The Vagrants (24 page)

“What rotten fortune to meet a toad in the morning,” the woman said to a cat strolling by, and she hurried away, her hand still combing her hair.

Who does she think she is, a swan in disguise? Bashi looked at his reflection in the shop window, a presentable lad in a new jacket. Three teenage boys, heads shaved bald and all sporting sunglasses, stopped next to him. “Hey, Bashi, what do you need a jacket like that for?”

Bashi looked for their eyes but only saw six figures of himself in the dark lenses. He did not know the boys, and from a few unfortunate encounters with the newly sprouted gangs of Muddy River, he had learned not to attract their attention. “Nice sunglasses,” he said, patting his pocket and finding the package of cigarettes he kept for these moments. The boys caught the cigarettes Bashi threw to them. “Can we borrow your jacket for a day?” the youngest one said with a grin.

“Yes,” said Bashi. “There's nothing that I don't share with my brothers.” He took off the jacket and shivered in the morning breeze. The boys nodded and walked on, the youngest trying on the jacket for the older brothers to assess.

What a dangerous bunch this city is breeding, thought Bashi. He patted a wad of cash in a pocket of his pants—he was wise not to have left any money in the jacket. He went into a nearby store and asked for a small bag of sunflower seeds, and when he came out, he put a few of the seeds in his mouth and chewed them into an inedible mess, imagining all of them to be unfriendly people crushed between his teeth. Only with Nini did he have the respect he deserved. But what did he give Nini, except for a few basketfuls of coal and vegetables? She was right that he needed to prove himself. “Name the people who make you unhappy,” he imagined himself saying to Nini first thing the next morning. “Name them all and they are Lu Bashi's enemies too. I won't let them live happily.” He would start with that mother of the executed woman, who hated Nini.

At the entrance to an alley, Bashi saw the dog Ear. “Hello, my friend,” Bashi said, putting a hand into his pocket. Ear wagged his tail. “Come on,” Bashi said sweetly. “How are you? Are you looking for me? I was just thinking about you.”

The dog came closer and rubbed his neck on Bashi's leg. What a stupid dog, Bashi thought; he withdrew his hand from his pocket and clapped. “Sorry, I haven't got meat for you today. You see, I'm running some other errands.”

The dog circled him for a minute and ran away. Bashi felt satisfied. The new friendship with Ear was a by-product of his plan for Kwen's dog—it had not taken a long time or much ham to win Ear's heart, and what dog could refuse a piece of meat? Dogs were dogs, after all, unable to compete with man's intellect.

Bashi entered a store with a black wooden plaque bearing the golden characters
Long Life.
An old woman stood by the counter, laying out many wrinkled bills for the shop owner. “Granny, what are you buying?” Bashi asked.

Hadn't he heard about the medicine woman from Eastern Village who had discovered new ways to communicate with the dead? asked the old woman. She had just paid a visit to the medicine woman, who had given her the message that her husband did not have enough money for liquor in the next world.

“Ha, you believed him?” Bashi said. He looked at the money on the counter; the husband certainly would not get drunk from that poor amount. “Maybe he uses your money to buy a woman out there?”

The old woman mumbled and said her husband had never been into women; it was drinking that he had lived for and then died from. Bashi thought of this fool dying before knowing the real joy of life and shook his head in disbelief. “What a pity,” he said. “What's so good about drinking?”

“You say that because you don't know the real taste,” said the shop owner, a middle-aged woman with a new perm. “People always put liquor and a woman's beauty together, you understand why, little brother? Drinking and women are the two best things for men.”

Bashi snorted. What did a shop owner know about men? He picked up stacks of paper money, a miniature mansion, carriages pulled by four horses, a chest, and some other knickknacks, all made of white rice paper and ready to be burned into ashes to accompany his grandmother to the otherworld. He asked for some rat poison too, and the shop owner was taken aback. “My store serves those who have stepped into the immortal garden,” she said. Like all people in Muddy River, the woman resorted to any euphemism possible to avoid mentioning death, and Bashi smiled. He paid for the paper products and said he had asked for the poison because he did not want any rats to bother his grandmother's body. Frightened, the paled woman bowed to a Buddha that sat in a corner of the store with burning incense in front of him. Please forgive the boy's ignorance, the woman said, and Bashi laughed and decided not to bring any more nightmares to the merchant. A few doors down the street, he bought a packet of rat poison in a drugstore.

