For Christmas he’s sent Dagou a journal, stationery, and the allowed religious necklace: Winnie’s pendant of Guan Yin, seated on a lily pad. He’s already purchased credit—paying a hefty fee—for his brother to buy toiletries and snacks. Thanks to video and in-person visits, small presents, Brenda’s attention, and daily workouts, Dagou is holding on. He must serve his sentence in prison until Jerry, Sara, and Katherine can prepare for the appeal. They’re counting on the likelihood that O-Lan’s flight will discredit her testimony, as she herself predicted.
While he waits for Dagou, James rereads Lynn’s latest post. She’s still blogging, despite the fact that she received a C on the trial assignment, seventy-six out of a hundred points. (Among other factors, she lost credit for each sentence over twenty words and every paragraph over three lines long.) This brought her course grade down to a B for her first journalism elective. Her mother and father are dismayed, but Lynn has decided to keep writing.
Posted December 24, 9:15 a.m.
The big news was announced yesterday: Alf has been found! He’s well and happy, living with the Skaers, of all people. That pack of Skaer cousins, after messing with James’s phone, later found Alf in the snow and saved him. They thought they’d keep him long enough to upset the Chaos, then return him to Leo. But the cousins fell in love with him and didn’t want to let him go. When Leo’s death hit the news, they adopted him.
James studies the accompanying image of Zack Skaer, wearing a Christmas sweater, posing with his arms around a fat, middle-aged French bulldog with a white blaze on his chest. A red bow is stuck between his ears.
James has decided not to confront the Skaers about keeping Alf. What argument can he make, considering that his own family lost the dog, let him run out to founder in the snow? The Skaers saved Alf; they had the right to adopt Alf; they deserve to keep him. James will write to thank them.
“Hey, Snaggle.” Dagou’s image materializes on the monitor.
Dagou looks pretty good. There’s the hint of a glow in his face. It could be his shave, in preparation for the day’s visit. He hasn’t given up.
“I did eighteen sets already,” he tells James. “I do twenty push-ups, jog to the end of my cell and back twenty times, that’s a set. My plan is to get really ripped in the new year. I’ve been reading about it. You can lift using the coffee jugs, you can do chin-ups by wrapping toilet paper around the—” There’s a delay in the transmission. James is reminded briefly of his brother’s broadcasting from FM 88.8.
“You look great,” he says.
“—you can eat peanut butter for protein.” Dagou never liked cheese. “How are you, kid? You look like shit, to be honest.”
James feels his lips twitch. “Thanks.”
“When are you going back to school?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, kid, you can’t beat me at being the loser of the family. You have to go to school.”
James swallows hard. Every time he talks to Dagou, either in person or on video, he worries it might be the last time he’ll be able to see him, confide in him.
“I shouldn’t take out loans if I don’t have goals.”
“Fuck goals. You should be in college. And fuck loans. Mingo owes you, big-time. He can pay for your school.”
“I always planned to be a doctor,” James says. “Since grade school, I never questioned it.”
“So don’t question it.”
He had thought of it as saving lives and helping others. But his failure in Union Station changed all of that—led, step by step, to the moment when he let O-Lan escape and Dagou go to prison. Of course, he’s confessed to Dagou about letting O-Lan get away; his brother understood, has forgiven him. But Dagou’s forgiveness changed nothing about what he’d done. It’s as if one unthinking day he’d set foot on an island with an active volcano. A fissure opened in the ground. Now he’s standing on one side, watching his life move further and further away.
“A tiny weed widening a crack in a man’s life,” says Dagou. “Those thoughts are dangerous, kid.”
“I can’t help it,” James says. “I just keep thinking.”
“That was my problem. Take my advice: get back to school. School, it could be like my working out. Keeps the energy contained, keeps your brain from developing unhealthy habits. But—” he drops his gaze. “I’m the last person you should come to for advice.”
“You’re my oldest brother,” says James. “You’re the only person I come to for advice.”
“We miss Ma,” Dagou says. His chest swells in a deep inhalation, then collapses in a sigh. James thinks of his father, shooting sparks in the dark.
“I loved Ma,” says James. “Only—”
“Only she had no good advice about getting laid.” There’s another short delay. Dagou is saying, “… before she died, when I went to her at the hospital. I asked about him. About Ba.”
“What did she say?”
“You know her, she would quote the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.’ It was her favorite verse of the Bible. And then, when she could no longer take it, when Christianity became too much for her, she went to the Spiritual House, where it was about cessation from attachment, from desire. She tried to let go of all of it. But she never did, you know. She never ceased attachment. She told me to love. In the hospital. To love him.”
“Maybe she didn’t know what she was saying.”
“She knew.”
For a long moment, neither brother can come up with a response. Then Dagou grins.
“As for getting laid again, you can come to me for advice. I deliver! From behind bars, I can get you laid. I should do a column: ‘Dear Convict.’ ‘Dear Convict,’” he intones, in his best voice from FM 88.8. “‘There’s this hot girl, and she doesn’t know I exist. What do I do? Signed, Horny Bastard.’” Dagou shrugs. “‘Dear HB,’” he says, “‘You need to get convicted—’”
“That’s not funny. And you’re not a convict.” To comfort Dagou, James has said this before.
But today, Dagou says, “That’s not true.”
“Yes, it’s true!”
“It’s true on a technicality. I’m being held unlawfully. I didn’t commit the crime for which I’ve been convicted. But if you look at it another way, I deserve to be here. I did a lot of other shitty things, for which I wasn’t punished.”
James struggles to reply.
“Forget about it. Listen up. I had an idea about another dish for the fantasy party! I know it’s too late now, so how about next year? Ma’s savory zongzi.”