Typical American Read Online Free Page A

though. The man swaggers in, belches, spits. Ralph's father goes on grinding his ink. Now the glint — a cleaver. Ralph's father quotes from the classics. The Communist is breaking Ralph's father's neck.
    But that wasn't what has happened, that couldn't be.
    This is what Ralph would have liked to think about instead: a chicken cooked and cooling. The servants stalking mosquitoes at twilight, crafty, pouncing on the window screens. As a result of their efforts, the screens bulge toward the courtyard. Ralph's father is always telling them not to hit so hard, all they need to do is press a bit. He demonstrates, elegant. Mosquitoes prove indeed delicate, easily overcome. Still the servants swat gustily. Thwack! Another down! It's as much power as they'll ever enjoy.

    Outside, the cicadas whirr. Summer. The paddy fields have turned a feathery yellow. The lotus pads lift themselves huge out of the lake, plates for the gods.
    What Ralph did think, though — that was many other things. And especially, strangely, this: he shouldn't have taken that watch from his mother when he boarded the boat in Shanghai.
    Your father would like to give ...
    Or did he steal it? He remembered that he didn't, but still wondered, somehow, just as he sometimes wondered if there weren't something inside it, if that ticking weren't some secret life she was passing him, some essential heartbeat, without which the rest of the family was wasting away, bloodless. He's stopped wearing the watch, thinking of them. They are ancient paper lanterns, translucent, unlit, strung across the courtyard, too fragile to move — though when he sees Ralph, his father, still a brave man, tries to speak.
    We are alive. His voice is faraway, a sound heard through a wall; yet the corners of his mouth crease and tear with effort. Pained, he blinks. His eyelids crackle like candy wrappers. We are dead.
    Ralph launched his slipper across the room.
    More knocking, knocking.
    Knocking. And the next thing Ralph knew, he was having visa trouble.
    "Forgot?" said his friends. "Forgot the immigration office? Forgot to renew your visa?" They shook their heads, mystified.
    How to explain it? Something about not wearing a watch, he ventured. And he hadn't been sleeping right.
    But the only one who accepted his answer was Little Lou, who was like that, an absorber. As for the spouters, if they had a chief, it was Old Chao. "You should go to bed the same time every night." He knit his smooth brow. "Get up the same time the next day."
    Sound advice for a formless time. Ralph, though, hung in his

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    own time, in the many times he'd wanted more than anything to destroy his father's world. What son doesn't? But he wasn't supposed to succeed, that was the thing.
    As mysteriously as he'd let his visa lapse, he found he could do nothing about it.
    "Better go see the foreign student advisor," said Old Chao. "Better bring Fitt some candy."
    As if a friend of Cammy's could risk going to Mr. Fitt with an expired visa! Rumor had it that Mr. Fitt had tipped someone off about Cammy's raises, and that as a result the dean had been forced to take a leave of absence. The chair of the Engineering Department was taking his place for now, some said. Others said he was taking it forever. Ralph imagined Mr. Fitt on the phone again. He imagined the deportation team arriving instantly, with snarling dogs, and ropes.
    Xiang banfa. An essential Chinese idea — he had to think of a way. In a world full of obstacles, a person needed to know how to go around. What banfa did he have, though? All he could think of was how many stories he knew about people smarter than he was. The advisor in Three Kingdoms, for instance, who, needing arrows, floated barges of hay down an enemy-held river. It's night; the enemy shoots and shoots; downstream at dawn, he plucks from the hay arrows to last weeks. Now there was a Chinese man! Another story: the emperor despairs of finding a horse able to run a thousand li. Until his