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Part 8
Page 1
This was the bicycle graveyard. This was where bicycles
went when they died.
Beijing being an economy largely reliant upon these
means of transport, the average citizen was not very quick to declare their
bike past a point of repair. Parts would be patched, swapped, cheated and
duct taped for a long time before the owner would send the thing to the
scrap heap. Bikes are like swords; you replace a part as it decays, and
by the end of things, none of its components are the original forged pieces,
but it is still effectively the same tool your great-granddad won at the
fair, or whatever the case might be.
But sooner or later --and more frequently these
days, among the apathetic rich-- a bike will reach its end, and then it
will come here.
Here, in the back lot of a stretch of warehouses
in the pit center of the southern hutongs, the skeletons are stacked ten
high, a huge rotting heap of rusted frames and shattered chains. Twisted
wheel spokes jut out like snapped ribs. Mangled handlebars claw out at
the empty air. And dulled reflectors glint out sadly under the hard sun.
Street rats like Xiaolong became graverobbers here.
The gutter feeders of society take what even the hardest-working middle-class
man would foresake as broken, and salvage it. They'd scavage for anything;
wheels, innertubes, spokes, wires, gears. Individual links of chains would
be patched together; twisted remains of bars and frames would get hammered
back into shape and slapped together with tape and cheap welding. Frankensteins,
was the common slang for them. It had developed into virtually its own
art.
It was unlikely that Jianmin, Wenlong and Guonan
could find enough here to patch together three or four bikes, but they
had to try. They couldn't not try. Bikes, again, were like swords. And
this was just as well the urban version of the Scottish highlands.
Besides, even if they couldn't patch a whole set
of bikes, they could probably find enough to patch one. The one for the
only person who really mattered.
These were agreements they were making without words
now. Ideas that they had on consensus without even looking to each other
for the validation. They knew, intrinsically, that Xiao Shujuan had a worth
to her, enough that they were all automatically in debt.
Wenlong especially felt up for penance at the moment.
He was the first to discard his school coat and shirt and start digging
into the nearest heap with wrench at the ready. Jianmin followed, because
that's just what boyfriends did, and Guonan wasn't far behind.
Chains. Seats. Frames. Crossbars and handles. Pedals.
Foot brakes, hand brakes, single-speeds, five-speeds, twelve-speeds. Broken
cables, threadbare tires. The limbs and entrails of a thousand corpses,
shredded at their convenience.
"Tell me what happened."
It had to have been said eventually, and above the
clank of graverobbing, Jianmin and Wenlong didn't have a good defense against
it.
Wensley gritted his teeth and worked harder at prying
off a rear tire. It didn't work to take his concentration, and Jian wasn't
saying anything to spare him.
"We were right about Liang," Wenlong said finally,
laying it flat without pretense. "That's all."
"That's not all," Guo argued. His head emerged from
under a heap of severed pedals. "I got a major bad feeling last night.
Remember? When I caught up to you guys? It was like something screaming
in my head, an' then it all stopped."
The older two looked over at him.
"Then it's you too," Jianmin admitted. "You an'
ol' kingy."
"But not Mom. Why, d'ya think?"
"Mrs. Xiao? She's only magical when she's stoned,
boy-o."
"Were you guys stoned?"
"Dude, you know we don't touch that stuff," Jian
said stiffly. "Every time we try, it just fucks us up major. Last time
it happened, Wen was up on the roof yellin' for his magic pet dragon t'come
home."
"Then how d'you explain that?" Guonan demanded.
"We've always had a sort of intuition for Shujuan,"
Wenlong explained with forced calmness. He kept his eyes on the silver
circle of a wheel frame. "As long as we can remember, since we were kids.
Remember, Jian?"
"Third year, with that other gang over by the basketball
courts," Jian agreed.
"Sixth year, when she fell off that roof," Wensley
corroborated.
"The day in the locker rooms."
Wenlong nodded. "Last night was the strongest, though."
Guonan hung his head. "I never felt anything. Not
like that. Last night was the first."
"Well, you've only known Shujuan a few years," Wensley
reasoned.
"It doesn't matter! It's just as well 've known
her my whole life. It feels like it," Guo defended stubbornly. "An'
anytime somethin' happens to her, s'like a nightmare all over again..."
The scrap heaps rustled under the afternoon sun.
"...But what canya do?" Jianmin grumbled into his
bare shoulder. "We can't 'xactly protect her."
"Except we have to," Wenlong reminded. "Remember
Jin."
"Jin's so in love wit' Shu-rin, he can go play knight
in shinin' armor himself," Jian snapped back, before he could help himself.
"...'Love'?" Wenlong repeated, looking faint.
Jianmin stopped.
Because it wasn't about Jin. It was about them.
And he couldn't own up to it.
He didn't need to, a few minutes later. When the
three boys' ears twinged to the sound of falling metal on the adjacent
scrap mountain, and turned in time to see three figures come leaping down.
With guns.
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