by Gus Lee
I watched my father in the parlor, reading about West Point and the Panama Canal, Cheops and the Pyramids, Queen Anne’s War, the discovery of the helix, and the banking secrets of Geneva, his pipe clamped tightly, the pages turning with a steady rhythm. He was more disciplined every day than I was in my wildest dreams.
I knew that my father, the proud warrior who loved to jump from American airplanes and tramp Chinese river roads in pursuit of the enemy, was finding refuge in books, as surely as my friend Sippy Suds, our most famous drunk, found solace in the bottle.
As a pledge to America, Father read only in English and never in Chinese. He was immobile while he read, as if he, the inanimate book, the table lamp, and his cushioned living room chair were an ensemble as secure as Napoleon, his great maps, his courageous marshals, and his old green coat. I read books about war, but they weighed little against Father’s encyclopedic grasp of the world.
I used to ask him about China, his childhood, his war years, his family. I asked him about his father.
Puffing on his pipe, he never answered. If pressed, he would lift his eyes and look off into the great beyond, giving the Gaze. It took him from the present world to places unknown. If I had the discourtesy to persist, he would maintain the Gaze, or say, “This is America,” and my briefing on the history of our family, the character of its members, the moral lessons they learned from life, and the nature of Chinese civilization was concluded.
His strong grasp of the things that pressed inside me, things that beat bright brass Chinese gongs in the pocket of the brain where questions are formed, was closed to me, as inaccessible as Red China, as mysterious as romance or the dark side of the moon. China was his secret. He guarded it with care, using it to court Edna with selected stories of family history, of the estates and servants of his gung-gung, grandfather. He told her of the dawn conferences in the Forbidden City under imperial roofs lined with the figures of bad Prince Min and the parade of marching animals, of the predawn work regimens of scholars in the Hanlin Academy, of the cycles of agriculture in the valleys of the Yellow River. Edna shared morsels of these stories with me, sufficient to inspire taste, never enough to digest, proof of his distrust of my mind. When my father spoke to Edna about China, he was wistful. The two of them had a close but private relationship, full of passion, conversation, and privacy. When Father looked at me, he was sad and silent, as if I reminded him of ancient pains and lost hopes.
I wanted to know his history, certain in the belief that this knowledge was part of my preparation for later events. I believed, primordially, that his telling me his past would lend me some of his great power, and that somehow the telling could even lighten the rock that he himself bore through the length of his weighty American days. I was the child at the fire, looking up at my father with curiosity and faith, waiting for the stories that represented the chain of life.
At the wooded campfires at Camp Tolowa in the Santa Cruz Mountains, my boxing coaches, Barney Lewis and Tony Barraza, spoke under a canopy of stars to boys who were not their sons. Tony had last seen his child when the boy was four. Tony Jr. and I had been born in the same year. I imagined my father and me sharing singed marshmallows, throwing moss kindling into a crackling fire, watching sparks fly into the nighttime sky. Here, under the cloak of dark, under Wench’ang, the celestial god of scholarship, whose presence was known in the West as the Big Dipper.
When I was nine, I got glasses, and Uncle Shim pointed out what he called the Literacy Arc. “See, Hausheng, Wen-ch’ang, god of the literati, in the form of the Bear. Below him, the four stars of his chariot with Wen-ch’ang’s principal assistant, K’uei-hsing, the ugly fellow who gives the grades. Inside the chariot, unseen, is Chu-i, who gives good luck to lackluster, ill-prepared students.
“Hausheng, never trust Chu-i, god of the inept. Honor Wench’ang as I honored you with your name, Able Student. As an advocate of the Wen-lin, I urge upon you scholarship and literacy.”
In my daydreams, Father would tell me the stories of his life—his childhood, his victories, his enjoyments—tutoring me under the kind and ancient Arc of Literacy and its three gods. Here, his urge for mathematical genius and Uncle Shim’s Old World beliefs, Tony’s training about rules, my Negro heart and Chinese blood, and the wishes and hopes of fathers and sons could commune and be safe with one another, fortified against any harm or any change.
On the night before I left, we stood in the dank and poorly lit garage. Here he found quiet refuge. When the pressures of his life became too weighty for reading, he would clang his pipe against an old, large glass ashtray and walk down the narrow hallway to the door that led to the garage.
