A bolt of white shoots across my eyes, and I crumple. I can’t even scream, it hurts so bad. I land against the wall of monitors, throw my hands up to ward off another blow. The first guy shouts something, I can’t understand what, and another one of them starts yanking at my backpack, and I lash out with my fists, trying to connect, and he wrenches the backpack off, pulling one of my arms so far back that I think it’s come out of its socket, and then I scream because I can’t help it, and one of the guys with the rods hits me again, in the ribs this time. I curl into myself because there’s nothing I can do, no way to fight back, and I’m just waiting for the next blow.
Instead I hear the zip of my pack being opened.
I open my eyes, and the first guy has my laptop out.
Then something truly weird happens.
“What are you doing?” I hear a man shout-at least I think that’s what he says. His accent’s so thick I can barely understand him. “You can’t do that!”
“Mind your own business! You should get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Cao ni ma de bi! You think you can just do what you want, treat people like dogs? You think you own the earth and sky?”
This guy, whoever he is, his voice is shaking with rage.
“You think you can tell me what to do?” says Thug #1, sounding like he’s on the verge of laughing.
I can make out Thug #1, standing there with his back to me, his fists clenched, looking like he’s going to beat the shit out of this new guy.
Except it’s not just one guy. Behind him are others. I can’t see them clearly, but there are about a half dozen men and women clustered around him, some hesitant, some furious, ready to take up metal bars of their own and kick some ass.
“Haode,” Thug #1 finally says. I see his shoulders bunch in a shrug. “Chou tu,” he adds under his breath. Filthy peasant.
Then he takes my laptop and hurls it into the pile.
I slowly sit up as the three of them get in their car, reverse it in a grinding of gears, and head back the way they came.
I try to focus on the crowd that stands a few yards away, in a ragged semicircle of their own. I can’t really see their faces. “Thank you,” I manage. Several of them shift back and forth, mutter words I can’t make out, and suddenly I’m not sure if I’m any better off than I was before.
Then a man steps forward. His arm is still raised, and he’s holding something in his hand-a brick.
I scuttle back against the monitors.
“You all right?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”
It’s the guy who yelled at the thugs, I’m pretty sure. I think he’s in his forties, but it’s hard to tell-he’s average height, with a shaved head, sharp cheekbones, and the kind of no-nonsense wiry build that comes from a life of hard work.
“Hai keyi,” I say. Meaning I could be better, but I could be worse.
I try to stand. Not going to happen. The pain from my bad leg leaves me gasping against the pile of monitors.
The man takes another step toward me, hesitates, then turns his head and yells out something I can’t understand. A woman steps forward. “She can help you,” the man says to me.
She’s about the same age as the guy, angular, blunt-cut hair streaked with grey, deep crow’s feet and brow lines etched on her face.
“Give me your hand,” she says.
I reach out with my right, or try to, but my shoulder hurts like a motherfucker, and I have to lean there a moment longer and catch my breath until my head clears.
So I give her my left, same side as my fucked-up leg, and somehow get to my feet. The woman has me drape my arm over her shoulder.
“You can walk?”
“I can.” I laugh a little. “Maybe.” It’s more like I can hop.
We take a few steps this way, my good arm over her shoulder, her arm circled around my back, me not able to put much weight on my bad leg. She shouts something that I can’t understand to the man.
“Hao le,” he says, and trots off.
The woman points toward one of the stalls across the street from the monitor mountain. “You can wait there a little.” Wait for what? “You need doctor?” she asks. I nod, because I guess I probably do.
Then I remember my laptop. “Wo… wode xiao diannao.” My little computer. I can’t exactly remember the Chinese for “laptop.”
“Where is it?” she asks.
I take a look around me, at the endless piles of electronic scrap, and I laugh.
Another person in the crowd, a kid, scrambles over to the pile. Roots around in the junk. “This one?” he shouts, holding up a laptop.
Who the fuck knows?
I nod anyway.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TURNS OUT WE’RE WAITING for a tractor.
I sit on a little plastic stool beneath a blue tarp, in one of the makeshift workshops where they’re dismantling monitors, and I try not to breathe too much. One of the workers brings me a Coke from someplace, which I figure is probably safe to drink. I wonder why they’re being so nice to me, but all I say is, “Ganxie nimen”-Thank you very much-and use the Coke to wash down a Percocet. I know sometimes I take the things when I’m really stressed out or just because it feels good, but right now I take it because I’m fucking hurting.
What the fuck was all that? I try to think, but it’s hard, it’s like my thoughts are tangled up in barbed wire, my head throbbing with the pain in my leg.
Something’s going on with New Century Seeds. I’m as sure as I can be about that without actually knowing what it is. And it’s easy to figure that the guys who attacked me are connected to that. But I can’t know for sure. With all the unrest going on, maybe they’re just touchy about having foreigners around.
Maybe there’s something they don’t want me to see. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be about New Century Seeds.
While I sit, I try to boot up my laptop. Turns out it really is my laptop, but the casing is cracked, and when I power it up, there’s some sad whirring and then nothing but a grey screen.
The kid who retrieved it sidles up to me. He’s… I don’t know, maybe twelve? Skinny like the couple who rescued me. Oversize head. Bucktoothed. Wearing sneakers a size too large, laces flapping.
“Broken?” he asks.
I nod.
“Pingguo?” Apple?
“Shi.” It’s an old MacBook, a white plastic slab that’s taken all kinds of abuse and still works. Well, up till now.
“Can I?” the kid asks, reaching out his hand.
Sure. Why not? I hand him the laptop.
He opens it. “Late 2006 one. I can fix,” he says solemnly.
“Really.” I’m skeptical.
“Really!” He makes a fist and thumps his skinny chest.
Right about then the guy with the brick shows up in a tuolaji. It’s this crazy farm vehicle, a cross between a truck and a tractor that looks like it’s built out of scrap and rubber bands: two-stroke engine mounted in the front, thrusting out over two small wheels, a little truck bed in back, with a long, skinny metal beam connecting them, like it would snap in half if you jumped on it hard, something a kid would build out of Legos. The engine turns the front wheels by what looks like a giant vacuum-cleaner belt. The guy steers it with these long handlebars, his seat a cracked green vinyl cushion.
“Lai, lai!” he calls out. Come, come!
“My parents,” the kid says, pointing at the woman who helped me and then the guy on the tractor. “I fix the computer for you. Okay?”
“Maybe later,” I say. I mean, it would be nice, but I’m not about to leave my laptop with this kid, even if it is just so much electronic junk, like everything else here.