relationship with the gangs, Jing-nan, but I’m not a gangster, and I can’t control everything they do. The whole Julia thing they’re handling in their own way. She was an innocent bystander caught up in an intragang power struggle, but her death was not in vain.” He rolled his cigarette between his thumb and middle finger and regarded it clinically before tossing it aside. “They’re taking care of the guilty parties their way. I don’t have anything to do with it, and neither does America.”

  I felt my throat lock up, but I managed to chirp, “Who killed Julia?”

  “Specifically, I don’t know and I’ve never asked. I told you. It was friction within Black Sea, but everything’s all right now, or will be soon.”

  “Black Sea, huh?”

  “Oh, fuck. You better just forget I said that.”

  I interlocked my fingers and pounded my hands against my knees. “I was gonna marry her, you know?”

  “Let me guess. You were also going to have two cars, a suburban mansion and two kids going to the Ivy Leagues?” The American laughed out loud before composing himself. To show that he was serious, he switched back to speaking Mandarin. “You’re talking crazy, Jing-nan! Look at you! Look at what you do! Look at where you live! I don’t want to make fun of you, but take a good look at who you are!”

  Both of us leaned into a turn. We were now headed south on Fuxing North Road. We went into a tunnel, and engine sounds echoed around us like lost souls. We came out and whipped through Zhongshan District. Construction barriers narrowed the road, and we were probably driving too fast. Our wheels pounded metal plates set in the asphalt to the one-two beat of Joy Division’s “Isolation.”

  As we drove by assorted works in progress, I thought about how I hadn’t really finished anything. Not college. Not my promise to Julia. Not paying off that family debt to German Tsai, which I felt like bringing up, to make my case seem less subject to my personal failings.

  I looked at the American. He didn’t give a shit what I had to say, anyway. Probably thought all Taiwanese were stupid and simple.

  “You know,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to end up living such a stupid, simple life.”

  “Jing-nan, who are you trying to kid? You keep the same schedule nearly every day. You go home, have a beer, wash yourself and sleep. You’re entirely predictable.”

  I turned my body to him as best as I could. “I think you’re projecting your life onto mine,” I said.

  “Oh, no. I’m talking about you. Well, until Nancy started fucking it up a little bit. She noticed the smell.”

  “What smell?”

  The American pointed up at the sky and wormed his finger upward.

  “She noticed the frying smell. When we were drilling holes for our surveillance equipment, we used cooking oil as a lubricant. That caused the smell. We figured you wouldn’t notice after a long night surrounded by frying meats, but the girl …”

  The American took out his cigarette pack, had a second thought and stuck it back in his coat pocket.

  “We usually use rifle microphones to listen remotely,” he continued. “But your crappy little house is built from a composite of scrap metal, rock and concrete. It’s completely soundproof!”

  He nodded at me with approval and leaned into my arm as we made a right on Heping Road. This would take us to Wanhua District. So they were taking me home after all. Still, they were basta
rds for what they did to me.

  “You bugged my house?” I asked, feeling my hurt hand pulse.

  The American put his hand over his heart. “I personally didn’t want to, but we did. Everything we ever got from you was completely useless, just like I said it was going to be. You don’t even have people over. Except for that one intimate night with Nancy.” He winked at me.

  My arms shook with anger as I hugged myself. “Why the hell did you bug my house?”

  “Don’t blame me, Jing-nan. I told you to stay the fuck away and you didn’t. You forced us to evaluate your threat level.” He pointed at my nose. “Everything that happened was your own fault.” He jerked his body away from me and checked his phone.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “You destroyed my bike and you spied on me. You can go to hell.”

  “Don’t get mad at me,” the American said over his shoulder. “I saved your life tonight.”

  “You people put my life in jeopardy by messing with my bike! And if you hadn’t been there, I’m sure that eventually somebody would have come along and helped.”

