“Isn’t it?”
“Maybe one of them.” “Is your father your brother?” “Sure, if he could be.” “You talking American?” “Like my sister.” “Your sister’s your brother sometimes, you said.” “A lot.”
“I will marry her,” Umo said.
“That’ll be the day.”
“Right. She will wait, but the day will come.”
“Why would she marry you?”
“The sister of my brother.”
“She’s got other plans.” “You go to war for her?” “Sometimes.” “You gotta defend yourself,” Umo said.
“That’s my mother; she’s for the war.” “Your mother,” said Umo, “she’s preparing fresh shrimp and getting sore fingers”—such a sharp rememberer, Umo! — “and cooking and taking care of the house, a good Christian—” “You don’t know a thing about it,” I said wondering at Umo’s memory.
“My mother was a sheepherder—” “So she left her home?” “—out where desert invading grasslands, Mongol…but wild camels let her come up to them, she was the only one, but that had a bad ending because she learned the medicine herbs they eat and she got arrested.”
“Not the only thing, Umo.” “No not the only thing,” he laughed that harsh laugh, really amused at me. His lost grandfather had had in his possession some tortoiseshells with fine lettering on them he had taught himself to do, but what happened to the tortoiseshells…? Umo, that awful laugh again.
Was I saving him for some loss — even his own — that I didn’t ask about his travels or the truck much? He was in Shaanxi. Then he was in Yichang and he mopped deck on a river boat and must have been extremely noticeable. He was in a village helping animals to haul a loaded wagon, but he did not show me his journey out of China or even across the ocean, though it seemed clandestine, a powerful motion, except in certain geographical points, fixed on a map: even the hard seats of a railway train car, tunnels, then jumping off where there was no platform. He had to be just thirteen then. There was a mountain, some foggy mountain at top when you get up there, people like it. (Did he have a bag?) Oh yes, and English book — catalogue, magazine (?) — laughed differently and looked away.
I wondered how Umo had left…where he had grown up. You didn’t just leave China. A poor village on a mountain, a wooden pulley over a well creaking, a ranger watching people dynamite fish out of a lake, ermine hunters, the rumored size of a boy slipping through trees, a borrowed bicycle, drumbeats. I felt a miracle next to me: he had taken over his own life at his age. And for some reason I said, “But the women don’t herd the sheep.” Umo nodded amazingly but it was not in agreement, his eyes on the road, a state trooper across the intersection waving us over. I couldn’t believe what I’d said from the height of my ignorance in the cab of this truck. I wondered what had happened to Umo’s mother, or really to Umo. “Listen, your city is far from the coast. How did you get away?” Our truck ran a red light to remind us of itself. “Listen, my grandfather was—” Umo braked and pulled over and leaning across me greeted the state trooper: “Zoose, what’s happening?”—the little cop gave us a look, “Your friend has a license,” he said, he was joking. “You don’t even have the permit—” “No, wait, we’re talking,” Umo said to Zoose, and to me, “No my grandfather was a policeman for a while—” “A policeman! I thought he was a miner,” said Zoose. He had a hand on my window ledge. “That’s where his heart was,” Umo said; and to me, “He was a magnesium miner.” Umo had some bills in his fist. “He admired Plutarco Calles, the revolutionary; my grandfather would come to Mexico and be a miner in Mexico and work with Calles.”
“I know you don’t have your learner’s permit today.” Zoose waved us on. “Arrastras el chasis,” Umo called across to him—you draggin’ your ass.
Umo was sort of known. “Zoose,” he said. “When you need him, you know? He’s got a sister. He’s a wild man. We tape. She married a guitar player just got his citizen papers, he’s a wild man too, lead guitar,” said Umo. Zoose had a part interest in a Chevron station.
How it worked, you could ask.
7 a better safelight for the darkroom
The cop was into music, into the war. “Never know what he’ll do ’cept let you past.”
The grandfather had never lived with them out west in China. (Umo was bummed out thinking.) “How could he? He was dead.” Umo took his hands off the wheel and looked at his palms. “He ran into Japanese, they ran into him, find it on the map 1931,” Umo seemed to growl. “They got a map for 1931? He died, he liked the Japs, some things — I told you — he liked their island, they were smart, you agree? — he was a fighter, he could stand on his hands. Find it on the map. Mukden. But he didn’t believe the war. You like this one?”
“We take this guy out,” I said. “It’s a no-brainer.” I might be joking. “Out?” “Throw him out.” “You think?” The great Olympic training facility not far from the Mexican border flashed past on our left in the noise of our moaning, downshifted vehicle in need of a ring job. “Olympics,” I pointed. I guess I changed the subject but to what? Umo laughed. “‘No-brainer,’” he said. “You smart. You know photography. You listen, you break things down. But you are…” “I changed the subject?” I said. “That’s what your father said to me,” said Umo now. “He did?” “Smart son of a gun.” “About me?” “I said me and him, and he turned away, he was gonna shout at somebody — that kid—” Umo meant Milt—“and I asked if you enlist. Not changing subject, Zach.”
Beyond friendship, that.
What had Umo said to Dad? I might never know. “First day. He say, ‘Where you learn that?’ Not front dive but butterfly first day.”
“Yeah, butterfly’s tough guy stroke,” I said, speaking like Umo, who’d changed the subject.
“Yeah, he slapped me here—” Umo took his hand off the wheel to touch his right side like a tender spot, “you saw.” “Yeah, the two of you the other side of the pool. He said I—?” “Yeah, how you talk. I tell him you said Jesus, he’s our CEO, he meant business, he was a Marine.” “Look what they did to him. He was a tough guy they were up against; that’s why they crucified him, but he was…proactive,” I said—“what did he say?”
“Gonna give me a book to read, for my English.” “Your English is killer English, Umo.” “But he didn’t.” “Maybe he will. About an American pilot flying over mountains to help China beat Japanese, I know.”
“God Is My Co-Pilot. I told him that’s a band.” Umo shot a burst of laughter at the windshield. Umo and my father met in me maybe. This kid, easily illegal, at home in this vehicle with a sometime shadow coworker, moving what goods who could tell — he had never talked like this… “Hey, he might believe in this war he might not, but…” Umo said something in Chinese, I guess, and I kind of agreed. Umo said, “He has to…” and then, “He say butterfly blind will power. Blind.”