Authors: Ron Foster
“That’s the third lock I’ve put on that gate. Folks seem to be wanting to see what this place has around that maybe they could steal.” Charlie advised.
“Thieves! Everybody thief nowadays!” Feng said disgustedly.
“Yea, first time somebody breaks in here I caught some of them redneck boys from up in the backwoods at the camp store and scared them off with a couple of firecrackers and some hollering. We then decided if there’s anything in there that we wanted, we better get it out and make it look like somebody had already been there. So we dragged what little bit of canned goods that was in there and a few other supplies back home and kind of trashed up the place, you might say.” Charlie said like it was the smartest thing he ever did.
“You still stupid! Anything left in there that has value people might be back for!” Feng said pushing her husband away sharply.
The two began jabbering at each other in some foreign language Farley didn’t understand, evidently quite a bit of squabbling at each other, it sounded like to Farley’s ears.
“English! Speak English, please!” Farley said trying to calm the pair.
“Now you said that was the third lock you put on that gate. What happened the other time?” Farley asked.
“Well, we don’t really know, we were back here when somebody got in and found their way back to the rental boat property. Me and Charlie were off fishing then and just happened to see them driving down road and this big dummy here decided to shoot the truck with an arrow from the woods. Them boys had guns and commenced to shooting out both windows like a Dukes of Hazzard movie in every direction and left out. Stupid old man! You like to get us killed!” Feng said to an obviously embarrassed Charlie Wu.
“Well, I did stick an arrow in his door!” Charlie said protesting.
“Well, Whoo! Whoo! You actually hit something with that thing!” Feng said to an obviously embarrassed Charlie.
Farley sniggered at her use of the English Whoo Whoo and the man’s name but it was funny as hell. But he soon stopped his chuckling as Feng started berating him that she thought there was nothing funny about the encounter.
“Then you big man, Farley, come chop lock off again and scare Miss Feng!” Feng said before she disarmed Farley’s immediate apology with a smile also.
The three stood there starting to get acquainted and laughing at Miss Feng’s “ A Whoo Whoo joke before a car horn honking at the end of the driveway got their attention.
“Oh shit! I forgot to tell ya’ll I got two friends with me.” Farley began before he heard Becky hollering for him.
“Who’s that? You no tell us you got friends with you?” Feng said obviously alarmed and Charlie attempted to retrieve his bow.
“You better tell me if you got any other friends around here first.” Farley said leveling his rifle in that direction after warning Charlie away from his bow.
“Only little nephew, Charlie Fong. He came to visit this summer. He’s supposed to be fishing.” Feng said clutching her spatula like it was a battle axe.
“That’s just a woman and her boy down there. Nothing to worry about, they ain`t got no guns. That nephew of yours got a gun?” Farley asked, alarmed.
“No, he’s got no gun.” Charlie said wanting to get down there as soon as possible but still worried about this old man standing in front of him with his own gun.
“Let’s go see what the commotion’s about then.” Farley said hurrying back down the driveway with Charlie in tow and made it about half way down the driveway before Miss Feng came flying by driving a golf cart.
“What the hell? She could have stopped and picked us up!” Farley said looking over his shoulder at Charlie who was bringing up the rear about twenty feet behind him.
“You go see! I be there in a minute.” Charlie said huffing worse than Farley was.
When Farley finally got down to the bottom of the hill, he was presented with an amazing sight. Becky was sitting on a young boy about fourteen with his foot twisted back and Miss Feng was swatting at Jeremy with a spatula hollering Chinese or some other language at them while trying to rescue her nephew.
“Get off that boy, Becky! Miss Feng let up with that flyswatter of yours! Jeremy, leave that lady alone!” Farley said trying to catch up and bring some order as a huffing and puffing Charlie came up trying to get her off his nephew.
“Fong! You all right? You hurt boy?” Charlie said to a blue shorted Grateful dead t-shirt wearing fourteen year old Asian boy.
“He bit me! And she sat on me and twisted my foot!” Fong started jabbering.
“That son of a bitch hit me and flung me over his shoulder!” Jeremy shouted rubbing his eye where evidently a world class shiner was about to be.
“Whoa now! Everybody settle down for a minute. Charlie take that spatula away from your wife, she’s worrying the hell out of me with that thing. Becky, what are you doing whooping up on that young boy?” Farley asked.
“Whooping up on him? What are you talking about! That boy whomped me twice before I finally got a hold of him and sat on him! He jumped Jeremy somewhere up the road when he was trying to take a whiz and I walked up on the fight and tried to separate them!” Becky said rubbing her side.
“Yea that little slant eyed son of a bitch got the drop on me while I was whizzing on that oak tree over there and we commenced to tussle. Didn’t say a word except something like’ Hiya!’ and next thing I know it was Katie bar the door. He started using some kind of Kung Fu crap on me and threw me to the ground and commenced to punching on me.” Jeremy said pointing at the young man that Miss Feng was dusting off and mothering.
“You bad boy! Very bad boy!” Miss Feng said pointing back at him wagging her finger and looking towards Charlie for backup.
“That boy bit me!” Fong said rubbing some evident teeth marks on his leg.
“Well you hit me while I was pissing!” Jeremy countered.
