I wonder what my father would think if, standing at the entrance of a 7-Eleven at that far, far-away place, he happened to catch sight of that picture of me made up of tiny black dots? He’d probably think: Damn! My son has run off just like me! Or maybe he’d think: Damn! How did Big Head’s head get so damn big? It’s big enough to scare the shit out of somebody! Or perhaps after he read through my mother’s emotional essay, he’d nod his head—just like each time my mom showed him a new product slogan he’d nod his head and ask, “Okay, so what should we order tonight for dinner?” Or then again, maybe my father wouldn’t even notice the poster hanging on the large glass window at the entrance of that 7-Eleven, he’d just stroll in and say to the girl inside, “One pack of Sevens.”
By now my big head was taped to the storefront window of every 7-Eleven in Taiwan; this was really a bit irritating. Especially when we stood across the street or were sitting in the car waiting for the light to change—all over the place you could see that big head of mine. Annie said, “So how does it feel? Not bad to be a celebrity, huh?” Little Horse said, “When you look at it up close you can barely tell it’s him.” Apricot said, “If you blow up anybody’s picture that big, they end up looking like a movie star.” Little Xinjiang’s reaction was to steal a poster and give it to me as a present. Old Bull didn’t say a word—that day he was running around in circles like a stray dog, turning everything upside down. Each time he bumped into somebody he would ask, “Did you see that big bag of tea leaves that Hoop brought over?” He even used a hand gesture to show us just how big it was; it was indeed one big tea bag.
Actually the one looking for that package of tea leaves was Uncle Xu. Uncle Xu said that Hoop wasn’t the kind of person who would think of buying tea leaves for anybody, let alone a package as large as half a bag of cement. After that Uncle Xu told us, “It might be ‘Presidential Tea.’”
Those who have never made it out in the streets will have no idea what the hell “Presidential Tea” is. Back in the days when we were living in hotels, our country elected a president. Everybody was really happy about this, as was the president.* So in order to reward the people, the president said: “Everybody’s been through a lot, please have some tea, please have some tea.” And so some of the more important celebrities all over Taiwan received a gift of Presidential Tea. Moreover, recently the word on the street was that Horsefly had over five hundred kilos of this Presidential Tea. That’s even more than Big Brother Luo** of the infamous gang the Heavenly Alliance received. Even though Big Brother Luo had a seat on the Legislative Yuan, he only got two hundred and fifty kilos! And because receiving Presidential Tea was so glorious, everyone on the street was keeping their eyes open to see who’d get their hands on a couple of kilos. Those with relatively more kilos of Presidential Tea could pretty much pass as “celebrities.”
But Uncle Xu said that if Horsefly really gave us Presidential Tea then something serious was going down. That’s because it was Hoop who brought the tea and not Apricot. A gift like that may look like a great face-saving gesture, but if, instead of coming from the regular “window,” it came from someone you perhaps no longer trusted, it wasn’t a gift at all—it was a warning. It was like saying, “I fucked you behind your back and you found out. But I’m not afraid of you finding out, in fact I’m the one who let you find out in the first place. Moreover, I want to let you know that I’m going to continue to fuck you.”
There was a downpour that night. Old Bull combed the junkyard with a flashlight in the pouring rain, saying that he wasn’t going to sleep until he found that bag of tea. Ahzhi spent the night out circling the big streets and small alleys; every few minutes he’d phone us and ask, “Apricot back yet?” Apricot had already been missing for two days. Ahzhi said that even if she was dead they should have found her by then. Little Horse was sitting in the driver’s seat of the tour bus playing with a red paper plane. As soon as the plane left his hand it smashed into the windshield, its nose completely flattening. None of us bothered giving Little Horse any bullshit—that paper airplane was made from the official letter that came stating he was to begin his term of obligatory military service.
I don’t know what row of the bus Uncle Xu was slumped over in, but after a while I heard him heave a deep sigh. As soon as he sighed, I felt embarrassed to continue crunch, crunch munching away on that package of dried snack peas.
