This is a serialization of short story collection, Staring into the Sun. Start here for more info and the full index.
Previous installment: An Upright Man, Part 2
Oakland, September 1942
Joe owned a factory in San Francisco's Chinatown where most of his stores’ merchandise was manufactured. The workers there organized with the ILGWU to create the Chinese Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Joe told Henri that they were demanding all sorts of things, like a union contract, wage increases, and better working conditions. To break the union, Joe shuffled some papers around, selling the factory to a new company, Golden Gate Manufacturing, which was owned and managed by his men. That’s when the strike started, in February 1938, with more than one hundred workers joining in. Inspecting newspaper photos, Mary pointed out to Henri some faces that were familiar to her.
After three months of picketing, Joe (through his puppets) granted all the demands around pay and working conditions, but not a union contract. He then held true to what he had set out to Henri (always a few steps ahead of Henri’s thinking and ambition; Joe was a better mahjong player too): the National Dollar Stores stopped purchasing from Golden Gate Manufacturing, so the factory soon went out of business and the workers lost their jobs.
Henri commiserated more with the workers than for the Shoongs, who always won.
A couple of years later, when Joe’s son started courting Corri, Henri didn’t approve. He saw nothing good in the boy, who struck him as spoiled and irresponsible. However, Henri didn’t tell his daughter about his misgivings—she would need to make her own decisions, live her own life. Corri was pretty and social, with an easy, tinkling laugh she sprinkled around generously. Maybe wealth and power would suit her. If she wanted to join the Shoong empire, so be it.
February 1953
So many committees for the Chinese Community Center. Executive, Finance, Public Relations, Decoration and Awards, Womens Gift, Mens Gift, Publication…and especially for the inauguration: Parade, Entertainment, Reception. Henri served on none of them but then again, neither did his son-in-law, Milt. Still, Henri wasn’t sure if his lack of a title was a slight from Joe, the president of the center’s board, who kept promising, “We’ll get you involved, my friend.” Henri took the initiative to get himself involved with the new center, doing tasks here and there, like picking up thousands of programs from the printer.
Beyond the stores, Joe’s wealth came from property holdings and the stock market. Everyone knew that he made his first million by selling off shares just ahead of the 1929 crash. Though Henri and Joe didn’t see eye to eye on store management, Joe had passed along to Henri some key real estate contacts who helped him expand in Oakland. Henri was grateful, though both men knew that the Oakland Toggery would never rank as a real competitor to the National Dollar Stores. It was like giving a child a piggy-back ride in a race for adults.
Henri couldn’t fault Joe for his philanthropy: the tycoon paid the lion’s share of the $350,000 Chinese Community Center and he supported countless causes like hospitals, churches, and schools both in California and in his home village in China.
If forced to decide, are you friends with Joe, yes or no, Henri would have said yes. They shared grandchildren from Corri and Milt—first a boy, then two girls. Until two years ago, when Joe’s wife died, they often had family dinners together, rotating among Corri and Milt’s place, Joe and Rose’s house, and Henri and Mary’s.
It didn’t take long after Joe’s wife passed for him to leave Oakland for San Francisco and move into his favorite hotel, the Fairmont. A year and a half later, he married a woman twenty-six years his junior. Henri barely saw this new wife, a widow with children of her own. He was sure that he could make small talk with her—he could find something of interest to chat about with anyone—but was relieved that he didn’t have to.
Today, Henri’s first thought upon awakening (early as always) was, “The inauguration.” He got ready and left the house quickly, before roadblocks were set up for the parade, shouting to Mary (still in bed, not a morning person) on his way out, “See you over there!”
As Henri drove, the boxes and boxes of programs in the Cadillac’s trunk made braking noticeably harder. Fortuitously, there was a parking space right in front of the center. He would unload the boxes quickly since he couldn’t leave his car there for long—the space was right where some committee members were setting up the stage and public announcement system. When a man gave him an odd expression, Henri gestured toward the vehicle and said, “I brought the programs.” The guy just looked at the ground, shook his head, and didn’t respond.
The double doors were propped open, so Henri piled his arms full of boxes and in a few trips, transferred all the programs from his trunk to a corner inside the center’s entrance. He decided to check upstairs before leaving, in case anyone needed an errand while he still had his car available. Taking the stairs two at a time made his thighs burn. His arms and back ached from moving the boxes.
Upstairs was quiet except for a woman’s voice cooing. It came from a room at the end of the hallway. Henri tiptoed down the hall, then pushed open the door. A couple jumped apart as if yanked away from each other by strings. Left on Henri’s vision was an imprint of them kissing. It was Milt and a Caucasian woman he didn’t recognize.
