Butler's "Crickets"

My colleagues call me Ted in the workplace, and I've been called that for more than ten years now. But it still bothers me, even though I don't like my original name as the former President of the Republic of Viet Nam: Shao . The name "Shao" is very common in our hometown. My mother gave me this name because I just missed my uncle who had passed away a long time ago. In this place at Lake Charles, Louisiana, my name is only Ted. I think that the Mr. Shaw I have just mentioned may have embezzled enough gold bullion from our country to allow him to wear a top hat and a parasol in London, but at this time people only called him Mr. Shaw.

I reckon I was still a little indignant in my tone, but I never said it in my work at the refinery. I'm the best chemical engineer they employ, and even they occasionally have to admit it. Seriously, they have a good heart. I've worked hard enough in my life. When Saigon fell, I was only eighteen years old and had just been drafted into the army. When the troops were disbanded and everyone fled for their lives, I also took off my military uniform and changed into the clothes of ordinary people. As I watched the North Vietnamese tanks cross the street, I threw stones at them. Several others followed suit. I hid at the mouth of the alley so that I could run away at any time and then come back and throw more stones. But my resistance was too isolated, a pitiful gesture, and the shooters in the tank ignored me. I didn't care about their contempt at the time. At least my right arm expresses the "no" I am going to say.

Later, a Thailand pirate ship appeared in the South China Sea, and then a gang of bastards set up refugee centers, and then more bastards became United States immigration agents, helped me and my new wife smuggle in, and boldly let us board the refugee ship in the dark of night, and went through many terrible thrills at sea to reach our destination. The rest needs no more to say. Finally, we finally settled on the edge of this flat bay in Louisiana. There are rice paddies with a delicate balance between land and water, especially like where I grew up: the Mekong Delta. Even though the people I work with here are much taller than I am, which sometimes makes me feel a little awkward, they are very kind-hearted, affectionately call me Ted, and are willing to treat me as one of them. I'm about the same size as a woman in this country. United States men are big and slow to speak, and although English is their mother tongue, they are also slow to speak to their own people. I've heard New Yorkers speak on TV and feel like I can speak as fast as they do.

My son's English is starting to speak a bit like that of a Louisiana. He had just turned ten years old and was the culmination of my first night with my wife in a cheap hotel in Lake Charles. On that day, the refinery's fires reflected the entire sky. My son is so proud of his birth in United States that every morning when he leaves home to walk to the Catholic Church school, he says, "Have a great day with both of you." Sometimes when I said goodbye to him in Viet Nam, he would wrinkle his nose at me and say, "Oh, Dad." "It was as if I was playing a boring joke with him. He never spoke Vietnamese, and his wife defended: "Don't worry, he's United States." ”

Although I knew I should be satisfied, I was worried. I started worrying about this even ten years ago. At that time, my wife and I agreed to give our son an United States name: Bill. Bill and dad Ted. This summer, I saw my son wandering around the house during the summer vacation, so he suddenly changed back to his old father, Shao, and wanted to give him a good idea to pass the time. At Lake Charles, I had this idea every first week of February, because that's when the crickets started chirping. There are so many crickets in this place, it always reminds me of my childhood in Viet Nam. But it wasn't until this summer that I talked to my son about it.

One Sunday, I saw him listlessly in the yard boringly pulling moss from the nearest branches under our oak trees, and throwing stones at the bus stop sign in front of us to pass the time. I came up to him and said, "Do you want to do something fun?" ”

He said, "Of course, Dad." But there was suspicion in his voice, as if he didn't trust me in terms of play. He threw all the stones in his hand at once, and the bus stop sign was smashed. So I said, "If you smash it again, they will arrest me, sue me for destroying the city's facilities, and send us back home." ”

The son laughed when he heard this. Of course I knew he thought I was bluffing. I also had this childlike urge to vent when I was a child, but now I want to share the joy of my childhood with him, so I don't want to harshly reprimand him for his childlike frivolous behavior.

"Dad, what's your idea?" My son asked me.

"Fighting crickets." I say.

"What!?"

My son is now as obsessed with superheroes and the high-tech world wars that aired cartoons every Saturday morning, just like his buddies who just turned ten. In order to make him understand, I used the word "cricket fighter" to tell him how to play, and I felt that I had used a good method. I saw that he tilted his head in great interest and listened, so I took him to the door and sat him down, and then talked to him in a rambling manner.

