Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (Vintage International)

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  “Wittman. Just my son,” said Pop by way of greeting.

  “Hi, Ba. Hello, Uncles.”

  “Eh.”

  “Um.”

  “Haw.”

  They won; he had said Hello, and they had cleared a throat, snorted, breathed hard. Don’t want to make you feel too good. He used to think it was because they didn’t approve of him for something, such as his beard, or his studying liberal arts. But who knows what it was. General badness.

  “Go sit down by the river,” said Pop. “Room by the river. Have some crackers and juice.” He reached into the cooler and handed out orange soda and strawberry soda. He didn’t know the difference between soda and juice. The soda companies take advantage of people like that.

  Sitting next to the fishing poles, Wittman said, “This is his hospitality. A seat, refreshments. He likes you. Otherwise, he’d chase us away.” Taña was drinking the orange soda. Wittman drank the strawberry, which tasted like tobacco.

  “Blonde queen of my heart, come to me at last!” yelled Big Uncle Constant. “Haw! Haw!” “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Had he picked up another queen, or was he teasing Wittman about his girlfriend? For laughs, the old futs liked to jump out from behind doors and trees and scare the shit out of a kid. That was their idea of playing with kids. I’m too old for that now, you old futs.

  The young futs leaned back in their lawn chairs, looking at the river go by, looking at each other. The smell of anise and spearmint, the smell of bay laurel, like a childhood day of licorice and chewing gum. A bee-loud glade. Pop’s rowboat tried to follow the current, but was tied to a mulberry tree. A gold rocker was catching and cradling whatever came tumbling by. We are water rats under the willows, which Valley Cantonese call skunk trees because we are realistic. Wind in the skunk trees and the shiverleaf aspens. The mulberry tree was dripping with purple earrings. Autumn.

  “I ought to quit my job,” said Taña. “Wittman, we ought to stop going to parties, and live on a houseboat. Eat catfish and crayfish and mustard greens.”

  The river breeze blew her hair across his eyes; through it, he saw the spanking-gold California sun hitting the blues and greens of the river, the reeds, and her beautiful sanpaku eyes. The river passed on and on.

  What could come by now is a small ship, a spy ship from China, playing music. Because whoever controls music has the world spinning on the palm of his hand. Like a dreydl, like a wish-fairy. There’s a plum-wine party on board. Cho Cho, now a fifty-four-year-old water rat with narrow eyes and a long thin beard, is standing alone on the prow. He makes up a song: “I built a casita, where springs and summers I might have studied my books, autumns and winters, have a home after hunting. I might have had a tranquil life but for news of the wedding of a certain woman, and news of war. Aiya, I am sad. I wasted my life at war. The ravens fly across the moon; they circle the trees, and find no nest.” A guest comes up on deck, and Cho Cho asks him, “Why are the ravens cawing and knocking in the middle of the night?” “The moon is so bright, they think it’s day. Don’t sing such a sad song.” The V of the raven’s tail does not stand for “victory” in their language. “You don’t like my poetry then?” says Cho Cho. For he is a warrior poet like Mao Tse Tung and a warrior actor like Chou En Lai. “What’s wrong with it?” he says. His guest, a good man who has re-built farm communities and schools, says, “On the night before battle, you shouldn’t sing discouraging words.” Cho Cho drops his spear to fighting level, and runs the critic through. The ship sails on, flying the Big Dipper and the North Star, a flag of the night sky to guide him day and night.

  And after the ship of spies and music comes Marilyn Monroe pushing and pulling the tiller of her boat with all her body, and singing “The River of No Return.” Strange people—cat women, sandmen, castle builders—denizen the islands of the Delta. And some of them are one’s relations, who have to be explained.

  “That thing is a gold rocker. My father made it. It works. He’s found gold in it. Zep had a big moment in his life. He found a gold boulder in the roots of an upturned tree. It came up out of the water like an arm and a hand with gold in its fingers, and handed it to him, a gift from the Mi-Wuks. Zeppelin Ah Sing started the Jamestown gold rush. He found his boulder in Chinese Camp, but told the newspapers it was Jimtown so as to decoy the rush away from the mother lode. He came home carrying his bird cage in one hand, and his gold boulder—like the head in Night Must Fall—in the other. He was living with his pet bird, inside an abandoned mine ‘for free, at no cost,’ he said to the newspapers. ‘Americans never be homeless,’ he says. Take over the mines that the Caucasians have given up on—they’ve done the hard digging, ha ha on them. His birds test the air. They live in thousand-year-old cages with Ming Dynasty porcelain seed and water cups. All a Chinese guy has to do is to hang out his bird, and he feels like an emperor at leisure in his castle. They think birds sing because they’re happy. My dad emigrated to Australia once—‘took my birds to Australia’—but came back in six months because one of the birds died; there had been two of them, twin thrushes. Gold spoiled him for regular ambition. He lives from gold find to gold find.”

