AlliterAsian (19 page)

“Ain't nobody there for yew, Mr C !” cried Chas. “Y'all jes scarin' the bejesus outta folk. We's need to get back into the caddy ta git u heart pills. Everything gonna be fine, Mr C!”

Florida watched them leave, and in their flamboyant wake, she
simply whispered the words, “Miz Trixi?”

To which Trixi answered, “Miss Florida Waters, how nice! You haven't changed. I like your hat. Come with me, will ya!”

And just like that, as if the thirteen-year hiatus was nothing at all, Florida fell into easy step with Trixi Lee. She marvelled at how Trixi had not changed one iota under lock and key. If anything, Trixi looked younger, smaller, and more innocent than ever before—as if that made any sense, as if she had not lost thirteen years to incarceration but gained time instead!

Trixi instructed, “Help me say goodbye to these nice coffee shop folk that took me in. I can see that they're pretty shaken up. And then you and I should leave as soon as we are able. I don't have anything to pack except a cardboard satchel with my life story inside.”

Florida said, “Okay! Oh, and life story! Okay to that too! We'll get to it eventually, I guess!”

In reality, after the cops got a little something and went away happy, Chas drove Seymour's caddy around to the back door of the coffee shop in the alley and turned off the engine. Both their reunion with Trixi Lee and her goodbyes to Annie, Gar Foo, and Ed lasted just under two hours. It turned into quite a friendly little party without one word said about the curious incident between Seymour and Trixi. It looked entirely too personal, so people dismissed it as a mistake that perhaps never should have even happened.

Annie the waitress came out to the car and took everybody's orders a few times over. They ate with relish Gar Foo's grilled pork chops with applesauce, as well as two peach cobblers and a blueberry pie. Trixi shared her vegetable soup with Florida. Ed and Gar Foo were kept busy in the kitchen but they came out, peered into, and hovered over the car multiple times. Annie was the only one with the temerity to actually get into the Cadillac and get a load off her feet. Seymour
offered to buy a round of beer for everyone, so Ed had a big wooden crate of bottles delivered. Everyone used the public restrooms in the terminal. Seymour used the phone booth a few times over before leaving in his Cadillac with his uniformed driver and motley female passengers.

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

In my attempt to describe colonialism in “No Sleeping on the Bench,” I chose a perspective derived from the radical feminist adage, “the personal is political.” In this excerpt, there is a key meeting between a black woman and Chinese woman, although this point is easily missed in the often violent swirl of historical forces around them. There are two strong elements in my story. One is social placement as often defined by labour, and the other is the shifting of social placement. For instance, after witnessing an inexplicable event, a group of strangers undertake to share a meal. In terms of labour, there is a carefully considered delineation of who sits who stands who cooks who eats who serves who pays. In contrast, there is the strong element of travel or, if you will, the shifting of social placement: Each pilgrim converges upon a place as prosaic as the bus depot in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Chinese woman as a fragile outsider sits up on the bench in the waiting area and remains vigilant, while the white man, ostensibly a veteran of World War II, lays his weary head down whenever and wherever he feels like it. To me it is a Dorothea Lange record of a moment in time, imbued with the transcendent power of being human. —
SKY
Lee, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

SKY
Lee is an author and illustrator with a BFA from the University of British Columbia and a diploma in nursing from Douglas College. She is the author of
Disappearing Moon Cafe
(1990) and
Bellydancer
(1991).

Túshūguăn

Ricepaper
19, no. 3 (2014)

Eric Choi

Fénshū carefully studied the boy with the book.

The youth looked to be in his early teens, but it was difficult to tell. Contemporary Běiměizhōu children always looked much older than their years. This one resembled a skeleton, more bone than flesh, with grimy bug-bitten skin, laddered ribs, twig-thin arms and legs, and bloodied, swollen feet. His face was gaunt, topped by a tangled, greasy mess of long black hair. He also stank, reeking like an oily, salty fish.

