It has not snowed here in thirty years, and today it is snowing.
Thang Phong and the Son of the Chief of Police
I wake up stunned and hurt. Should I not do sit-ups and push-ups until this little fit of stunned and hurt passes over?
The son of the ex-chief of police, gone to seed, walks fatly and loosely down the street.
Thang Phong (tong pong) will murder his piano teacher, whom he loves, or loved, very much, and respects, and calls, or called for years anyway, and probably will not stop calling after he has killed her, a “word-crass piano prayer.” Thang Phong will not be able to say why he killed her. He will remain cheerful about his long and successful tutelage under her and is himself accomplished at the piano, for which he gives all credit to Mrs. . We have, strangely, misplaced the name of the piano teacher — precisely, we have forgotten it. It is like Harrison or Garrison but slightly off, perhaps in a French or German way.
It is a little sloppy to say that the son of the police chief has gone to seed. The son of the police chief was not ever in that state one is in before he goes to seed — would it be ripe? In full bloom? At stud? Is a horse put to stud after his racing career not “gone to seed”? The son of the police chief was not ever virile or prepossessing or upstanding, but he was a young man with a nice fresh face and possessed of a cheer, if not an innocence, that you did not expect of a boy whose father was locally famous for enmeshing himself in minor scandal and being, after all, the chief of police. By one argument the sons of police chiefs are born gone to seed. There is no hope for them: they are juvenile delinquents whose fathers will keep them out of the system of juvenile jurisprudence. But this particular boy showed hope of a sort. He was, well, nice. It is easy to say now, having seen him before, and seeing him now, perhaps too nice. Something went awry. Like milk in a bottle, something spoiled. The teeth in the nice smile of the bright child of the police chief are now furry-looking, and there is too much saliva in the smile, which he still proffers. He is soft-looking now, and weak-looking, and a bit splay-footed. He has as he walks no apparent direction. That is not quite accurate. He has direction, but not enough speed to suggest he is really going anywhere he needs to go; nor is he ambling in such a carefree way that he appears to be walking for health. It is impossible to say what he is up to. He is the fat son of the police chief who, the son, was once almost handsome now with dirty teeth and an oblique smile and a loose walk. He looks like a young man who has said to himself, “I have nothing better to do, I should at least walk somewhere,” and has obeyed his own command. His father lost his office finally by claiming falsely to have played football for a famous football coach. He had also dislocated the affections of voters by wearing makeup for televised press conferences. This was not the casual makeup applied last-minute by a television crew to prevent a subject’s nose from shining, but makeup that the chief of police self-administered in unartful excessive quantity toward an apparent attempt to have himself resemble Elvis Presley. People seeing the chief of police in this plumage did not think of Elvis so much as they thought of men who liked to dress up as women. The son of the ex-chief of police ambling about as he does looks lost.
Had an observer seen the initial contact between Thang Phong and the son of the chief of police, he would have said it appeared to be accidental and he would be baffled by its escalation and its outcome. The first shambling misstep a little across the sidewalk by the son of the chief of police into the path of the approaching Phong, Phong’s halt, their both sidestepping the same way back over to the son of the police chief’s initial side of the sidewalk, their both stepping then back to Phong’s side, was a classic Willie Pep maneuver in which both parties, seeking to allow the other pass, inadvertently block the passage of the other. Perhaps it was the smiling, the wet yellow grin, by the police chief’s son, which smile does not seem to be extinguishable, a fact Phong could not have known — perhaps this salacious-looking expression on the face of the fat boy in his way put Phong on the defensive, made him think a large grub-like Westerner was deliberately fucking with him.
Unlike the police chief’s son, Thang Phong had direction and conviction: he was, before this clown got in his way, on stride and on time, precisely on time, for his piano lesson with Mrs. Guerre or Mrs. Garre or Mrs. Huarre. In his head he was going over the piece he was to play for her when suddenly someone was blocking his way and apparently finding it funny, and to Phong’s acute sense of smell the boy seemed unwashed. This sour-milk smell might have panicked Phong, for he was antiseptic in his outlook and habits. He touched the son of the police chief deftly in the solar plexus with his middle finger and the son of the police chief collapsed on him. The finger went to the correct spot and stiffened from Thang Phong’s root, which came out of the ground with the power of the earth. It was a thing Thang Phong had not thought of since a boy when they had all done martial arts as, say, American boys all do Little League baseball. He knew how to touch the son of the police of chief with maximum effect, and without malice, just as an American man will know, thirty years later on a softball team, to charge a grounder, when he would otherwise wait for the ball to come to him. When Thang Phong’s middle finger went into the soft center of the police chief’s son, with his two other fingers flanking it in what he had known thirty years ago was called a snake strike, he touched something down in there very firmly, like playing that gratifying E-flat in the opening of Beethoven’s fifth, and the boy shuddered as the piano would, but unlike the piano the son of the chief of police lost his breath and grasped for Phong to try to keep from going down to the sidewalk. The clabbery smell and the clammy feel of the son of the chief of police panicked Phong more deeply as he was grabbed onto, and he twisted hard and inadvertently elbowed the boy in the temple, again with a ground-root force that he did not intend and that seemed to come from the provinces of both martial arts and music. The police chief’s son’s creepy smile dimmed a bit and he went to the side and down hard on the sidewalk, hitting first on blubber and then on his head, and he did not move.
Thang Phong was upset that this encounter had made him late for his lesson with Mrs. Legare. It did not occur to him that the man in his way was hurt. He wanted now to somehow take a shower before playing his piece for Mrs. Garreisen but he knew this was impractical short of his getting there and asking her if he could take a shower. You did not do that at a piano lesson or at any other occasion when entering someone’s home, and especially in Mrs. Heinson’s house it would be a problem because she would have to set out a matching set of towel and face towel and washcloth for him and these would have to match the rugs in the bathroom, which matched covers on the tank of the toilet and the cover of the toilet, which upholstery Thang Phong had already made note of in his innocent use of the bathroom on other less trying occasions when he had merely needed a toilet and not a shower. He resolved to march through the pain of being dirty and play his piece well for Mrs. Garhoolie and not be such a whiner.
But when he got there, a tad breathless from hurrying, and Mrs. Jeemstripe opened the door and received him with her warm smile as she did every week, he burst out, “Mrs. Hometapes, some crodhopper slime me, I needa take shower prease.” He was wrong to have anticipated an ordeal, because even though, as he had predicted, a complete matching stack of high-grade earthtone terrycloth was supplied him, it was done instantly, without fuss, and Mrs. Thorsenguille even drew the water and had the shower running and was closing him into the bathroom before he could say another word and retract his request and insist he could play with germs on him almost as well as he could play without germs on him. The image of Mrs. Tomarre smiling at him so solicitously as she closed the bathroom door was so motherly and generous and she seemed so genuinely happy in being helpful this way that he thought of her at that moment as his mother, and he could not momentarily picture his own mother. He said aloud, “Who was my mother?” No image or idea of his mother or of any family at all came into his head, which he held in one hand, trying to think, absently fondling his genitals in the shower stream with the other hand, when the shower curtain ripped open and Mrs. Theneglassen stood there naked and white as a powder puff except for her dark triangular business in the middle of the largest white triangle of her, grinning at him hugely, stepping in, and Thang Phong recoiled and slipped and going down he grabbed behind him for purchase with the hand that had held his head while he had tried to think, and with the hand that had absently been at his genitals he formed and sent the snake strike that was now becoming second nature to him into Mrs. Horbeglieve’s throat.