Colors of the Mountain

  I whistled all the way home, with the ducks quacking as I walked along the quiet Dong Jing River.

  At home, Mom and Dad smiled helplessly at the ducks.

  “You shouldn’t have accepted the present,” Mom said.

  “But Professor Wei said it was for the treatments Dad gave to her sister.”

  “Next time, run,” Dad said, but he seemed pleased. “Now let them free in the courtyard for a day or two.”

  I followed his order and untied the ducks.

  “But leave the red bows on their wings,” he added.

  I looked up at him and tried to swallow a smile.

  Dad had an ego the size of Ching Mountain. He wanted the traces of gifts to remain, like leaving the price tag on an expensive present, so that curious neighbors and friends would ask about the two noisy creatures and Dad would be forced to reveal the source of the gifts. The inquirers would be so impressed that they would talk about the givers for another two days, prolonging Dad’s glory at being the doctor for the Wei sisters.

  “Join me in the living room after you wash your hands,” Dad said, still smiling ear to ear.

  “Okay.” I scrubbed my hands, which smelled like duck feet, and ran into the living room.

  Dad had brewed a tall pot of strong tea. He sat comfortably in his old cane chair with his feet on a stool. The well-wishers of the New Year had gone home. It was quiet family time. My brother sat in the corner lighting a cigarette, while Dad poured a cup of steaming tea for him, and filled another for me.

  “It’s New Year’s Day and we have made a new decision about your brother. He is going to take time off and start preparing for the college exam. What do you think?” Dad sounded confident. Once he had made a decision, he considered that 80 percent of the job was done. He believed that by his believing in us, we could swim the ocean and climb mountains. No hurdle was too hard to overcome, no glory too high to obtain.

  I looked at my brother, who was smoking quietly, then at my dad. “Dad, why didn’t I hear about it sooner? I’ll go make room for him in my study; I know I’ll learn a lot from him.”

  Pleased with my response, Dad rolled up his sleeves. “Now here is the strategy for you two. Da, you are still fresh. You’re going to help your brother. You’ll make a schedule and study together.”

  I was surprised. Jin, who was two sisters away from me, had been in first grade when I was still crawling around in my diapers fighting for food with the chickens in the courtyard. Now I was to help him. My heart beat with pride. With a little hard work and a bit of determination, I had won my dad’s respect.

  “That will be great,” I said, turning to my brother. “I have all the books.”

  “I’m not really sure about college, I’ve been away from books for too long.” Jin sounded pessimistic. He had always been my opposite in many ways. He was always calm and wise, never the one to want to take center stage. When it came to a major decision, we always had to push and shove a little. I hoped for victory, while he worried about failure.

  “You can do it,” Dad told Jin. “You were the math wizard of your class in junior high. You will devote your time to learning the other subjects over the next seven months. Don’t worry, son, I feel lucky this year.” Dad looked at the two quacking ducks, now depositing droppings all over the courtyard.

  It was superstition. Things were coming in twos.

  Dad was an amateur fortune-teller. There were many tricks to the art of predicting the future. His specialty was judging facial features. Each day, the first thing he would comment to Mom about in the morning was the color of his face.

  Holding a mirror in his hand, he would say, “Rosy. I wonder what good things are coming our way today.”

  Mom would squint and say matter-of-factly, “I don’t see any rosiness there.”

  “There.” Dad would twist his face, trying to squeeze color out of the pores. “A little there, huh?”

  Mom would have to agree with him or he would keep looking in his mirror the whole morning.

  “Is it the color again?” I asked.

  “Yes, the color is good and my right eye is twitching like crazy,” Dad said, pointing to his face. “Son, this is the chance of a lifetime. I thought you guys would never have the opportunity to dream about college. Now Mao has gone west and you’re given a chance to try. The Chen men have never been known for lack of talent, only for lack of opportunity.”

