Hour of the Rat

by Lisa Brackmann

  None of this is helping my bad mood.

  “I think it’s up here,” the cab driver says.

  Another cluster of buildings, more solidly built, like it’s the town center in another village. A broad dirt street. There are huge mounds of … I don’t know, electronic crap, everywhere. Plastic. Cathode tubes. Metal scraps, partly covered by a ripped blue tarp.

  “Here,” the cabbie says. He points across the street, to a two-story building, grimy white tile with pink accents.

  “You’re sure?”

  He shrugs. “It’s the address.”

  “I’ll go ask.”

  I sling my daypack over my shoulders and get out. The front of the building is open, except there are thick, round iron bars, like a prison, that run from from top to bottom into the surrounding structure. Workers sit in a row facing the street, six of them, four women and two men. I can see their heads and torsos above the low wall that frames the opening. Smoke billows from inside, blown out by a couple of industrial fans embedded in the wall.

  As I approach, I can see that they’re sitting on squat wooden chairs, cheap bamboo folding ones, like you’d take to the beach. The smoke is coming from little iron barrels. They’ve got circuit boards on top of them that they’re holding in place with tongs, and I have this weird flash of this church camping trip I went on once, when we toasted marshmallows over a fire pit.

  The double doors are open, all the better to let the smoke out, I guess. I step over the threshold.

  “Ni hao,” I say loudly, so they’ll hear me over the fans.

  A couple of the women look up. One is middle-aged, her face wrinkled and weathered, from sun or—who knows?—maybe exposure to toxic chemicals. She wears a nice striped blouse and tailored slacks, like she’s dressing for an office job. The other is young, with a long, thick ponytail held in place by a scrunchie and two sequined barrettes, wearing a fashion hoodie that has KITTEN! stenciled across the chest, and an appliqué of an anime cat holding a ray gun.

  “Sorry, I don’t want to trouble you,” I say in my best polite Mandarin. “But I’m looking for this company. I thought it was this address.”

  I have the piece of paper that Daisy gave me, and I hold that out in my hand.

  Kitten Girl stands up, as does Office Woman. The two of them study the paper.

  I glance around. Past the first row of circuit-board campfires are other workstations, if you can call them that, thin wallboard stretched across plastic milk crates, covered by plastic bowls, surrounded by plastic bins, small ones like you’d buy to organize your office supplies, large ones like you’d use to do your laundry. Each one holds different pieces of plastic or metal or wire: transistors, capacitors, relays, microchips.

  “This is the address,” Kitten Girl says. “But no seeds here.” She giggles, like it’s a really funny notion.

  Office Woman frowns. “Shi. But … I think sometimes …” Then she shakes her head. “Buqingchu.” Not clear.

  “Weishenme buqingchu?” I ask. Why isn’t it clear?

  “I’ve seen boxes with that name come here,” she says. “I think maybe is a mistake.”

  “Do you think anyone here might know?”

  “Maybe. Xiao deng,” she says. Wait a moment.

  I hear a honk from outside. The cabdriver has rolled down the passenger window. “Hey!” he calls out.

  I hobble over to the cab.

  “I need to get back to Shantou,” he says.

  “Weishenme? I thought we had an agreement.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Family problem. If you want, I can take you back with me.”

  I hesitate. I’m thinking what are the odds anyone here is going to tell me anything useful? Plus, my chest hurts, my throat hurts, and my head’s pounding, just from trying to breathe.

  “How hard is it to find a cab back to Shantou?” I ask.

  “Not hard. You go to downtown, plenty of cabs there. You can take local bus to downtown. Easy.”

  I guess I must look pretty pissed off, because then he says, “Okay, when I drive through Guiyu, I send a cab back for you.” He catches my look again. “Really! I promise!”

  I shrug. “Okay. Whatever.” And I pay him.

  A waste of time, I’m pretty sure. But I’ve come all this way. I might as well see it through.

