The grief counselors were themselves stunned.
Sociopathic was a word not found in the Chinese language, an idea the parents could not comprehend. How could human beings have no regard for the evil they do? Unless, of course, they weren’t human beings but m’hai yun, a lower species of animal.
What could the grief counselors say? None of it made any sense.
In China, a criminal who committed murder would have received a Beijing haircut, a single nine-millimeter bullet to the head, followed by government’s bill to the executed person’s family for the price of the bullet.
In China, Jack knew, cops were liberal in their application of the law, justice there more pragmatic: do the crime, and you were executed. Simple as that, in a country with a billion people. There was no death row. There was no twenty years of appeals. China was six thousand years of civilization. They knew what worked. And they didn’t play.
He watched the funeral gathering from a distance, near the ball fields of his childhood.
The neighboring businesses on the street, from the undertaker at one end to the headstone cutter at the other, were all moved by the tragic death, and had contributed to the funeral, according to the Chinese press.
The Chin brothers’ Kingdom Caskets Inc. donated the simple bronze-colored coffin, a no-frills metal-veneer box.
Peaceful Florist discounted the floral wreaths, and the family’s village association paid for the funeral and the plot.
Several radio-car drivers had offered to drive the family for free to the cemetery in Brooklyn and back to Chinatown.
On the park side, a group of Buddhist monks from the Temple of Noble Truths concluded their prayer service and planted sticks of incense in the iron urn by the curb.
A group of Puerto Rican schoolgirls passed by and cracked jokes, goofing on the bald heads and saffron robes of the monks. Chino Viejo! Oh snap, like kong foo, their giggling cutting through the dirge.
Inside the Wah Fook parlor the air was thick, heavy with the pungent cloud of jasmine incense that cloaked the room. The overhead lights were dimmed to set off the glow of candles softly illuminating the gathering of grieving, sobbing faces.
A small gathering, barely twenty people.
Out by the main doorway, the reporters and photographers waited at a respectful distance. Jack walked by them and made his way to the incense urn, paying his respects by planting three sticks of incense and bowing. Stepping to the casket, he bowed again, turned, and came to offer condolences to the family before returning to the main door.
The reporters made notes in their pads, a sad end to another violent New York City story.
Another dead Chinese deliveryman.
There is enough anger here, Jack felt, in this small room. But where was the greater rage out there in the community? Would the Fukienese demonstrate again? Or would the old-guard Chinatown Cantonese make a statement?
No justice, no peace?
No just us, no please?
The community’s activist media would stay focused on this, Jack thought, and the DA’s office would be very aware of that. This one wasn’t going to be bargained away in some sealed juvie deal.
There was a freestanding black-and-white photograph of Hong, a smiling teenage face, just above the altar space. Below that was the closed casket the parents were forced to accept, so horrified were they by the damage to their son’s face.
A ring of flowers surrounded the closed coffin.
They could hear the band starting up across the street on the park side, a sad sweet “Nearer, My God, to Thee” in four-four time.
The pallbearers readying themselves to shoulder the load.
Suddenly, the mother uttered a harrowing cry, then exploded from her seat and threw herself across the coffin, knocking over her son’s framed photograph. The father and relatives rushed over to console and to restrain her. The mother was screaming, “Aah Jai! Ah Jai!!” and beating her chest, trying to tear her heart out, clutching at her hair. She fell to the floor, kicking, pounding the polished stone with her fists.
The relatives lifted her up, managed to slump her onto a seat, surrounding her from all sides supporting her, all of them wailing now, words useless in the whirlwind of grief.
The father stood speechless, ready to collapse.
The pallbearers lifted the casket, slowly beginning to walk toward the street. The band urged them on, the hearse standing at the curb with its tailgate open.
Up and down the street, drivers waited patiently as the pallbearers stepped slowly through the frozen morning, loading the coffin into the vehicle. The mother collapsed again and they carried her into one of the Town Cars. The band played until the last car moved off around the bend to Bayard, en route to the New Chinatown, then to Brooklyn, and on to everlasting sorrow.
Life Is Suffering
Sai Go sat in the barber chair and watched Bo in the mirror wall of the New Canton. She caught his glance and raised the chair, pumping the lever with her foot to position him.
“You look tanned,” she said with a smile. And tired, she thought. “Had a good time?”
“Yes,” answered Sai Go as she draped the plastic sheet over him, discreetly returning the clinic card and prescription note. “You left them here last time,” she said, grabbing a spray bottle.
Sai Go recognized the items immediately and nonchalantly pocketed them.
“Thanks,” he said. “And I’ve got something for you, too.” He produced a souvenir key ring with the Disney World logo, pleased by the happiness it brought to her face when he handed it to her.
“It’s got a light.” He smiled. “When you press the button.
For the dark places.”
“A wonderful gift.” She beamed, flashing the light. “Thank you much.” She remembered the talismans she had for him, but decided to wait until the end of the massage before showing them to him.
She misted his hair.
“The weather was good,” Sai Go said. “We went all over.”
Bo worked the little electric clipper against the long black comb.
“People swimming. People having fun,” he continued.
She misted again, and he squinted at the comb whipping around, chased by the buzz of the blades, hard salt-and-pepper clippings spraying across the plastic sheet.
“Everyone out in the sun,” he said, blinking.
“Just like a postcard,” Bo said, focused on the top of his head.
Sai Go felt himself floating, drifting behind his eyes. He scanned the overcast street in the mirrors, and felt detached, out of place. When he brought his focus back, he saw his quick trim, neat and tight. Bo was dusting his neck with powder, brushing him off. She loosened the plastic sheet.
He closed his eyes as Bo’s strong fingers kneaded the knots where the cords ran from his neck into his shoulders. He took a slow deep breath, released it the same way. He thought he’d felt something catching in his chest as she massaged his shoulders.
Inside his forehead he imagined palm trees and blue skies, the hot Florida sun on his face. Her thumbs dug into the base of his skull, rotated there, and then her forearms pressed and rubbed the sides of his neck.
He imagined a pack of greyhounds sprinting around a track, chasing a mechanical rabbit, and remembered he’d fallen asleep during the last race, but still came out a winner, a grand fifty dollars on the day.