Using hand tools, he made inlaid stools, ornate end tables, and cabinets of a quality that was beyond his training. He had a gift, which appeared in many things that he did. It was in this respect—demonstration of competence—that I was not his son. He was a capable man; I was always slow, myopic, hard of hearing, stupid, awkward, poorly tongued, hesitant in speech and uttering inarticulate Chinese when I should have been silent, putting up fists when I should have been doing kowtow, raging with horrible anger against my own parents, blurring my Chinese, Negro, and American boundaries, unable to laugh except when mad.
I came down twice every morning to do pull-ups, six sets of twenty, thirty seconds apart, on an old metal pipe, driven by the need to escape. My arms were my wings. I practiced with the liang-jiang, the two octagonally beveled rods of pine that resembled dynamite sticks connected by a thong. Chinese fighting sticks. I practiced the double-hand whipping, attacking, blocking, and hand switches taught me by Pinoy Punsalong at the Y. When I could not cope with life, I came here to punch the beams.
“Come,” he said, standing, and I followed him downstairs.
On a high shelf, surrounded by small cardboard boxes of wood screws and hinges, was his Colt super .38 automatic, two shelves above my liang-jiang. His old Army sweater strained as he reached. It was moth-eaten, stretched thin around his shoulders, the fragile fabric requiring him to don it as if it were made from the webs of spiders. His baldness had quickened, but he was trimly athletic, his posture exemplary; his handsome face had softened as the war years grew distant. I thought of asking him about West Point.
“Clean,” he said, handing the gun to me, watching as I disassembled and cleaned it with an old undershirt and an oiled gun cloth. I held the barrel to the light, checking for lint in the bore. I glanced at him quickly. He was lost in his thoughts. I knew that my gahng, my bond to him, had been a test for both of us. The purpose of the test and how I might pass it were never clear. Now this duty of son to father—the first of the San-gahng, the high Three Bonds identified by K’ung Fu-tzu—was changing, seemingly before the test had been administered. I was relieved in a way; I did not want the grade that K’uei-hsing—or Chu-i—would give me.
I cleaned the slide. I was leaving in the morning—to go to the one place on earth that seemed to embody all that he believed, all that he had hoped for in both of our lives. Now that I had obtained what he had always wanted, he seemed more withdrawn and secretive. Something was angering him. It had to be me.
He inspected the pieces. He nodded, and I began reassembly. What does the gun mean to him? Had he killed with it? When I was seven, and learning the basics of street fighting, I wanted to believe that he had killed. Now I was less sure.
My mouth fought itself. “Uh … so, uh, when you wore it—uh, you know, the gun—did you put a round … in the chamber with, you know, a full clip, or did you just, uh, load it with, you know, the magazine? Alone? So it had, you know, extra—an extra round?”
He came out of his thoughts. He rubbed his square jaw, and made a gesture with his hand: Finish your work.
When I finished, he inspected it, closing the action with a loud metallic snap. He slapped the empty magazine into the handle well. “You know how safety work,” he said.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Leave chamber empty. Child find, she can di
e,” he said.
“Yes, Dad.”
“During war, I keep extra round in chamber, under hammer. Extra clip, all places—in boots. Canteen carrier. Pockets, rucksack. Sergeant Kress, Infantry School, say, ‘Never no such thing, too much ammo.’ Now, no war. Leave empty.”
“Yes, Dad.” He carried extra clips for the gun, in the war, the way Teddy Roosevelt carried nineteen pairs of extra glasses up San Juan Hill. TR also had suffered from asthma. My mouth moved, looking for words, wanting to be the portal for a hundred questions while my mind clattered against itself. Maybe he would say more.
“Kai, this yours.” He pushed the heavy gun into my hand.
He cleared his throat. “Na-men give to me. I put letter for you, mail to her when you get there. In holster. Na-men will smile when she see West Point postmark on stamp. She will like letter from her old friend from China days, mailed by her only son.” Many Chinese confused the feminine third-person pronoun with the masculine; in Chinese there is no distinction. This difference had caused comic mayhem with Dad’s instructions when my sisters were part of the family. With Edna in the house, their visits were now infrequent.