  I hang around outside the workshop, upwind of the exhaust fans, though I’m not at all sure that the air is any better out here than it is in there. Thinking, if I wanted to get something to eat, would that be a good idea? Could you trust any food prepared in this place? Probably I’d be better off buying nuts or chips, something packaged. Maybe a beer, as long as it’s not local.

  It feels like I’m there a long time, but it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes before a man comes out of the workshop. He’s short and squat and bald, and I don’t like the pig-eyed look he gives me.

  He stands there, his fists clenched like stones.

  “You looking for New Century Seeds?” he asks.

  Is this a trick question?

  “I am,” I finally say. Thinking, okay, nothing’s going to happen to me here, right? On a street, in broad daylight, with a couple people on the sidewalk, going into another workshop, stopping at a snack stand to buy Cokes.

  “Not here,” he spits out. “Old address. They moved.”

  I can’t place his accent. I’m not that good. Not proper Mandarin, but I don’t think he’s local either.

  “Oh,” I say. “Do you know where …?”

  “No.”

  I can’t say it’s unusual for a business to come and go so quickly. Happens in China all the time. And who knows how old Jason’s information was?

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I start to turn, to walk away, to think about where that bus might be, so I can get back to Shantou. Back to my life. Such as it is.

  I stop. It’s like I can’t help it.

  “I’m looking for a foreigner,” I say. “An American. His name is David. Have you seen him?”

  The guy’s piggy eyes narrow to slits. “You his friend?”

  My heart pounds hard in my chest. I should have kept my mouth shut, I can tell. I swallow, and my throat’s raw and swollen, like there’s rocks in it.

  “No. I’m his family’s friend.”

  He says nothing. Then he gives a little shrug. “Don’t know him. Not here.”

  I manage a smile. “Thank you,” I say again. “Sorry to bother you.”

  We stare at each other a moment longer. Then I turn and take a few stumbling steps down the street, the muscles between my shoulders clenched, waiting for a blow.

  But nothing happens. I keep on walking.

  Okay, I think, okay. That was dumb. There’s something going on here, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure that I’m lucky to be getting out of here in one piece. I’ll tell Dog what I know, and he can do whatever, report it to the American embassy or hire someone professional. Someone else can figure it out. I’ve done my duty, I’ve been a good buddy, no one’s gonna argue that. I’m just going to get my fool ass back to Beijing, see what kind of life I’ve got left, and take it from there.

  I’ve been walking without really looking where I’m going. Now I take a moment to see where I am.

  Ahead of me the buildings thin out, looking more derelict, less permanent. I hesitate. I’m trying to remember how we got here, and I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this is the way back to beautiful downtown Guiyu.

  On the other hand, if I go back the way I came, I’ll run into Mr. Piggy, and I know I don’t want to do that.

  So I keep walking. I think I see a sign for a local bus up ahead. Maybe that will take me back where I need to go.

  Or maybe another taxi will magically appear to whisk me back to Shantou.

  I’ll just keep walking, I tell myself. Long enough for Mr. Piggy to think I’m out of his business. Walk to the next town if I have to. This is China, and it’s not like I’m walking into wilderness here. There
’s always another town down the road.

  Just keep walking and it’ll all be fine.

  My leg’s throbbing. My mouth’s beyond dry. Next snack stand I come to, I’ll buy a Coke or something. And take a Percocet.

  But I’m not seeing snack stands. Instead I’m walking out into the country. Into polluted, brackish rice paddies. Pungent smoke rises on either side of me, from burning trash, I guess. There aren’t any solid buildings anymore. Now there are shanties with roofs made out of tarp, walls of the same wobbly blue tin fencing that surrounds every construction site in China. The most solid things are the piles of electronic scrap flanking the road, mountains of computer casings, of monitors, of circuit boards.

  Mud, and ash, and plastic.

  Workers sit on plastic stools in the shanties, burning circuit boards, stripping wire, sorting transistors. A few of them glance up as I pass, some curious, some wary. A motorcycle rumbles by, then a battered truck, its bed loaded high with electronic scrap. No magic taxi.