Fénshū looked into the boy's green eyes, and while it was impossible to get a sense of the boy's soul, she could discern a certain fire—perhaps of intelligence, certainly of strength.

“Nǐ jiào shén ma míng zì?” she asked. The boy was silent.

“Nǐ míngbái ma?”

Still no response.

“What is your name?” she said at last in English.

“Wu,” the boy said. His yellowish-brown teeth were chipped and twisted.

“Hello Wu, I am Dr FénshÅ« Zhèng”, she continued. “I am … an historical archaeologist. Do you know what that is?”

The boy fell silent again.

“How are you, Wu?”

The boy did not answer, looking instead at his inquisitor and returning the question: “How are
you
?”

Definitely intelligence. The boy's verbal language skills, at least in
English, were excellent. Fénshū was quite impressed.

“I am sixty years old!” FénshÅ« cackled in a high-pitched voice, trying to smile.

Wu simply stared.

“Do you have something for me?”

Wu nodded, his calloused hands reverently handing over the book.

“Thank you, Wu.” FénshÅ« gestured to the floor of the tent. “Please, sit down. My colleague will be back for you shortly.”

Wu hesitated for a moment, then sat on the ground as instructed.

Fénshū pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and examined the book. It was a brownish-black hardcover, about sixteen by twenty-four centimetres and perhaps three centimetres thick, enclosed within a clear sealable plastic bag of the type that had once been a common means of storing food in pre-Fall Běiměizhōu civilization. The book was in fairly good condition, except for a serrated gash that penetrated the pages from cover to cover. Also inside the plastic bag, collected mostly along the spine, were clumps of a white powdery residue. She held the book up to her nose and sniffed. Through the punctured plastic, it smelled faintly of camphor and another odd odour she could not immediately identify.

“Where did this come from?” FénshÅ« asked. “Where did you find this?”

The boy looked up.

“Where did you find this?” she repeated.

“In the old shit and piss!”

Over and over again, Wu's mother would ask him the same thing.

“What do you do if you see a Jiangshi?”

“Run,” Wu would answer.

“Why?”

Sometimes Wu would hesitate, and his mother would insist.

“Come on. Why?” she would repeat.

“Because a Jiangshi will hurt you, kill you, eat you.”

The road upon which Wu walked was wrinkled and cracked like the skin of an old man. Weeds and wild flowers sprouted from every fissure, heaving apart the decaying asphalt. With slow certainty over the long years since the Fall, the pavement was being reduced to the constituent stone, gravel, and bitumen from which it had been formed.

For much of this day, Wu had been fortunate in his solitude. It was not to last.

Wu stopped in his tracks and squinted. In the far distance, a Jiangshi came into view. He recognized the brainfrizzed monster immediately, a stained and filthy figure slowly shambling in his direction with that distinctive jerky, unsteady gait.

He didn't think he had been spotted, but he wasn't about to stick around to find out.

Wu ran off the road, through the tall grasses, into the trees. Twigs and branches lashed his body and stones cut his bare feet, but neither slowed his flight. Deeper and deeper into the woods he ran, until his lungs heaved, and his heart felt like it would burst from his chest.

Finally, he stopped … and stared.

Before him was a ruin of the old world. A house had once stood here, but it had long ago collapsed and been assimilated by the living woods. Only the chimney remained standing, but Wu could see that its bricks were dropping and breaking, little by little, as the mortar crumbled and powdered. Some kind of vine grew everywhere,
climbing through the broken windows and up the bars and grillwork.

Wu circled about the stone tower, fascinated.

There was a shallow hill across from the remnants of the foundation. He walked to the hill and climbed. Suddenly, he stopped and looked down.

He had run over something.

Tracing back a few steps, he spotted a patch of dead leaves and twigs collected within a rough square. Resting on his knees, Wu swept away the detritus with his hands. A grey slab with a square metal handle imbedded on top appeared before him.

Wu stared in wonder, uncertain of what to do next. Finally, he reached down and grasped the handle with his small, bony hands.