  An especially loud uproar of swearing came from the trailer. Triumph. Losses. Zeppelin went into the bushes to piss, which you could hear. Then he came over and hunkered down next to the pretty girl for a smoke. He looked like Mescalito on the cover of the Oracle.

  The beauty spot on a lucky part of his face, near his mouth, meant that he will always have enough to eat; if the spot were at the center of his lip, he’d have more, but he didn’t want more.

  “Lose?” asked Wittman, the concerned son.

  “One game.”

  “That’s what you get for playing with Uncle Bingie.” Gordon (Bingie) Young Ah Doc was pit boss at the Emeryville gambling.

  “Win the next. Straighten your collar. Bums wear collar up.” Wittman flattened his collar. Humor the old fart, who’s going to die before me. “Don’t wear striped shirts, I tell you. Make you look like one prisoner. Excon. Bum-how.” Enough already.

  “I’m not wearing a striped shirt.”

  His father patted the collar. “Keep your collar down.”

  “It’s nice here, Ba. Rent free.”

  “No. A farmer owns this land. Every piece of land belongs to somebody. You know that? The river is owned. You hear of Eminent Domain? When we got rid of King George, we should have got rid of Eminent Domain. When I die, don’t pay the death tax.”

  “I won’t. You aren’t gonna die, Ba.” Wittman could return affection as good as the next guy.

  “Farmers have guns. If the farmer finds me, I have to pay rent.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I’ll change my parking space. Yeah, I want to stay here for the rest of my life. I’m too old to live in mines. What you been up to? You okay? Not spending too much?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “You like tea?” His father had brought out a tea tray. Very courteous of him, giving humble respect. Taña probably thinks it’s like getting coffee.

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  The teapot had been steeping in the sun. Pop poured everyone’s, removed the lid, put one of the teabags on the spoon, looped the string around spoon and bag, and pulled, squeezing dark tea into his cup. A Depression trick no doubt, cheap Chang.

  Taña fished up another bag, looped, squeezed. Dark tea pissed out. “The last drop,” she said. Yes, Taña, he’s living fully. A really Chang guy would’ve made one bag do for the entire tea party. Wittman dunked his bag a couple of times, and put it sloppy wet on the tray, Diamond Jim.

  “Is this Indian tea?” asked Taña.

  “Do you think I look Injun?” asked Zeppelin, who was wearing his turquoise belt buckle. “Some say I look Italian.” He was proud to be taken for whatever, especially by one of their own kind, Mexican, Filipino. His favorite, he’d been asked by a Basque once near Gardenerville, “You Basque?” “I’m pure Chinese,” he told Taña. “A pure Chinese can look Injun, Basqu
e, Mexican, Italian, Gypsy, Pilipino.” Wittman thought of Pop whenever he heard, “Some say he’s black, but I know he’s bonny.”

  “Teabags aren’t a Chinese custom,” said Zeppelin. “I tell you a tea custom before communists. There once was a kind of teacup with a lid. A poor man would catch a sparrow, and bring it to a teahouse. Waiting for the waiter, he put the bird inside the empty cup. The waiter opens up the lid to pour, and the bird flies out. Then the poor man says, ‘Look what you’ve done. That was my valuable pet bird. You let it fly away. You have to pay me for my bird.’ The waiter says it was a common sparrow. The poor man says, ‘It was a rare almost-extinct species that flew away so fast, it looked like a sparrow to you. You owe me free tea, at least.’ That’s why we have the custom to lift the lid ourselves.

  “I’ve got a new one for you, Wittman. Next time you order a cup of tea, ask for lemon, and get the whole lemon. The other day in town, I tried it. First, I paid my bill, then I waited at the cash register. The waitress said, ‘Something else?’

  “I said, ‘Where’s my lemon?’

  “ ‘Pardon me?’ the waitress said, as if she didn’t understand my English.

