The Stone Monkey

Smittie in seconds. He rested this next to his pistol and wiped his shooting hand on his slacks once again.He debated for a moment, picked up the gun, cocked it and set it back on the counter. This was against regulations but then he was the one in the fishbowl, not the brass who wrote the regs.
    •   •   •
    At first Sam Chang had worried that the long line of cars meant a roadblock but then he saw the booths and decided this was some kind of a border crossing.
    Passports, papers, visas . . . They had none of these.
    In panic he looked for an exit but there was none—the road was surrounded by high walls.
    But William said calmly, “We have to pay.”
    “Pay why?” Sam Chang asked the boy, their resident expert on American customs.
    “It’s a toll,” he explained as if this were obvious. “I need some U.S. dollars. Three and a half.”
    In a moneybelt Chang had thousands of yuan—soggy and salty though they were—but hadn’t dared change the money into U.S. dollars on the black markets of Fuzhou, which would’ve tipped off public security that they were about to flee the country. In a well beside the two front seats, though, they’d found a five-dollar bill.
    The van crawled slowly forward. Two cars were in front of them.
    Chang glanced up at the man in the booth and observed that he seemed very nervous. He kept looking at the van while appearing not to.
    One car ahead of them in line now.
    The man in the booth now studied them carefully from the corner of his eye. His tongue touched the side of his lip and he rocked from one foot to the other.
    “I don’t like this,” William said. “He suspects something.”
    “There’s nothing we can do,” his father told him. “Go forward.”
    “I’ll run it.”
    “No!” Chang muttered. “He may have a gun. He’ll shoot us.”
    William eased the van to the booth and stopped. Would the boy, in his newfound rebellion, disregard Chang’s order and speed through the gate?
    The man in the booth swallowed and gripped something next to a large cash register. Was it a signal button of some kind? Chang wondered.
    William looked down and pulled the U.S. money from the plastic divider between the front seats.
    The officer seemed to flinch. He ducked, moving his arm toward the van.
    Then he stared at the bill William was offering him.
    What was wrong? Had he offered too much? Too little? Did he expect a bribe?
    The man in the booth blinked. He took the bill with an unsteady hand, leaning forward to do so, and glanced at the side of the van, on which were the words:
    The Home Store
    As the guard counted out change he looked into the back of the van itself. All that the man could see—Chang prayed—were the dozens of saplings and bushes that Chang, William and Wu had dug up in a park on the way here from the beach and packed into the van to make it look like they were delivering plants for a local store. The rest of the families were lying on the floor, hidden beneath the foliage.
    The officer gave him the change for the toll. “Good place. The Home Store. I shop there all the time.”
    “Thank you,” William replied.
    “Bad day for making deliveries, huh?” he asked Chang, nodding up at the stormy skies.
    “Thank you,” Chang said.
    William eased the van forward. He accelerated and a moment later they plunged into a tunnel.
    “Okay, we’re safe, we’re past the guards,” Chang announced and the rest of the passengers sat up, brushing leaves and dirt off their clothing.
    Well, his idea had worked.
    As they’d sped down the highway from the beach Chang realized that the police here might do what the Chinese PLA and security bureau officers did frequently to search for wanted dissidents—set up roadblocks.
    So they’d stopped at a huge shopping center, in the middle of which was The Home Store. It was open twenty-four hours and—with few employees so early in the morning—Chang, Wu and William had no trouble slipping in through the loading dock. From the stockroom they stole some cans of paint, brushes and tools, then slipped outside again. But not before Chang had snuck to the doorway that led to the store itself and looked at the astonishing place. He saw acres of aisles. It was breath-taking—Chang had never seen so many tools and supplies and appliances. Kitchens ready-made, a thousand light fixtures, outdoor furniture and grills, doors, windows, carpets. Whole rows devoted to nuts and bolts and nails. Chang’s first reaction was