  He turned to my brother, lit another cigarette for him and said, “Jin, you have the advantage of being more mature. Da, you have the energy. Work together like brothers should, make up for the disadvantages, and both of you will win this time. All you need to do is work hard. Jin, if you as a teenager could farm like an adult to support this family, then there is no college, I mean no college under the sun, that should be too hard for you to get into. We are behind you all the way. And you, Da, have no reason to even have to consider anything other than your first choice of college. Beijing. Shanghai. Anywhere your heart belongs. Young man, you don’t know how lucky you are. Look at your sisters. They weren’t even allowed to finish elementary school.” Dad finished his speech, his eyes fiery.

  The conversation turned from father-son chitchat into an admiral’s final order. The enemy was at the front door. Now go get them, sons.

  Jin quietly put out his cigarette and said to me, “Tomorrow, wake me when you get up. Let me get a feel of what’s going on, then we’ll sit down and talk. Make me work hard if you see me slack off, little brother. We’ll work together.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Dad filled our cups again and symbolically drank his in one gulp. He had said enough. Now it was up to us.

  “Bottoms up.” I toasted my brother and rose to leave. When I pushed the door open, Mom was right behind it and had probably been listening to the whole conversation.

  I climbed the stairs to my room, and sat down at my desk, which was covered with piles of books. The sense of a sacred mission swept through my heart. Just before this pep talk, college had been a young man’s romantic ideal. Now it was a reality full of emotions. If I failed, I failed the whole family all the way back to our earliest ancestor, whose tombstone had long become sand. If I won, the family’s ship would sail again. It was about pride, humiliation, revenge, dignity, and vindication of the family name.

  I shivered as I recalled how often Mom had been casually dropping hints about the good things that had happened to Cousin Tan’s family ever since he became an AU student. More marriage proposals, better treatment by their neighbors, and his father’s visit to the glorious AU campus.

  I knew she wished this were happening to her; that brother Jin was the one receiving all those proposals and she was the mother reviewing all the girls with a magnifying glass, passing along her well-reasoned, tactful rejections, while inwardly gleefully witnessing their disappointment, especially that of the families who had spat at her in the past. She wasn’t mean or cruel, but suffering made you see things differently.

  I compiled two lists. One was a checklist of everything my brother needed to catch up with me. The other was my own list of do’s and don’ts, a sort of New Year’s resolution. On it were no movies, no plays, no sports, no more time off until after The Big One. Tonight would be my last night out with my friends.

  A popular, local melody was being badly distorted by a whistler just below my window. The nightingale was Siang, the designated messenger from the gang.

  I closed my book, went to the kitchen, and picked up the food basket Mom had prepared for my friends. When I had asked her for the food, I had promised her that it was my last night out with them, that from now on, I would shut my door and bury my head in my books.

  “What a terrible whistler,” Mom said. “Why don’t they come in?”

  “Because they’re afraid of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a good person,” I replied.

  “How strange.”

  “Well, my friends aren’t afraid of bad p
eople, they deal with them all day long and beat them up all the time. But when they meet a good person like you, they don’t know what to do. They turn shy and stay in the dark.”

  Mom shook her head and wiped her hands on her apron.

  When I pushed the door open at Yi’s, no one jumped out to throw me to the floor or pinch my neck. It was quiet. Four heads, a cloud of smoke rising above them, slumped between legs.

  “Hey, brothers, the food is here. Why is everyone so damned quiet?”

  “We lost half our money,” Sen said in a low voice. His eyebrows were locked together, a hairy mess.

  “How?” My heart dropped. Five hundred yuan gone like the wind. “That’s impossible. You guys are the quickest hands north of the equator and east of the western world.”

  I shook Mo Gong’s fuzzy head. His neck was boneless, like a rubber pipe. The picture of prosperity only hours ago, he was now a deflated balloon.

  “We were doing fine at the beginning, wiping out people like a typhoon. I mean big hands. Then someone snuck from the fields and reported us to the commune. They sent in a battalion and cleaned our pockets. Good thing we made for the sugarcanes, that’s why we’re not sitting stinking in the commune jail.”