  We slowed down around the Taipei Botanical Garden. The gates were locked, and lumbering palm trees looked down at us like curious giraffes. When we were kids, there were signs that banned the mentally challenged from entering the garden. We used to joke that so-and-so couldn’t go on the field trip there. I don’t remember all the people that we made fun of, but Cookie Monster was definitely one of them. The Taipei Botanical Garden didn’t lift the ban and remove the signs until 2011.

  I became apprehensive again. Were they going to kill me and make it look like I had been trying to enter at night, a thief trying to steal rare aquatic plants for his private garden?

  “I saved your life by destroying your bike. Right about now, you’d be asleep in bed, right?” I played with my seat belt, unsure if I should take it off now that we had stopped.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know for sure you would be.” He waved his hand to the northwest. “Your house is somewhere over there, right?”

  You certainly couldn’t see my house from here. My little toaster building was blocked by much larger buildings down the block. This road would take me home, though. What was this crazy American trying to get at?

  “It’s somewhere over there, sure. Ten blocks away. So what?”

  He smirked and allowed himself to have that second cigarette he’d denied himself earlier.

  “Keep looking.”

  I crossed my arms. I wondered if he had watched me undress, if he had video files of Nancy and me having sex.

  Suddenly, I heard an explosion in the distance and saw a flame flick up in my neighborhood. It flared upward at first, but then steadied to a constant flame.

  “That’s your little house on the prairie right there, Jing-nan,” said the American. “Your ass would have been Cajun fucking blackened right now.”

  “You’re lying!” I said.

  He used his phone’s walkie-talkie function to talk to the driver and instructed him to go by my house. I was somewhat unnerved that he didn’t have to give him my street address. We went past Longshan Temple, which still had lights mounted to help guide lost souls. A block later and I could tell that it was my house on fire before we actually drove by it.

  The explosion had been well planned. The destruction and remaining fire were concentrated on the exterior wall—where my bedroom was—and away from the adjacent apartment building, which was buzzing with people yelling and pointing out of their windows.

  My records. Records that Julia had once held in her hands. My music files. Even the burned CDs. All gone. I took in a series of halting breaths. All those sounds had been silenced. I didn’t care about the actual stereo equipment or anything else in the house. I didn’t even care about the house itself. All of that music was now in the hereafter. I’d wasted most of my life putting that collection together.

  I reverted to my teenage self. I just wanted to die.

  My head was chilly. I ran my fingers over my hair and they came out slick with sweat.

  “Satisfied?” the American asked in English. I nodded dumbly. We drove down a few more blocks, made a U-turn and stopped at Longshan Temple.

  “This is where you get out, Jing-nan.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Go walk to your house, talk to the fire fighters. Tell the cops your bike broke down and you caught a ride from a ‘depressed friend.’ ”

  “A ‘depressed friend’?”

  “They’ll know. Don’t worry about your moped. We’ll fix it up and bring it back to the night market.”

  I snapped off my seat belt and crumpled my head into my lap. “All my things are gone,” I moaned.

  The American put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about that. Say, Jing-nan, that box you got from Julia’s father was in there, wasn’t it?”

  I raised my head and stared at him vacantly. The box was still at Nancy’s.

  He read my expression all wrong. “It’s better destroyed, Jing-nan. Believe me.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I stood up.

  He touched my left forearm. “Jing-nan. It stops here, okay? You’ve already found out all there is to know about Julia. Don’t go looking for more trouble, because next time, they will kill you.”

  I was about to make a comment about the diploma, but I stopped myself. After all, it probably didn’t mean anything and the American might suspect I still had it. He had saved my life tonight but he wasn’t my friend.

  I looked down and nodded. Then I hopped out and walked slowly to the burned foundation of my home, the source of the light and smoke pouring up into the night sky.

  I WAS HALF A block away when I slowed down to a stiff-legged, undead trudge.

