Free Quin?s Shanghai Circus by Edward Whittemore Page A

caves of tides and algae, a calm, quiet place, a home deep and narrow, light brown, sucking and oozing, darker at the edges.
    And for Big Gobi there were other sensations hidden in the mysterious oyster, not so much peaceful as ecstatic. Once while he was shucking them, once and no more so that he would never be caught, he sneaked an oyster for himself and held it above his lips, let it slide down slowly and swell in his throat until he grew dizzy and began to shake, felt a numbness in his loins and then a warm sticky wetness there.
    An exquisite experience certainly, but for Big Gobi, not unexpected. Strangely similar, in fact, to the wonders the fathers attributed to the act of communion whereby God momentarily possessed the soul.
    About the time Big Gobi should have gone to school they discovered his shoulder was malformed. The shoulder was operated on and allowed to heal, broken again and allowed to heal. Throughout his childhood he was operated on every year, and during the recoveries there was nothing to do but watch television.
    He didn’t care about the programs but he loved the commercials because they told him what to do. They told him where to go every day. They told him how to get there. They advised him what to buy and what to eat, what to drink, when to drink it. They told him what to do once he was home again, and after that and later and the next time, everything he needed to know about life.
    Of course he was an orphan who lived in an orphanage, he had no money, and his shoulder was in a plaster cast so there was no question of going anywhere or doing anything or buying anything. He had to eat and drink what he was given to eat and drink, when he was given it.
    But none of that mattered. The commercials were concerned with his welfare. They watched over him. They cared for him the way family and friends might have cared for him had there been family and friends in his life. So he returned the love of the commercials. He loved them as they loved him.
    The first time Big Gobi whispered that secret to Quin, Quin didn’t laugh or even smile. He just put his arms around Big Gobi and hugged him to show that he understood. Yet even then Big Gobi hadn’t been able to bring himself to mention the tuna fish. Instead he had pretended he had gone directly from the orphanage into the army.
    He told them he didn’t want to go, but they said he had to. One afternoon during training he was sitting outside the barracks not doing anything, staring at the sand and thinking of television commercials, humming them, repeating their warnings and instructions, when all at once a corporal kicked him and shouted that he was out of his head, that he’d missed a meal sitting there, that he must be crazy if he didn’t know enough to eat.
    What’s a crazy bastard like you doing in the army? They don’t let crazy bastards into the army.
    That night Big Gobi was so excited he couldn’t sleep. The next morning he sat down on the edge of his cot and refused to go to breakfast. They pushed him and yelled at him and threw him into the shower. After refusing to eat for three days he was taken to see a doctor.
    The doctor asked him questions and sent him to another doctor. The second doctor asked him more questions and moved him to a hospital with bars on the windows. Every morning the doctor came to ask the same questions again.
    Do you like the army? Are you afraid of the army? Do you like boys? Do you like animals? Are you afraid of men?
    Big Gobi smiled and answered all the questions with a different answer every day. The only questions he always answered the same were those about the army.
    I like the army very much, he said. I want to spend my life in the army.
    Why won’t you eat then?
    Big Gobi smiled. He wasn’t hungry. The doctor pointed at his arms and legs.
    Hungry? You’re starving.
    Big Gobi smiled. He didn’t know about that. All he knew was that he wasn’t particularly