  “ ‘You forget the rest of my lemon?’ I said.

  “ ‘What lemon?’

  “ ‘I ordered tea with lemon. You gave me a slice, in fact, one very thin slice. Where’s the rest of my lemon?’

  “ ‘It’s in the kitchen, I guess.’ Acting dumb blonde.

  “ ‘Are you going to get it for me?’ I was polite.

  “She got mad. ‘I should go and get the rest of the lemon? You want the whole lemon? We don’t sell whole lemons. You get a slice, and another customer gets another slice. That lemon’s not there anymore. It’s been sliced up, and used already.’

  “I said, ‘Don’t bully me, young woman. Your menu says, “Tea with lemon.” ’ I showed the menu to her and to everybody. ‘What does it say? Can you read? It does not say part of a lemon. If you mean part of a lemon, you write part of a lemon on your menu. You are selling my lemon to other customers. I don’t care which lemon you give me, I just want a lemon, one slice out okay.’

  “ ‘She said, ‘One lemon has to go around for ten or twelve customers.’

  “ ‘You feed a dozen customers at my expensive.’

  “She went in back, and got the manager. I had to explain it over again. ‘Does the menu say tea with slice of lemon? No. It says tea with lemon. I paid fifteen cents for my tea and lemon. All I ask is the rest of my lemon. In the market, lemons are fifteen cents for two. Here I should get one lemon for that dear price.’ Everybody in the diner was listening. I teach them a lesson.

  “The manager said, ‘You get a slice. Everybody gets a slice.’

  “I repeated many times, ‘I want the whole lemon. I paid for the whole lemon. I’ll leave when you give me my lemon. I have a right to it.’

  “He ordered the waitress to go get it, and gave me about three-fourths of a lemon, not eleven-twelfths, a compromise but all right. Lemonade for a week. You ought to try it. That’s the lemon you’re using right now. You understand, it’s not just the lemon but the principle of the thing.”

  What principle of what thing? When you live in the wilds too long, and go to town, you have to boss waitresses around? Waitresses and clerks are not for giving a bad time to.

  “I saw Ma,” said Wittman.

  “She okay?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see PoPo, though. Where is she?”

  “Most likely she is not your grandmama.”

  “Don’t matter. Where is she?”

  “Ee, chotto,” he said in her language.

  “Tell me what you did with her.”

  “I drove her to Reno.” He was trying to sound like a good guy who took her on a vacation.

  “Where is she now?”

  “Maybe Reno still.”

  “What do you mean maybe?”

  “You know your popo, she likes her gambling. She likes her gambling too much.”

  “You left her there?”

  “I looked all over, she didn’t show up. I waited, she didn’t show up. It wasn’t my idea, go to Reno. Your popo said, ‘Let’s go on a drive and picnic.’ She likes that place where you can first see the Lake from the top of the mountains. We get up there—no snow, good weather for one last picnic—and she says, ‘I brought my savings. Let’s go gamble.’ And your ma says, ‘Look out. She’s tricking us to gamble.’ I say, ‘You women argue, I dump you at Donner Pass.’ Your ma, you know your ma, says, ‘How you afford to gamble, PoPo, and not pay rent? How much money did you bring?’ ‘All,’ says PoPo. ‘I bring every savings I got. I an old lady can spend all.’ I had to be good to her. Her last gambling trip. I drove her down to Reno.”

  “And dumped her there?”

  “I tell you, not dump.”

  “Dumped.”

  “I like my blackjack. Your ma likes her odd-even red-black roulette wheel. Your popo likes her machines. She said, ‘Amscray.’ We split up. When we get back to the truck, she’s not there and she’s not there. Then we figure, she showed up from nowhere one day long ago, she goes away now. She lived okay by herself before she found us. Everybody has to learn to take care of herself. PoPo is self-reliant. And she has advantages—waterproof matches, fatwood kindling, Army surplus kit. Nevada one rich state from the gambling industry. Good libraries. Good services for the old folks.”

  “Didn’t you look for her?”

  “We waited.”

  “I’m going to look for her, Ba.”

  “Up to you. What you say her name is?” Pointing a thumb at his unbeknownst daughter-in-law.

  “Taña.”

  “Taña, nice car you have. Please, may I borrow it?”

  “Where are you going? Are you going to get your mother?”