“Peace! Watch your mouth boy; you racial slur somebody you don’t know again you got me to answer to. Ya’ll settle down. This isn’t any way to meet everybody here.” Farley said as the adults rounded up their perspective charges and tried to make sense of the mess they just walked in to.
“You beat that boy! He bit my nephew! You said you good man, Farley, you just like the rest!” Feng said before Charlie hollered at her in military voice and tried to restore order.
After standing around arguing a bit about who had the worse child and the craziest woman on the lake, it finally got sorted out that Jeremy had gotten out of the van and gone down to take a piss and look around while waiting on Farley and had been pissing against a tree when he spotted the fishing poles and tackle box that Fong had left in the woods when he hid when he spotted them pull up in the van.
When Jeremy started heading towards the fishing pole to investigate, Fong had jumped out from behind a bush and ambushed him. Then a conversation ensued where Miss Feng proudly said the boy had studied some Judo before then got a couple of digs in at her fake Kung Fu master husband.
Eventually after the smoke cleared and matters were settled in and an uneasy truce between Miss Feng and Becky ensued as the two boys growled at each other in the background wanting a rematch to which Farley and Charlie would occasionally threaten them with bodily harm if they started any shit again.
Miss Feng eventually offered everybody a ride in her golf cart back up to the house and the humor of her doing the charge of the light brigade towards the fracas amused everybody and smiles and easy conversation took over.
As they were heading back towards the caretakers cabin, Miss Feng reminded Farley “no food for you, no food for anybody!” to which Farley advised that they had their own food with them and no worries.
“Hey, Becky, for some reason they got hamburgers.” Farley attempted to whisper under the sound of the whirring golf cart motor on the way back but Miss Feng with them radar ears of hers heard him and attempted to reinforce her “no food for you” mantra she’d been on.
“They can come for dinner.” Charlie said and then Charlie and his wife broke into a world war III conversation in Chinese that Fong could not even understand being a stateside raised boy, but it sounded something like dumping the silverware out the window to everyone else’s untrained ears.
Miss Feng finally agreed or was threatened enough by Charlie who by now had her spatula well out of her reach and clutched in his own right hand as she drove like Andy Granatelli racing in the Florida 500 back to the cabin and nearly gave everybody whiplash doing so as she stomped on the brakes in front of the fire pit.
“You trying to kill us?” Becky asked accusingly towards the woman as Miss Feng muttered something you would probably not want translated for putting that leg lock on her nephew.
“Farley, you look like you used to be in the military, is that true?” Charlie asked.
“Yea back in the day I was. What’s on your mind?” Farley asked regarding him.
“Well, any other time you know us military folks are security minded and all that but we also share a brotherhood.” He said looking towards Farley.
“I told you that we’re honorable and friendly. What’s on your mind?” Farley asked looking at the deadpan Asian face trying to scrutinize what the man meant.
“When this crap happened me and my wife here were at a loss as to what to do next, this is our home and we had no other place to go and we also had our nephew down for the summer. The base got word out to us to shut down, dismiss the seasonal employees and secure the campground but they didn’t give us any further directions. Now not having any other place to go and this was all we had, we just decided to stay on here and instead of sending all the snack shop food back to the commissary, you might say I appropriated it.” Charlie said with a wink in Farley’s direction knowing that certain military supplies were known to stick to the fingers of those they were charged with occasionally.
“So you got a shitload of hamburgers and French fries and pizzas and stuff, huh?” Farley asked wondering how in the hell he was keeping this stuff refrigerated in these hard times.
“To answer the obvious question, there are four generators on this place. We got one on the house, one on the convenience store to help with power outages on the lake and a spare up at the utility shed. Now before you decide you want to move in here or rob us of our bounty, let me tell you it’s been over ten weeks since the poo hit the fan and we been eating on that crap all this time. We never had a whole lot of food around here that we kept on hand because it’s just enough for the guests on a weekly basis, so there’s hardly any left now and I don’t know what we’re going to do.” Charlie said before his wife started bickering at him again.
“He doesn’t even know how to fish! Crazy worthless old man! He no like even eating fish! You ask him. You eat fish you Wu, you.” Feng said talking about Charlie’s aversion to fish and never having taken up the sport even though they had been living on campgrounds ever since he retired from his second vocation as a recreational director.
“I thought all Orientals liked to eat fish and knew how to fish.” Becky said looking at Miss Feng and Charlie like they were aliens or something.
“We are Asians. Orientals are carpets!” Charlie deadpanned, causing Farley to bust out laughing at the funny quip.
“No, I guess I’m a sorry old Asian, never liked fish much to eat and never thought the money, time and worry to catch one for yourself was worth the time that it took to go to the supermarket and buy one if you wanted one but I can see the necessity now. Do you know on this whole lake and in that entire store there is not one book on how to catch a fish available? We kind of depend on Fong here to try his luck catching one because he got a couple lessons from one of the airmen that came here to visit. However, before the grid went down, I never even wetted a line.” Charlie said hating to give that admission.
“If Fong didn’t sneak up on a boy while he was whizzing, that kid right there can teach him how to do the professional fish rodeo tournament thing!” Farley said regaling his audience with a bit of how he watched the boy land a ten pound bass.
“See, Fong, everything is not what it seems. And what were you jumping on that boy for when you still got all that stuff down in the camp store?” Charlie asked never having been too happy with getting the boy dumped on them from some distant relative in the first place.