Ghost Month

by Ed Lin

  “Just get out of here,” I said to the men. The driver grabbed Yang roughly, and they walked grimly to the truck.

  The driver and the American took Yang to the back and tied him to one of the seats in the truck bed. Ominously, they threw a tarp over him.

  “Hey, GI!” Frankie called. He tossed the two laser-sighted guns into the dirt lit up by the headlights. The American scrambled for them.

  “These,” he said, holding up the guns, “are worth more than your life, Jing-nan.” He weighed them in his hands before calling out to the darkness, “Sure, keep the bullets.” The truck started up. The next sounds were doors opening and shutting. I saw some movement under the tarp, but once they were on the highway, it could just have been flapping in the wind. The truck lurched away, and in a few seconds it was like it had never been there.

  I hugged Nancy in the ugly yellow from the derelict parking-pole light. “I’m sorry,” I grunted into her head. “I should never have let you do this.” Her hair was a mess, and she smelled like motor oil.

  “I wanted to,” she said to my armpit. “I’d do anything for you.”

  I saw Frankie’s illuminated shoes walking toward us. “I’m keeping the flashlight,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I ran into Peggy in the lobby of Nancy’s building. She’d been lying in wait.

  “Jing-nan!” she called from one of the couches as I stepped from the elevator.

  “Why, hello, Peggy.”

  She rushed over and slapped my shoulder hard. “You and Nancy didn’t answer your door!”

  “Was that you knocking earlier? We had a lot of resting to do today. Nancy and I are coming off a pretty wild night, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, because you look like crap.” It was an honest assessment.

  “You look good, too, Peggy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the night market.” I tried to swivel away, but she managed to remain in front of me. Peggy was probably a hell of a good dancer.

  “Just a minute. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “Peggy, I’ve thought about it. I’m not going to go for that deal with you. It’s just not right for me.”

  “Well, fuck the deal. I’m talking about how some media’s going to try to interview you today.”

  I suddenly worried that news of the betel-nut stand, the CIA and the abductions had leaked to the media. “They want to talk to me?”

  “Yes! They’ve traced Ming-kuo’s last phone call, and someone at Chunghwa Telecom told the media that it was to you. Some reporters went to your address of record, but apparently they have it wrong. They ended up at an empty lot in the Wanhua District.”

  I couldn’t contain a bitter laugh. “I like to be mysterious,” I said.

  “Can you take this seriously for once, Jing-nan? A few reporters are going to be waiting at your stall. Don’t talk to them.”

  “Why not? It might actually be good publicity for Unknown Pleasures.”

  “But it will be bad feng shui for the real-estate developers, you know, the ones interested in signing a deal on the property. They aren’t going to want to build at a place tied to a suicide!”

  I stopped trying to work my way past her. “He didn’t even die there, Peggy.”

  “It doesn’t matter! Just don’t talk to them, Jing-nan, and the story will die down. Better yet, tell them it wasn’t true. You never talked to him!”

  “I have a better idea, Peggy. How about I tell them you tried to get me to sell out early?”

  She blinked. “Don’t joke around. You don’t know what you’re messing with.” She raised her hand and pointed a finger at my nose. “If you’re interviewed on camera, you’re going to get a lot of unwanted publicity!”

  I smiled, thinking of the American and all his shadowy cohorts.

  “Peggy, publicity is what I need. I want as many people as possible to know who I am.” I headed for the revolving doors.

  “This is your last warning, Jing-nan!”

  “You promise?”

  A FEW REPORTERS? I think every print, television and online reporter in Taipei was waiting for me. Dwayne had managed to line them up in the order they had arrived in. He had a burst capillary in his left eye, probably a souvenir from last night, and that made him look even more intimidating.

  I expected Frankie to be stoically working in the back, but instead he was talking enthusiastically to a young woman in a pantsuit who was second in line.

  “Jing-nan,” he said, “this is my niece, Tina.”

