by Julie Wu
“By that time my mother and I had joined him in Canada. Hong became like a father to me.” His voice became gravelly and he cleared his throat. He gestured toward the road. “And speaking of Canada, here we are.”
THE TRAIN WE boarded at Winnipeg lurched a lot more than any train I’d taken on Taiwan.
“It’s the muskeg.” Wen-chong, sitting opposite me, waved toward the landscape outside, what looked like plains covered with clusters of short pine trees. “Bog, basically. The permafrost layer prevents the water from draining properly and this vegetation grows on top. There’s just gravel on top to make the tracks. Very unstable.” Our car banged around a bend, and I winced, thinking of the transmitter I’d soldered together.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t have been better to fly?” I said.
“Well,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck. “I think the components are too heavy for the plane here. It’s no Boeing 707, you know.”
I looked back out the window. The train curved away behind us, one hopper car after another, filled with grain. All along the track, wooden utility poles leaned at forty-five-degree angles, propped up by wooden poles in gangly tripod form. The utility lines stretched, unbroken, to infinity on either end, so precariously supported that one storm, one unseasonably warm day to melt the permafrost below, and communication would be lost. I could die out here and Yoshiko would never know.
I turned back to Wen-chong. He was sitting and looking at his hands in his lap, his eyelids heavy.
“Tell me about your research,” I said.
He looked up at me wearily. “Why?”
“Because,” I said. “I want to do research, not just repair your equipment.”
He sighed. “I don’t have anything to write on.”
I dug up the tote bag and pulled out a sheet of paper.
“No,” he said. “That’s our specifications and experiment design and such. You can’t use that.”
I looked at the diagram in my hand. “But this is the schematic for the transmitter! You didn’t tell me you had this!”
“Oh.” He looked sheepish. “I didn’t realize we did.”
“Well,” I said, “we don’t need it anymore.”
28
AT LAST WE ARRIVED at Fort Churchill, stepping into air so frigid that it burned the passages of my nose and lungs. I saw with excitement that Gleason had arrived at the station with a pickup truck. Wen-chong and I waited at the cargo car for the boxes of equipment while the pickup backed into a space near us. The tundra stretched, barren, in all directions, punctuated only by small rectangular buildings.
“Here they are,” Wen-chong said.
I grabbed the other end of a large box and looked around eagerly for Gleason. He was walking around the truck to open the tailgate, the wind ruffling the fur on the hood of his parka. He unwound a length of rope from a large ball in his hand.
The wind cut through the meager wool of my winter jacket, and I smiled at him, shivering, my hand resting on the box containing the nose cone. My fingers were already numb.
Gleason squinted up at me and cut the rope with a large knife. “What are you doing here?”
I felt a shock in my belly. I had thought him so kind.
Wen-chong stepped to my side. “He fixed the telemetry,” he said. “And he drove me up in his car to Winnipeg.”
Gleason silently wrapped the rope around the tailgate of the truck and began knotting it in place. Wen-chong went up to the truck to help him. They whispered to each other for a minute, and the wind brought their words to me.
“I can’t be babysitting—isn’t he that . . .”
“No, no, he’s the one who . . .”
“Oh, I thought he was the other fellow . . .”
I watched despondently, my arms hanging at my sides while they tightened the rope.
When they finished, Professor Gleason turned to me, his face still somber. “I remember you now, Chia-lin. Didn’t I tell you to come back when you had your master’s?”
“Yes,” I said. I trembled, only partly from the cold. “But I don’t have time to wait.”
He looked at me for a moment, drumming his fingers on the side of the pickup truck. “Get into the cab before you freeze to death.”
THEY FOUND ME a spare parka and we unpacked the payload components in the blockhouse. Gleason and Wen-chong assembled the payload with their backs to me, Wen-chong throwing me nervous glances every once in a while. Had I traveled all this way to be treated as an intruder?
And then when they tested the telemetry, the dials were silent.
“Okay, wunderkind,” Gleason said. “I thought you fixed it.”
