China's Son (6 page)

I jumped out quickly and they all froze. Their angry faces stared at me as if I had already overstayed my welcome. The only thing moving was the cigarette smoke spiraling over their heads. It was a perfect group picture of the local criminal elite in full swing.

“What are you doing here, you little punk? I thought you were a good mama's boy. This is no place for you,” Mo Gong, the local shoemaker's son, barked at me. His diction was crude, his tone menacing. His nostrils flared as he threw his cigarette butt at me. “Get outta here.” In the hierarchy of
the local criminal elite, he easily took the top spot. He once cut his enemy's shoulder open with a sharp knife meant for trimming rubber-soled shoes.

“Yeah, get outta here,” another member of the elite roared.

I covered my head with my arms like a surrendering war criminal and moved slowly around the edge.

Mo Gong took a few steps and threw me to the ground, which was covered with springy crushed sugarcane. He sat on me, twisted my arms behind my back, and demanded, “Who sent you here?”

“Nobody, I just wanted to see what's going on.” My nose was being ground against his muddy leather boots.

“Who told you where we were?”

“I found my way here.”

“Liar!” He forced my head harder against the ground. It smelled like the pig manure used as fertilizer.

“Wait, Mo Gong, let go of him,” I heard a calm voice say from above me. It sounded like Sen, the son of the local banker, the brains behind all the scandals in the recent history of Yellow Stone. Mo Gong did as he was told, but not before kicking me once more on the behind.

I got up and dusted the dirt off my new coat. Sen grabbed Mo Gong and pulled him aside.

“Don't hurt him too much or he'll tell the commune leader and we'll be in trouble,” I heard Sen whisper. Then he turned around and grabbed my shoulder.

“I'll let you stay, but don't come back tomorrow and don't tell anyone about this place. If you do, I'll have Mo Gong make you a useless cripple,” he warned, his eyes unmoving.

“I just want to watch, that's all.”

“Quiet! And I want your mouth shut while you watch,
hear me?” I remained gratefully quiet as I stood far behind the circle. Sen took his place at the head of one of the tables. It was a simple poker game played by four, two against two. The starting bet was half a yuan, which would only give me one shot if I were to jump in.

Two minutes into the game, Sen and his partner, Mo Gong, started making faces, blowing their noses, and cracking their knuckles. They were playing against a couple of out-oftown village boys who didn't know their sign language. Soon the villagers were losing fast, and they wanted out.

“Can't do that in this town.” Mo Gong put his dirty palm on their money.

“Says who?” The villagers were a bit taller than they were.

“You guys don't play fair. We're leaving,” one of the villagers said as he pushed Mo Gong's hand away and grabbed the money.

“We said at the beginning that the game is finished only when you're empty. I don't think you're empty,” Sen said coolly. “Sit down.”

“What's this? Are you guys trying to make us stay?” The villagers stepped together, back to back.

Sen and Mo Gong were also on their feet now. I saw Sen make another one of his faces; then he and Mo Gong were on top of them.

Fights must have been common in this place, because the people at other tables didn't even turn around. “Quiet, you guys. Keep it down,” they shouted.

The four wrestled on the ground, seemingly inseparable. They went on wrestling like that for five minutes until the pile of money was scattered all over the place. Whenever Sen rolled over to face me, he winked at me, gestured toward the money, and went on fighting.

Finally, I got his message. I looked around and kicked the wads of money between the cracks of trampled sugarcane, where they were hidden among the dense leaves. When the villagers kicked off their shoes, I picked them up and threw them into the fields while they weren't looking.

It was over when they were too tired to fight anymore. The two villagers stumbled around dizzily, looking for their money and shoes, finding neither. Complaining and cursing, they walked out of the pit, never looking back.

As soon as the villagers were out of sight, Sen and Mo Gong burst into laughter. Their faces were covered with mud and bloody cuts; their clothes were torn. They squatted down, looking for the hidden bills. They collected forty or fifty yuan in total.

“Here, take this.” Sen stuffed a bunch of small bills into my hands.

“I don't want any.”

“Fine, then you don't get any.”

“You guys are ruthless,” I said.

“Hey, you weren't too bad yourself. I saw you kick the money and throw the shoes away,” Sen said with a smile, and pinched my ear.

As I made my way home, I found myself smiling. Those guys were rough but likable. They were natural and upfront, no hidden emotions.

It would be great to learn to smoke, drink, and gamble, and be their friend. I could imagine my enemies' faces. They'd look like spineless little rascals compared to these boys.

After my first encounter with the gambling duo, Sen and Mo Gong, I had to control the urge to go back and see them the next day.

If I ventured out again so soon, it would arouse suspicion in my family, and then my adventure would end prematurely. I looked out from our second-floor window, trying to get a glimpse of the gambling pit, but all I could see was the cold wind making the sugarcane leaves dance like the ocean waves.

Mom and Dad wanted us to grow up to be perfect kids so that our ugly political birthmark would be obliterated. They hoped one day that all those leaders would wake up and say, “Hey, you guys are a bunch of wonderful kids. C'mon, let's get you into schools and offer you jobs.” If we fought against her belief, Mom would cite the example of a girl from a neighboring town. Li Jun too came from a landlord's family,
but she had recently been selected by the commune to work in a food canning factory, a juicy plum of a job that any child of a good family would kill to get. She left town on the back of the commune's tractor wearing a big paper flower on her flat chest as she rode down the street of Yellow Stone in all her glory. No one could forget the tears and smiles of joy on her pretty face. She was the one in a thousand that the Communist rulers used to illustrate their benevolent policy toward us.

The message was that if you were obedient, a future might be handed down to you.