Nothing happened.

He extended his legs and dug in his feet for leverage, pulling harder with all his strength, but still it did not budge. Exhausted, he released the handle and fell backwards, his legs splayed.

Something moved in the bushes.

Wu turned in the direction of the rustling noise, his eyes wide. He pulled a slingshot out of his pouch, his other hand frantically sweeping the ground for a suitable projectile. Grasping a stone, he loaded the pocket and pulled back the bands with trembling hands.

The leaves rustled again.

Wu drew back the bands a little further, then released.

The happiest times were when his mother told him stories about the things from before, the old world prior to the Fall.

“People flew?”

“Yes. In flying machines. Anywhere in the world, without fear.”

And she would tell him about the music that came from a box smaller than your hand, and the heat and light and clean water that
came with a touch, and the pictures that moved, and the buildings as high as mountains, and the places with piles of fresh food, and the artificial stars that let people talk to one another across the world, and most wonderful of all, the bound volumes upon whose pages were recorded the knowledge and beauty of Běiměizhōu civilization at its height.

“Books.”

“Books,” Wu repeated.

The boy emerged from the bushes a split second after Wu launched the projectile. Eyes wide, he instinctively ducked. The stone whizzed over his head, striking the trunk of a tree just behind him.

“What are you doing?” shouted the boy indignantly.

Wu grabbed another stone and reloaded his slingshot, drawing back the band and keeping it trained on the stranger.

The pale, skinny boy looked to be about Wu's age. With the exception of his short curly brown hair, Wu could have been looking at a reflection.

“What are
you
doing?” Wu challenged. He studied the stranger. The boy, though as emaciated as he was, did not slur his words, and he stood firm without the jerky twitches that were the stigmata of those who consumed the flesh of others.

“Are you a Jiangshi?” Wu asked rhetorically.

“Are
you
a Jiangshi?” the boy echoed in retort.

Slowly, Wu lowered his slingshot. “I am Wu.”

“I'm Vancott,” the boy said. He pointed at the crumbling chimney. “What's that ruin?”

Vancott walked up the shallow hill to join Wu, and the boys found themselves looking at the slab and handle in the ground. They took hold of the handle together and managed to lift the grey slab.
Putting the lid aside, they went to the opening and peered down into the darkness.

Wu squinted. “Something's in there!”

A very faint odour wafted out of the opening. Vancott sniffed.

Recognition came to both of them at the same time.

“Stupid!” Vancott shoved Wu, sending him sprawling to the ground. “This is—”

“Old shit and piss,” Wu said. He remembered his mother's words. “Skeptic tank.”

The two boys sat silently, pondering their next move.

Suddenly, a flock of dark birds took flight from the trees, swirling noisily into the sky. Wu and Vancott turned.

There was a rustling in the bushes.

Vancott grabbed Wu's arm. “I saw a Jiangshi today!”

Wu shot Vancott a fearful glance. “I saw a Jiangshi too,” he hissed. “On the road.”

The boys looked about, knowing they were badly exposed atop the shallow hill. At once, the same desperate idea occurred to both. They got up quickly.

Vancott slid the concrete lid partially over the opening, while Wu gathered up some dead leaves and twigs and piled them on top. It wasn't much in the way of camouflage, but it was better than nothing. Vancott squeezed inside first, followed by Wu. With great effort, they managed to get the lid almost closed except for a thin sliver.

Wu peered through the narrow slit, and before long saw the monster stumble out of the woods. The gangly, twitching figure, no longer really human, was the same one Wu had seen on the road.

Quietly, the boys drew the lid fully closed, and darkness enveloped them.

Wu and Vancott waited silently in the musty dark for a sound, a voice, a sign … something.

They were sitting on a pile of flat rectangular objects. Wu felt around with his hands. The objects were all roughly the same shape but in different sizes. He remembered seeing something when they first opened the lid, but without light he could do nothing to identify the objects even while sitting among them.