  “Hello, how are you?” I said. I could see why she was on TV. She had a small nose, big eyes and a straight smile. The woman was attractive in a wholesome, save-it-for-marriage sort of way. Had Frankie watched her grow up? How close was he with that brother he never talked about?

  The woman signaled to her cameraman and swung directly into interview mode. The man who was first in line complained, but Dwayne cut him off by frowning and putting a finger to his lips.

  “Jing-nan, what did Ming-kuo say to you as he readied himself for death?”

  “He said he was sorry for what he did, Tina. He tried to kill me right here at this stand earlier that night.” I looked into the camera. “The Shilin police did a terrible job investigating that.”

  She didn’t go for my aside and instead stuck to the script. “Did Ming-kuo sound afraid, or was he already sober and prepared for life beyond death?”

  “Well, I don’t know about life beyond death, but he never had a fair chance in life. They used to call him ‘Cookie Monster.’ ”

  “Did Ming-kuo have a last secret to tell?”

  I took in a deep breath, ready to say everything as briefly as possible. “Tina, he did, in fact, tell me where my old girlfriend was murdered. You remember, the betel-nut girl who was shot, and you people never fucking bothered to follow up on the story? I found out that the CIA was involved. In fact, she was a contractor for the CIA and was on a mission to investigate the Taiwanese military.” But of course I couldn’t say that.

  What I said instead was, “Ming-kuo didn’t have any secrets. He was a young man who never had a fair chance.” I crossed my arms. “We all need real friends in life, and I wasn’t a good friend to him.”

  Just when I felt a little emotional, Tina stopped the interview. “That’s it?” I asked.

  “I’ve got all I need,” she said in English, with a tight little smile. “Besides, my colleagues still need to talk to you, and I don’t want to be a hog.”

  All the interviews were of a similar length. Camera clicks built to the fury of locusts as I held Da Pang over my head to show off the dent from the bullet.

  Only two hours later, I watched myself on the news on the flat screen at Beefy King. I was shown speaking in clips, saying that Ming-kuo was a “monster” who had tried to kill me. It ended with a shot of me holding Da Pang over my head, the news anchor saying in a voiceover that I deserved a trophy for defeating him.

  The only good thing about the news segment was that it included a quick shot of Unknown Pleasures’ sign.

  GHOST MONTH STUMBLED INTO its final days. Solid objects—cars and buildings—wavered in the humidity, lending them a spectral quality.

  This is what our world looks like to ghosts, I thought. Soon the weary spirits would retreat into the maw of hell, and the gates would shut for another year and another tourist season.

  To celebrate the end of a hellish month, I closed Unknown Pleasures for a few days. Sure, the money lost in that time would probably come back to haunt me, but I needed a break, and so did Dwayne, Frankie and Nancy.

  I asked Jenny and Kuilan to keep an eye on the closed stand. They were going to split time displaying Da Pang in their windows. My fame had faded quickly, but the damned pot was practically an idol now. Jenny was even considering making a Da Pang T-shirt.

  Dwayne borrowed a car from a friend, and we drove east on National Highway Five to the coastal town of Toucheng in Yilan County. It only takes ab
out half an hour without traffic. I had last been to Toucheng as a kid, when the thirteen-kilometer-long Hsuehshan Tunnel was still on the drawing boards and the drive took more than three hours on stomach-wrenching mountain roads.

  “You dirty Han Chinese killed our gods,” said Dwayne as we plunged into the eastbound tunnel. “You drove a hole right through them.”

  “What god was this mountain?” Frankie asked from the passenger seat. I was sitting in the back with Nancy, who had fallen asleep almost as soon as we started driving.

  “I don’t know,” said Dwayne. “I’m sure it meant something to some people.”

  “We’re not anywhere near Amis territory,” I said. “You guys lived farther down to the south.”

  “I speak for all aborigines.”

  “Then how come you love your little Han Chinese god so much?”

  “Goddamn you for taking Prince Nezha that night,” said Dwayne as he caressed the idol suctioned to the dashboard.