We all knew this wasn't true and listened to it as though it were the western wind blowing in one ear and out the other. It made us want to puke. Children like us all over the commune were still getting beaten up and thrown out of school. Even those who had obtained good jobs and had been afforded a college education before the Cultural Revolution were sent back to the town of their birth to become reeducated. Sometimes they were even jailed if they rebelled against local ignorance. Zhu Eng, the son of a counterrevolutionary, was clubbed to death in the bushes by his college classmates at a Shanghai university. All his family received was a jar containing their son's ashes and a police statement saying he had taken his own life and had wasted the government's investment in him.

Mom still disciplined us strictly. Cynicism wasn't allowed in our family. Her belief was that we should do more and get less. When people spit at you, look the other way. When they curse you, pretend to be deaf. If she found out about my visit to the gambling pit, I'd be grounded for at least three days.

But boredom and the need to make friends got the better of me. The next day I took some cigarettes from Dad's drawer and sneaked back to the sugarcane fields.

Mo Gong and Sen treated me coolly, as if they had forgotten our united work such a short time ago. But they smoked my cigarettes and let me try some of theirs. It was the first time I'd smoked with the big league. Mo Gong showed me how to inhale without its hurting too much. Smaller puffs at first, he said. I felt the rush to my head, numbing and soothing at the same time. I washed my mouth with handfuls of water by the river before heading home. Once I got home, I didn't speak until I had had some garlic, onions, and a lot of soup to mask the foul scent.

The second day, Sen let me sit next to him for good luck and showed me the way he handled cards. I was so flattered by his trust I kept on nodding, feigning ignorance of the game.

The third day, Mo Gong wanted me to sit with him and even let me pick the amount to bet. For the rest of the sessions, they coached me on their sign language. They had me standing at another table, opposite their other two friends, Yi and Siang, where I scratched my head and picked my nose to give away their competitors' cards. They kept winning.

The fourth day, I was late in coming to the field.

“Where have you been?” Sen asked. “Come sit here by me. I've been losing too much money without you being here.” He ruffled my hair, threw me a whole pack of unopened cigarettes, and let me cut the cards for good luck. As I lit my first cigarette of the day, I smiled. It was very satisfying to be missed by these hooligans.

That evening, after the four of them split their money, I went home, wrapped up some of Mom's sweet rice cakes,
and shared them with my new friends. They fought like hungry dogs and ate with dirty hands.

After they were done, they wiped their mouths with the corners of their jackets and ran their greasy hands through their unruly hair so that it would look shiny.

“No matter how shiny your hair is, you still look ugly, Sen,” Mo Gong joked.

“You look even worse,” Sen retorted, touching his hair.

“Okay, okay, you both look ugly.” Siang laughed.

They started hitting each other for fun. Yi grabbed my hair with his greasy hands and we started wrestling. Later, we took a stroll to the marketplace near the theater and used some of the gambling money to buy candies and more cigarettes. We laughed, talked, and joked until midnight. Then, reluctantly, I told them I had to go home. In my household, it was way beyond bedtime, even though it was still the New Year's holiday period. They pushed me around jokingly and Siang lifted me up to his shoulders. Then they said good-bye.

I lay in bed and couldn't go to sleep for a long time. Their laughter, their faces, their way of saying things, and the way they had included me like a real friend replayed in my mind like a colorful film. They had never once mentioned that I was from a landlord's family. They called me “little punk” because I was three or four years younger, weighed twenty pounds less, and measured a head shorter. With them, I felt a freedom to say and do whatever I wanted without worrying that they might report me to the school authorities. My enemies at school looked conniving and petty in comparison. If they thought they were bad, wait till they saw these guys. I drifted off into a sound sleep, hoping tomorrow would come quickly.

As the holiday came to an end, the seasonal gambling activities also died away, once all the New Year's money had
been won, lost, and spent. The five of us began to hang out at their usual spots. Their favorite was the stone bridge where the Dong Jing River crossed our narrow street. The thoughtful architect had built a row of stone seats along the bridge, where we would sit in the evenings, chatting and watching townspeople come and go. Mo Gong and Sen would make rude comments to passing females, then laugh like a bunch of monkeys when the girls scolded them and called them ruffians who belonged in jail. My friends seemed to take pleasure in anything that stimulated them, and in making fools of themselves.

Soon I came to know their personalities and the hierarchy that existed within the group. Sen, fifteen, was the lead dog. He had the brains and audacity. He was born the middle brother of five who fought one another at home every day. His dad worked for a bank in a faraway town near the salt factory along the coast, sent money home once a month, and visited every third month. His mom raised the five boys like a single parent. Each day she could be found chasing one of her unruly sons with a long wooden stick, cursing her ancestors for giving her these demons to torture her in this life. She was often busy in the fields doing farmwork, so Sen's elder brother would be in charge of cooking for the family. The cook often ate up most of the food, and whoever came home late got nothing.

Once Sen was detained by the commune's police because someone had accused him of setting fire to a watchman's little hut. When the police came to notify his mother and ask her to take him home, she said, “He's not my son. Do whatever you want with him,” and shut the door in the cop's face. The poor officer, who was prepared to give a long lecture to
the mother, left confused and disappointed. They let Sen out without a scratch.

Mo Gong, also fifteen, distinguished himself by almost killing someone with a big knife when he was thirteen. Years later, the sheer size of the weapon still shocked people. He grew up in a family of entrepreneurs.

His mom and dad secretly made shoes behind closed doors and sold them in the black market. Mo Gong was born a rough kid and couldn't stay out of trouble. His mouth said the wrong things and his hands were always out of control. He had an endless need to touch and hit things. No matter how hard his parents tried to discipline him, it never worked. They had hung him by the wrists, locked him up, and whipped him till his butt was red and swollen. He always went back to the old ways. He stole money from home to buy cigarettes, liquor, and food.