On a China country bus

By will dewees

Twentyfive years ago in China, if you and I wanted to go to the end of the line, where people still looked up from their work in the fields when a bus went by, to villages where we’d see kids rush from their play to salute, for some reason, really stand at attention and salute, as we passed even though they didn’t know we were sitting at the window watching them, to crossroads that were out of the way to everyone except the ones who lived there, face it. We had to take a country bus.
Here are 45 flash fiction stories that tell you what it was like.

• Language: English
• Publisher: will dewees
• Release date: May 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476114477

Book preview

****~~~~****

Twentyfive years ago in China, if you and I wanted to go to the end of the line, where people still looked up from their work in the fields when a bus went by, to villages where we’d see kids rush from their play to salute, for some reason, really stand at attention and salute, as we passed even though they didn’t know we were sitting at the window watching them, to crossroads that were out of the way to everyone except the ones who lived there, face it. We had to take a country bus.

Here are 45 flash fiction stories that tell you what it was like.

****~~~~****

On a China country bus

by

Will Dewees

****~~~~****

****~~~~****

On a China country bus

by Will Dewees

Copyright 2012 Will Dewees

[e-mail]

Athens OH 45701

****~~~~****

First Epub 6/12

****~~~~****

Smashwords edition, license Notes

This ebook is licensed for just your own personal enjoyment. It’s not good, not even legal, to resell it or even just give it away to other people. Imagine how many sales I’d lose if you shared it somewhere. To be fair to me, be sure to get someone else who wants to read this to buy it. If you’re reading what someone else bought, it’s better to pay for your own copy from Smashwords.com. That way you reward me for writing the book. That’s the ethical way, right? The way you’d like it to work if you were writing.

****~~~~****

It's not where you sit. It's what you see.

Zhang Bin Jiao

****~~~~****

Contents

Prologue

Hick

Fried rice

In no time

Dog quake

Three little pigs

Bees

Here’s to twang

Steamed buns

Bus dreaming

Paper faces

A penny

Pirates

New man

I’m Japanese

Lion

Cirque de Chine

The dreaded wo pu che

Arhat

Police protection

The stream

Ti Guan Yin

How she knew

Jump

Striking gold

(om ma ni pad me hom)∞

Rocky road

Smoke

Static

Juezi

White energy

Abstract

The chick paw king

The dumb fountain

Nicotine

Shangaralila

Swan

If it hadn’t

Is that a duck between his legs?

Chop Socky

The beating

Wang’s jade

The square

Waiting room

****~~~~****

Prologue

Fifteen years ago in China, if you and I wanted to go to the end of the line, where there weren’t many Chinese tourists let alone people looking like us, where nobody minded if we gawked through the gate of a family's courtyard or cared whether we pulled a pucker when we tasted the butter tea, face it. We had to take a country bus. It could carry us to places where people still looked up from their work in the fields when a bus went by. Villages where we’d see kids rush from their play to salute, for some reason, really stand at attention and salute, as we passed even though they didn’t know we were sitting at the window watching them. To crossroads that were out of the way to everyone except the ones who lived there. Unless we wanted to walk for days, we passed through those little quantum universes on a country bus.

Oh, some spots were even more remote, cart lanes there or horse trails or foot paths, but that was too much adventure for me most of the time. I usually got you to stick to the bus routes.

A Chinese country bus was a very special and specific vehicle back then. It’s about 25 feet long and almost 2/3 that high when the roof rack’s fully loaded. Sky blue completely or on a stripe between the bottom of its beat up body panels up to about shoulder level. Everywhere else, various shades of white where the Bondo or the rust isn’t showing through.

On top, but under all the bundles and sacks roped up there, you can see a closed rectangular galvanized tank with a big spout sticking out. There’s a plastic hose leading down to the back brakes to drip cooling water on them during long down grades. When we travel in the mountains we pass places to fill up with water ten times as often as we see a gas station.

Let’s start by looking along the right side where there’s that sliding window next to the seat across from the driver. It’s usually tinted blue like all the bus’ windows, so that, when we look from the seats inside, the world has that washed out faded look of an old Mao jacket. All the yellows that make green and the reds that make amber are strained from the light so unless the window’s open, we travel in a monochrome world. And from the outside, everyone in the bus has a cadaverous hue. Sometimes the window has a latch that works. And about a half an hour after take off, there’s usually someone opening it to puke.

The folding entrance door is about a quarter of the way back from the front of the bus along that right side, after the passenger’s window. There’re narrow panes at the top of each of the two door panels with their raggedy rubber seals along the edges. Then three more sets of sliding windows to the back of the bus.

On our tour around, the tires look as if the treads have been cut into them with a box knife, Canton recaps, a Chinese friend calls them. And then we’re at the back.

That’s where the ladder is that lets the packers up onto the roof to lash on the bundles that won’t be needed until the final destination, as ominous as that term sounds. And there’s a tinted window all the way across, almost as big as the driver’s in the front. Keep picturing, sky blue at the bottom and dirty white at the top.

Walking on up the other side of the bus, we can see the four windows and in front of them an automobile style door at the driver’s seat where he can leap out quickly and safely just before his steed hurtles off the precipice and into the chasm. The windshield’s cracked. Part of the front bumper’s missing

So let’s get on, shang che, in Chinese, climb the bus. Three steps up to the deck and if we’re lucky a seat right there at the entrance door. Across the aisle from that seat’s not so bad either. As long as it’s not at the window, there’s leg room and the sight-line out the front's pretty good. That way we can see the water buffalo, or the rock slide or the hurtling truck, and, as time slips into low gear, watch the driver evade.

