Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

the cemetery, but it was clear that they'd have to walk. So the cousin turned off the light, reached into his backpack and took out a flashlight that ran on three double-? batteries. Flicking it on to light the way down the gray path through the trees, he said impatiently:
    “Let's go. You lead the way.”
    So old Ding jumped out in front in an instinctive attempt to get on the cousin's good side. He heard his apprentice say from behind:
    “Cousin, the vehicle . ..”
    “How's that? Afraid someone might come by and steal it?” He laughed snidely. “Who but a fucking idiot would be out on a cold night like this?”
    With the cousin's flashlight jumping from the tips of the trees to the cemetery ahead, old Ding had trouble keeping his footing, like an old horse with failing eyesight. The path threaded its twisting way through the cemetery, the surface covered by a thick carpet of dead leaves that crackled under their feet. The northeast wind had died down; there was a chilled, eerie quality to the air above the extraordinarily quiet cemetery, except for the human footsteps on the crackling leaves, a sound that sent shivers through the heart. Something icy cold fell on old Ding's face, like raindrops, but not really. Then he saw white floating objects in the flashlight's beam.
    “It's snowing!” he said with a trace of genuine excitement.
    The cousin corrected him in a chiding tone:
    “That isn't snow, it's sleet!”
    “Cousin,” the apprentice said, “how come you know so much?”
    With a contemptuous snort, the cousin said:
    “You people think that cops are all stupid, don't you?”
    “Not for a minute,” the apprentice said with an ingratiating smile. “There might be stupid cops on the force, but you're certainly not one of them. I heard my aunt say once that you could read more than two hundred characters at the age of five.”
    The cousin's flashlight lit up the tip of a tall poplar, startling some crows in a nest. With caws and chirps, two of the birds flew out of the nest and flapped their wings in the beam of light; one banged into the trunk of the tree, the other flew into a magpie's nest, leading to some mighty squawks. Cousin turned off his flashlight and grumbled:
    “Goddamned birds, I ought to blow you all away!”
    They walked up to the abandoned bus hulk, which looked like a sleeping monster in the umbrella of light. By then the warring crows and magpies had returned to their own nests, returning the woods to silence. The sleet was coming down more heavily now, making a rustling noise in the night air, sort of like the sound of silkworms munching on mulberry leaves. Cousin shone his light all over the cottage.
    “Inside?” he asked.
    Old Ding felt his apprentice's eyes on him in the darkness and sputtered out an answer:
    “Yes, inside …”
    “Damn, you sure know how to find a spot.”
    Flashlight in hand, the cousin walked up to the door and gave it a kick. To everyone's surprise, it swung open. Old Ding's eyes followed the beam of light as it moved through the inside of the cottage, like taking inventory of his personal effects. He saw the bed and the straw mat and coarse toilet paper on top of it; the three-legged wooden table against the “wall” in the corner, with its two bottles of beer and three of soda, all of them dusty, two red candles lying next to the beer bottles and another short one, standing up; the dirty melted wax on the table top and the plastic chamber pot; and an anonymous pornographic chalk drawing on the “wall.” The beam lingered on the drawing for a moment, then continued on its way. It landed finally on old Ding's face, as the cousin turned and asked him angrily:
    “Ding Shifu, what's this all about?”
    The light blinded him, so he tried to shield his eyes with his arm as he stammered in his own defense:
    “I wasn't lying, I swear to heaven I wasn't lying.”
    The cousin said cynically, “There are people who walk mules and people who walk horses, but I never thought there were people who walk cops.”
    He raised his flashlight, turned, and headed back.
    Old Ding's apprentice said disapprovingly:
    “Shifu, you'll do anything for a laugh.”
    Moving up close to his apprentice and keeping his voice low, he said:
    “Little Hu, now I understand, it was a pair of spirits.”
    As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt a chill run up and down his spine and his scalp tighten; at the same time, however, he felt enormous relief. His apprentice, on the