Last Night In Twisted River

Avenue -what the cook called the Coralville strip. The Cheng brothers might have had more business if they’d been closer to downtown; they were too upscale for Coralville, overlooked among its fast-food joints and cheap motels, but the brothers liked their proximity to the interstate, and on those Big Ten sports weekends when an Iowa team was competing at home, the restaurant attracted lots of out-of-towners. It was too expensive for most students, anyway-unless their parents were paying-and the university faculty, whom the Chengs considered their target clientele, all had cars and weren’t limited to the bars and restaurants nearer the center of the campus, downtown.

In Tony Angel’s opinion, the name of the Chengs’ restaurant was another questionable business decision-Mao’s might have worked better with politically disenchanted students than it did with their parents, or the out-of-town sports fans-but the Cheng brothers were completely caught up in the anti-war protests of the time. Public opinion, especially in a university town, had turned against the war; from ’72 till ’75, there were many demonstrations outside the Old Capitol on the Iowa campus. Admittedly, Mao’s might have worked better in Madison or Ann Arbor. Out on the Coralville strip, a passing patriot-in a quickly disappearing car or pickup truck-would sometimes lob a brick or a rock through the restaurant’s window.

“A warrior farmer,” said Ah Gou Cheng, dismissively; he was the elder brother. Ah Gou was Shanghai dialect for “Big Brother.”

He was a terrific chef; he’d gone to cooking school at the Culinary Institute of America, and he’d grown up working in Chinese restaurants. Born in Queens, he’d moved to Long Island and then to Manhattan. A woman he’d met in a karate class had lured Ah Gou to Iowa, but she’d left him there. By then, Ah Gou was convinced that Mao’s could make it in Iowa City.

Ah Gou was just old enough to have missed the Vietnam War but not the U.S. Army; he’d been an army cook in Alaska. (“No authentic ingredients there, except the fish,” he’d told Tony Angel.) Ah Gou had a Fu Manchu mustache and a black ponytail with a dyed orange streak in it.

Ah Gou had coached his younger brother on how to stay out of the Vietnam War. In the first place, the little brother hadn’t waited to be drafted-he’d volunteered. “Just say you won’t kill other Asians,” Ah Gou had advised him. “Otherwise, sound gung ho.”

The younger brother had said he would drive any vehicle anywhere, and cook for anyone. (“Show me the combat! I’ll drive into an ambush, I’ll cook in a mortar attack! I just won’t kill other Asians.”)

It was a gamble, of course-the army still might have taken him. Good coaching aside, Tony Angel considered, the younger brother didn’t have to pretend to be crazy-he was certifiable. That he’d saved his little brother from the Vietnam War-and from killing, or being killed by, other Asians-gave Ah Gou a certain chip on his shoulder.

MAO’S DID CLASSIC French or a mix of Asian styles, but Ah Gou kept the Asian and French food separated- with some exceptions. Mao’s version of oysters Rockefeller was topped with panko, Japanese bread crumbs, and Ah Gou used grapeseed oil and shallots to make the mayonnaise for his crabcakes. (The crab was tossed in the Japanese bread crumbs with some chopped tarragon; the panko didn’t get soggy in the fridge, the way other bread crumbs did.)

The problem was, they were in Iowa. Where was Ah Gou going to get panko-not to mention oysters, grapeseed oil, and crabs? That was where the crazy younger brother came in. He was a born driver. Xiao Dee meant “Little Brother” in Shanghai dialect; the Xiao was pronounced like Shaw. Xiao Dee drove the Cheng brothers’ refrigerated truck-complete with two freezer units-to Lower Manhattan, and back, once a week. Tony Angel made the ambitious road trips with him. It was a sixteen-hour drive from Iowa City to Chinatown -to the markets on Pell and Mott streets, where the cook and Xiao Dee shopped.

If a woman in a karate class had lured Ah Gou to Iowa, Xiao Dee had two women driving him nuts-one in Rego Park, the other in Bethpage. The cook didn’t really care which woman Little Brother was seeing. Tony Angel missed the North End, and he was equally fond of the small Chinese communities in Queens and on Long Island; the people were friendly to him and affectionate with one another. (Personally, the cook would have preferred the Rego Park girlfriend, whose name was Spicy, to the one in Bethpage, whose name he could neither remember nor pronounce.) And Tony loved the shopping in Chinatown-even the long drive back to Iowa on I-80. The cook shared the driving on the interstate with Little Brother, but he let Xiao Dee do the driving around New York City.