  I couldn’t bear the thought that everything was gone. All the music I had ever listened to in my life. I also began to miss specific books and certain clothes, such as my Joy Division hoodie. It was cooler because it had a picture of the band and no words to clue in non-fans. The little paperwork I had accumulated at UCLA was gone as well. Julia had left behind more things than I now owned.

  I still had the memories of living in that home with my mother, father and grandfather, even though most of them were merely prosaic. Eating, washing, sleeping.

  Damn it, if I had only worn my Joy Division hoodie today! Sure, it was too hot for a hoodie, but I could have pulled it off while riding my moped.

  As I drew closer to the fire, the air stank of chemicals oxidized into evil spirits that bit the insides of my nasal cavity and the roof of my mouth. I clamped the inside of my right arm over my nose and continued.

  The concrete-and-stone wall topped with glass was still intact, but the metal gate was gone, probably already in the hands of a scrap-metal dealer. Even with the obvious gap, the outer wall was in better shape than what had been my family home. The roof was gone and the walls had crumbled. The flames had lost some intensity since we drove by, but they were still going strong enough to throw off heat. I sat on a brick stump and watched embers winking at each other and cackling.

  A fire truck had beaten me there, but it hadn’t used the siren, or I would have heard. Even more curious, the water hoses remained rolled up behind the roll-down gates on the sides of the truck. Two male fire fighters, one with a helmet and one without, stood at the rear of the truck, both glued to their cell phones.

  “Hey!” I said to them. “Why aren’t you putting this fire out?”

  “Who are you?” asked the man with a bare head.

  “This is my house!”

  “You’re Jing-nan, huh? You’d better talk to General Yang. He’s the guy over there.” He switched his helmet to his left armpit and pointed to a heavyset fire fighter talking to a man I knew to be a plainclothes policeman and German Tsai on the far corner of the block.

  I marched over to the three of them. I saw the so-called general gesticulate to the others that he was going to handle me himself. He was the kind
of guy who buckled close to the crotch because he refused to get a longer belt to accommodate the child he was carrying in his womb.

  “Jing-nan, I’m Mr. Yang,” he said. “I’m glad you weren’t home.”

  “How come you won’t put that fire out?” I said.

  German Tsai rubbed his nostrils with his right thumb and looked away. The policeman put his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. “It’s more dangerous if we turn on the water, Jing-nan.”

  “How could it be more dangerous than having an open fucking fire, General?”

  I don’t know what set him off more, me cursing or calling him “General.”

  “You live in an illegal house, you know that?” he bellowed. “You’re lucky we came at all! Can you smell that? Do you know what that is?”

  “A bunch of chemicals, obviously.”

  “It’s tar! The walls of your home were filled with tar and probably some other industrial waste! We can’t spray water in there when we don’t know what toxic crap we could be spreading around. It’s safer to let it all burn away completely.”

  “That’s bullshit! Put out that fire right now!”

  German Tsai approached, showing me his open palms in a calming gesture. “Now, look, Jing-nan, everything’s pretty much lost already,” he said. “I know that things don’t look good now, but you and I are going to work things out.”

  Mr. Yang felt free to add, “This is what you get for living in an illegal construction! This building should have been demolished decades ago.”

  I headed back to the two fire fighters. “He’s not going to put out the fire,” I told them.

  The man with his helmet on shoved his phone in his back pocket and said to me, “Come here.” He brought me around to the back of the truck and popped open a storage door. “Take one,” he said, pointing to a rack of dirty shovels.

  I picked one with a flat edge and he took one with a rounded blade. We walked toward the fire. I never felt more like a hero, even though it was my house.

  The outside west wall had blown apart where most of the fire was concentrated. The east wall—the one next to the adjacent condominium—was merely scorched. The flames had nearly burned themselves out by then. The fireman dug into a dirt patch along the remains of the north wall. He threw dirt across the fire and nodded to me. I went over to the dirt patch and scooped up a shovelful of moist earth.