“Annie! Do you know what?” I have no idea when Uncle Xu began to suddenly speak—from the compartment where we were sitting, it appeared as if those rows of deserted seats were speaking. Immediately after that Uncle Xu’s head popped up from behind one of the seats to gaze at us. Uncle Xu said, “Right now there’s no place on the streets for us; there’s only room out there for those damn ‘celebrities.’”
Annie didn’t say a word.
“If only Golden Nine had iced Horsefly with those two bullets…”
“Who knows, supposing he had, then it might have been Golden Nine sending you tea instead of Horsefly.” As Annie spoke she turned to the window, which reflected the image of her face. Rainwater brushed down by the bucketful over the mirror image in the window.
I quickly stuffed a couple dried snack peas into my mouth and asked Annie, “Who is Golden Nine?”
“He’s the gang leader who locked me up in that rooftop jail!”
That was the last major face-to face duel in the streets. Uncle Xu said that Golden Nine aimed at Horsefly’s stomach and fired two shots. As soon as Horsefly took the first shot he sprang to his feet with a forward somersault and said, “Fuck! Is that all you got?” But before Horsefly even finished his sentence, the second shot fired, also right into his stomach. Once again, Horsefly sprang to his feet with a forward somersault: “Fuck! You got any more?” Golden Nine’s hand went limp and the gun fell to the ground. After that Golden Nine took nine consecutive shots to the chest.
“Bullshit!” I laughed aloud, my hand loosened up, and the dried snack peas fell all over the floor. “Where’d you get a story like this? It’s just too ridiculous!” However, right at that moment that image truly appeared right before my eyes: one gang boss aiming at another boss’s stomach and firing two shots. The stomach of the gang boss who got hit shrank inward and then he sprang to his feet, doing two somersaults in midair.
Uncle Xu had long slipped back into his seat. And the sound of laughter combined with the sighing from before came to me from the rows of seemingly deserted seats. “Don’t you like listening to stories about gang leaders? This is what the life of a gang boss is all about!”
“Since when has anyone heard of such a ludicrous final showdown as that? I don’t believe a word of it!” But I still asked, “So what happened next?”
“After that Horsefly became the only big boss left on the streets.” It was as if those rows of empty seats continued the conversation:
Horsefly has got two right-hand men who are always by his side; their names are Little Five and Ah Dibo. Little Five can break a beer bottle with a pocketknife, so whenever he orders beer somewhere, he never needs a bottle opener. Ah Dibo is the king when it comes to street racing; what he loves most is going out on the highway in his stolen RZR looking for cops to go head on with. But ever since Horsefly became the main boss in the streets, Little Five and Ah Dibo rarely leave his side. Once in a while—but only on extremely rare occasions, when Horsefly wants to collect his money or wants to buy a pack of cigarettes, a box of betel nuts, or a bowl of Prince Instant Noodles, does he send for a helicopter to take Little Five and Ah Dibo on these miscellaneous errands. But even when the two of them aren’t by Horsefly’s side, they still leave their large, looming shadows with Horsefly—Little Five’s shadow is on Horsefly’s right, Ah Dibo’s is on his left. If anyone isn’t careful and steps on one of their shadows, there’s nothing that’s going to stop that poor soul from taking a ride up shit creek.…
It was then that the sound of Old Bull screaming crossed the darkness of night, the pouring rain, the glass window, and the story of the gang boss to reach our ears. That was one extremely, extremely terrified scream.
As we jumped down from the tour bus we saw Old Bull standing at the tail end of the bus; his face looked like a fluorescent light bulb. He just said two words—“A ghost!”—before he toppled over flat like a bowling pin.
Only after Old Bull fell over did I notice that about ten meters away, standing in front of the sheet-iron bathroom door, was a pair of shadows. One was tall while the other was quite short; the taller one yelled out, “Ghost your mother’s ass!—Hurry up and help me!” We recognized the voice—it was Little Xinjiang.
The shorter one was wearing a white hat. By the time I got closer, that hat was already soaked and had fallen to the ground—it was made of paper.