  “Don’t start up again,” I said.

  “If I’d had Nezha, everything would have turned out fine.”

  “Everything did turn out fine, so let’s not worry about it anymore.”

  YILAN COUNTY HAS AMAZING views of nature. You can even board a boat to go stress out dolphins and whales in their native environment. But the main reason I wanted to go was to see Qianggu, a centuries-old rite-turned-contest. “Snatching wandering ghosts” was always held in the last hours of Ghost Month.

  My memories of the contest were of teams of men in thongs trying to climb over each other to reach the tops of greased poles as thick as old tree trunks. It looked primitive and seemed to predate written language. The grounds could have been the set of a B-grade National Geographic special on the exotic customs of a forgotten people. I saw bruised and bloodied legs and arms. I remembered that one guy struggled as he neared the top and cried out, prompting the man underneath to look up. That poor guy below was injured when a pair of bare ass cheeks slammed right into his face.

  Things were much different now. Gone were the raw braided ropes. Real safety netting was in place. Also, the hundred-foot-high grease-stained poles seemed to be uniform, giving no team—whether policemen, students, retirees or daredevil Australians—an unfair advantage.

  The biggest difference was the crowd. When I was last here, I had to dodge the many drunken louts stumbling around. Now there were a lot more women, some of them even pushing strollers.

  Banners and sponsorship signs were all over the site. Fifteen years ago, these electronics companies and car makers wouldn’t have wanted their brands associated with one of Taiwan’s grubbiest events. Now that the tunnel brought in far more tourists and coverage on the Travel Channel, it was an altogether tame affair that could be consumed easily in a one-hour program with generous commercial breaks.

  At 11 P.M. Toucheng’s mayor and a representative from an energy-drink brand welcomed the crowd briefly. They brought up a Taoist priest, who stuffed lit joss sticks into buns and then, with a flourish, tossed the buns to the ground. The priest then threw around some salt while chanting. A horn sounded to signal the end of the rite, and then a gong announced the beginning of the contest.

  All the sanitizing couldn’t hide the fact that every contestant suffered. The skinny men lacked muscle and strained themselves. The bulkier ones had a harder time pulling their weight.

  A lot of teams made it to the first rack. At that level, the climber can throw down the cakes and cookies that are stacked there. The only other level is the top. The first team to reach the top and cut off a flag with a sickle wins.

  “I still don’t see why we had to be here in person,” said Nancy. “We could have watched it on TV. High-definition, too.”

  “I haven’t been here in years, and you’ve never been here, Nancy. I thought we should experience it together.”

  She crossed her arms and scowled. “It’s pretty gross.”

  “If you think it’s gross now, you would have thrown up if you had seen this place way back when.”

  Frankie appeared with a bag of wasabi taro chips. He neatly tore away the top and offered the opened bag to Nancy.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  “Please,” he said.

  “All right.” She took a small handful. Frankie turned the bag to me.

  “Sure,” I said as I clawed out two big chips.

  “Look at that guy up there, all the way to the left,” said Nancy. “He was last, and now he’s first.”

  “I’m glad you’re getting into this.”

  Dwayne came up, clutching a roasted sweet potato. “Hey, Cat,” he said. “How come you’re eating packaged food? There are some great stands here.”

  “I work at a stand,” said Frankie. “I trust packaged food more.”

  “What do you know, anyway?” I spoke up.

  “He did save our lives, Dwayne. All of us.”

  “Hostages don’t get killed,” said Dwayne. “They just wanted to scare us some more.”

  “Scare ya by chopping off your fingers,” said Frankie. Dwayne cleared his throat and wrapped up the sweet potato.

  “Thank you, again, Frankie,” said Nancy.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Please stop.”

  “Leave Frankie alone. He gets embarrassed,” said Dwayne. “Let’s just watch the contest. I’m pulling for the policemen. They’re from the mountain.”

  “I don’t think all of them are,” I said. “You’re stereotyping cops.”

  “Don’t try to take away my native pride.”

