Brothers (31 page)

Blacksmith Tong put down his hammer and wiped his sweat-drenched face with a towel. He watched as Baldy Li sauntered into his shop and comfortably took a seat on the long bench he used to sexually exploit. Blacksmith Tong growled, "You little bastard. What do you want?"

Baldy Li chuckled. "I'm here to collect my debts."

"Fuck," spat Blacksmith Tong, as he whipped his towel in the air. "And what debt would that be, you little bastard?"

Baldy Li continued chuckling. He reminded Blacksmith Tong, "Remember what you said to me two weeks ago in front of the bathhouse."

"What did I say?" Blacksmith Tong honestly couldn't remember.

Baldy Li pointed to himself. "You said that I, Baldy Li, was truly something, and that someday you were going to treat me to a bowl of house-special noodles."

Blacksmith Tong remembered now. He hung his towel back around his neck and growled, "Yeah, so I did say that. What are you going to do about it?"

Baldy Li decided to shift to flattery. He said, "Who doesn't know your stature in this town? When you, Blacksmith Tong, say ‘Jump,’ everyone asks, ‘How high?’ You would never go back on your word, would you?"

"You really are a little bastard," Blacksmith Tong said, laughing. He couldn't maintain his bullying tone any longer, but he did find a loophole. Smugly, he said, "It's true I said I'd treat you to a bowl of house-special noodles someday. But someday—that could be any day. I certainly don't know when."

"You got me!" Baldy Li showed his admiration by giving him a thumbs-up but then immediately cut to the chase. "How about this: I won't have you treat me to a bowl of house-special noodles, but if you lend me your cart for a day, we'll call it even."

Blacksmith Tong had no idea where Baldy Li was going with this. He asked, "So why do you want to borrow my pullcart?"

"Aiya!" sighed Baldy Li. He explained to Blacksmith Tong, "My mother wants to go sweep my father's grave in the countryside. You know how sick she is. She certainly couldn't make it by walking, so that's why I want to borrow your pullcart."

As he spoke he put the IV drip bottle down on the bench. Blacksmith Tong pointed at it and asked, "What's that for?"

"This is a military canteen," proclaimed Baldy Li. He explained, "The road to the country is long and the sun will be strong, so what happens when my mother gets thirsty? I'm going to fill this bottle with water and nurse her along the way with it. That's what this military canteen is for."

Blacksmith Tong said, "Oh," and added, "I would have never pegged you, little bastard, for a filial son."

Baldy Li smiled modestly. He gave the drip bottle a few swirls and observed, "There's somewhere between half an ounce and an ounce of glucose nutrition in there."

Blacksmith Tong said generously, "Well, seeing that you're being such a filial son, I'll lend you the cart."

Baldy Li thanked him repeatedly. He then patted the long bench and waved Blacksmith Tong to sit down next to him. Baldy Li said mysteriously, "I won't just borrow your pullcart with nothing in return. Good deeds are to be repaid in kind, as they say."

Blacksmith Tong didn't understand. "What do you mean, repaid in kind?"

Baldy Li whispered, "Lin Hong's butt…"

"Oh!" Now everything became clear.

Intrigued, Blacksmith Tong sat next to Baldy Li as the latter began to divulge the secrets of Lin Hong's butt with the most florid of descriptions. Just as he was getting to the most exciting part, Baldy Li's lips ceased moving. Blacksmith Tong waited patiently for him to start up again, but when he did he no longer spoke of Lin Hong's bottom but, rather, of how Poet Zhao nabbed him at that critical moment. Blacksmith Tong was crushed. He stood up, rubbing his hands and pacing about back and forth, then broke out in curses: "That bastard Poet Zhao…"

Though he had gained only the faintest glimpse of Lin Hong's bottom, Blacksmith Tong was still filled with goodwill toward Baldy Li. When he lent Baldy Li his pullcart, he told him, "Whenever you need the cart, just give me a holler and take it away."

Baldy Li stashed his pilfered glucose drip in his pocket and pulled Blacksmith Tongs cart up to Yanker Yu's stand. He now had his eyes on Yanker Yu's rattan recliner. He planned to tie the recliner onto Blacksmith Tongs cart so that Li Lan could ride lying down all the way to the countryside.

When Baldy Li walked up, Yanker Yu was himself stretched out on
the chair, napping. Baldy Li set the pullcart down with a resounding thump. Yanker Yu woke up with a start, but when he opened his eyes and saw it was merely Baldy Li with a pullcart and that neither of them was a customer, he promptly shut his eyes again. Baldy Li inspected everything with the air of a visiting officer. Hands clasped behind his back, he examined the dental tools and teeth displayed on the table.