  The sky’s the color of lead. I don’t know if that means rain or if it’s just from the crap in the air.

  Fuck, I think. How long am I going to have to walk to get out of this?

  Another car, some beater VW or Chinese Chery, hurtles down the road. Unlike the last couple of cars, it pulls off to the shoulder, screeches to a halt.

  Three guys clamber out. Two of them have metal rods about a yard long and two inches thick. And they’re all heading toward me.

  I want to run, but I don’t. I can’t run that fast. But mainly it’s like I’m frozen in place, a scared little rabbit about to be some tiger’s lunch.

  Flight or fight. I do neither.

  “What are you doing here?” one of them shouts, the one without a rod.

  “I’m just leaving,” I manage.

  “This is forbidden area! You’re not allowed!”

  By now they’ve closed the gap. They form a semicircle around me. To my back is a wall of junked monitors.

  “I didn’t know,” I say, lifting up my hands. “I just want to find a bus to Shantou.”

  “Give me your backpack,” he says, but before I can even decide what to do, one of the other guys swings his rod and smashes it into my bad leg, right above my knee.

  A bolt of white shoots across my eyes, and I crumple. I can’t even scream, it hurts so bad. I land against the wall of monitors, throw my hands up to ward off another blow. The first guy shouts something, I can’t understand what, and another one of them starts yanking at my backpack, and I lash out with my fists, trying to connect, and he wrenches the backpack off, pulling one of my arms so far back that I think it’s come out of its socket, and then I scream because I can’t help it, and one of the guys with the rods hits me again, in the ribs this time. I curl into myself because there’s nothing I can do, no way to fight back, and I’m just waiting for the next blow.

  Instead I hear the zip of my pack being opened.

  I open my eyes, and the first guy has my laptop out.

  Then something truly weird happens.

  “What are you doing?” I hear a man shout—at least I think that’s what he says. His accent’s so thick I can barely understand him. “You can’t do that!”

  “Mind your own business! You should get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Cao ni ma de bi! You think you can just do what you want, treat people like dogs? You think you own the earth and sky?”

  This guy, whoever he is, his voice is shaking with rage.

  “You think you can tell me what to do?” says Thug #1, sounding like he’s on the verge of laughing.

  I can make out Thug #1, standing there with his back to me, his fists clenched, looking like he’s going to beat the shit out of this new guy.

  Except it’s not just one guy. Behind him are others. I can’t see them clearly, but there are about a half dozen men and women clustered around him, some hesitant, some furious, ready to take up metal bars of their own and kick some ass.

  “Haode,” Thug #1 finally says. I see his shoulders bunch in a shrug. “Chou tu,” he adds under his breath. Filthy peasant.

  Then he takes my laptop and hurls it into the pile.

  I slowly sit up as the three of them get in their car, reverse it in a grinding of gears, and head back the way they came.

  I try to focus on the crowd that stands a few yards away, in a ragged semicircle of their own. I can’t really see their faces. “Thank you,” I manage. Several of them shift back and forth, mutter words I can’t make out, and suddenly I’m not sure if I’m any better off than I was before.

  Then a man steps forward. His arm is still raised, and he’s holding something in his hand—a brick.

  I scuttle back against the monitors.

  “You all right?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”

  It’s the guy who yelled at the thugs, I’m pretty sure. I think he’s in his forties, but it’s hard to tell—he’s average height, with a shaved head, sharp cheekbones, and the kind of no-nonsense wiry build that comes from a life of hard work.

  “Hai keyi,” I say. Meaning I could be better, but I could be worse.

  I try to stand. Not going to happen. The pain from my bad leg leaves me gasping against the pile of monitors.

  The man takes another step toward me, hesitates, then turns his head and yells out something I can’t understand. A woman steps forward. “She can help you,” the man says to me.

  She’s about the same age as the guy, angular, blunt-cut hair streaked with grey, deep crow’s feet and brow lines etched on her face.

