The Fall of the Year (15 page)

“By doing unto others, in other words.”

Bumper stared at me through the thickening cigar smoke. “Others are about to do unto him, Frank. Others are about to do him out of business and out of town and very possibly right out of this country.”

“So what should Sa—what should our mutual friend do, Bumper? Sell the Emporium and come back here to muck out your cow stalls?”

“No,” Bumper said. “But what I'm thinking is, it might just be time for our friend to fold up his hand, cash in his chips whilst he's still ahead, and find another game to sit in on further down the line. So, Frank,” he said, stubbing out his cigar, “if you'd find a way to let him know he might want to take a gander at greener pastures, I'd appreciate it.”

 

“What church fellas do, Frank Bennett? Sneak round in white bed sheets, pointy white hats, burn cross? Burn Land of Free Emporium? Hang Dr. Rong up from heels on American elm on common, burn him?”

Sam laughed hard over the idea of being hanged from an American elm tree and immolated. But I was worried. “That's not the way these particular people operate. I don't know exactly what they will do. But our mutual friend, the person who warned me, said you should—Sam! You're not even listening.”

“Call ‘Doctor,'” Sam said as he poured boiling water from his enameled kettle into a flowered teapot, and the acrid fumes of ginseng filled the Emporium. “Show respect.”

“Yes, but Dr. Rong, the selectmen—”

“No but. Let Sam deal with selectmen. Wild bee honey in friendship tea tonight, Frank Bennett? Or straight up? You say which.”

 

“Don't understand charges! What means ill alien?”

Judge Forrest Allen closed his eyes for a moment. He sighed. Then, for the third time since the hearing had begun, he tried to explain. “It means that you're not legally a citizen of this country, Dr. Rong. Yes, you've lived here in Kingdom Common for four years. But you've never been naturalized. You've never even applied for American citizenship. You didn't have permission to come here in the first place. That makes you an illegal alien, I'm afraid.”

“Nonsense,” shouted Dr. Rong, who was representing himself in order to save money and because he didn't trust lawyers. “Aliens green all over. Come from Mars.”

From the courtroom balcony, where Bumper Stevens and his rogues' gallery were encamped, came a barrage of guffaws. But the town officials and businessmen who had sent a delegation to report Sam to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Memphremagog the week before sat in the rear of the courtroom as grave and silent as the granite tombstones of their ancestors in the village cemetery.

Judge Allen frowned up at the balcony. Then he positively scowled at the town fathers. In the ensuing silence he looked out the courtroom window in the direction of the tall statue on the green of his great-great-great-grandfather Ethan, as if seeking counsel from his famous forebear. After perhaps thirty seconds he said, “Dr. Rong, in America—”

“Land of the free,” Sam interjected. “Maybe so, maybe no.”

“Yes. But even in the land of the free, you still need approval from the government to come here. Unless you can prove that you were born in this country.”

“Wait. Why Sam got to prove anything? Why not innocent til guilty? How you prove I not born here? Where proof Sam from Mars?”

More laughter from the balcony.

“Sam, Dr. Rong. You need to show cause why you should be allowed to remain in America.”

“Here cause.” Sam reached into the pocket of his white doctor's coat and produced one of the green figurines of the Statue of Liberty that he sold out of his souvenir barrel. “This cause. Exhibit one. Miss Liberty.”

Sam rushed forward and shook the misshapen statuette under the judge's nose. “You listen. Miss Liberty say send tired. Say send poor. Send huddled masses. Okay. That Sam Rong many year ago. No more. Now tired poor come see him. Come borrow money cheap. Buy coffin, bury old dead grandfather, don't cost arm leg. Moo! Cow starving. Farmers come Sam buy feed on credit. Cows eat, farmers eat. Everybody happy.”

Sam whirled around and shook the statue again, this time in the direction of the stony-faced businessmen who had come together to betray him. “What Dr. Rong ever do Miss Liberty say not do? Nothing. This land of free. Innocent till proven otherwise. Who here prove otherwise? Where alien? Why cause? Judge got law all backward. Case dismissed!”

To a rousing cheer from the balcony, Sam marched out of the courtroom, waving Miss Liberty over his head. With me at his heels, he repaired in triumph to the Emporium where, half an hour later, Sheriff Mason White served him with a citation stating that if he could not show cause within ten days why he should be allowed to remain in this country, he would face deportation.