When he arrived home, Bashi left the paper offerings next to his grandmother's casket. “Nana, tomorrow Old Hua and his wife are sending you off to my grandpa and my baba,” he said, talking to the old woman as he worked; he had developed a habit of talking to her when he was alone. He hacked off a thick slab of ham, punched a few holes in it, and soaked it in liquor. “When you get there, say a few words for me to my grandpa and my baba. Tell them I am doing well and won't bring disgrace to their name. See, I can't go with you tomorrow, because I have something more important to take care of.” He unpacked the rat poison and poured some pellets into the mortar his grandmother had used to grind dried chili peppers. The pellets were a nasty, dark grayish brown color. What rat would ever want to touch such a disgusting thing, Bashi wondered aloud as he ground the pellets into powder. He did not know how strong the poison was but the layer of powder seemed unconvincing, so he added a handful more of the pellets to the mortar. “I tell you, Nana, not many people use their brains nowadays. It's hard to find someone as smart as my baba now, no?” Bashi said, thinking that ghosts, like the living, must readily devour compliments. Old women were easily pleased if you praised their sons and their grandsons; perhaps his grandma would forgive him for not going with her to the burial tomorrow. He talked on and praised his father more. When he finished grinding, he brought the mortar close and sniffed—apart from a stale, pasty smell, he did not sense anything dangerous. He took out the ham and dredged it in the powder until it was covered on both sides; with a tiny spoon he tried to insert more powder into the holes. “You must be wondering about this,” he said. “But you watch out for me and pray for this to work, and after I finish this big deed, I'll come and burn a lot of paper money for all of you.”

The last time his grandmother had taken him to visit his grandfather's and his father's graves, Bashi was twelve. The next time, he thought, he would bring Nini so they would know that they didn't have to worry about their descendants. He looked at the ham for a moment, and carefully brushed some honey onto both sides, making sure none of the poisonous powder escaped. “There,” he said. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

Bashi walked across half the city before he found Ear. With a smaller piece of meat he was able to entice the dog to follow him. They walked over the Cross-river Bridge and climbed up South Mountain. It was a beautiful day, the sun warm on his face, the buzz of spring unmistakable in the air. Bashi stopped by a bush of early-blooming wild plums. “I have something really good for you,” Bashi said, and laid the ham next to the bush.

Ear sniffed the ham with great curiosity but showed no immediate interest in taking it. Bashi urged the dog on, but it only pawed the ham and sniffed. Bashi became impatient. He grabbed the ham from the dog and pretended that he himself was going to eat it. This seemed to work; when Bashi threw the ham back at the dog, it caught the meat in midair and trotted away.

Bashi loitered, thinking he would give the dog a few minutes before locating it and observing the effect of the poison. If the rat poison did not work on this small dog, it would certainly not work on Kwen's black dog. Bashi wondered if he would need to go back to the drugstore and make a fuss. He would demand something stronger, saying that the rats in his house were as strong as hogs. His thoughts wandered until he heard the dog's painful yelping. “There,” he said, and then he heard a long, painful howl.

Bashi found the dog on the ground, panting, its limbs jerking helplessly. A small ax stuck in its skull, between the eyes, and sticky red blood oozed out. It was obvious that the dog was dying fast. Next to the dog stood a teenage boy in a gray cotton coat as worn-out as a heap of rags; his left hand was bleeding with a dog bite, and his right hand tightly gripped the slab of ham. Bashi looked from the dog to the boy and then to the dog. “Did you kill the dog for that?”

The boy looked at the young man in front of him. He thought of explaining that he had not meant to kill the dog, but who would believe him, when the dog's blood had already stained his ax. The boy, a small teenager who looked not much older than ten, had come to town to sell nothing but his poor, underdeveloped muscles. Sometimes a housewife hired him to chop firewood, kill a live chicken, or unload coal, small chores that she could just as well finish by herself or ask her sons or husband to do, but by hiring the boy, she would feel good about her own heart. Women were all alike, the boy had concluded after a few weeks of working; they talked about their hearts but also watched their wallets carefully. They paid him with food but not money, and the boy, half beggar and half sop for the women's consciences, knew enough not to ask for more than he was allowed.