  “But the police got our names,” Siang said. “It’s only a matter of hours before they come and knock at our door.”

  “What? Who reported it?” I asked.

  “Some guy from another village. We’ll take care of him sooner or later.”

  “So let’s eat first and then run,” I said.

  “I don’t think we have time to eat. But we need some money, we’re broke,” Sen said.

  “What about the other half of the money?” I asked.

  “In the field. We buried it. We’ll get it later. Now ain’t a good time,” Sen replied.

  “Here.” I dug into my pocket and took out about ten yuan. “Not much, but take this for now.”

  “That’s a lotta money,” Yi said.

  “Don’t worry. I have no place to spend it,” I said, pushing the money into Sen’s hands. He took it slowly.

  “Thanks, Da, you’re a real pal. We’ll borrow it,” he said, his head low.

  “It’s nothing, and it’s not enough for you guys. Hey, if you wait, I could go home and get some more.” I was thinking of borrowing from my brother.

  “No, no, we’re leaving now,” Sen said.

  “Do you have to?”

  All four heads nodded in unison.

  “Listen, if we go now, we’ll be in Putien in a few hours. We’ll stay at Yi’s and make another living there. If we don’t, it’ll be jail time.”

  “Eat the food up, please, or you’ll be hungry.” I opened the basket. The smell of fried fish, roasted pork, noodles, and New Year’s rice cakes permeated the room and opened their eyes.

  “Here, use your hands. Eat.”

  Four pairs of hands fought for the juiciest pieces. Soon Mo Gong was licking the bottom of the meat plate and Siang was burping. Sen wiped his greasy hands on his hair, a habit he had since he was young, and Yi picked his teeth. A perfect last supper.

  The four of them touched me with their greasy hands before leaving. Sen whispered to me, “Work hard, college man. Make us proud.”

  I carried the empty basket home, feeling like a fugitive myself. My friends had vanished into the darkness. All I could hear was the clanking of the old bike.

  THE FIRST DAY back from New Year’s break, Dia sported a brand-new, army green Mao jacket. One of the pockets was already missing a button. He stood outside our door and looked as dopey as a new bridegroom.

  “Hey, happy New Year, and how the hell did you make the girl marry you?” I faked a frown and crossed my arms across my chest.

  Dia rubbed his reddened face. “This thing?” His hands smoothed the wrinkles on his jacket. “Mom made it for my elder brother and the stupid guy washed it in boiling water. It shrunk two sizes. Now, I gotta wear it. I took the button off to look more casual.”

  I studied him a few seconds, prolonging his agony. “You look really stupid, but I love you, pal. Why didn’t you come out for a visit or something?”

  “I was too busy. Mom wanted me to go to the temple with her to beg for luck with the college entrance exam. You know what I told her?”

  “What? Something witty?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was hilarious. I said that to get me into college, a decent one, Buddha himself would have to do the exam for me.”

  I thought about the thousands of kowtows that I had done to beg for Buddha’s grace and felt a mild temptation to kick Dia’s ass for insulting my good old Buddha.

  He slapped my shoulder and shouted, “What, you don’t think it was funny? My dad still can’t get over it. He’s probably somewhere telling it to the villagers and smoking his huge pipe. Oh, and I went to a smoking contest.”

  “Did you win?”

  “Did I win?”

  “Sorry. Did you win big?”

  “I didn’t win.” He seemed disgusted at my poor judgment.

  “Sorry, again. So who won then?”

  “Who do you think won? Grandpa!”

  “Grandpa?”

