"Bling! What about the kid?"
"A fad, like. Here in Beijing it was doctors. They were catching a lot of crap for catering to the landlord element, treating bourgeoisie heart attacks and so forth. Finally, twenty top physicians, the cream of the nation's doctors, man, poisoned themselves by way of protest."
"Some protest."
"Yeah, well, in Yang's province it was teachers. The kid's father was a professor of poetry. He was condemned to humiliation for teaching some damn out-of-favor tome or other. After enough insults he and a dozen other maligned colleagues walked into the provincial university gymnasium in the middle of a Ping-Pong tournament… walked in, lined up, took out their swords, and staged a protest."
"Like dominoes."
Bling nodded. "The man at the end of the line had to do double duty: first dispatch the man in front of him, then do himself. They tried to keep it out of the papers, but there were pictures. And things like that get talked around even in China."
"Jesus."
"That anchor man was the kid's father."
"And that's why the kid went for our plot?"
"That and, of course, the stipend of three thousand huyen… that may have had some influence."
They waited for their Prince and Pauper as long as they dared the next morning. The photographer fiddled with his aluminum camera cases. The writer checked his pockets again to be sure he'd flushed all the wild wanna. The editor paid the phone bill.
They finally ordered a cab.
"I begin to suspect that we've seen the last of Bling, Yang, and your thousand clams."
The editor nodded glumly. "I wonder if the kid gets a cut?"
"I wonder if the kid even got the pitch. Bling may have put a hummer on all of us. Who can tell with these inscrutable pricks?"
The plane was delayed for two hours – emergency work for the flood victims – and they were drinking Chinese beer on the terminal mezzanine when they saw the taxi.
"Hey, look! Here he by God comes!"
"So he does, by God, so he does," the editor admitted, not too much relieved. "And, by God, with those glasses and that cap – he does look a lot like Bling."
The photographer lowered his long-range lens. "That's because it is Bling."
They couldn't get seats together until after the takeoff. "You did what with my money?"
"You heard me. Your three Chinese grand went into young Yang's travel fund to fly him to next year's Nike marathon in Eugene."
"Wait'll bookkeeping comes across that."
"Cheer up. He can still defect when he gets to Oregon."
"But what about you, Bling? Your education, your career?"
"When I got back to my dorm room last night I found I'd been moved out, girly books and all. You know who was in my bed, all coiled up like a black snake? That damn Tanzanian. Mude must've liked his style. So I decided it might be time for me to do some myself. Tripping."
"Listen, Bling. Be straight with us. Did you even ask the kid, or is this all a shuck?"
"I will not be tempted by doubt." Bling sniffed. He pushed the recliner button and leaned back, fingers laced behind his neck. "Besides, you'll get your money's worth."
"A thousand bucks for a thirty-year-old Pekingese punk? With times most high school girls can beat?"
"Ah! Good houseboy, me. Wash missy's underdrawers. Velly handy."
Yang did not wait for the bus from the Qufu airport. He left his bag and his coat with Zhoa. He would get them later at school.
He loped off down the puddled runway, east, in the direction of his village, feeling very happy to be back in the country. The sweepers smiled at him. The workers in the fields waved to him. Perhaps that was the difference: in Beijing there had been no smile of greeting on the streets. People moved past people, eyes forward to avoid contact. Perhaps it was merely the difference between country and city life, not between governments or nations or races. Perhaps there were only two peoples, city and country.
He rattled over the plank bridge crossing the canal and leaped the hedge of brush. Through the damp air he could see the fengs rising against the descending twilight, and his grandfather there like a scribble of dark calligraphy on the top, contorting through his ancient exercises.
– - Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
or
– Bob Dylan
Subterranean Homesick Blues
LITTLE TRICKER THE SQUIRREL MEETS BIG DOUBLE THE BEAR
– by Grandma Whittier
Don't tell me you're the only youngsters never heard tell of the time the bear came to Topple's Bottom? He was a huge high-country bear and not only huge but horrible huge. And hairy, and hateful, and hungry! Why, he almost ate up the entire Bottom before Tricker finally cut him down to size, just you listen and see if he didn't…
It was a fine fall morning, early and cold and sweet as cider. Down in the Bottom the only one up and about was old Papa Sun, and him just barely. Hanging in the low limbs of the crabapple trees was still some of those strings of daybreak fog called "haint hair" by them that believes in such. The night shifts and the day shifts were shifting very slow. The crickets hadn't put away their fiddles. The spiders hadn't shook the dew out of their webs yet. The birds hadn't quite woke up and the bats hadn't quite gone to sleep. Nothing was a-move except one finger of sun slipping soft up the knobby trunk of the hazel. It was one of the prettiest times of day at one of the prettiest times of year, and all the Bottom folk were content to let it come about quiet and slow and savory.
Tricker the Squirrel was awake but he wasn't about. He was lazying in the highest hole in his cottonwood highrise with just his nose poking from his pillow of a tail, dreaming about flying. Every now and again he would twinkle one bright eye out through his dream and his puffy pillowhair to check the hazel tree way down below to see if any of the nuts was ready for reaping. He had to admit they were all pretty near prime. All day yesterday he had watched those nuts turning softly browner and browner and, come sundown, had judged them just one day short of perfect.
"And that means if I don't get them today, tomorrow they are very apt to be just one day past perfect."
So he was promising himself "Just as quick as that sunbeam touches the first hazelnut I get right on the job." Then, after a couple of winks, "Just as quick as that sunbeam touches the second hazelnut I'll zip right down with my tote sack and go to gathering." – and so forth, merely dozing and dallying, and savoring the still, sweet air. The hazelnuts get browner. The sunbeam inches silently on – the fifteenth! the twentieth! – but the morning was simply so pretty and the air hanging so dreamy and still he hated to break the peace.