“It worked at the—” I began to say.
“The train ride,” Wen-chong said. “Some of the connections must have come loose.” He glanced at me, harshly this time. “I told you they needed to withstand strong vibrations.”
I flushed.
Gleason pulled the schematic out of the tote bag. It had my writing all over it. “What happened to this? Now we’ll never be able to fix it!”
Wen-chong looked at me.
“I did that,” I said, feeling my old righteousness welling up. “We had no other paper, and I already know the circuits in my head, so I knew we didn’t need any schematics.”
Gleason stood up and faced me. “It doesn’t pay to be arrogant, Chia-lin.”
Arrogant! The blood surged through my head, my ears, to the frozen tips of my fingers. I turned away and stepped toward the door. It was middle school all over again. I would leave these ungrateful people behind me to flounder with their own equipment. See how they would miss me then! I could have been working all this time, making money to send home—straight to Yoshiko this time, or to her parents—
What was I doing? I had fixed those circuits perfectly well. I turned back and pushed past Gleason and Wen-chong to look at the payload assembly.
“There’s nothing wrong with my connections,” I said irritably. “You just assembled the units incorrectly. The inputs are all scrambled.”
WE WATCHED THE launch from the blockhouse. The rocket went off smoothly, the earth literally shaking beneath our feet, and the team, including Gleason’s entire laboratory plus three Fort Churchill technicians, cheered, watching the rocket roar off into the sky.
The telemetry needles jumped to life, and Gleason patted me on the back. “That’s my boy,” he said. “If it were up to us, Vanguard would already be up there.”
“Vanguard?”
“Satellite. Guys are having a heck of a time with it. Supposed to go up in November, now they’re saying December. But they’ll do it. And imagine that—a man-made moon over our heads.”
We celebrated by bonfire. On the shores of Hudson Bay, the fire crackled, sending sparks into the growing darkness. One of the Fort Churchill technicians who had helped monitor the launch knelt by the hot coals, cooking bread in a cast-iron skillet.
“Bannock,” Gleason said. He slathered butter onto a piece and handed it to me. “The natives eat it.” And then he walked away and sat by the fire. The others closed in next to him, and I remained on the outside of their circle.
I bit into the bannock. It was crunchy on the outside, and so hot inside that the steam burned my lips. Aside from the butter, it was plain and unseasoned—a simple combination of little more than flour and water. But here, in the flickering, smoky light of the fire, by the frigid waters that had slipped past glaciers and carried ice floes up and down across the Arctic Ocean to lap these shores, it was the most delicious food I had ever tasted. I ate it up, the crumbs falling down into the folds of my borrowed parka and onto the sparse grass and pebbles at my feet. I could have eaten ten more, but there was only one skillet, and the next bannock was still cooking.
We roasted sausages on sticks, and one of the graduate students said, “This is basically what we have to eat in Churchill—bannock and sausage.”
There was general laughter. “And last week’s newspaper,” someone said.
“I’m dying for some fresh milk and a nice, fresh sirloin.”
I bit into my sausage, and the hot fat ran down my chin. It was spicy and delicious. Yoshiko would have loved it.
I stood up and left the fire.
I made my way over the rocks to the edge of the bay. The night was growing darker and the surface of the water glowed in the waning light. The wind blew, and I smelled the salt in the air, the smoke from the bonfire behind me, and the bannock.
Rocks clattered behind me and I turned around to see a dark form approach from the group, silhouetted against the fire’s light.
“You shouldn’t leave the group in a place like this.” It was Gleason. “It’s dangerous.”
I was in no mood to be chastised. I turned back to face the bay. Its surface undulated in the distance, toward the ocean.
“Those are belugas,” Gleason said, drawing up next to me. “They come here to breed.”
“They are lucky to go wherever they want,” I said. “And so are you. I would be happy to feed my family sausages and bannock.”
He was silent for a moment. The belugas disappeared, then reappeared farther away, so that I even doubted whether I saw anything at all. “Chia-lin,” Gleason said, “why did you come here?”