  It didn’t matter that Frankie and Dwayne, two tall guys, were standing in front of Nancy and me. Everybody had to look up to see the show.

  When I realized that nobody was looking at us, I pulled Nancy closer and cupped her right breast. She turned to me with a shocked look on her face, and I locked my lips onto hers. She grabbed the back of my neck and stuck her tongue in my mouth.

  The crowd roared and we broke away from each other. Some team was near the top, and a particular group of supporters near the front was chanting, “Jia you, jia you, jia you!”

  “Are you still in love with Julia?” Nancy asked. Her lipstick was a mess, and her eyes were wet. I owed her an honest answer.

  “No,” I said. “It hasn’t been love for a long time. Just my pride in keeping a promise to her.”

  Another team had inched up on the leaders, so another group, near the back, also began to chant, “Jia you!”

  “I never came here with her,” I told Nancy. “So I especially wanted to come here with you. It’s time to try new things.”

  Disgusted that the policemen weren’t contenders, Dwayne threw down his sweet potato, mashed it with his foot and pointed at me. “This was rigged right from the start to let some Han Chinese win,” he sniffed.

  “I’m not Han Chinese, Dwayne. I’m Taiwanese. Like you.”

  He turned around and grunted.

  A siren went off. The contest was over. No one on the ground could tell who the winner was. The crowd grew restless and pressed in. Nancy and then Dwayne were pushed into me as I looked up.

  High above, the silhouette of a man bathed in light raised one arm in triumph. I shielded my eyes and stared at him hard.

  A high-energy hostess came out on the stage in a sparkling dress and announced that some group from Tainan down south was the winner. She mentioned the drink sponsor every other sentence as she congratulated the team, all the participants and beautiful Toucheng in Yilan County.

  Dwayne rounded us up like a sheepdog scared of losing its job.

  “Look, you guys,” he said, “it’s one in the morning and there’s gonna be a big-ass traffic jam back to Taipei. We have to move now!”

  DWAYNE WAS DRIVING WITH Frankie sitting shotgun. Both listened intently to a CD of melancholy songs by Jody Chiang, the queen of Taiwanese music.

  I was sitting in the back with Nancy slumped against my left side. We seemed to always be in a tunnel, and at times traffic threatened
to come to a complete standstill.

  “Jing-nan?”

  “Whoa, Nancy, I thought you were asleep.” We spoke underneath the sound of Jody pouring her heart out to a cold world. Nothing ever made her happy. Wow, is this what other people feel when they hear Joy Division for the first time?

  Nancy stirred a little and pushed her head against me to rebalance herself before speaking. “I saw you give money to the people collecting for the Taoist temple.”

  I stiffened. “I didn’t give that much.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in those things.”

  I made a pyramid on my right thigh with my thumb and index and middle fingers. “I came to an understanding in Longshan Temple, Nancy. We’re all human. We break promises and screw up our lives, sometimes by design and sometimes through circumstances. It’s a good thing that we can find some comfort in goddesses and rituals.” Without words, Nancy took my left hand. “Or in music.”

  “Are you glad,” asked Nancy as she traced her fingers across my palm, “that Ghost Month is over and the gates to the underworld are shut again?”

  I leaned my head against the window. “The gate is never shut, Nancy. The dead are always with us, because they live on in our hearts. We just can’t talk to them.”

  Nancy wove her fingers through mine. “Some people say that the dead can talk to us in our dreams.”

  I made a pessimistic groan. “I don’t know if I buy that.”

  “I hear you talking to Julia in your sleep.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Every night.”

  The last dream I could remember with Julia, the one where she told me to burn her diploma, had been about a week before.

  “What do you hear me say?” I asked cautiously.

  “You usually laugh. Like a little boy. Sometimes you sound sad, and I want to wake you up.” Nancy stretched her back briefly before continuing. “A few nights ago, though, you told her you’ve found someone new, and you sounded happy.”

  I took in a deep breath and settled back. “I sounded happy,” I repeated.