Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (P.S.)

by Peter Hessler

  “Wow, that must have been nice,” I said. “What did your uncle do?”

  “That was Uncle Sam.”

  People in China never talked like that. They weren’t storytellers—they didn’t like to be the center of attention, and they took little pleasure in narrative. They rarely lingered on interesting details. It wasn’t an issue of wanting to be quiet; in fact, most Chinese could talk your ear off about things like food and money and weather, and they loved to ask foreigners questions. But they avoided personal topics, and as a writer I learned that it could take months before an interview subject opened up. Probably it was natural in a culture where people live in such close contact, and where everything revolves around the family or some other group.

  And a Chinese person with options would never choose to live in a place like southwestern Colorado. The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar in Ridgway, I met a man and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there’s no reliable small-talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal. When I had DIRECTV installed, a technician came over to drill a hole in the side of the house. He commented that he had just moved to a town called Delta, and I asked him what it was like.

  “Quiet,” he said. “Not much going on in Delta.”

  “Why did you move there?”

  He looked up from the drill. He was a skinny man in his twenties with blue-line tattoos that ran along his arms like wayward veins. “I had a two-month-old son who died,” he said slowly. “That was in Denver, and I just had to get out. I didn’t want to stay there any longer. So I moved to Delta.”

  It took me a moment to respond. “I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “It sounds awful.”

  I didn’t know what else to say; in the States, I often had trouble responding to personal stories. But soon I realized that it didn’t make much difference what I said. Many Americans were great talkers, but they didn’t like to listen. If I told somebody in a small town that I had lived overseas for fifteen years, the initial response was invariably the same: “Were you in the military?” After that, people had few questions. Leslie and I learned that the most effective way to kill our end of a conversation was to say that we were writers who had lived in China for more than a decade. Nobody knew what to make of that; they seemed much more comfortable talking about their most recent prison term.

  At times, the lack of curiosity depressed me. I remembered all those questions in China, where even uneducated people wanted to hear something about the outside world, and I wondered why Americans weren’t the same. But it was also true that many Chinese had impressed me as virtually uninterested in themselves and their communities. They weren’t reflective—they preferred not to think hard about their own lives. That was one of the main contrasts with Americans, who constantly created stories about themselves and the places where they lived. In a small town, people asked very little of an outsider—really, all you had to do was listen.

  Sometimes that role made me feel like a foreigner or an impostor, but there was also something comforting about the sense of narrative. It had defined my culture since childhood; even if I was no longer part of the local story, I still understood the way people told it. I liked listening, and I found myself drawn to community events where I could sit quietly in the crowd. Leslie and I went to rodeos and quarter-horse races, where local ranchers competed along with professionals. In the autumn, we attended football games at nearby high schools. We followed tiny Olathe High through a state championship season, and we went to the victory parade that was held on Olathe’s main street. The players rode atop fire trucks to the end of the road, where they did a U-turn and came back, so everybody in town had a chance to cheer twice.

  One weekend in June, we attended a religious rally called “Cowboy Up for Christ.” It was held at the start of rodeo season, and the organizers gave out free copies of The Way for Cowboys, which featured Christian-themed tales from competitive rodeo riders. One speaker was a country musician named Morris Mott, who talked about growing up in a dysfunctional family. “When I was sixteen, my personal history met up with His story, the story of Jesus Christ,” he said. He explained how he had created a different life for himself, and he said that his faith had helped him cope with the near-death of his child. Mott had a slow, confident way of talking, and the crowd of two hundred fell silent. “An individual with a story is on a higher ground than an individual with an argument,” Mott said. “Your story is a powerful weapon you can use, not only against your enemies, but also to bring other people into the light.”

  In the span of six months I lost thirty pounds. Many years earlier, I had been a competitive long-distance runner, but in Beijing, where the air is badly polluted, I let the hobby go. I picked it up again in Ridgway, where my home was at an elevation of eight thousand feet, with trails headed off in all directions across the mesa. On runs, I looked for deer and elk and turkeys; twice I saw mountain lions. I was surprised to find that I could still run eight or nine miles at a stretch, and soon a lightness returned to my legs.

  I came to think of this as Peter Chang’s healthy period. By now, his mail was dominated by glossy Chinese flyers for ginseng products—Prince Gold Heart Formula, Pure American Ginseng Powder—all of them coming from a company called Prince of Peace Enterprises, in Wausau, Wisconsin. Peter Chang also got regular mailings from Korean Airlines. A company called Hellman Motors sent a check for $2,078, along with a letter:

  Attention Peter Chang:

  This Official Notice confirms that you have been selected as a GUARANTEED WINNER in a marketing test for the major automobile companies. This is NOT a joke, prank or gimmick.

  I liked it when people pleaded with Peter Chang to accept their money. I imagined him as a lone wolf, a figure of international mystery, and I enjoyed taking his calls. One evening the phone rang just as Leslie and I were returning from dinner in town.

  “It’s for Peter Chang,” Leslie said, after she answered it. “It’s a woman. I think she says she’s from the National Lightbulb Association.”

  “What the hell is the National Lightbulb Association?”

