Nine out of ten times, when people saw Chang Fu, he was in trouble, either arguing with some guy or chasing away children with a duster. "Ah Hoh, Ah Hoh," his young Taiwanese wife often was heard calling to him, half begging, half threatening. Ah Hoh was the name by which his wife addressed him. It often sounded like a reminder of his promise to her. There was a sound of tenderness in her soft twang. All his islander friends and the relatives on his wife's side called him "Ah Hoh." Some of his mainlander friends did, too.
Ah Hoh was rude and insolent even to patrons. When his wife was not around, customers would have to cry out, "Chang Fu (or Ah Hoh), please pay attention to your customers!" Reluctantly, the big man from Shantung would hoist his bulk from the rickety rattan recliner and fix his beady eyes on the customer as if confronting a kung fu champion. One day, a soldier blacked Ah Hoh's eye in response to a string of epithets. The soldier had only asked for a package of cigarettes.
Complaining, Ah Hoh told a friend, "Too bad I had to get married and tie myself down to this damned grocery. I'd rather pedal a pedicab."
"You're a rogue, Chang Fu," said his friend.
Another day, Wang Chung-chih, chief of the Chiu Tai District, chanced by the store to find Ah Hoh engaged in physical combat with a lady customer. She was clawing for his eyes, her sleeve torn, as Wang intervened. It took tugging and shouting to pry them apart.
"That bad guy," Wang told the neighbors. "If I had known he was such a brute, I would never have loaned him the hospital money when his youngest son was scalded."
But human relations involves subtle factors the Chief didn't quite grasp. The woman who might have scratched out Ah Hoh's eyes was soon back at Ah Hoh's shop, sitting on the bench outside, chuckling and chatting with young Mrs. Chang as though nothing had happened.
Chang had the only grocery in the developing neighborhood. Unpleasant and insulting he might be, but people didn't think it was worth the trouble to walk several blocks to buy a bottle of soy sauce or a cake of soap. Then, too, Ah Hoh did have one redeeming quality. He was no businessman. Haggling was unnecessary and any shrewd housewife could outwit him. What did he care for a few pennies?
"Five dollar and twenty cents for one small bottle of sesame oil? I haven't got the twenty cents," a housewife would say. Ah Hoh, daydreaming on his couch, hands locked behind his head, would free one arm, reach the bottle and bang it down on the counter without so much as a glance at his customer. "Give me the five and be on your way. I have no patience with gabby women." The woman would give him four dollars, remarking that she was subtracting a dollar for the bottle she returned.
Only after she was gone would Ah Hoh remember that the refund was fifty cents, not a dollar. Back from market, his wife would complain that he was giving away their livelihood.
"All right, all right," Ah Hoh would answer. "How much is fifty cents? Not enough for a candy bar." "You fool," his wife would snap. "You can't remember anything. I'll write these things down for you and paste the paper on the wall." Ah Hoh would scowl but his voice was gentle and his eyes were soft as they met the olive-shaped, thick-lashed eyes of the pretty wife who had borne him four sons. "What's the use," she would say. "You'd only forget to look."
Ah Hoh's wife didn't exaggerate. Yet sometimes to be unbusinesslike can be the best business. The store prospered. In two years the planks and boxes had given way to real shelving and a handsome counter. There was even an adding machine to replace the abacus.
It came as a shock, therefore, when Ah Hoh beat up an 11-year-old boy for stealing a package of chewing gum. "He wasn't in a good mood today," Ah Hoh's wife told Chief Wang.
"Gambled and lost maybe," the Chief conjectured.
"Oh, no, Chief, he never touches a mahjong tile. It's just that he's so homesick. Today's his Ma's birthday. This morning he got up cursing the Communist robbers for the hard life of his old parents and the Red Guards for their disrespect and violence. He was swearing and shaking his fists. It was the wrong time for that boy to snitch a pack of gum. I was in the kitchen preparing lunch or I could have stopped it."
"So Ah Hoh thought of the brat as a Red Guard. But he might have killed him if I hadn't stopped by just then."
"I'm grateful, Chief. Would two hundred dollars fix things up? The boy isn't badly hurt, is he? "
"Not dying, anyway. But the right thing is to turn a thief over to the police. He can't take the law into his own hands."
"I know, Chief, and I promise he won't do it again."
The Chief shook his head but not without compassion. He, too, had left a mother on the mainland. Two decades of good life couldn't blot out old memories and affections. Home was still over the horizon. The Chief took care of the boy's bruises and hurt feelings. Ah Hoh was contrite. Chief Wang had won a friend.
Not so long afterward, the Chief went to the hospital for an appendectomy. He was barely out of the anesthetic when Ah Hoh appeared, gift money in hand. The Chief protested. "I can't take your money, Ah Hoh." The storekeeper only tried to tuck the bills under the pillow. "Okay, okay," said the Chief, "go buy some fruit with it." Ah Hoh shook his head. The Chief was tired and the pain was worse. "I give up," he said. "But it's only a loan, remember. I'll pay you back as soon as I'm up and around." Ah Hoh was happy. "Sure thing, Chief. You can think of me as your Nephew. I need an Uncle to look after."
The Chief forgot his aching incision and remembered Ah Hoh's loneliness. "Hey, Nephew, that's a good idea. I'm old enough to be an Uncle. I guess you don't have any family of your own here, do you? "
Ah Hoh's scowled as he thought of those damned Communists. "You know where they are," he said. "One of these days we are going to get those bandits and we'll. .. "
"That we will," the Chief said. "But mean while, watch your language. You know how you get carried away and take things out on your customers. "
Ah Hoh didn't argue. He hung his head a little.