“Na-men” was H. Norman Schwarzhedd, who had fought alongside my father during the Second World War. Na-men now wore the two stars of a major general, and commanded the Second U.S. Infantry along the DMZ in Korea. Na-men was a Chinese-speaking West Pointer.
Na-men had judged men by what my father called “Western way”—by action. My father’s upbringing had taught him to judge men by their classical education, social status, and birth order. During the war in China, when my father became an expert judge of the character of men in the Western way, he looked carefully at Major Na-men Schwarzhedd and decided that if he, Major Ting Kuo-fan, ever had a son, the son should be a West Pointer as well.
“Dad, this is your gun,” I said, feeling its weight, returning it. His hands came up suddenly, pushing the gun into my chest.
“No, no more. Is her army make it. Now, your army.” He patted it, as if, in a way, he were patting me.
“You know, I love U.S. Army! Yess! All American soldier gallant gentlemen! Eat last, sleep last, up hill first, die first!” His eyes moistened. “Best men! Good you go to Army. No money for college.” He laughed in a way that was not sad, but close to a thing of pleasure, surprising me.
“West Point!” he said. “This the way! Army college, pay you!” His eyes beamed. “American Army West Pointer! Ahhh!
“My dream,” he said.
“I’ll send money home, Dad.”
He frowned. “No! No! You need. Books. Ammunition, uniform. Don’t need your money. No worry. Work, pay raise. Buy less food, you gone! You do good. No fail. Edna and I come for graduation. Edna, very proud of you.”
So many words for him, to me. Fortified, I blurted, “Dad, what would your father think of my going to West Point?”
It was too dark for the Gaze. He walked to the bench and rummaged for his old pipe, filled it with Edgeworth, and lit it. This was a powerful message: Do not ask. He hated this old pipe but he hated my question more. Long, uneasy moments passed. I had to break the spell I had caused. “I should send a little money.”
He looked at me. “Edna very proud,” he said. “Very proud.”
“Okay,” I said, frowning. He loved her. I couldn’t.
“I am your father!” he shouted, enunciating each word as if it were Shanghainese and not English. “Chinese or American—I am father! YOU NOT STUDY!” he cried, waving his hand at me in a fury of expression. “Draw airplane picture! Read book about war! Get grades by brains and luck without work! You work at Y not at math! Do boxing, play sport all time! You sit and hold your knees! You talk zoo elephants out loud! Bad at math! How can climb American ladder without math!”
I backed up, blinking.
“No fail,” he hissed angrily. He stood in front of me, and I saw him in his tan field uniform with the Sam Browne belt, soaked in sweat, standing in front of his men, the automatic in his holster, somewhere in Asia, where war was the business at hand and talk was not Jane Austen; it had been Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Dad never looked directly at me. Now he did, and it seemed to be a matter of effort, of his will, to fix his eyes directly on mine, and I trembled for so many reasons, all unclear.
“Work hard,” he said in a strained voice, the muscles in his face taut, his lean face hard and flinty, death on his breath.
I began shaking.
“I, engineer. Your father’s father, he tell everyone—be engineer! Education, math!”
“Your father’s father,” my grandfather, gung-gung, Ah-Tiah. “You cannot say the name of your father, or of your father’s father,” Uncle Shim had said. “Do not ask me the name of your father’s father. He is his rank; he is gung-gung.”
“Work,” my father said, “to point of bitter pain, k’u-li—what American call ‘coolie’—understand? Be very good engineer, for family. Fear nothing in head or heart. So much riding on your head! This our dream! For America! You are only son!” He nodded his head. “Ch’uan hsin ch’uan i!”
I didn’t understand. Ch’uan, I thought, might mean “everything.” I looked at him, unknowing, unbreathing, unsteady.
“With whole heart and whole mind.” He coughed. “Make us proud. Please, please,” he said, laying upon me a vast and ancient weight reaching back to my mysterious, unknown grandfather, wanting his issue to be engineers. Math. That’s why my father so valued it.
Fear nothing in head or heart, he had said. Yet I feared him in head, heart, stomach, liver, ear canal, and pancreas. And I feared my mother. Even on the airplane, it was this combined weight upon all my organs that seemed to aid gravity, delay forward movement, and invite a numbing detachment.