  “Give me your hand,” she says.

  I reach out with my right, or try to, but my shoulder hurts like a motherfucker, and I have to lean there a moment longer and catch my breath until my head clears.

  So I give her my left, same side as my fucked-up leg, and somehow get to my feet. The woman has me drape my arm over her shoulder.

  “You can walk?”

  “I can.” I laugh a little. “Maybe.” It’s more like I can hop.

  We take a few steps this way, my good arm over her shoulder, her arm circled around my back, me not able to put much weight on my bad leg. She shouts something that I can’t understand to the man.

  “Hao le,” he says, and trots off.

  The woman points toward one of the stalls across the street from the monitor mountain. “You can wait there a little.” Wait for what? “You need doctor?” she asks. I nod, because I guess I probably do.

  Then I remember my laptop. “Wo … wode xiao diannao.” My little computer. I can’t exactly remember the Chinese for “laptop.”

  “Where is it?” she asks.

  I take a look around me, at the endless piles of electronic scrap, and I laugh.

  Another person in the crowd, a kid, scrambles over to the pile. Roots around in the junk. “This one?” he shouts, holding up a laptop.

  Who the fuck knows?

  I nod anyway.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TURNS OUT WE’RE WAITING for a tractor.

  I sit on a little plastic stool beneath a blue tarp, in one of the makeshift workshops where they’re dismantling monitors, and I try not to breathe too much. One of the workers brings me a Coke from someplace, which I figure is probably safe to drink. I wonder why they’re being so nice to me, but all I say is, “Ganxie nimen”—Thank you very much—and use the Coke to wash down a Percocet. I know sometimes I take the things when I’m really stressed out or just because it feels good, but right now I take it because I’m fucking hurting.

  What the fuck was all that? I try to think, but it’s hard, it’s like my thoughts are tangled up in barbed wire, my head throbbing with the pain in my leg.

  Something’s going on with New Century Seeds. I’m as sure as I can be about that without actually knowing what it is. And it’s easy to figure that the guys who attacked me are connected to that. But I can’t know for sure. With all the unrest going on, maybe they’re just touchy about having foreigners aroun
d.

  Maybe there’s something they don’t want me to see. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be about New Century Seeds.

  While I sit, I try to boot up my laptop. Turns out it really is my laptop, but the casing is cracked, and when I power it up, there’s some sad whirring and then nothing but a grey screen.

  The kid who retrieved it sidles up to me. He’s … I don’t know, maybe twelve? Skinny like the couple who rescued me. Oversize head. Bucktoothed. Wearing sneakers a size too large, laces flapping.

  “Broken?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Pingguo?” Apple?

  “Shi.” It’s an old MacBook, a white plastic slab that’s taken all kinds of abuse and still works. Well, up till now.

  “Can I?” the kid asks, reaching out his hand.

  Sure. Why not? I hand him the laptop.

  He opens it. “Late 2006 one. I can fix,” he says solemnly.

  “Really.” I’m skeptical.

  “Really!” He makes a fist and thumps his skinny chest.

  Right about then the guy with the brick shows up in a tuolaji. It’s this crazy farm vehicle, a cross between a truck and a tractor that looks like it’s built out of scrap and rubber bands: two-stroke engine mounted in the front, thrusting out over two small wheels, a little truck bed in back, with a long, skinny metal beam connecting them, like it would snap in half if you jumped on it hard, something a kid would build out of Legos. The engine turns the front wheels by what looks like a giant vacuum-cleaner belt. The guy steers it with these long handlebars, his seat a cracked green vinyl cushion.

  “Lai, lai!” he calls out. Come, come!

  “My parents,” the kid says, pointing at the woman who helped me and then the guy on the tractor. “I fix the computer for you. Okay?”

  “Maybe later,” I say. I mean, it would be nice, but I’m not about to leave my laptop with this kid, even if it is just so much electronic junk, like everything else here.