This Old Man by Lois Ruby Read Free Book Online Page B

stony silence. Wing’s dejection was as thick as my own. He opened the door for me, and we were out on Jackson Street. We climbed the steep gray hill, and the muscles in my calves knotted and bulged like a ballet dancer’s.
    â€œIn other words—” I broke the icy silence, and Wing moved a little closer to me. There were people everywhere on the street. “In other words, he’s mad at you because I’m who I am?”
    â€œSomething like that,” Wing said miserably.
    â€œHasn’t anybody told him he’s living in America? I mean, this is the United States of America. Most people aren’t Chinese here.”
    â€œHe lives where he lives.”
    â€œHe’s in another world,” I roared.
    â€œCompletely. I’m sorry, it’s his way,” Wing said again.
    Then I did explode, all over Jackson Street. “His way? His way? How many times have you told me that? What about my way? You’re a turtle, Wing, you know that? You crawl toward him and let him beat you with a stick, and you pull your head back into your shell, and you keep going back for more. Well, I don’t need that from him, and I don’t need a turtle for a friend, either.”
    People were staring at us, I knew. Two little girls sat on the marble steps of an apartment building rolling their hands and singing some song in Chinese that sounded familiar, but I was too upset to pin it down. A small boy stuck his thumb in his mouth and grabbed his mother’s leg. He could have been Wing, ten years ago.
    â€œI’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wing murmured, bobbing his head.
    It was only later when I thought of this scene, thought of a stick prodding Wing and making him retreat, thought of his small dark eyes, and his head nodding helplessly, that I realized I’d made him look like a turtle, as if I’d completed Old Man’s job.
    I was too mad to go to the hospital Thursday. I went and sat by the Broadway Tunnel instead, and walked all the way back to Anza House, too late for dinner.
    The phone at the house rang all the time, but on those rare occasions when it was for me, I’d hear a different ring to it, and think of Hackey: finally he’s found me. When I heard it this time, my first thought was to run, catch a Greyhound to New York. But it was Wing.
    He said, “You didn’t come today.”
    â€œNo.” My heart was racing. I was so glad it wasn’t Hackey, but not sure what to say to Wing.
    â€œI want to talk to you.”
    â€œTalk.”
    â€œI want to tell you some things about Old Man.”
    Old Man and Hackey Barnes, two men in my life. What a twosome. In fact, what a life. “I don’t want to hear about him.”
    â€œPlease come,” Wing said.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œTo my house.” He gave me an address on Washington Street. I said I wouldn’t go, and as soon as I hung up the phone I checked my overalls for bus fare, grabbed my sweat shirt, and left for Chinatown.
    Since I wasn’t there with Wing, I was looking at things with a different, rounder, Western eye. In the window of the Bonvivant Shop on Stockton Street, twenty-two dried ducks hung by their feet. Their brown leather bodies intrigued me. Their heads were still intact, with holes where their eyes once had been. One of the ducks had slits, not holes, as though he’d been asleep when his eyes were plucked.
    A gray-bearded man, wearing a beret and gold socks and sandals, smiled as he shuffled past me, his eyes disappearing into slits like the duck’s. They were old eyes, tired but merry.
    I found Wing’s building. His door, made of murky glass, was next to the door of a Dr. Marcus Lee, whose sign said he was a world-acclaimed acupuncturist, trained in China.
    Wing’s apartment was up three dark flights of stairs. He waited for me at the top. He had a key on a string, under his shirt, and he pulled it out, bending low to the lock. He pushed the