“Did you kill the dog?” Bashi asked again.

The boy stepped back and said, “He bit me first.”

“Of course he did. You stole his meat. I would bite you too.” Bashi grabbed the boy's sleeve and dragged him to the dog, whose breathing was shallow and fast and whose paws were trying to dig into the newly thawed ground. “Look what you did. What kind of a man are you to fight with a small dog for food?”

The boy assessed the situation. If he ran, the man could easily catch him. He could fight, but there was not much good in that for him either. He might as well brace himself for a good beating, but besides a beating, there was nothing else the man could do to him. The boy relaxed.

“Look at your eyes,” said Bashi. “What trick are you thinking of playing on me?”

The boy knelt down and started to cry. “Uncle,” he said. “Uncle, it's all my fault. I thought it was a waste for a small dog to eat that much meat. I thought I could get the meat for my mother. My mother and my sister haven't had a taste of meat for three months.”

“So you have a sister?” Bashi said. “How old is she?”

“Nine,” the boy said. “My father died six years ago, and my mother is ill.” To prove his story, the boy untied a small cloth bag and showed the man its contents—a few buns and half buns he had got, already hard as rocks. His sister had invented a way of re-cooking the leftover buns into a paste, he explained.

Bashi nodded. The boy must have told the story a thousand times to earn the sympathy of those old hens in town. He brought out a few bills. “You're certainly a boy who knows how to take care of your family. If not for this,” Bashi said, and bared his teeth, “if not for your mother and your sister, I would send for the police. Now take the money and buy some good clothes for your sister.”

The boy looked at the money and swallowed hard. “I killed your dog by accident, Uncle,” he said. “How dare I accept your money?”

Bashi laughed. The boy could certainly tell that Bashi was not much older than he, but he knew how to talk properly, and it pleased Bashi. “It's not my dog,” he said. “If you killed my dog I would wring your skinny neck like this.”

“Are you sure you don't want to send me to the police?”

Bashi knocked on the boy's head with his knuckle. “Don't be silly. The police wouldn't care if you hacked ten dogs to pieces.”

The boy accepted the money and thanked Bashi profusely. Bashi stopped the boy with an upturned hand. They both walked toward the dog; it had stopped panting and moving and now lay on the ground, its paws half-covered with mud. It was hard to imagine that a thin boy could kill a dog with such a precise cut.

The boy knelt down and retrieved the ax and wiped it clean on his coat. Bashi told him to throw away the ham. The boy hesitated and said, “But won't it be a waste?”

“Why do you ask so many silly questions?”

The boy watched Bashi hurl the ham with all his might. It made a beautiful arc in the afternoon sky and fell out of sight. “Now hurry back home before my patience runs out,” Bashi said.

The boy said yes but did not move, eyeing the dead dog. When Bashi urged him again, he said, “Uncle, what do you think will happen to the dog here?”

“How do I know?” Bashi said. “I told you it's not my dog.”

“Do you want a dog-skin hat or mufflers?” the boy asked.

Bashi smiled. “Ha, you cunning little thing. If I need anything I have money to buy it. Take the dog and make something for your sister, if that's what you're thinking.”

The boy smiled too. “Uncle, if not for our shabby place, I would treat you to a good meal with dog-meat soup for the holiday.”

“Don't sweet-talk me,” Bashi said. “Now I need to run on to my own business. Send my greeting to your sister.”

The boy watched Bashi disappear before he sat down to work. He dumped the old buns by the roadside and tore the cloth bag into strips. He took off his coat and wrapped it around the dog, and then strapped the body on his back. It was heavier than he'd thought, warm still, which reminded him of the day his sister rode piggyback on him as they followed their father's coffin to the cemetery. His father had held the boy's hands the moment before his death, and told him that he would have to be the man of the house and take care of his mother and sister.

The boy thought about his father's grave, untended in the past six years. He looked up at the sky, still brightly blue; if he hurried up, he would be able to get home before dark and clean up the grave for Ching Ming. His mother, bedridden for five years now, would not be able to make the trip, but he would take his sister there. He was now a man, responsible for the living as well as the dead. The boy walked fast; then after a moment, he turned back. It took him some thrashing around to locate the meat, which was a little dirty with sand, but with a good scrubbing it would make a fine holiday meal.