“My wife has tuberculosis,” I said, and then my throat stopped me.
“And you want to visit her.”
“No. Well, yes, of course. But I can’t. I wouldn’t be let back into the US.”
“You’re trying to get her here,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I can’t pay you, Chia-lin. I already filled my student positions.”
Though I knew this, hearing Gleason say it was a blow to me, as buying the car had been a calculated gamble that he might bend his rules.
“But I can give you an unpaid internship. If you’ll help us with the data from the launch, I’ll put your name on the paper.”
I thought for a moment. Getting my name on a major paper might be just the thing to get me that teaching fellowship at the School of Mines. But no income, in the most expensive country in the world . . .
“No money?” I said.
Gleason sighed. He took a step to the side and turned away. “Well, after you get your master’s . . .” He started making his way back to the fire, holding out his arms for balance.
“Wait.” I clambered after him. “I’ll take your internship.”
He looked back at me for a moment and then waved his arm. “Come on, then.”
29
NIGHTS, I STAYED LATE at the lab, and when I returned to Wen-chong’s apartment, where he so graciously allowed me to sleep on his couch for the summer, I lay in the quiet of the night, reading the latest papers on the newly burgeoning field of atmospheric physics.
I did also study at times under the magnificently arched ceiling of the Hatcher Library, and it was in the corner of the main reading room that I found a cluster of Taiwanese graduate students hunched dutifully over their textbooks. One of them was Sun-kwei, the Professor, whose nervous smile I studiously avoided, though I wondered what had become of his buddy Li-wen. I recognized also a student named Wei-ta, whom I had competed against in junior college in intercollegiate track meets. I remembered him as a good sprinter, and he was built like one—a bit shorter than me, with a powerful build. He had an easy smile and introduced himself as president of Michigan’s Chinese Student Association.
“I remember you,” he whispered over his book. “Horse, right? Taipei Provincial Tech? You beat me on the four hundred meter.”
“Yes,” I said. “But you beat me on the fifty and one hundred.”
He invited me to his Plymouth Road apartment for dinner, and I accepted happily, looking forward to an evening of reminiscing about track and field.
He had barbells in his guest bedroom and an old coffee table padded with pillows to make a weight-lifting bench. We took turns doing bench presses while Wei-ta’s wife prepared dinner in the adjoining kitchen. My stomach grumbled at the familiar savory smells of ginger and garlic, sesame and allspice.
It felt good to be speaking Taiwanese with someone who did not appear to be a Nationalist agent and even had some social graces. Wei-ta’s wife also seemed very friendly, and I wished Yoshiko were there with us, to laugh in her rich voice and shake her head as Wei-ta and I relived our glory days at the stadium.
Wei-ta led me to the living room, where his wife had set out cups of oolong tea and a dish of roasted peanuts. “I’m sorry, this place isn’t much to speak of,” Wei-ta said. “These places come prefurnished.”
I glanced around at the pioneer-wagon curtains and imitation Navajo rugs, with their lingering smells of cigarette smoke and disinfectant. Yoshiko and I could live in an apartment like this. We’d be proud of our American home.
Wei-ta sat in an armchair and indicated for me to sit opposite on the matching plaid couch. He explained that he had tried to buy a house but was sure he had been discriminated against in favor of American buyers. He had determined to wait a year or two; the Chinese students had too little power, but there were many more blacks in the same situation in Ann Arbor, and they were mobilizing the Fair Housing Association for a housing ordinance.
“That sounds savvy enough,” I said, slurping my tea. It was much better than Wen-chong’s.
Wei-ta smiled and leaned forward as though he was about to tell me a secret. “Now, tell me,” he said. “How did you get here?”
I hesitated, confused. “To Ann Arbor? I drove.”
“No, no. I mean to America.”
“I flew.” I almost added “of course” but remembered Chen’s arriving in his box, on a boat.
Wei-ta rolled his eyes and laughed. “Oh, come on. I mean, how did you get here without passing the exam?”
