Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories by Paul Yee Page A

to the front counter to serve customers, Ping sneaked out the back door to smoke cigarettes. When he was in a rush to leave, he would rinse the wash only once instead of twice. If customers complained, he always denied any wrongdoing.
    As usual, whenever he had spare cash, he went gambling. He played fan-tan, mah-jongg and dominoes. His friends played for high stakes, and money slipped through his fingers like sand. He never sent a penny home because Shek handled the remittances.
    Three or four times a year, Shek visited a Chinatown company and handed over an amount to be forwarded to China. Then he went to a letter-writer to have a message written, telling his mother to go to the company’s branch office in the market town to retrieve the money. To relieve her worries, Shek always claimed the funds were from the work efforts of both brothers.
    Once, after the police raided a game-hall and arrested thirty gamblers, Ping slept on the concrete floor of the jail for three nights before Shek bailed him out. If Ping was lucky enough to win at the tables, he summoned all his friends to feast on bird’s nest soup, sharks fin and abalone. Song-girls entertained them, guests danced to the gramophone, and the banquet lasted all night. But he never invited Shek, who frowned on such carefree spending.
    A few years later, the Great Depression descended. Factories and mills closed, and workers across the conti­nent lost their jobs. Long lines formed at soup kitchens, and homeless men slept in shantytowns under bridges. Many Chinese booked passage back to the homeland.
    When Ping’s laundry went bankrupt, he had no choice but to go and live with Shek, who was glad to get a helper and have his brother nearby.
    Ping soon discovered the rigors of farm work. When he met his buddies in Chinatown, he complained at length.
    â€œI start at daybreak, work until dark, swallow some rice, and then sleep a few hours until it’s barely bright enough to see my hands in front of me. Chores are always waiting. A second seeding has to go in, seedlings need to be transplanted, or crops must be harvested before insects eat everything. I can never scrub myself clean, my fingernails are permanently black, and my back aches all the time. I am nothing but food for mosquitoes to feast on.”
    He hated the farm a hundred times more than the laundry. The outhouse was a long walk away, and when it rained, his bed became soggy. He looked for ways out, but Shek did not pay him wages, so there was no opportunity to win at gambling or to buy a train ticket out of town.
    So he decided the only way to get money was by improving the farms income. He challenged the way his brother grew many different vegetables. Shek had reasoned that if carrots didn’t sell, then the lettuce would. And if the radish crop turned brown and mushy, then tomatoes would reduce the loss.
    Ping noticed that potatoes always sold well, and argued the farm should grow nothing but that one crop.
    â€œIt’s too much work with different vegetables,” he insisted. “Too many plantings, too many diseases, too many things to remember and worry about. With potatoes, you plant them and dig them up, bag them, ship them out, and you are all done. And we can get rich, since the whites eat them every day.”
    Shek’s brow furrowed as he thought about the proposition. Every day, Ping would reframe his arguments and add new information.
    â€œLook at Chung Chuck! He grows only potatoes and has built a new farmhouse and owns three trucks. Even white farmers and politicians call him the King of Potatoes.”
    â€œDid you hear? The wholesalers raised the prices paid to potato farmers by five cents a sack! It’s the third raise this season.”
    â€œHave you seen this? The Marketing Board is giving every housewife in town a free cookbook with a hundred recipes for cooking potatoes! Sales of potatoes are sure to go up.”
    Gradually, Shek gave in to his