It was already the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, and the revolution was no longer a roaring tide but more like a trickling stream. Yanker Yu no longer had to display his class loyalty with an exhibit of mistakenly extracted healthy teeth; on the contrary, they now threatened to hurt his reputation as a dentist. Tacking to the political winds, Yanker Yu had hidden away his healthy-teeth display behind his cash. He figured that after flowing west for a while the river might begin flowing east again, and the revolutionary stream could again turn into a tide, so he might as well save the healthy-teeth display for another cycle.

Baldy Li examined the table for a while but didn't spot any healthy teeth. He rapped the table and loudly asked, "What about the healthy teeth? Where are the healthy teeth?"

"What healthy teeth?" Yanker Yu opened his eyes in annoyance.

"Those healthy teeth you pulled." Baldy Li pointed at the table, "They used to be sitting right here."

"Shut your trap," Yanker Yu said angrily. Sitting up, he insisted, "I've never pulled a single healthy tooth. I only pull them out when they're rotten."

Baldy Li hadn't expected Yanker Yu to get so riled up, so he immediately smiled ingratiatingly, changing course as smoothly as Yanker Yu had. Baldy Li slapped his forehead, saying, "Yes, yes, you have certainly never extracted a good tooth. I must have remembered wrong."

As he spoke Baldy Li pulled up a stool next to the recliner and started to flatter Yanker Yu just as he had done with Blacksmith Tong, saying, "You, Yanker Yu, are the premier tooth extractor within a hundred miles. You could pull a rotten tooth out with your eyes closed."

Yanker Yu's fury transformed into satisfaction, and he smiled. "Now, that's the truth."

Feeling that Yanker Yu was now ripe for the plucking, Baldy Li began, "So you have been here for some twenty years. You must have seen all the young ladies in Liu Town, right?"

"Young ladies?" Yanker Yu bragged, "I've seen them all—even the
not-so-young ones. Throughout Liu Town, I know right away whenever a young lady gets married or an old lady gets buried."

"So, in your opinion," prodded Baldy Li, "who is the prettiest young lady in Liu Town?"

"Lin Hong," Yanker Yu replied without hesitation. "Without question, it would be Lin Hong."

"So"—Baldy Li chuckled—"who among all the men in Liu Town has seen Lin Hongs bare butt?"

"You, of course." Yanker Yu pointed at Baldy Li and laughed heartily. "You little bastard."

Baldy Li nodded and then leaned in closer and whispered, "So would you like to hear about it?"

Yanker Yu's laughing face immediately became solemn. He sat up from his recliner and peered about the alley. When he saw that no one was around, he whispered to Baldy Li, "Tell me!"

Yanker Yu s eyes glittered, and his mouth hung wide open as if he were waiting for a dumpling to drop down from heaven. But Baldy Li, a master of calculation, chose this very moment to fall silent. What the men in Liu Town said about him was true: This fifteen-year-old little bastard played a better game than a career card shark in his fifties. Yanker Yu saw Baldy Li's lips sealed tightly shut and anxiously prodded, "Well, go on!"

Very deliberately, Baldy Li ran his hand over Yanker Yus rattan recliner. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he said, "Loan me this chair for a day, and I'll map out every millimeter of Lin Hong's bottom for you."

When Yanker Yu heard that Baldy Li wanted to borrow the recliner, he immediately shook his head. "I can't do that. How can I pull teeth without this recliner for customers to lie down on?"

Baldy Li reasoned with him patiently, "You'd still have your stool. Given your world-renowned skills, they could be standing up and you'd still manage."

Yanker Yu cackled a couple times as he did a quick mental calculation of the pros and cons of the arrangement. Perhaps losing the recliner for a day in exchange for the secrets of the beautiful Lin Hong's bottom would not be such a bad deal at all. He nodded in agreement, then raised a finger, saying, "Okay, but just for one day."

Baldy Li already had his lips up to Yanker Yu's ear as he launched into a vivid narration. Having worked through fifty-six bowls of housespecial
noodles, and with the literary embellishments from Poet Zhao and Writer Liu, Baldy Li by now had a story burnished to a high sheen. Lin Hongs bottom could not have been made more bewitchingly captivating. Yanker Yu listened, rapt with emotion. He tensed up as if listening to the thrilling climax of a ghost story, then Baldy Li's lips suddenly stopped moving. He gazed over at Yanker Yu's oilcloth umbrella, and Yu became so anxious he cried out, "Go on!"

Baldy Li smacked his lips and pointed at the umbrella. "I want to borrow the umbrella for a day, too."