Breathing was difficult, and the boys were getting sleepy. The stale air would not sustain them much longer.

Cautiously, they pushed the lid and opened up a small crack to look around. The brief inrush of fresh air hit their lungs with an almost icy sharpness, and it took all of Wu's willpower to not dash out right away.

Finally, they pushed the lid all the way open and climbed out. Wu moved to follow, but on sudden impulse grabbed one of the rectangular objects on his way up. Outside, the boys collapsed onto the sweet long grass of the shallow hill, lying on their backs, lungs heaving as they gulped fresh air, their mouths open and trembling like those of fish out of water.

After a long moment of rest, Wu rolled onto his side and saw the flat rectangular object lying on the grass. He sat up and took it with both hands, bringing it up to his eyes.

Wu stared at the object for a moment before recognizing it. “A book!”

“What?” Vancott asked.

Wu turned the book about, examining it from all sides.

It was brownish-black in colour and sealed in a transparent pouch, probably made of the material that Wu's mother had called plastic. A hard seam ran along one side. Wu examined the seam and eventually figured out how to pull the pouch open. There was a faint
medicinal smell, and clumps of a white powder fell out.

With deliberate care, Wu reverently extracted the book from the plastic pouch. There were symbols on the cover that he recognized as words, but like all contemporary teenagers he didn't read. He slowly flipped through the yellowish pages, each dense with indecipherable text.

“What is it?” Vancott asked again.

“A book,” Wu repeated. “From the old world, before the Fall.”

Vancott's eyes widened.

Wu was illiterate, not stupid. He had the sense to know, on an instinctive level, the importance of what he and Vancott had found. Somebody had done this on purpose, creating an improvised library—a túshūguăn—either before or shortly after the Fall, in the hope that someone like Wu might find the treasure.

Wu put the book back into the pouch and resealed it. The boys covered up the hatch again with leaves and twigs before setting off. They would need to find a person who could read.

Wu and Vancott wandered aimlessly for days. Sometimes, they would walk for hours in one direction when Vancott would suddenly change his mind, and then they would turn about and retrace their steps. On other occasions, they seemed to be walking in circles. Wu began to doubt whether Vancott had any idea where they were going.

Beside him, Wu heard Vancott's stomach growl. His companion always seemed to be hungry. For such a thin little guy, he ate an awful lot. Not for the first time, Wu wondered how Vancott had managed to survive on his own for this long.

A feral rakunk bounded out of some shrubbery a short distance ahead. Vancott had seen the black-masked, fluffy-tailed animal first, putting out his hand to stop Wu and signalling for silence. If nothing
else, Wu was grateful for Vancott's sharp eyes. His companion might eat too much food, but at least he was good at spotting it.

Wu slowly knelt to pick up a rock, quietly pulling out his slingshot at the same time. He steadied himself, drew back the band, took aim, and fired.

Killing the game turned out to be the easy part. Starting the fire to cook it proved much more difficult. It had rained earlier in the day, and the boys had trouble finding dry grass and leaves for tinder. More than once, Wu saw Vancott eyeing the book. He pulled it closer.

Night had fallen by the time they got the fire going and cooked the rakunk. In the chilly dark, Wu and Vancott managed to find some comfort in the warming flames and meat. When they had finished eating, they lay on their backs and gazed up at the twinkling tapestry of stars above. Wu thought about his mother's stories of people in flying machines, soaring amongst the clouds and even out to the dark heavens beyond.

Wu closed his eyes, and as sleep came, the book slipped quietly from his arms and fell to the ground.

He dreamed.

It was a strange dream, the kind Wu knew was only a dream even while he was dreaming it, because he was seeing things that he could not possibly have known or remembered. He was in a vast cavern, within which were rows upon rows of shelves, each packed end-to-end with books. The volumes were all of different sizes, thicknesses, and colours, with incomprehensible words along the spines. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of books stretching further into the depths of the cavern than Wu could see.