Every country store must have a proprietor; Fritter Hollow's proprietor had a scar on his neck, so everyone called him Scarface; a bit wide of the mark, perhaps, but Scarneck sounded funny, so Scarface it was. A man of thirty-five, Scarface was unusually fat. When there were no customers, he could normally be found sleeping atop the store counter. But on this particular day, he was running around busily, taking care of a steady stream of customers, until finally he asked one of them what was going on and learned that Wheatie Liu had fallen ill.
The first to buy canned goods and snacks to take along when calling on Wheatie Liu were men from the mines. They drifted in, made their purchases, and drifted out. Then came the villagers, who also drifted in, made their purchases, and drifted out. They came, and they came, and by nightfall the shelves were empty.
Broad Bean, the final customer of the day, was carrying a flashlight.
"Why so damned late? I've got nothing to sell," Scarface said.
"Who all's going?" Broad Bean could have kicked himself for being so late and letting the others buy up everything.
"People these days are all fucked up," Scarface blurted out. "Smell that," he continued, sniffing the air. "The guy's been dead for days now, and nobody's doing anything about it."
"Why don't you bring it up with Wheatie Liu?" Broad Bean said, flashing his light back and forth across Scarface's face. Back and forth, then straight in his eyes, then back and forth again. "Got the nerve?" Broad Bean asked.
A Conversation of Sorts
In twenty or thirty years' time, when members of the next generation of Fritter Hollow's inhabitants look back on their glorious history, they may well talk about the time Wheatie Liu took ill and received 500 gifts of canned food. If that's all they say, of course, the word history is being ill served, so I must break in with a more revealing look at what happened that time Wheatie Liu took ill.
A conversation was recorded between Broad Bean and Wheatie Liu as the latter sat on his own kang, leaning up against a colorful backrest; the sides of the brick bed were decorated with depictions of colorful pomegranates, peonies, plum blossoms, watermelons, rabbits, bananas, pears, peanuts, apricots, and of course, magpies and goldfish.
Wheatie Liu had been enjoying a leisurely smoke when Broad Bean entered; the table, the kang, and the windowsill were all but covered with canned goods and packaged treats brought by well-wishers. It was a lovely sight, but to Broad Bean the real significance was the number of visitors it represented.
"Are you sick?" Broad Bean walked up and observed Wheatie Liu, who just smiled.
Here we must be reminded that Broad Bean's full name was
Broad Bean Tian and that Wheatie Liu's wife's name was Bean Sprout Tian, which tells you all you need to know about the relationship between Wheatie Liu and Broad Bean.
"Me, sick? No fucking way!" Wheatie Liu scooted up next to Broad Bean and whispered, "I just wanted to see if people would treat my death as meaningless, like they did with that other guy."
"How could anybody compare that murderer to you?" Broad Bean stared wide-eyed.
"What about that murderer?"
"Well, maggots are starting to wriggle into his yard," Broad Bean said with a shudder.
"It's still not time." Wheatie Liu smiled again. "Let him stink," he continued as he looked at the red scars on his arms.
Broad Bean held his tongue and studied his fingernails, first the left hand, then the right.
"Count them, see how many there are." Wheatie Liu, his eyes mere slits from the broad grin, pointed to the colorful array of canned goods. "See for yourself. I told people not to come, but they came anyway, didn't they?"
Broad Bean started counting, from the table all the way to the windowsill. "Three hundred and twenty-seven," he said.
"Now count the ones inside."
Surprised that there were more in the other room, Broad Bean froze for a moment before going in to see for himself. "A hundred and seventy-three," he said as he reentered the room.
"Go tell Scarface I want to see him," Wheatie Liu said. "It's business." He tossed a cigarette to Broad Bean.
That's as far as I need to go with this conversation. While I can't comment on its broader significance, on the surface at least we have learned that Wheatie Liu wasn't sick at all; and that is the beginning of yet another story. I've thought about whether I ought to see where this story takes us. I could, for example, say:
Fritter Hollow once had a village chief named Wheatie Liu, an upright, fair-minded, and handsome individual. One day, he took ill and was visited by a steady stream of well-wishers, young and old, male and female, all bearing gifts of canned food and prepared snacks, nearly wearing out his threshold. They wished him a speedy recovery. Fritter Hollow's accountant, Broad Bean Tian, dropped by, discovering to his surprise that Wheatie Liu wasn't really sick at all. This gave rise to an intricate tale. Listen up, for this is what happened…
A pretty common opening, if you ask me. What do you think? I realize that my readers are concerned about why Wheatie Liu would feign illness following the death of Talented Wu. So here goes.
Yet Another Conversation
In Fritter Hollow, July is the best month to eat corn. On one particular night, Broad Bean's wife, Jade Beauty Wu, sweat oozing from every pore in her body, was boiling a pot of corn. Broad Bean was eating fragrant kernels right off a cob, using both hands. As he munched away, he told his wife to light a coil of mosquito incense. She walked over to the kang and lit one. "That guy pocketed seven or eight hundred just by getting sick," she muttered for the umpteenth time. His patience long since worn thin, Broad Bean reached out and poked her a couple of times on one of those fleshy spots of hers. "Fuck you!" he said.
Broad Bean's wife giggled. Picking up the mosquito coil, she walked over and set it down on the windowsill, then leaned her head back to sniff the air. "What a stink! If fucking doesn't kill me, the stink will."
Broad Bean also leaned his head back, then gagged and turned to run outside; before he got there, he puked all over the floor.
"You're supposed to do that in the pigpen," his wife said. "Who do you expect to eat it in the house? Your father?".
"Fuck you! I'll feed it to your mother if I feel like it! What if somebody heard you?" Broad Bean wiped his mouth. "I think I'm going to do it again."
His wife went outside and returned with the family pig in tow to clean up Broad Bean's yellow mess, but the animal turned its nose up at it.
"Fuck you, you old sow!" Broad Bean kicked the pig. "You're more pampered than Wheatie Liu!"
"That Wheatie Liu is no one to fool with," Broad Bean's wife said from the side. "I guess everyone's scared to make a phone call to the district office."
"Not so loud. Why don't you go?" Broad Bean said. "Take a look outside, make sure there's nobody around."
Telephone
Fritter Hollow had a telephone, but hardly anyone ever used it. Countryfolk don't need such things; if they have something to say, that's what fences are for. If the district office called, it was always to talk to someone in charge about tying off tubes or wearing diaphragms or fertilizer costs or planting trees or water conservation. So there isn't much to say about telephones. The only reason they ever came into the lives of the citizens of Fritter Hollow was because of the episode when Talented Wu cut Wheatie Liu seventeen times, an incident that resulted in the loss of one of Maple Leaf's eyes. Big Eye Liu at the district clinic later had this to say: "You didn't think of making a phone call? If you'd called the clinic, would she be blind in one eye today?" Now that caused a real stir among the people.
In the final analysis, residents of Fritter Hollow thought about many things in their day-to-day lives: plows, hoes, axes, spades, picks, baskets, hampers, creels, carrying poles, wicker ornaments, pickle vats, manure sacks, rats, insects, dogs, pigs, donkeys, cows, cats, mules, goats, sheep, peppers, aniseed, salt, vinegar, children, women, eating, sex, and more; but they never thought about telephones. Until August 2, 1992, that is. That was five days after the death of Talented Wu, and Greater Principle Zhou's younger brother, Lesser Principle, suddenly thought about the telephone. "Why doesn't somebody call the epidemic-prevention station?"