Henry Chang - Year of the Dog

He forgot which was which. The pills had him in a daze.

The red ones with the white stripe, every third day.

The blue ones, one a day?

The yellow tablets, the purple capsules. .

Leukocidin .

Words that were meaningless to him, like small black bugs flitting across the square of prescription notepaper from the clinic. New sounds that rattled in his ears, alien noises.

Gum Sook, the herbalist, told him to stop smoking, and to brew up some tea of Job’s tears and brown sugar. No lizard or bladder or powder of horn or dried bull penis.

Chemotherapy.

Radiation.

More dancing bugs. He’d lose his hair and be sick a lot.

Chat Choy, the head chef at Tang’s Dynasty, advised him to boil three cloves of garlic, eat them with soy sauce. Longshot Lee, senior waiter at the Garden Palace, said with quiet confidence, “Fry three cloves of garlic in olive oil, add black pepper, ginger, and salt with shiitake mushrooms. Twice a day. Two months.”

Fifty-nine’s too young to die nowadays.

Four months left was not enough time.

Forget all this, he concluded in his exhaustion. We all die sooner or later .

I’m not taking any more gwailo pills. It was more painful trying to stay alive than to accept dying. His thoughts began to scatter far and wide, somewhere between being high and falling down dizzy. It was all unraveling now. He felt it in his cancer blood, paying for his sins, his life in free fall, spiraling down helpless and hopeless.

He coughed quietly and swallowed, already tasting the blood in his throat. Flicking off the light, he let his eyes adjust and left the bathroom.

The living room was dark, but he turned on the television set and let its light fill the room. He thumbed down the volume and rewound the videotape player to the second race at Happy Valley. On the shelves next to the cable box he’d set up his own little wire room operation, where he charged up his cell phones, kept his pads of soluble paper, and reviewed the odds at different overseas race tracks.

In the glare of electronic light the twenty-year-old living-room set exposed a beat-down convertible sofa bed, matching wood-veneer end tables, and a desk that served as a dining table.

He sat down on the sofa and started the videotape. A sunny day in Hong Kong, but he could see it was a sloppy track. They’d probably had rain in the morning.

The riders, with their colorful silk outfits calmed their mounts as they loaded into the gates. He followed the horses: Gung Ho Warrior, Buddha’s Baby, Fool Manchu, Happy Dragon, Sword of Doom, Baby Bok Choy, Noble Emperor, Ming Sing, Chu Chu Chang. Double Happiness, and Secret Asian Man, and Geisha’s Gold. A crowded field of twelve.

Suddenly, they were off, breaking from the gates. With the volume off, Sai Go was calling the race in his head, seeing the fix with wicked clarity.

At the break, it’s Geisha’s Gold along the rail, with Noble Emperor challenging for the lead, followed by Buddha’s Baby. Fool Manchu and Baby Bok Choy a length back for third. A gap of two, it’s Double Happiness, Ming Sing outside him, and Chu Chu Chang, settling in toward the rail, with Secret Asian Man and Happy Dragon chasing them. Gung Ho Warrior drops back, with Sword of Doom bringing up the rear as they pound into the first turn.

It’s Geisha’s Gold and Noble Emperor chased by Fool Manchu a length back, then a close-packed crowd of Buddha’s Baby and Chu Chu Chang in front of Baby Bok Choy, Ming Sing, and Secret Asian Man. Happy Dragon boxed to the rail by Gung Ho Warrior and Double Happiness. In last, Sword of Doom is stalking them all.

Down the backstretch it’s still Geisha’s Gold and Noble Emperor. Behind them the others are scrambling for position, dropping in, and saving ground, barreling out or breaking sharply, all driving to catch the leader. The pace quickens; Ming Sing is in ninth position. A half mile to go.

Secret Asian Man dances around the outside and takes the lead. Ming Sing is boxed in along the rail in eighth place. The field is bumping and pushing the leaders.

They come to the clubhouse turn.

It’s still Secret Asian Man, with Buddha’s Baby, and Chu Chu Chang ready to pounce. Ming Sing is in seventh.

They’re three-wide off the turn. Double Happiness, Chu Chu Chang, and Buddha’s Baby. Ming Sing is sixth, the rest of the field digging for the leaders.

At the top of the stretch, the jockeys are waving their whips.

The leaders spread apart a gap. Ming Sing dodges out and follows Double Happiness down the middle of the track. Sword of Doom, fighting through horses, chases them. Buddha’s Baby loses ground, and Chu Chu Chang blocks off the rest of the field.

A mad dash the last three lengths and at the wire it’s Ming Sing by a neck, then Double Happiness, and Sword of Doom. Buddha’s Baby finishes fourth.

Sai Go pumped his fist and cheered quietly. The race, which took merely a minute to run, had been a thing of beauty. He waited for the posting of the payout, thinking that his exotic bets, via his man at Happy Valley, were going to bring in more than ten grand. He had taken Lucky’s pick, Ming Sing, and boxed the bet with other longshots into double and treble wagers. The exotic bets available in Hong Kong made the same type of action in the states seem like standard play; pay-outs in the Fragrant Harbor were astronomically higher.

He downed a shot of Chivas and sat on the sofa as he waited.

The numbers came up on the screen.

The dailo Lucky had won more than six thousand, but Sai Go’s own exotic bets had won him over eleven thousand. Minus the dailo ’s money, his take was over five thousand, all from working a hot fix.

The money would be wired into his U.S. Asia bank account the next day, minus his Happy Valley cohort’s commission and the transaction fee.

Sai Go rubbed his eyes and turned off the set, plunging the room into blackness. What to do? he wondered. How to enjoy the jackpot? when the irony of it all came back upon him.

What was he thinking? With four months to live, he was getting excited about taking five thousand out of Happy Valley? Should have made a list, he thought, of all the Chinaman things to do before cashing in.

Go to Bangkok, drink, and fuck himself to death.

Go see all the places he’d never been.

Go home to Hong Kong and China to say good-bye to the few elderly relatives who were still on speaking terms with him.

Now, closer to the end of the line, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take his death on the road. He considered making his last stand in Chinatown, hunkered down in his rent-controlled one-bedroom walk-up.

He had about twenty-eight thousand in the bank, and a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy from Nationwide that still listed his ex-wife as beneficiary. That was it. No wife, no kids, no family. Parents long since passed. His sister and cousins, all estranged. World without end, amen.

He knew he needed to take his money off the street, call in all debts. He could explain, if necessary, that he was starting a bigger operation, and required a larger financial investment. Once he recouped everything, he told himself, he’d still have time left to do whatever it was that one does at the end of one’s life.

He thought about getting a haircut, a massage, a Chinese newspaper, but quickly fell asleep on the sofa, in the darkness unsure of where the rest of his life would lead after that.

In the rush-hour morning, Jack caught the M103 bus running, almost at St. Mark’s. The city bus brought him quickly down to Chinatown. He hopped off near Bayard and went west to Mott Street, past the old tenement where he’d grown up, where Pa had finally died.