The Vagrants

“But it's not warm enough for the hedgehog yet,” Tong said. He had read in a children's almanac, retrieved by Old Hua from a garbage can, that hedgehogs would not wake up from hibernation until the daytime temperature rose to 15 ° C. He told this to the young man and showed him the recordings in his nature journal. Snakes too would wake up around the same time, Tong said, though turtles would wait longer because it took longer for the river to warm up. The man shrugged and said he had no use for the information. “My home is definitely warmer,” he said. He put on his gloves and scooped up the arrowed ball.

“Why do you want to take him home?” The hedgehog looked dead in the young man's arms, though Tong knew better than to worry.

“Because I need a pet. You have a dog named Ear, don't you?”

“Have you seen him today? I'm looking for him,” Tong said.

Bashi looked at Tong with a strange smile. He wondered how fast the boy who had killed Ear walked. By now he must be past the city boundary. “He may be running somewhere with his girlfriend now,” said Bashi.

“He doesn't have a girlfriend,” Tong said.

“How do you know?” Bashi said with a grin that made Tong uneasy. Tong decided not to talk to the man. He turned to walk away but Bashi caught up with him, holding the hedgehog in the cup of his two hands. “I'm teaching you a lesson. Sometimes you think your dog is your best friend but you may be wrong. For instance, all of a sudden he may decide to go home with someone else.”

“He won't,” Tong said, a little angry.

“How do you know?”

“Of course I know. He's my dog.”

Bashi said nothing and whistled. After a while, Tong said, “Why are you following me?”

“You're going back to town, and I am too. So how come it is not you who's following me?”

Tong stopped, and the man did too. Tong turned and walked back toward the river and Bashi turned, walking side by side with the boy.

“Now you're following me,” Tong said.

“It just so happened that I changed my mind and decided to go in that direction too,” Bashi said, and winked.

Tong flushed with anger. What a shameless grown-up; even a five-year-old would know more of the rules of the world. “I don't want to walk with you,” Tong said. “Stop following me.”

“I want to walk with you,” said Bashi, affecting a child's voice. “There's no law that says I can't walk with you.”

“But you don't follow people if they tell you they don't want to play with you,” Tong said with exasperation.

“Whose rule is that? You don't own this road, do you? So I can put my feet wherever I want on this road, no? If I like, I can follow you anywhere, as long as I don't go into your house.”

Tong was in tears, speechless. He had never met a person like the man in front of him, and he didn't know how to reason with him. Bashi looked at Tong's tears with great interest and then smiled. “Okay, now I don't want to play with you anymore,” he said, still in a little boy's voice. He walked away, throwing the hedgehog up like a ball and catching it with gloved hands. A few times he missed and the hedgehog rolled onto the road, which made him laugh.

Ear didn't return by dinnertime. When Tong mentioned this absence to his parents, his father, who slumped in the only armchair and looked at the wall, where there was nothing to see, said dully, “He'll come home when he will.”

It was useless to talk with his father about anything before dinner—for him, it was the most important meal and nothing, not even a falling sky, could disturb him while he waited for it. Tong's mother glanced at him with sympathy but said nothing. She put dinner on the table and brought out a bottle of rice liquor. Tong took the bottle from her and poured some of the liquor into a porcelain cup. When his father was drunk and asleep, he would beg his mother for help.

Tong carried the cup with both hands to his father. “Dinner is ready, Baba.”

Tong's father accepted the cup and tapped on Tong's head with his knuckles. It hurt but Tong tried not to let it show. “It's better raising a boy than a dog,” his father said, his way of showing his approval of Tong. He moved to the table and downed the cup. “Now pour me another one, Son.”

Tong did and his father asked him if he wanted to try some. His mother intervened halfheartedly, but his father wouldn't listen. “Try once,” he urged Tong. “You're old enough. When I was your age, I smoked and drank with my father every night,” he said, and he struck the table with his fist. “My father—your grandfather—wasn't he a real man? I tell you, Son, don't ever do anything less than he did.”