I knew what to do. I flexed my neck and arms, flared my lats, waved casually at the stewardess, and asked plaintively for a third dinner.
The cold beverage corporal served water. Mr. Stoner provided us two salt tablets, two glasses of water, and a “Bon appétit.” I took the water in small, regulated sips, my body singing in ecstasy.
But I feared I had seen my last meal. In my rush to be the first candidate through the gate, I had bypassed breakfast that morning. My last lunch and last supper had been yesterday, June 30, at the Thayer Hotel, at the threshold of the Academy reservation.
6
THAYER
U.S. Hotel Thayer, West Point, June 30, 1964
“I hear they torture you,” a voice had said from the back.
Our letters of instruction directed candidates to report to the West Point Gymnasium in the morning. There were two groups at this government hotel at the edge of the post. One was brash about the next day’s challenges; the other was anxious about them and scared of the unknown. I was anxious, scared, and hungry.
College should not begin in July. After what we had done to win appointments, it was unnerving to be called “candidates.” We were a multitude in the dining room, our hubbub transforming its dignified, dark-wooded colonial formality into the roar of a public school cafeteria. Hundreds of us, lumbars stiff and bottoms sore from bus and airplane travel, were pressed together by tens at round tables. The brash spoke of the past while the anxious ruminated about the future. All I saw were white. I ate.
This was lunch, but I read the dinner menu the way some read the ends of novels first, unable to resist the desserts of the last chapter. “Broiled Rock Lobster Tail with Drawn Butter, Snowflake Potatoes, Asparagus Hollandaise, and California Sunshine Salade,” preceded by “chicken liver pâté, V8 cocktail, melon in season, marinated herring, Crème Vichyssoise in Tasse or split green pea soup”: at three dollars and fifty cents, it was more than pricey. The lunch highlight was a club with soup and coleslaw for ninety-five cents, not including an automatic 10 percent gratuity. I had landed in the social upper crust.
Newcomers crowded the lobby. They were uniform in height, age, and build. Still no Negro, Hispanic, or Asiatic faces, reinforcing the familiar feeling
of unfitness. Through no lack of effort, I had seldom passed for a Negro, however light skinned. I was going to blend in like Pancho Villa at a Texas Ranger convention.
Three years before, I had hated leaving the ’hood for the jangling anxiety of white streets. Lincoln High was not a nation of Ednas, but kids had achieved material paradise in possessions. No ringworm, tuberculosis, vomit, or blood; lots of dental braces, TVs, and new clothes. They ate well and had limited experience with violence. Fist City was not the governance theme. I had not been pitched a new fight card to set status. The school was clean and the teachers were not asked to be cops. Again I mimicked, switching adjectives, gestures, and attitudes, putting one more cultural mile between me and my Chinese youth and the fading borders of my recent past.
This was the Sunset district. People didn’t live on top of each other, sharing arguments, passions, and deep bass tones as the music pounded through common walls, everyone merging pleasures, disagreements, bad habits, scents, and garbage.
“Found a friend, Toos,” I said. “Name’s Jack.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “You in the same ’hood?”
“No ’hood here.”
“Say what?” he said. “No ’hood? You livin’ in a tent?”
“It’s a house with a little lawn and a backyard. Houses have trees. Little plants everywhere. No turf, no—no nothin’.”
“Damn,” he said, thinking on it. “They pickin’ on you?”
“No one picks on no one, Toos,” I said. “If I picked one, there’d be no action. Grown-ups don’t fight. No noise. No winos. Everyone’s polite. White kids talk like people at church.”
“Sounds good, China,” he said.
“Spooky,” I said. “Don’t know what they’re thinkin’.”
“Know what Jack thinks?” he asked.
I thought I did. I was sort of good at that.
“That’s all you need,” he said.
Through the jabber of the congregated future generals of America, came a pure, sharp-angled New York, Bowery Boys accent, rich with confidence and as thick as new concrete: “Let’s order.” I admired his priorities and liked him instantly. He looked like Sal Mineo, short with dark eyebrows, wearing a blue button-down shirt and dark slacks. He talked like a cab-driver and I wondered if he had enough smarts to get through the Academy.