Despite Connie’s dismissal of the possibility, I am curious about the other Chinese families in Bear Creek. I drive west for about a mile, take a right on Danner, and turn in at Guay’s Grocery.

Ting’s Market was closer to where we lived, and now that I think about it, was not in such an obviously black part of town. I should have at least told Tommy I would visit them, but the truth is, like Connie, I can’t begin to imagine that one of them was responsible. My assumption is that the Chinese, like blacks, stick together, though I personally don’t recall any memory that would validate this feeling. Yet the old lady may know a lot more than she is telling. The trouble with this theory is that I never heard of any of the Chinese in Bear Creek even raising their voices, much less their hands. What is increasingly apparent to me is my lack of curiosity about anybody but the white families when I was growing up in Bear Creek. It was as if over half the town didn’t even exist.

From the outside, Guay’s Grocery is dilapidated and in need of a paint job, and the inside is not much better. Yet, my memory is that these stores were always marginal in appearance, perhaps deliberately, so as not to alert the dominant race that the proprietor was doing better than the consumers. Behind the counter is a Chinese man of indeterminate age

in a brown cardigan sweater and gold-framed eyeglasses. He is taking change from a ten-year-old black kid, who is buying some hard candy. I look around the store to get an idea of the merchandise and marvel at how little stock he has, other than canned goods, some of which appear to be as old as he is. There is an old white man in overalls nursing a can of beer on a stool in the back, an activity that is surely illegal. Beside him is a totally bare meat-case which has, judging by the rust stains on the white panel, been vacant awhile. I look over the top of the panel and see through the door to a room that has furniture in it.