They would leave Iowa on a Tuesday afternoon, driving all night till dawn; they emerged from the Holland Tunnel onto Hudson and Canal streets before the Wednesday morning rush hour. They were parked in the Pell Street or Mott Street area of Chinatown when the markets opened. They spent Wednesday night in Queens, or on Long Island, and left before the morning rush hour on Thursday. They would drive all day back to Iowa City, and unload the new goods at Mao’s after dinnertime Thursday evening. The weekends were big at Mao’s. Even the oysters and mussels and fresh fish from Chinatown would still be fresh on Friday night-if they were lucky, on Saturday night, too.

The cook had never felt stronger; he’d been forty-eight, forty-nine, and fifty in those Iowa years, but loading and unloading Xiao Dee’s refrigerated truck gave him the muscles of a professional mover. There was a lot of heavy stuff on board: the cases of Tsingtao beer, the vat of salt water with the smoking blocks of dry ice for the mussels, the tubs of crushed ice for the oysters. On the way back, they would usually stop for more ice at a discount-liquor store in Indiana or Illinois. They kept the flounder, the monkfish, the sea bass, the Scottish salmon, the scallops, the shrimp, the lap xuong sausage, and all the crabs on ice, too. The whole way west, the truck melted and sloshed. One of the freezers always smelled like squid; they kept the calamari frozen. The big brown crocks of Tianjin preserved vegetable (from China) had to be wrapped in newspaper or they would crack against themselves and break. It was “asking for bad luck” to pack the Japanese dried anchovies anywhere near the Chinese preserved duck eggs, Xiao Dee said.

Once, when they were crossing the bridge over the Mississippi, at East Moline, they swerved to avoid a bus with a blown-out tire, and all the scents of Asia followed them home: the broken jars of Golden Boy fish sauce for the green Thai curry; the shattered remains of the Chinese soybean sauce (fermented bean curd) and Formosa pork sung; the many jagged edges from the Thai Mae Ploy bottles of sweet chili sauce, and red and green curry paste. The truck was awash with sesame oil and soy sauce, but it was mainly the Hong Kong chili garlic sauce that had endured. The aura of garlic was somehow permeated with the lasting essence of Japanese bonito tuna flakes and dried Chinese shrimp. Black shiitake mushrooms turned up everywhere, for weeks.

The cook and Xiao Dee had pulled off I-80 immediately west of Davenport-just to open the rear door of the truck and survey the spillage from the near-collision over the Mississippi-but an indescribable odor forewarned them not to risk opening the truck until they were back at Mao’s. Something undefined was leaking under the truck’s rear door.

“What does it smell like?” Xiao Dee asked the cook. It was a brownish liquid with beer foam in it-they could both see that much.

“Everything,” Tony Angel answered, kneeling on the pavement and sniffing the bottom of the door.

A motorcycle cop drove up and asked them if they needed assistance. Little Brother kept all the receipts from their shopping in the glove compartment in case they were ever stopped and suspected of transporting stolen goods. The cook explained to the policeman how they’d swerved on the bridge to avoid the incapacitated bus.

“Maybe we should just keep going, and inspect the damage when we get to Iowa City,” Tony said. The baby- faced, clean-shaven Xiao Dee was nodding his head, his glossy black ponytail tied with a pink ribbon, some trifle of affection either Spicy or the other girlfriend had given him.

“It smells like a Chinese restaurant,” the motorcycle cop commented to the cook.

“That’s what it is,” Tony told him.

Both Little Brother and the cook could tell that the cop wanted to see the mess inside; now that they’d stopped, they had no choice but to open the truck’s rear door. There was Asia, or at least the entire continent’s culinary aromas: the pot of lychee nuts with almond-milk gelee, the pungent shock of the strewn fresh ginger, and the Mitoku Trading Company’s brand of miso leaves-the latter giving a fungal appearance to the walls and ceiling of the truck. There was also a ghoulish monkfish staring at them from a foul sea of soy sauce and dark-brown ice-a contender for the title of Ugliest Fish in the World, under the best of circumstances.

“Sweet Jesus, what’s that?” the motorcycle cop asked.