away.
Twenty meters farther on was a darkened house and behind it was a pickup truck. But Chang didn’t want to exposehis father or the children to the rain and weather. Also, ten shipwrecked Chinese would be easily spotted in a rickety old vehicle of this sort, driving toward New York City like a band of the “floating population”—itinerant laborers who travel from town to town in China looking for work.
“Stay out of the mud,” Chang ordered his son and Wu. “Walk only on the grass or branches or stones. I don’t want to leave footprints.” Caution was instinctive for Chang; with both public security bureau and People’s Liberation Army agents constantly following them, dissidents in China learn quickly to obscure their movements.
They moved on, through brush and trees whipped by the ferocious wind, past more houses, some dark, some showing signs of families waking: televisions flickering, breakfasts being prepared. Seeing this poignant evidence of normal life, Chang was stabbed by the hopelessness of their plight. But, as he’d learned to do in China, where the government had taken so much away from him, he pushed these sentimental feelings aside and urged his son and Wu to move more quickly. Finally they came to the last building on this strip of habitation: a small church, dark and apparently unoccupied.
Behind the weathered building they found an old white van. From his hours on the Internet and watching TV, Chang knew a little English but these words he didn’t understand. At his urging, though, both of his sons had studied the language, and American culture, for years. William glanced at the van and explained, “It says ‘Pentecostal Baptist Church of Easton.’ ”
Another soft crack in the distance. Chang froze at the sound. The Ghost had killed another one of them.
“Let’s go!” an anxious Wu said. “Hurry. See if it’s open.”
But the van’s door was locked.
As Chang looked around for something they could use to break the window William surveyed the lock closely. He called over the noisy wind, “Do you have my knife?”
“Your knife?”
“The one I gave you on the ship—to cut the rope holding the raft.”
“That was yours?” What on earth had his son been doing with a weapon like that? It was a switchblade.
“Do you have it?” the boy repeated.
“No, I dropped it getting into the raft.”
The boy grimaced but Chang ignored the expression—why, it was almost impertinent—and scanned the rain-pelted ground. He found a piece of metal pipe and swung it hard into the window of the van. The glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces of ice. He climbed into the passenger seat and looked through the map box for keys. He couldn’t find any and stepped out onto the muddy ground. Glancing at the building, he wondered if there would be a set inside the church? And if so, where? An office? There might be a caretaker inside; what if the man heard and confronted them? Chang believed that he couldn’t hurt anyone innocent even if—
He heard a loud snap and spun around in alarm. His son was crouched in the driver’s seat and had shattered the plastic housing of the ignition lock with a kick from his boot. As Chang watched, astonished and dismayed, the boy pulled out wires and began brushing them against each other. Suddenly the radio came on with a blare: “He will always love you, let Our Savior into your heart . . . . ”
William touched a button on the dash and the volume lowered. He touched other wires together. A spark . . . . The engine fired up.
Chang stared in disbelief. “How did you know how to do that?”
The boy shrugged.
“Tell me—”
Wu clutched Chang’s arm. “Let’s go! We have to get our families and leave. The Ghost is looking for us.”
The father pierced his son with a look of shock. He expected the boy to lower his eyes in shame. But William stared back coldly in a way that Chang himself never would have done with his own father, at
Twenty meters farther on was a darkened house and behind it was a pickup truck. But Chang didn’t want to exposehis father or the children to the rain and weather. Also, ten shipwrecked Chinese would be easily spotted in a rickety old vehicle of this sort, driving toward New York City like a band of the “floating population”—itinerant laborers who travel from town to town in China looking for work.
“Stay out of the mud,” Chang ordered his son and Wu. “Walk only on the grass or branches or stones. I don’t want to leave footprints.” Caution was instinctive for Chang; with both public security bureau and People’s Liberation Army agents constantly following them, dissidents in China learn quickly to obscure their movements.
They moved on, through brush and trees whipped by the ferocious wind, past more houses, some dark, some showing signs of families waking: televisions flickering, breakfasts being prepared. Seeing this poignant evidence of normal life, Chang was stabbed by the hopelessness of their plight. But, as he’d learned to do in China, where the government had taken so much away from him, he pushed these sentimental feelings aside and urged his son and Wu to move more quickly. Finally they came to the last building on this strip of habitation: a small church, dark and apparently unoccupied.
Behind the weathered building they found an old white van. From his hours on the Internet and watching TV, Chang knew a little English but these words he didn’t understand. At his urging, though, both of his sons had studied the language, and American culture, for years. William glanced at the van and explained, “It says ‘Pentecostal Baptist Church of Easton.’ ”
Another soft crack in the distance. Chang froze at the sound. The Ghost had killed another one of them.
“Let’s go!” an anxious Wu said. “Hurry. See if it’s open.”
But the van’s door was locked.
As Chang looked around for something they could use to break the window William surveyed the lock closely. He called over the noisy wind, “Do you have my knife?”
“Your knife?”
“The one I gave you on the ship—to cut the rope holding the raft.”
“That was yours?” What on earth had his son been doing with a weapon like that? It was a switchblade.
“Do you have it?” the boy repeated.
“No, I dropped it getting into the raft.”
The boy grimaced but Chang ignored the expression—why, it was almost impertinent—and scanned the rain-pelted ground. He found a piece of metal pipe and swung it hard into the window of the van. The glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces of ice. He climbed into the passenger seat and looked through the map box for keys. He couldn’t find any and stepped out onto the muddy ground. Glancing at the building, he wondered if there would be a set inside the church? And if so, where? An office? There might be a caretaker inside; what if the man heard and confronted them? Chang believed that he couldn’t hurt anyone innocent even if—
He heard a loud snap and spun around in alarm. His son was crouched in the driver’s seat and had shattered the plastic housing of the ignition lock with a kick from his boot. As Chang watched, astonished and dismayed, the boy pulled out wires and began brushing them against each other. Suddenly the radio came on with a blare: “He will always love you, let Our Savior into your heart . . . . ”
William touched a button on the dash and the volume lowered. He touched other wires together. A spark . . . . The engine fired up.
Chang stared in disbelief. “How did you know how to do that?”
The boy shrugged.
“Tell me—”
Wu clutched Chang’s arm. “Let’s go! We have to get our families and leave. The Ghost is looking for us.”
The father pierced his son with a look of shock. He expected the boy to lower his eyes in shame. But William stared back coldly in a way that Chang himself never would have done with his own father, at
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