  “I’m not going. I want to jump-start Bingie’s little V.W. Then he can drive to the junkyard, and find me a battery for the truck.”

  “Okay,” said Taña. She backed her car up to the V.W.’s free side. Zeppelin disconnected the jumper cables from the pick-up. He crawled into the bug’s backseat to adjust the clamps and arrange the cables out the other door. Then he will open up Taña’s rear lid, and clamp her anode and her cathode. If there was one thing that bored Wittman to death it was hanging around while people worked on their cars. He had a block against memorizing what was carburetor, what was motor, where the oil went, what wire to stick where for a hot-wire job, though he had spent years saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” while handing pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers to friends. He had hoped that those adolescent days were over. He went for a walk along the river, left the mechanics signaling at one another from behind their wheels. He heard the car almost start, die, almost start.

  One Christmas day in a big city where it snowed, maybe New York or Chicago, he and his father were walking through a train station. A man in a ragged coat moved away from the pole he was leaning against. His hand came out of a pocket, and brought out a toy, a plastic horse. “Say thank you,” said Ba. “Say Merry Christmas.” The three of them shook hands Merry Christmas all around. Wittman held the toy horse, and watched the man walk out of the station. His father said, “He’s Santa Claus. That was Santa Claus.” Then they were in an elevator with an old man, who kept looking at Wittman. As all of them were getting off, the old man gave him a little green car with wheels that turned. His father said, “That’s another Santa Claus. He be Santa Claus too.” And out on the street, a lone man reached inside his coat, and gave him a stocking bag of candy. Many Santa Clauses. Santa Claus is a bum-how, and he does not have a sack full of toys. These men’s pockets were not bulgy with more presents for other boys and girls. They hadn’t had a family or a home; they had had enough money for one toy, and they’d gone out into the city to celebrate Christmas by choosing one boy to give the gift to. Because of his haircut and clothes or his Chinese face or his Chinese father, they chose him.

  Teen-age time, he stopped going places with his father out of shame. He ought t
o give him a thrill, and make the rounds with him one of these days. Appreciate a father who doesn’t dictate much, nor hit, drink, nor hang around having habits that use up all the room.

  Januaries, they had gone to American banks and stores to collect calendars of the solar year; Februaries, to Chinese banks and stores to collect calendars of the moon year. On the pages of time—Gwan Goong, god of gamblers, beautiful Hong Kong girls, faery girls who float among birds and bats and flowers, kids riding on deer. The world is full of free stuff. The three-hundred-and-sixty-five-page calendar. The food in back of supermarkets. His father hoisted him into the garbage bins, where he handed out cheese in plastic, cereal in boxes that the grocer had slit whilst opening the shipping carton, day-old bread, pies in tinfoil pans. Bread gets a week old at home anyway before you get to the end of the loaf, right? At the state legislature, probably of every state, you can get all the scratch paper you want—the bills that didn’t pass, and the ones that did pass and were acted on already, stapled together into legal-size notepads, print but on one side—moundfuls tossed into the basement. A day out with Pop was filled with presents. The world was a generous place.

  Another outing, he and Pop had gotten themselves invited to some kind of a club. In the men’s room, they filled their pockets with combs, razor blades, tiny tubes of toothpaste. It hadn’t been that fancy a club, no valet. Pop hadn’t lifted the silver shoehorn, but the two of them had taken off their shoes, and horned them back on. Wittman, playing rich man, had left a check for a trillion godzillion dollars.

  When he went to live in Berkeley, his father showed up, and took him to the back of India Imports. They recovered enough stuff to decorate his room, a madras bedspread with a stripe that hadn’t taken the dye. Pop got a poncho, and Wittman, a sweater from Brazil, a strand had unraveled. The singleton earrings he took for hanging in the window. Never buy a bed, you can always take in a mattress from off the street. Find it before it rains. His school desk was a card table, one of many he’s found by the curb. Must be gamblers throw them out if they get unlucky. Eat in cafeterias where the condiments are on the outside of the cash register. You buy a serving of rice or some bread, and then you load up with relish, onions, salad dressing, Worcestershire sauce, catsup. Never leave a restaurant without taking the packs of sugar and jam. (In that same Oracle wherein Mescalito looks like Zeppelin, Gary Snyder says for gleaners to come to the docks. The forklifts poke holes in sacks, and you can scoop fifteen or twenty-five pounds of rice once a week.) (Grocers padlock their bins now.)