I told him how when I was a kid and my friends used to crawl around in the bushes to catch crickets and then put them in matchboxes. I also said that we fed the crickets leaves, watermelon residue and bean sprouts, and then trained them to fight, and we kept blowing their whiskers and gently pulling the tips of their whiskers with thin wooden sticks so that they were always in a fighting state. I also told him that when we were young, we each had a litter of cricket fighters, but only two kinds of crickets.

At this point, my son began to sit still a little, and his eyes drifted straight into the courtyard, but I haven't finished talking about this cricket fighter yet. So I forced myself to stir up my son's interest. What is it about the rigid and stupid fights of those cartoon characters that makes him so obsessed? In the natural world - the real life-and-death struggle - why does he feel bored? I knew that I was like what people say on TV, that I would not give up. So I followed the example of James · Earl · Jones, and tried to make my voice charming: "These cricket fighters can fight to the death!" ”

However, this sentence only made my son glance at me and raise his eyebrows. I'm a little overwhelmed because I haven't told him about the two kinds of crickets. All of a sudden, I realized what was the most important thing in my life. I tried not to despair of my son. I put my hand on his shoulder and made him turn to face me. I said, "Listen. If you want a cricket that can fight, you have to understand. Only two kinds of crickets can fight. When we were young, we each raised some. One is called charcoal cricket. This kind of cricket is big and strong, but it is extremely slow to react and is always confused. The other is small and yellow, and we call it a fire cricket. They may not be as strong, but they are clever and fast-moving. ”

"So, which one wins?" The son asked.

"Sometimes this wins, sometimes that wins. They fight for a long time, fighting to the death. We first rolled the paper into a tube, then put a thin wooden stick into it, stirred the hard brains of the crickets, and made them mad, then pulled their heads and whiskers around twice, and then put their crickets through the ends of the paper tube. In the paper tube, the two crickets met and started fighting, and then we held up the paper tube to watch the battle. ”

My son said, "Sounds like fun." "He's at his best and he's lukewarm, and I know I'm going to have to do it.

So, we found a shoebox and started catching crickets. It would have been better to do it at night, but I'm sure my son's interest would not be sustained until then. Due to the high water level in the city, our house was built on a stone platform. The two of us climbed along the edge of the stone platform, first picking up the grass, then turning up the stones, and caught the first nest of crickets under one of the stones. It was my son who discovered them first, and he shouted in my ear, "There it is! There it is! But he only shouted and waited for me to catch him. I buckled one, then another, and put them in a shoebox, but felt a little disappointed. It's not because my son doesn't want to touch these crickets, but because they are stupid, black, and thick carbon crickets. We started to climb again, and ended up grabbing another in the grass, then one in the mud in the shadow of the house behind the tap, and two more in the azaleas.

"Is that enough?" The son asked, "How much more do we have to catch?" ”

I sat down against the wall, shoebox on my lap. My son sat against me, craning his neck to see the contents of the box. My feelings gradually became clearer. I was really discouraged, because these six were all carbon crickets, and they were stupid and coarse, and they looked around and didn't even realize that something was wrong.

"Oops, no!" My son screamed. I thought he understood my hard work and wanted to share my worries with me, but I saw him point to his white sneakers and scream, "My Reb shoes are ruined!" The toes of his shoes were stained with mud from the grass.

I glanced back at the shoebox, and the crickets inside were still motionless. I looked at my son, and his eyes were still on his sneakers. So I said, "Listen, that's a big mistake. There you go. Let's go play something else. ”

He immediately jumped up and said, "Do you think Mommy can wash her shoes?" ”

I said, "Of course, of course." ”

The son immediately ran into the house, and then heard the door slam. I put the shoebox on the grass. I didn't go into the house. I got up again, went around the whole house, turned over all the stones in the yard, and pulled all the trees around again. I caught about 20 more crickets, but they were all the same. Louisiana has rice paddies and beaches that resemble the Mekong Delta, but many of the birds are different from what we have there. So, aren't the insects here different? It's another country after all. Fire crickets are fun. At that time, all our Viet Nam children had to get fire crickets, even if they had carbon crickets. A fire cricket is very precious, and it is a rare thing to covet.

The next morning, as soon as I finished breakfast, my son was standing in front of me. As soon as he saw me paying attention to him, he immediately looked down at his feet and let my eyes fall on his. "Look!" "Mom cleaned them up," he said. ”

Then he ran out the door, and I shouted behind him, "Bill, see you later." ”