Read Online A Good Fall by Ha Jin - Free Book Online

problems in the textbook and went out with Eileen. Her blue Volvo was parked in the driveway, under the oak tree. A few caterpillars wiggled around on the pavement nearby, and Eileen avoided stepping on them as if in fear. I got into her car and turned the key in the ignition. The starter ground lazily, but the engine wouldn’t catch.
    “The battery must be gone,” I told her. “When was the last time you had it replaced?”
    “This is a new car, just three years old.”
    “The battery must be lousy, then.”
    “What should I do?” She kept rubbing her little hands together as if washing them. “I’m supposed to deliver the books to the reading.” She had inherited her husband’s small publishing business, and the company was holding an event that evening.
    “Where’s the reading?” I asked.
    “At the high school.”
    “How many books do you have here?”
    “Thirty-two copies, one full box.”
    The school wasn’t far away, about twenty minutes’ walk, so I offered to carry the books there for her. She thought about it, saying as if to herself, “Maybe I should call a cab.” Then she changed her mind and asked, “Can you really carry the books for me, Dave?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “It’s so kind of you.”
    I went into her house and explained the situation to Sami. When I came back, Eileen was holding the handle of a maroon suitcase with wheels. “Guess what?” she said. “I found this and put all the books into it.”
    “Great idea.” I wondered whether she still needed me since she could pull the wheeled suitcase herself, but I decided to go with her. Together we started out.
    We hurried along Main Street, toward Northern Boulevard. The suitcase wasn’t heavy, but I had to lift it at the curbs whenever we crossed a street. Soon I began sweating, and the back of my T-shirt became damp. I noticed people throwing glances at the two of us, probably wondering whether we might be a couple. Eileen was thirteen years older than I but looked younger than her age, her waist small, her legs shapely, her steps full of bounce. She dabbed at her face with Kleenex as we walked. I grew excited, as if this were a date, despite the bulky thing I was dragging. When we had crossed Thirty-seventh Avenue, to my surprise she said, “Let me mop your face.”
    I turned to let her wipe the sweat from my forehead and cheeks. It happened so naturally that it didn’t feel like the first time. She smiled, her eyes alight with feeling. Then I remembered we were in the middle of a thoroughfare, in the presence of many passersby. “We’d better hurry,” I said.
    We hastened our steps but soon stopped again. Near Little Lamb, the Mongolian firepot place, we ran into a bent man whom Eileen called Old Feng. He had just come out of the restaurant, still chewing. Although she introduced us, the man kept glaring at me, his eyes pouchy and bloodshot, his mouth sunken. As he talked with Eileen, he went on watching me as if wary of my presence. I stood nearby, waiting. After a few moments Eileen said, “I have to run, Old Feng. Let’s discuss this later, okay?”
    “Sure. I’ll stop by.” The old man didn’t look happy. He shambled away, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.
    We continued north. Eileen explained that Old Feng had been a professional writer back in China, an editor at the official magazine The People’s Arts , before coming to the States about ten years ago. His wife, almost twenty years his junior, worked at Gold City Supermarket so that Mr. Feng could stay home and write his books. Recently he had finished a trilogy, which Eileen would publish, though she expected to lose money on the novels. Before her husband died, he had made her promise to print the three books—because he had read parts of the manuscripts and loved the writing and because Mr. Feng had been his friend. Now Eileen had to keep her word.
    Her company, Everyman Press, was tiny, with only three employees, all part-timers. It survived owing