I felt my face flush. “What do you mean?”
“Listen, I’ve been running the Chinese Student Association for five years. Every single Taiwanese here went to Taiwan University. You can’t tell me you passed the exam after vocational school. Was it some connection you had? A bribe? Whatever you did, I want to know. I’ve got a friend who wants to come, but he hasn’t got the mental firepower for it, if you know what I mean, and he’s not well connected.”
My blood rushed in my ears. What a presumption! But I bit my tongue. It was probably true that everyone else here was from Taiwan University.
I put my teacup down, a bit too hard, so that it sloshed and spilled a little into the saucer. “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “But I’m afraid your friend will have to pass the exam,” I said, “as that’s what I did.”
He gave me a pointedly skeptical glance and sat back in his armchair, which looked suddenly dirty to me. “Didn’t mean to offend,” he said, though his voice was not very friendly anymore. I wondered if he had invited me for dinner solely to discover this purported secret of mine.
“Five years here and no PhD,” I said, before I could help myself. “You’re not even working on a thesis yet. Why is that?”
He smiled wryly. “I suppose you have the right to ask. But some have been here nine years. You have to pass the qualifying exam before you do your thesis, and no Taiwanese or Mainlander has ever passed it here. Though I suppose you could, Horse.”
“I plan to.”
“Go ahead and try. It’s oral.” He folded his arms, smiling again. “Notoriously difficult. Professors from double E, physics, and math asking you proofs on the spot. They teach you how to do that at Taipei Provincial Tech?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But apparently they don’t at Taiwan University, either.”
“True,” he said.
“Perhaps the only thing that matters is what we do in America,” I said. “People here can hardly tell the difference between Taiwan and Thailand, much less Taiwan University and Taipei Provincial Tech.”
“True again.” He nodded, then raised his eyebrow, cocking his head. “I prepare to be astonished by your trajectory.”
NEAR THE END o
f my internship, Gleason informed me that I would be on his paper—not first author, of course, and not last. I called Beck’s office immediately, readying myself for his dry note of surprise and approval. I had changed my decision, hadn’t I? He had been absolutely right. I wasn’t a pharmacist by any stretch of the imagination.
Mrs. Larsson answered. She sounded perfectly friendly and businesslike and I felt a jolt of shame at having ogled her when I left.
“I need to speak to Professor Beck. It’s quite urgent,” I said.
“Actually, Chia-lin, we were expecting Professor Beck back in a couple of days, but he just informed us that he’ll be spending next semester in Marstrand.”
“Where?”
“Marstrand. Have you ever been to Sweden? It’s so lovely there by the sea, and Professor Beck loves to sail—”
“The whole semester?” My mouth went dry.
“Yes, he’ll be back in January,” Mrs. Larsson said. “It gets so cold there in the winter.”
“But he told me I could have a teaching fellowship if I did research this summer,” I said. “Now I’m on an important paper at the University of Michigan . . .”
“I see. Oh, dear. You’ll have to address those concerns to the acting chairman now, Dr. Krauss. He’ll be in tomorrow. You’d better hurry,” she said. “The semester starts next week and you’re not registered.”
Damn Beck and his flippancy!
I hung up the phone and held my head. I had no idea who this Krauss fellow was, but hopefully he would be a reasonable man. I set to work packing my suitcases and readying myself for the long journey back to South Dakota. At least this time I had a car.
I THOUGHT IT would be better to wear my suit while I drove from Michigan rather than fold it up in my suitcase as I usually did. I’d be sitting in my own new car, not a smoky public bus. For the first couple of days, I enjoyed feeling like Pat O’Reilly, rocket windows down, in my fine suit. But the suit became thoroughly wrinkled after the first day and then stained with cheeseburger grease. Somewhere around Mason City I folded it back into my suitcase, and when I unpacked it in the next motel, I found toothpaste on it. I spent the next two nights trying to scrub the toothpaste off with rough motel washcloths.