  “How should I know? Should I just hang up?”

  But I decided to hear this one out. The connection was poor, and the woman said something about a one-question poll that would follow a recorded message from Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the association. The message began with an angry voice, and I thought: Man, this French guy seems awfully worked up about lightbulbs! Then it dawned on me that we had confused the word “lightbulb” with “rifle.” The NRA was doing a push poll, working the wilds of southwestern Colorado by phone.

  LaPierre explained that the United Nations was trying to pass the strictest gun-control treaty in history. Third-world dictators were urging the law forward; it was also supported by liberal American officials and the media elite. After the message, a man got on the phone.

  “Mr. Chang,” he said, “what’s your opinion about these third-world dictators and Hillary Clinton trying to ban firearms in the United States?”

  “I’m in favor of it.”

  “You’re in favor of what?”

  “I’m in favor of them banning guns,” I said. “You have to understand, I’m from one of those third-world dictatorships. I’m from China. I don’t think people should have too much freedom.”

  There was a long pause. “Well,” he said. “I appreciate your honesty.”

  “What did you think I was going to say? If you call anybody named Chang, he’s going to say the same thing. We all feel the same way about this. We’re all coming from China, and we don’t want guns.”

  “OK,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying.”

  “We want a more powerful go
vernment, like we have in China.”

  “Well,” he said. “Thanks for answering.” He was very polite and he never argued, but he seemed incapable of disengaging himself from this call—not the brightest bulb at the association. At last, I said goodbye and hung up, and Peter Chang took the rest of the night off.

  After nearly nine months in the United States, Leslie and I took a road trip to Las Vegas. It seemed like the final act of our homecoming, and we arrived in time for the city’s combined marathon and half marathon. Having attended so many rodeos and football games, I decided to make my own return to athletic competition, so I signed up for the half marathon.

  The race began before dawn, in front of the Mandalay Bay resort, and the mob of seventeen thousand runners headed straight up the Las Vegas Strip. In a rush, we passed the neon-lit Luxor, the Tropicana, the MGM Grand. Some of the all-night gamblers came outside to cheer. After a couple of miles, I slipped into a faster rhythm; it felt easy, because I had been training at altitude. Soon the race thinned out, and by mile six I led a pack of a few runners, with the next group about fifty yards ahead.

  There were professionals in the marathon, Africans and Europeans chasing a $45,000 prize, and they had gone out fast. I knew that somewhere around six miles the half marathoners were supposed to turn off, but I couldn’t see anybody up ahead making the break. Finally, I shouted at a bystander in a race-volunteer shirt: “Where are we supposed to turn for the half?”

  “Right here,” he said.

  I skidded to a stop. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re supposed to go up that street.”

  The volunteer hadn’t been paying attention; he was simply watching the runners go by. But I followed his directions, and not far ahead of me a policeman pulled away from the curb and rolled his lights. And that was when I realized it was the pace car, and I was the leader, and there were more than eight thousand runners following me.

  Even when I was young, I had never been good enough to lead a big race. Occasionally, I had won events whose entrants numbered in the hundreds, but anything larger was guaranteed to have athletes who were much better than me. And I knew that today the faster runners were still out there; they had simply missed the turn. If they figured it out quickly, and came back to the course, they’d chase me down without any problem. I promised myself not to look back until mile ten.

  In China, I had often dreamed of silence and solitude, but there’s nothing quite like the sensation of leading a race. Usually the sport feels visual; you pick out landmarks and athletes ahead, using them as goals. But when you’re in front it’s all about sound: your breathing becomes distinct, and so does the rhythm of your stride. You listen for footsteps behind you. When a bystander cheers and then goes silent, you count the seconds until his voice sounds for the next runner.

  And I had never imagined how quiet Las Vegas could be. The race continued a few blocks west of the Strip, where the bright lights disappeared and the neighborhood became seedy; I ran by the Las Vegas Community Corrections Center and the Erotic Heritage Museum. I saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart. He grinned and shouted, “Hey, dude, you’re winning!” Rock bands had set up stages along the course, and the musicians were still tuning their instruments. Often they didn’t notice me until I was almost past, and they’d try to play something quickly for my benefit. I’d hear the music behind me, growing fainter with the distance, until once again I was alone with my footsteps and my breathing.

  At the ten-mile mark I looked back and saw nobody. Soon I was on Frank Sinatra Boulevard, running past the service entrances of the big casinos, and then I reached the finish line in front of the Mandalay Bay. The crowd cheered as I broke the tape; the race director shook my hand. Fifteen minutes later, a Las Vegas television station conducted a live interview with me, along with the winner of the woman’s race and the first Elvis to finish—150 competitors had entered the race dressed as Elvis. The fastest one stood proudly with me on TV, dressed in a white Lycra bodysuit with pasted-on sideburns, sweating like the King in concert.

  Leslie and I were ushered inside a special VIP tent for the top runners, where we helped ourselves to the breakfast buffet while waiting for the professionals to finish the marathon. One by one, they limped in, mostly Kenyans and Ethiopians with big thighs and whippet-thin calves. They had the haunted look that comes at the end of a long race: gaunt cheeks, empty stares. In the buffet line, a Russian runner looked at me quizzically. “Did you run the race?” she said.