"You're asking for too much," replied Yanker Yu angrily. "First you borrow my recliner and now my umbrella—all I'll have left is this table. My stand will look as bare as a newly plucked chicken."

Baldy Li shook his head. "Perhaps you'd be bare tomorrow, but you'd have your feathers back the very next day."

Yanker Yu burned with anxious curiosity. He felt as if he had been reading a serialized novel and had just reached a cliff-hanger, so he couldn't do anything but agree to loan out his umbrella as well. Baldy Li went on for a few more sentences on Lin Hong's bottom, but what Yanker Yu heard next was all about Poet Zhao's hand. Dumbfounded, he took a little while to recover enough to ask, "What happened? How did Lin Hong's bottom turn into Poet Zhao's hand?"

"I can't help it." Baldy Li sighed. "That bastard Poet Zhao ruined my moment, and yours, too."

Now Yanker Yu fell into a blind rage, all of it directed toward Poet Zhao. Gritting his teeth, he snarled, "That bastard Zhao, I swear I'm going to pull out one of his good teeth."

With Blacksmith Tongs pullcart and Yanker Yu's recliner and umbrella in tow, Baldy Li then stopped by the warehouse of the town's department store. There he sweet-talked and peddled the secrets of Lin Hong's bottom yet again and managed to borrow a pile of rope. Now his mission was accomplished and, whistling a revolutionary tune and pulling the cart noisily behind him down the main street, he returned home victorious.

By this point it was dark and Li Lan had already gone to bed. In anticipation of the long road ahead the next day, she had eaten and retired early. Ever since Baldy Li had become notorious all over Liu Town, Li Lan had felt that she had completely lost control of this son of hers. He often returned home late at night, and she could do nothing but sigh.

When Baldy Li arrived home, he saw that the lights were out, so he knew his mother had gone to bed. He set the cart down lightly and crept into the house, where he turned on the light and sat at the table to wolf down the dinner his mother had set out for him. Then he got to work. By the light of the rooms lamp and the moon outside, he first placed the recliner on top of the pullcart, securing it tightly with the rope. There was an opening for a cup in the chairs armrest, so Baldy Li stuck the umbrella handle through it and then used the rope to fasten it securely in place.

By that point it was well past midnight, but Baldy Li did another careful inspection of the rig, reinforcing various parts with rope. When he was finally done, he circled the cart twice more, his hands behind his back. He couldn't stop grinning. He felt that the cart, chair, and umbrella were as firmly bound together as arms and legs on a torso. Satisfied, he let out a huge yawn and went in to go to bed. Once he was lying down, though, Baldy Li discovered that he couldn't fall asleep, so worried was he that someone would steal his masterpiece. So he grabbed his blanket and went outside. He crawled up onto Blacksmith Tongs cart and lay down on Yanker Yu's recliner. Now feeling secure, he started snoring the moment he shut his eyes.

Li Lan woke up at daybreak to find Baldy Li's bed empty and his blanket missing. Unable to figure out what had happened, she shook her head and opened the front door, then gasped when she saw the odd contraption sitting outside with her son sleeping on top.

Li Lan's gasp woke Baldy Li from his dreams. Seeing his mother's astonished expression, he rubbed his eyes, climbed down from the cart, and proudly explained that the pullcart belonged to Blacksmith Tong, the recliner and the oilcloth umbrella were Yanker Yu's, and the hemp rope binding it all together was borrowed from the department store's warehouse. Baldy Li exclaimed, "Ma, now you can travel in comfort!"

Li Lan regarded her demon of a son and wondered,
How in the world could a fifteen-year-old pull off a feat like this?
She felt that she really didn't know him at all, this son who seemed to be able to whip something out of his bag of tricks every other day.

Mother and son had breakfast, and Baldy Li then lifted their hot-water thermos and carefully poured water into the glucose bottle. "There's somewhere between half an ounce and an ounce of nutritious glucose in here," he told Li Lan, adding that it was in case she got thirsty on the road.

Baldy Li thoughtfully placed his neatly folded blanket over the chair, explaining that it was going to be a bumpy ride but the padding should do the trick. With his left foot holding down one of the pullcart's handles, he gently helped Li Lan climb onto the cart and lie down on the chair. She cradled the basket with the paper ingots and coins and looked up at the oilcloth umbrella over her head, realizing that it was to keep the sun and rain off her. Baldy Li then handed her the bottle with the hot water and glucose mixture. As Li Lan accepted the bottle tears rushed down her face. Baldy Li saw that she was weeping and asked, astonished, "Ma, what's wrong?"