One reason we might not get that best seat right inside the door is that’s where the co-pilot sits for take off. In an aside from the physical description of a country bus, the staff are important parts of the experience. On short hauls, say a couple of hours, she’s usually a woman. Really tight slacks, low heels, a knit top with sequins, a frilly tie holding back a pony tail, pretty stylish. She’s clutching a purse and a half a brick sized block of wood with a bright red streamer attached.

She’s the one that hurried us to board if we bought our tickets at a booth, or abducted us off the street, elbowing out others who were trying to get us onto their busses going part way or all the way to our destination. Plying her with smiles and a little sweet talk, we usually are able to get her to move somebody or some bundle enough for us to sit in one of those better seats.

Take off isn’t usually take off. We’ll fly low around the city until the bus is full. She’ll lean out the window from that seat right at the door, wave the streamer, and pound the wooden block on the side of the bus trying to call attention. She's watching for people with bundles or arms up in the stop gesture. She even seems to be trying to talk stay-at-homes into taking a trip. Sometimes we’ll circle the town for an hour stopping every once in a while for her to jump off and grab somebody by the arm, dragging them toward the bus. Most escape.

When all the seats are finally full, and there’re people squatted in the aisle on the little six inch high stools she’s produced from nowhere, we’re off. She’ll count the passengers, shout at one or two just to assert her discipline and authority, grab the ticket money passed through a dozen hands from the back to stuff it into her purse, move forward over everything, including our stuff, heaped on the engine compartment to the seat across from the driver, and light him a cigarette.

More on that engine compartment in a minute, but we can’t help noticing the driver, the sifu. White gloves. He put them on like a gentleman when he started the bus, and now that we’re on the road, he caresses the wheel with them as if she's a lover. Maneuvering the streets out of town, steering’s done by stroking more than gripping. All this from a man who has the intensity of a whippet or a thoroughbred. Drivers always seem to be wound tight behind those aviator’s shades. One glance and we know this man’s the one we want to have at the controls as we cruise at 14000 feet over the pass between here and Litang.

The sifu will probably reveal the engine a couple of times before we get there. He may open up the engine cover that’s right there in the bus between him and the copilot to put water in the radiator. He may open it to replace the starter. A country bus seems to have a lot of loose and leaky parts. And every time the undoes the four clips holding it on, off have to come a sack of maize, the buckets of honey, some relaxed chickens, our packs, and the backwards facing person perched on top of all that steadying the open buckets.

Between times, we’ll hear the rumbles and coughing, the thumping and wheezing and whining as if someone’s been buried prematurely under that engine cover shaped like a coffin lid.

Along the way, people get off and more get on. Sometimes three sit on one of the 25 bent plywood seats built on pipe frames. Not much talking other than the copilot shouting to the sifu. It’s too noisy.

The road’s rough so the old bus rattles like a Chinese orchestra. The roof is a tambourine. Windows whistle like those high pitched reeds that so define the music. Percussion beats with axle drumsticks, while the door flaps like a clapper. Over all the clamor there’s the taped voice of a soprano chanteuse singing falsetto about something desperate. We look at each other, we gesture, we catch each other’s pack when it begins to fall off the coffin, but there’s not much talking.

We don’t want our packs to fall onto the floor and especially not down the steps at the entrance. A guy and then a woman and then another guy whops huge chartreuse-grey lungers there. Everybody close enough tosses in their cigarette butts, mostly still lit. Wrappers from food, ticket stubs. Someone is going to puke there and probably did on the last trip. It’s the overwhelmed sewage treatment plant for the bus. Drop something there and it’s gone though only partially digested.

This time we have tickets, flimsy onionskin sheets. We got ours in the dingy bus station just before we got on. Some of the passengers got theirs while we were circling the town. The people we picked up along the way, the ones just going a few dozen kilometers, they just hope we don’t get stopped by the highway police. But we’re OK. Our adventure is just beginning. Let’s see where this journey takes us.

return to table of contents

****~~~~****

Hick

He's alright. He tries. You really can't expect him to know any better, considering where he comes from. And he seems to want to learn. But that accent! He sounds like one of those Shandong hillbillies. He's understandable some of the time, but for lots of words, and almost always when he's tired or anxious, I can barely understand him, he thinks.

It's awkward for me when we eat together. He keeps mooing like a cow or om-ing as he smiles over our food to me. The way he chews, ugh!. And why does he eat so fastidiously. Food goes in. He closes his mouth with his lips and not a sound, not a smack. Just the mooing and smiling, she thinks.

He lingers over the meal after everyone else is done as if he doesn't know that dinner's over when the food is finished, he thinks.

When he walks, he puts his heel down first as if he's never carried a load on his shoulder pole. It's just not normal for a man to walk that way. Compared to the whole foot touching the ground at once, she thinks.

He hits me on the back with the flat of his hand. He elbows me in the side. He bumps me with his shoulder. He'll hug me, but he lets go of my hand quickly after he takes mine and shakes it. Even though we've known each other for ten years, he won't hold my arm or my hand when we stroll to the causeway to see the old men with their bird cages, he thinks.

He points to the middle of his chest when he's talking about himself. He can demonstrate one through five with his hands but no higher number. He can't squat, she thinks.

He drinks cold tea. He eats butter. When he talks about it, the time he tasted dog meat sounds as strange as I feel about cheese. I saw him eat a cockroach as big as a minnow. It was in some delicious looking, emerald