Appended to the bottom of the document was a note in Judge Allen's crabbed handwriting imploring Sam to hire a real lawyer and apply for temporary political asylum. The judge himself would call his lawyer son-in-law in Burlington, Editor Kinneson's son Charlie, who had never lost a case.

“Double talk,” Sam Rong declared. He wadded the citation up in his fist, tossed it high in the air, caught it in his mouth, and devoured it.

 

“So, Frank Bennett. Land of the free not so free after all, eh? Very fine joke on Dr. Rong.”

It was late in the afternoon, a few days after Sam's hearing. He and I were high on the ridge east of town, digging ginseng. Far below us, a mile and more away, the pink granite buildings of the town sparkled in the rays of the lowering sun. A few of the hardwood trees on the ridge had started to turn color early. They too shone brightly in the mild September sunshine.

“Land of the free. Maybe so, maybe no,” Sam Rong said as he dropped a root into his wicker gathering basket. “Hope for best, expect worst. Eh, Frank?”

Actually, Sam seemed quite pleased to have his worst expectations of the land of the free confirmed. More than once over the years he had confided to me that being proven right was what people longed for above all else on earth, with the possible exception of being in the know about a great scandalous secret. Now Sam had been proven right about America.

He continued digging with his peacock shard. As always, he was careful to take only every third or fourth root. His face was as placid and ironical as ever, though only three days remained before his scheduled deportation. Judge Allen had set bail at twenty-five dollars—his maximum estimate, the judge had angrily announced, of the total amount Sam had cost the dozen or so businessmen who had turned him in for underselling them.

“Sam, you should have heard Father G's homily in church this morning. He shouted at us for twenty minutes. He said if he ever found out who was responsible for turning you in, he'd horsewhip them from one end of the village to the other.”

“Yes, Father G very good man, very good to Sam, other riffraff. Not bad idea, horsewhip town fathers through village. Too bad I not think to draw on scroll, laugh at over jin-chen tea.”

“What I don't understand is why
you
aren't mad, Sam. I sure would be.”

“Call ‘Doctor.' What good getting mad do?” Then, a moment later: “Well, sure. Sam get angry too, sometimes. Not made of china, you know, like bird on digger here. But. Got plan.”

Sam stood up. “Come on, Frank. Got plenty jin-chen now. You be good to jin-chen, jin-chen be good to you. Not like land of the free. Sam good to weary refuse, like Miss Liberty says, land of the free sells Sam down river.”

“What's your plan, Dr. Rong?”

“Obey law. Law says go away. Sam go.”

“Go where?”

“Don't worry. Maybe go college, like you. Get another medical degree. Many friends, Frank Bennett, all over country, many customers of Chinese bank. Speaking of money, listen this. Old red-nose auctioneer try give Sam thousand dollars hire shyster lawyer. You imagine? Sam buy Bumper one hundred time over.”

“I doubt Bumper ever had a friend before. Cronies, maybe.”

“Ever the best of, eh? Run-out-of-town Chinese doctor has two friend. Red-nose auctioneer, wet-back-of-ear kid named Frank Bennett. How lovely.”

“Come on, Dr. Rong,” I said, hurrying to keep up. “You've got tons of friends. Look at all the people you've helped.”

“Yes, look. Where ton of when government haul Sam into court, ride out of town on rail? Talk sense, Frank. Won't talk sense, at least listen. One: Be good to jun-chen, jin-chen be good to you. Two: After forty, less you eat, better you feel. Three: More you fish, longer you live. Four: Hope for best, expect worst. Five. Grandfather die, father die—”

“Son dies,” I said.

San Rong nodded. “Remember.”

A few minutes later we came into the village in the early fall dusk. Outside the Land of the Free Sam handed me his ginseng basket. “You wait here.”

He was inside the Emporium no more than a minute, returning with his tall black account book and a manila envelope. The envelope he gave to me. Then he held out his hand, pale as ivory in the mountain twilight, dry as old parchment. “So long, Frank. Good luck at college.”

“I'm not leaving until tomorrow, Sam. I'll stop here before I go.”

“You leaving tomorrow, I leaving tonight.”

“Where are your things?”

“What thing? Came here with no thing. Leave same way.”

“Leave for where? This doesn't make sense, Dr. Rong.”

“No sense at all,” Sam agreed. “Like great American pastimes. Like sending back refuse.”