  I told her I had won the half marathon.

  “You don’t look very tired,” she said. “You don’t look like you ran at all.”

  She was right—I obviously didn’t belong with these athletes. Mine was by far the slowest winning time in the fourteen-year history of the race, and I learned that the lost leaders hadn’t realized their mistake until they were already miles off course. (In true Vegas style, a limo took them to the finish line.) The race director assured me that there would be an awards ceremony, but as the morning dragged on, I felt more and more like an impostor sitting in the VIP tent. Finally Leslie and I grabbed a couple of croissants for the road and slipped out.

  I never received an award for the race. It was all in the spirit of Peter Chang—he walked away from prizes and free money, and he also knew, like any foreigner, that you have to ask directions if you get lost. In any case, the experience was what mattered most. I had run alone down Frank Sinatra Boulevard, and I had appeared on Las Vegas television. I had shaken the sweaty hand of Elvis himself. Finally I was home, and I had a story to tell; in America that was all you’d ever need.

  Dr. Don

  In the southwestern corner of Colorado, where the Uncompahgre Plateau descends through spruce forest and scrubland toward the Utah border, there is a region of more than four thousand square miles which has no hospitals, no department stores, and only one pharmacy. The pharmacist is Don Colcord, and he lives in the town of Nucla. More than a century ago, Nucla was named by idealists who hoped that their community would become the “center of Socialistic government for the world.” But nowadays it feels like the edge of the earth. Highway 97 dead-ends at the top of Main Street; the population is around seven hundred and falling. The nearest traffic light is an hour and a half away. When old ranching couples drive their pickups into Nucla, the wives leave the passenger’s side empty and sit in the middle of the front seat, close enough to touch their husbands. It’s as if something about the landscape—those endless hills, that vacant sky—makes a person appreciate the intimacy of a Ford F-150 cab.

  Don Colcord has owned the Apothecary Shoppe in Nucla for more than thirty years. In the past, such stores played a key role in American rural health care, and this region had three other pharmacies, but all of them have closed. Some people drive eighty miles just to visit the Apothecary Shoppe. It consists of a few rows of grocery shelves, a gift-card rack, a Pepsi fountain, and a section labeled “Diabetes Supplies,” which is decorated with the mounted heads of two mule deer and an antelope. Next to the game heads is the pharmacist’s counter. Customers don’t line up at a discreet distance, the way city folk do; in Nucla they crowd the counter and talk loudly about health problems. Maybe it’s the same instinct that makes people sit close in their pickups, or maybe it’s Don, who is always called by his first name, and who seems to have an answer to every question.

  “What have you heard about sticking your head in a beehive?” This on a Tuesday afternoon, from a heavyset man suffering from arthritis and an acute desire to find low-cost treatment.

  “It’s been used, progressive bee sting therapy,” Don says. “When you get stung, your body produces cortisone. It reduces swelling, but it goes away. And you don’t know when you’re going to have that one reaction and go into anaphylactic shock and maybe drop dead. It’s highly risky. You don’t know where that bee has been. You don’t know what proteins it’s been getting.”

  “You’re a helpful guy, thank you.”

 
“I would recommend hyaluronic acid. It’s kind of expensive, about twenty-five dollars a month. But it works for some people. They make it out of rooster combs.”

  Next, a women chats about her son, an Air Force officer who has been escorting the bodies of dead soldiers home from Iraq. Another woman inquires about decongestants; a third asks about the risk of birth defects while using a collagen stimulator. Earlier in the day, a preacher from the Abundant Life Church asked about drugs for a paralyzed vocal cord. (“When I do a sermon, it needs to last for thirty minutes.”) Another man dropped off a box of reloaded .222 shells for Don. “That’s new brass,” the man said, setting the bullets on the counter—stiff medicine.

  Others stop by just to chat. Don, in addition to being the only pharmacist, is probably the most talkative and friendly person within four thousand square miles. The first time I visited his counter, he asked about my family, and I mentioned newborn twin daughters. He filled a jar with a thick brown ointment that he had recently compounded. “It’s tincture of benzoin,” he said. “Rodeo cowboys use it while riding a bull or a bronc. They put it on their hands; it makes the hands tacky. It’s a respiratory stimulant, mostly used in wound care. You won’t find anything better for diaper rash.”

  Don Colcord was born in Nucla, and he has spent all of his fifty-nine years in Colorado, where community-minded individuals often develop some qualities that may seem contradictory to an outsider. Don sells cigarettes at his pharmacy, because he believes that people have the right to do unhealthy things. He votes Democratic, a rarity in this region. He listens to Bocelli and drives a Lexus. At Easter, the Colcord family tradition is to dye eggs, line them up in a pasture, and fire away with a 25-06 Remington. A loyal NRA member, Don describes shooting as essentially peaceful. “Your arm moves up and down every time you breathe, so you control your breathing,” he says. “It’s very similar to meditation.” He was once the star marksman of the University of Colorado’s rifle team, and for many years he held a range record for standing shooting at the Air Force Academy.