Peter Bethanis

In a hut far from the village Li Hua bends over his canvas like an insect. He is so deliberate, each stroke is a spider's legs fighting the current. There is a war in his veins, a battle of desires. He is jealous of Li Po whose pictures glide like the moon over dark water. I do not wish to disturb him as he tries to make art in this time of death, so I will wait, like a fly on the tip of a stick, until he is finished.

In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man talked to my parents for over an hour around a coffee table about our future. This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut that made his ears stick out, his moods still full of passion, still willing to listen, my mother with her beehive hairdo, smiling back at him, all three of them wanting so much to make the fine print of the world work. They laughed and smoked, and after they led the man politely to the door, my parents returned to the living room and danced in the afternoon light, the phonograph playing Frank Sinatra, the green Buick's payments up to date, five-hundred dollars safely in the bank— later that evening, his infallible common sense ready to protect us from a burst pipe or dry rot, my father waded up to his ankles in water, a V of sweat on the back of his shirt. Something loomed deeper than any basement on our block, larger than he was, a fear he could not admit was unsolvable with a monkey wrench or a handshake and a little money down.