“Where's your money? How can you go away without any money?”

“Very much money in here.” Sam tapped his black book. “All written down, very safe. Say so long to Bump Steve, Frank. I leave him Emporium, deed and key inside envelope. Good joke, eh? What old auctioneer do with Chinese pagoda? Drive him crazy. You get Orient Express, jin-chen patch. Paper inside envelope tells where to send roots. Bye now.”

Sam headed down the dirt lane of Little Quebec, past the mill and the railyard, toward U.S. Route 5. He did not look back. Soon all I could make out was his white coat. Then he vanished.

“There.”

Even before I whirled around I knew who had spoken. “There,” Bumper said again, and he headed back up the lane toward the commission-sales barn, leaving me standing by myself in front of the Emporium in a tobacco-laden shroud of loneliness.

 

Bumper never reopened the Land of the Free Emporium, looming up on the edge of Little Quebec, its gaudy colors fading, its sloping roofs and eaves rotting, as anomalous in our tiny Vermont village as a dairy barn in a Chinese rice paddy. The spring after Sam disappeared, Bumper sold most of its contents at auction and began storing hay and farm equipment in the building. Canadian bull thistles and wild cucumber vines ran rampant in Sam's old vegetable beds. Scavenging there, Louvia the Fortuneteller turned up a few hexagonal coins with holes in the middle that Sam had lost or perhaps planted for good luck.

Each fall for the next four years I visited the secret place under the butternut and basswood trees high on the ridge above the village to harvest the roots of the shy and aristocratic ginseng plants, which I dried and mailed to the Hong Kong wholesaler whose address Sam had left me. With the proceeds I paid for my college textbooks and bought gas for the Orient Express, which held up until my last semester at the university.

As for Dr. Rong, even as he became absorbed into the mythology of the Common, rumors of his whereabouts floated back to us. Julia Hefner, visiting her son in San Francisco, was positive that she spotted him wearing a motorman's hat and driving a cable car. Bumper's once and future ring man, Little Shad Shadow, swore that Sam was keeping books for an opium den in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where Shad had a half-brother in an asylum. Even Father George confided to me that on a sightseeing trip to New York City with his Catholic Youth Organization he had spotted Sam drinking tea and disputing with a Wonder Rabbi in an automat on East Fortieth Street; but then Father George had to chase after his charges and haul them out of a peepshow down the block, and by the time he had the kids rounded up, the rabbi, Dr. Rong, and the automat itself all seemed to have disappeared. For my part, I heard nothing at all from my friend until the summer I returned to Kingdom Common to work for Father George, when the postcard arrived directing me to send the Chinese bank to the address on Staten Island.

In White River Junction I changed trains for Hartford. Later I drifted into a restless sleep, full of dreams about the girl with the morning-glory eyes whom I'd met in Little Quebec with Louvia. At dawn I arrived at Grand Central Station, its ornate dome echoing with blaring announcements of the arrivals and departures of trains whose very names—the Empire State Express, the Twentieth Century Limited—made me want to chuck everything—plans for the future, teakwood box, and all—and hop aboard. But no. I had come here to see an old friend, and half an hour later I was riding the ferry to Staten Island.

A faded red and yellow bus with a snub nose delivered me to the address on Liberty Street, a long narrow market with a scarlet dragon emblazoned across the display window. Streaming out of the dragon's mouth was a flaming jet of Chinese characters and below them, in English, the words “Land of the Free Emporium #2 Dr. Sam E. Rong Prop.” Several clerks were filling sidewalk bins in front of the store with Chinese vegetables and popeyed fish on ice. Another assistant was cranking down a green awning with red and yellow stripes. Another was preparing to wash the display window. Yet another was hosing off the sidewalk. Inside the window two pretty girls were hanging a young roast pig on an iron hook beside four glazed ducks dangling by their plucked necks. I stepped inside, past a clerk running accounts on a red abacus. The air was full of the scents of dried cuttlefish, freshly washed vegetables, tea, ginger, and twenty different spices I hadn't smelled in four years. Tacked to the walls just above eye level was a scroll on which someone, I was sure I knew who, had begun to draw a tableau of a Chinese coastal city, including a soaring temple in the background shaped startlingly like the Empire State Building and, in the nearby harbor, the colossal statue of a young Chinese woman with a paper lantern held over her head and an unmistakably ironical smile on her face.