  “It was amazing,” Dia said, warming to the tale. “Grandpa walked into this smoky, hazy spot, the oldest contestant. You know, a little wobbly. I sat at his side, sorta supporting him. The young, aggressive guys laughed at his shaky frame, but soon they began to fall outta the contest. Smoked out! Ha, ha, ha. Couldn’t take it. Grandpa just went on and on with his pipe like a busy chimney. His eyes were smiling, and I kept pouring him hard liquor to quench his thirst. In the end, he won first prize, a whole year’s supply of matches for him to burn.”

  “Hell of a story, Dia. I think you should take him to the smoking Olympics every single year. Even when he’s blind and in a wheelchair, he’ll beat the hell out of those young craps.” I shook my head, swung my bag over my shoulder, and we were on our way to school.

  “Well, Dad is a little concerned. He said smoking like that, Grandpa might die an Olympian during the contest one of these days.”

  “I don’t think that’ll ever happen to any Dia man. You guys just wheeze a lot but never perish.”

  “That’s the Dia men, you got it.” Dia patted his own chest with pride. “Hell, come to think of it, if he croaks, it would be another record to add to his long and glorious smoking life. To die smoking. Wouldn’t that be something to put on your tombstone?”

  “Shut up, you.”

  We chose the narrow path between two green wheat fields, still wet from the melting frost. The morning sun gleamed through the fog. The trees, road, and endless fields looked like an Impressionist painting, fuzzy.

  “I feel ashamed walking beside you, you know,” Dia suddenly said.

  “Why?”

  “I heard that you locked yourself up in your room and banged your fucking head against the wall studying, and that you didn’t even take New Year’s Day off. You didn’t, did you, you son-of-a-gun?”

  “That was pure rumor. I had a great time this holiday.”

  “Not true. I have my source.”

  “I wouldn’t rely on it entirely,” I teased him.

  “Wait.” Dia ran in front of me. “I heard something you might wanna hear.”

  “What?”

  “About your friends.”

  “What about them?”

  “You haven’t heard anything?”

  “No, I haven’t heard from them since they skipped town on New Year’s.”

  “Don’t pull my leg.” Dia stopped me in the middle of the narrow road. His small eyes seemed to dangle from the midst of his sockets, radiating sincerity.

  “I swear to Buddha,” I said. “Tell me what you heard.”

  “Okay, here’s a clue. Money.”

  “Money? What money are you talking about?” My heart sank. Even Dia knew about their fortune.

  “You sure you don’t know anything about this? Okay, the rumor out there had it that Siang stole about a tho
usand yuan from the commune’s shoe factory his father runs. That’s why he’s been hiding out with his friends.”

  The news hit me like a fist. Siang, a thief? On the run? I recalled the glee on my friends’ faces on New Year’s Day. They were so full of joy. That one thousand yuan had to have been money they’d won honestly. Siang wouldn’t steal. My sworn friends wouldn’t lie to me about where they had gotten the fortune. It hadn’t been in their eyes. There had been no fear. It was money that had come from courage, bravery, and their ability to take a calculated risk at the gambling table.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Dia asked.

  “No, I don’t. They told me a different story.”

  “What? They told you about the money?”

  I realized my slip of the tongue. “Forget it, Dia. We didn’t have this conversation, okay?”

  “Hey, slow down. I’m your best friend. Trust me. The commune is investigating the whole thing now and they can’t prove whether Siang really has the money that he was accused of stealing.”

  Holy shit, I could have given the truth away. I was glad I was only talking to Dia, someone in whom I could confide my darkest secrets. “What else did you hear?”

  “That he stole the money to gamble, but there’s another rumor that the shoe factory’s one thousand yuan might have been stolen by its bookkeeper or someone from the inside. Someone knew that Siang was in possession of a fortune and framed him. He was easy pickings. You know he hangs around the shoe factory and is good friends with the treasurer.”

  My heart sank deeper. There was a scheme out there to frame and ruin Siang and his friends, and possibly me.

  “Did you hear anything about me being involved in any way?”

  “No, everyone knows you’re a born-again good guy who was recently honored with the Young Communist League title in school. You’ve been making quite a name as being a top contender for college.”