Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
Waaahlll-tuh. And the bus says ‘Golden Land Tour.’ I was walking
and fell, see? Boom!” He pointed to the ditch again, then to his shoul­
der and the red dirt smudged on his crisp white shirt. “And the bus, it
went: Vrrrooom!” He stood on one foot, as if hailing a taxi. Wait,
wait, stop, stop.” He placed his hand over his brow, watching the imag­
inary bus disappear into oblivion, leaving him in this terrible predica­
ment. He huffed and said, “Off they went. Bye-bye, shitheads.”
“Shithead?” the younger man said, and started to laugh. He mum­
bled something to his partner, and they guffawed like madmen.
Harry recognized his cue. Years of studying animal behavior came
into play. Observation. Analysis. Hypothesis: They recognized the
American expletive. Like all young men, they loved these words. Of
course they did. A love of cusswords was part of the chromosomal
makeup of the male brain, no matter what race. Now all Harry
needed to do was positively reinforce any glimmer of desired social
behavior stemming from that response, and keep it coming.
When the men stopped chortling, Harry nodded and pointed
down the highway. “Shitheads went that way. Me, here.” He shook
his head. “And they took off and left me here.” With you two dick­
heads, he added to himself.
Five minutes later, Harry was walking with the young policemen
to their command post, a small shack at the intersection of two
roads. Since passage beyond checkpoints stopped at six p.m., there
was no traffic to monitor. Once there, Harry had to rev himself up
again to do the expletive routine with the new audience, two senior
policemen. After much conviviality, Harry brought out a wad of bills
and asked if it was possible to hire a car.
“Taxi?” he asked, with feigned innocence, as if one could summon
a taxi in the middle of nowhere. “Taxi go zoom-zoom, down this
road.” “Taxi” was a word the men understood, as was Harry’s leav­
ing the booty on the table. They pointed to their police car outside.
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