He had an Uncle now, and Uncle had to be right.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Yes, Uncle," said the chief. "Remember that we're family now."
Having an Uncle to look up to made a difference in Ah Hoh. He managed to maintain a neater appearance and he wasn't quite so rude. To the elderly, he was almost polite. To Uncle, he was downright filial. It started with small gifts some dried beef, a chicken and long life noodles for Uncle's birthday. The Chief went along, but not with the kowtowing. "That's too much," he told Ah Hoh. "A respectful bow will do. And don't bring so much food. I'm getting fat." Ah Hoh reduced the kowtowing to very special occasions - such as birthdays and the New Year. His bows were deep, though. "Ma and Pa would lay it on me if I wasn't respectful," he said.
The Chief had to go south for a training school session that lasted several weeks. He returned to find Ah Hoh's young wife, Ah Yun, crying her heart out to his wife and saying things he couldn't understand.
"That baldheaded man is breaking up our home and marriage," she sobbed. "I told Ah Hoh, 'All right, you have your mainland home now, so I'll just take the kids and go to my own family. I won't bother you any more.' "
"Now wait a minute," said the Chief. "What's this all about. What bald headed man? Who is he? What's he done?"
"Uncle Wang, you won't believe it. This man turned up one day - I never saw him before and he spoke a dialect I can't understand. Ah Hoh fell all over him, took him in, gave him everything - the books, the cash, the store. He takes what he wants and Ah Hoh refuses him nothing."
"Another Uncle?" asked the Chief.
"That's it exactly," Ah Yun said. "He speaks the language and he knows Ah Hoh's pet name and the names of his parents and brothers. Ah Hoh believes him. But I don't. I think he's a phony and trying to get everything he can out of Ah Hoh and drive me out of the house. Ah Hoh bought him an expensive overcoat. He's not good for business, either. People don't like him."
She sobbed, and then remembered, "He has that new overcoat, and winter is coming, and I have only a sweater."
The crying stopped. Ah Yun started to get angry. "And it's his demands: Meat for every meal, a package of the best cigarettes every day. He talks to customers as though he already owned the business. He ignores me and the children and bosses Ah Hoh around. My fine husband is a mouse in front of this Uncle. Isn't there something we can do, Chief."
"Have you asked to see his identification card? " the Chief asked.
"Oh, I wouldn't dare. You know how Ah Hoh is. He would think I was insulting this precious Uncle. He wouldn't listen to anyone. I said, 'How do you know he's really your Uncle,' and he said that it takes a Chang to know one and to mind my own business. My father raised an eye brow and Ah Hoh was ready to black his eye. Then Ah Hoh yelled at us both and said we were not to talk of it again, that the man was his Uncle, and that he had to make up for all that he had suffered. Suffered? Ha! If that thief ever suffered, it was in jail."
"Calm down, calm down," Chief Wang urged. "Let me make a few inquiries. We can find out, easily enough. If he's a phony, I'll see that he is sent packing."
Ah Yun wasn't completely reassured. But she agreed not to leave until after the Chief's investigation.
As things turned out, the check on the "other Uncle" didn't have to be completed. The Changs woke to find the new Uncle gone along with the gifts Ah Hoh had showered on him and fifteen hundred dollars from the cashbox. They were lucky. Ah Hoh had gone to the bank the day before. What was left was only change for the next day.
Ah Hoh was too downcast to bite back when his wife put the adding machine to work and came up with the conclusion that departed Uncle had cost them about five thousand dollars. He shook his head and smiled sheepishly. The neighborhood buzzed with the trick that had been played on Ah Hoh. Nobody said anything to his face, though. One couldn't be sure of how long the new passivity would last.
Chief Wang had to go out of town again. On his return, he stopped by to see Ah Hoh and Ah Yun. Not only had Ah Hoh taken off some weight, but he was serving a customer with alacrity and courtesy. "Now let's see, a sack of sugar and a box of matches ... and here, please take this lollipop to your little girl" The Chief knew what he was seeing and hearing, but it wasn't easy to believe.
As a pleased customer departed, Ah Hoh turned to Chief Wang, smiling his pleasure. "Uncle, I'm so glad you are back and looking so well." The words were accompanied by a bow that was almost deep enough to be a kowtow.
"Look, Ah Hoh, haven't you had enough of this Uncle business. How do you think I feel after you got taken by that confidence man. Let's forget about you being Nephew and me being Uncle and just be friends."
Ah Hoh bent his head, then raised it and looked the Chief straight in the eye. "Yes," he said, "I was wrong and foolish - but not about you and not about the Uncle business. You are my Uncle, and I should have known that all the time. I learned my lesson - and maybe some other lessons, too."
Chief Wang looked around at the neatness of the shop and then at the carefully groomed Ah Hoh. The rattan recliner was gone. He patted
Ah Hoh on the shoulder. "Yes, I can see that," he said. "A lesson learned is a lesson earned - or is it the other way around? "
Ah Hoh laughed. "Yes, sir, Uncle, sir, it's whatever you say, because you are my first and last Uncle - well, at least until those so-and-so Commies have been dealt with."
Ah Hoh backslid a little. The recliner was to be seen on occasion, especially of a long summer evening. But Ah Hoh was on his feet the moment a customer entered the shop. And Ah Yun got a new coat for the New Year - not a cheap one, either. They never found the counterfeit Uncle. Ah Hoh didn't care about looking or pressing charges. As real Uncle had said, a lesson earned was a lesson learned.