Nobody said anything. Henri’s head swiveled back and forth between Milt and the woman, who looked at her feet and rubbed at the lipstick at the corners of her mouth. Milt knitted his brow and stared pleadingly at his father-in-law.
“Henri, I—”
Henri turned and left them there. He would confer with Mary about what to do. Did Corri know? The Shoongs kept winning, if winning meant doing whatever you damned well please, at the expense of others. Would the little guys, the good guys, ever win?
September 1955
Today, Henri is fishing alone. Frank (his good son-in-law, the one married to his first daughter) was meant to join him for the fourth annual, eight-week Sausalito Salmon Derby, but his first baby—Henri’s fourth grandchild—is due any day, and Frank wants to stick near his wife so he can take her to the hospital and wait there for the birth.
The wind has blown the clouds away and it’s crystal clear on both sides of the bay—invigorating after yesterday’s drizzle. The morning started crisp and is forecast to reach pleasant 70s by midday.
Henri was up at three a.m. with no alarm, but at least he got some rest; the night before fishing season starts in the spring, he can’t sleep at all. Well before sunrise, he stashed his rod and tackle including his cherished, colorful wooden salmon lures—all meticulously set out the night before—in the trunk of his new, forest green Cadillac sedan, and drove across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, then over the Golden Gate into Sausalito.
The parking area was crowded with chattering anglers. Henri didn’t recognize any of them; he knew they had come in from all over the state. Already during the first week of the derby in July, a fisherman from Auburn had caught a forty-five-pound, nine-and-a-half-ounce whopper. The week after, a Vallejo man landed a forty-seven-pounder. Those two catches would be hard to top.
Henri is squeaking into the last weekend of the derby before it finishes next Friday. He planned to go over the Labor Day weekend but had to cover for the sick manager of the Washington Street store. Fortunately, his other three locations are running smoothly—usually all the problems come at once.
In June, he received a thick envelope in the mail, as did the other three thousand derby entrants from last year. Opening it gave him a thrill of joy. He carefully pulled out a jaunty red, white, and blue folder that contained the regulations (rod and reel, no hand lines, $1 entry fee), mapped out the designated fishing zone, listed the thirty-three official boats, and dedicated page after page to the prizes—worth $3,000 in total.
Folder in hand, Henri bounded from his study into the living room where Mary sat leafing through the newspaper’s finance section.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed. “The First Grand Prize is an air trip for two to Mexico or Hawaii, with one week’s hotel accommodation. The Second Grand Prize is air travel and a hotel in Las Vegas for three days.”
Mary placed her index finger on the page and glanced up, her sluggishness contrasting with Henri’s energy. They operated at completely different speeds. She peered over at the prize list and kidded, “Well, if only you were a woman, you could win a six-place set of Heath stoneware…or if you were under fifteen you could get a twenty-five-dollar defense bond.”
Henri didn’t respond, only half-listening as he flipped to the next pages and read out, “More than a hundred weekly prizes…fishing tackle…motor oil—small fry indeed!” He pictured himself with his good son-in-law out on the open water, casting their lines, in complete peace away from the stores and home.
Surrounded by the other fishermen, savoring the isolation granted by the boat’s whining engine as it speeds under the Golden Gate Bridge into coastal waters, Henri’s thoughts turn to his fourth grandchild. He hasn’t dared utter to anyone that he hopes it will be a boy. Baby boy Lee.
His son-in-law, Frank Wing Lee, is one of many “paper sons” Henri knows. Frank came over from China as a boy using documents from another family, taking their last name “Lee,” which Henri’s daughter now uses, and of course the one the grandchild will have. Being a paper son is so common that nobody dwells on it—it was simply the means to start a new life in Gold Mountain.
Donnie leaps into Henri’s mind. The little boy has been frequenting him during these lulls. Not a little boy, Henri corrects himself, he’d be twenty-eight now, old enough to have his own children.
When Donnie was fourteen months old, Henri corralled the whole family down the front steps of their 8th Street house. One hand grasped one of his prized possessions, a 35mm Leica camera, and he gestured with the other.
To his mother, he said, “Ah-Maa, hold Donnie’s hand, he’s still unsteady on his feet. Here, take Corri too. Girls, step that way. Don’t stand in front of Donnie.”
Four-year-old Corri protested, “Maa-Maa, you’re holding my hand too tight! It hurts!”
“Stupid girl,” Lum Shee spat, grasping tighter. Her hold on Donnie was not as fierce.
Click. Once the photo got developed and printed, Henri wrote the date in the lower right corner: 6/24/28.
To be continued on 13 September 2025.