especially if you have people who want to advance politically.
Sometimes they make bad mistakes.” Connie is wavering, but finally says, “I’ll talk to Tommy again.”
“That’s all I can ask,” I say truthfully. I leave with a million questions, but this is not the time to ask them.
Despite Connie’s dismissal of the possibility, I am curious about the other Chinese families in Bear Creek. I drive west for about a mile, take a right on Danner, and turn in at Guay’s Grocery.
Ting’s Market was closer to where we lived, and now that I think about it, was not in such an obviously black part of town. I should have at least told Tommy I would visit them, but the truth is, like Connie, I can’t begin to imagine that one of them was responsible. My assumption is that the Chinese, like blacks, stick together, though I personally don’t recall any memory that would validate this feeling. Yet the old lady may know a lot more than she is telling. The trouble with this theory is that I never heard of any of the Chinese in Bear Creek even raising their voices, much less their hands. What is increasingly apparent to me is my lack of curiosity about anybody but the white families when I was growing up in Bear Creek. It was as if over half the town didn’t even exist.
From the outside, Guay’s Grocery is dilapidated and in need of a paint job, and the inside is not much better. Yet, my memory is that these stores were always marginal in appearance, perhaps deliberately, so as not to alert the dominant race that the proprietor was doing better than the consumers. Behind the counter is a Chinese man of indeterminate age
in a brown cardigan sweater and gold-framed eyeglasses. He is taking change from a ten-year-old black kid, who is buying some hard candy. I look around the store to get an idea of the merchandise and marvel at how little stock he has, other than canned goods, some of which appear to be as old as he is. There is an old white man in overalls nursing a can of beer on a stool in the back, an activity that is surely illegal. Beside him is a totally bare meat-case which has, judging by the rust stains on the white panel, been vacant awhile. I look over the top of the panel and see through the door to a room that has furniture in it. It occurs to me that I have probably erroneously assumed that the Chinese families in Bear Creek have homes separate from their stores. It looks lived in, but it is too dim inside to tell. Back up front, across from the counter in a corner, five middle-aged blacks gather in a semicircle around a Sorry TV set watching the Razorback-LSU basketball game on ESPN. I can’t understand a word they are saying. In front of me a black woman lays a sack of potato chips on the counter. Mr. Guay wordlessly changes a five-dollar bill, and I fall in behind her with a sack of plain M amp;M’s I grab from a box. From what I am able to hear of his interaction with the woman ahead of him, he has a pronounced accent. After I pay for the M amp;M’s, I say, extending my hand, “Sir, my name is Gideon Page. I’m a lawyer for the man accused of murdering Mr. Willie Ting. I’d like to come back and visit with you for a few minutes when your store’s closed or you have some help.”
Mr. Guay, or whoever he is, takes my hand, but says, “No business with them. No time to talk. Very busy.”
Up close I can see the lines in the other man’s face. Close to being contemporaries, if not approximately the same age, surely he and Willie had much in common. Business, their wives, children, whites, blacks.
The way each was treated in the South.
“This is about who killed Mr. Ting.”
The old man murmurs again, “Very busy,” and turns his back on me to fuss with his stock of cigarettes, which already seem adequately arranged.
I have no talent for this business of figuring out who-done-it, but I am becoming curious about how these people coped all these years and the lies they had to tell themselves to survive.
I drive back to Blackwell County, wondering which generation of Chinese-Americans has felt the most comfortable in east Arkansas.
Perhaps Willie’s generation. They didn’t have any choices and learned to be content by relying on each other. That couldn’t be enough for Tommy and Connie, nor would it be expected to be enough.
Who did want their father killed? I have no idea. I look out the window at the cold, muddy fields. A new planting season is just around the corner.
“You don’t seem to be enjoying this,” Amy calls from the other side of the net.
“We don’t have to play anymore.”
“I’m fine,” I say, forcing a grimace to become a smile as I stoop to pick up the ball that comes rolling back toward me. I have just hit my
backhand into the same spot on the net for the third time in a row. In tennis, as in other aspects of my life, I have a way of perfecting my mistakes.
“I’m just getting sick of being so consistent.”
We meet at the bench where I sit down and grab my opponent’s water bottle. I can’t use the weather as an excuse: the temperature is a balmy 68 degrees, and the sun has stayed behind a mostly cloudy sky.
Though it is only the first day of March, it looks like an early spring.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were this good?” I complain.
“I could have prepared my ego for this little setback.” Regardless of how liberated I tell myself I’ve become in the last twenty years, it is no fun being beaten by a woman. Amy, during warmups, casually informed me she is a legitimate 4.5 player under the United States Tennis Association rating system. Though in theory I can hit the ball harder and can cover the court more easily, my genetic head-start has proved to be as useless as a long-range Arkansas weather forecast. Now, in the second set (I won two games in the first) Amy zips around the court and is whacking the ball past me like some wind-up Steffi Grafdoll.
Amy, who has barely worked up a sweat, straightens the strings on her racket.
“You just need to practice. And to bend your knees on your backhand.
You look like you’re trying to putt a golf ball.” She stands and
imitates my swing.
Embarrassed by how ridiculous I must look, I nod and hand her the water bottle, noticing how supple her legs are under her blue tennis skirt. I wonder if she knows how sexy she looks. If she is wearing one of those bras that mash her breasts down, I can’t tell it. Her white top swells out so nicely that it had the local pro in the clubhouse fumbling for her change for thirty seconds.
Unlike almost every other woman I’ve ever played against, Amy can volley at the net. When I saw how well she hit from the baseline, I began hitting short and making her come in. No dice. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Overheads, backhand volleys, even drop shots, her game is as complete as mine is limited. I can get some pace on a forehand if I have time to set up, but Amy won’t let me do it.
When I overplay the left side of the court, she runs me to death. If she controlled the rest of our relationship the way she does on the tennis court, all I’d need is Jessie’s dog collar.
“At my age,” I crack, “they refuse to bend more than a couple of times a day.”
She sips at the water and sternly shakes her head.
“You could get in shape easy. There’re several guys out here a lot older than you who can play all day.”
Older than me? They must be playing in wheelchairs.
Properly motivated, I stand up and head out to the north end of the court. I could get in shape.
But it wouldn’t be easy.
“Let’s get this beating going,” I yell enthusiastically.
“Time’s a-wasting!”
As if in self-defense, early in the set, she drills the ball squarely into my chest the one time I am so foolish as to approach the net. At least she didn’t blind me.
“Sorry,” she says, her voice concerned.
“I wasn’t aiming at you.”
Unhappily, I think, I’m not aiming at you either.