Napoleon and the Dragons
Tap. Tap. Tappity tappity tap.
Nap pried his head from the desk as 4:28 AM bounced around the computer screen. He sighed and wiped drool off his face with a t-shirt that’d been lying on the ground.
Tip tap tappy tap tappity tippity tap.
“Goddammit, I’m coming,” he muttered as he drew back the curtain.
His father was standing on the roof with another of his face splitting grins. “Bangun bangun!”
Nap rolled his eyes and opened the window. “You’re late,” he said.
His father clambered in and brushed the dirt off his apple-green hospital gown. “Nurse Jenkins was checking in on me constantly. I think she likes me, lah,” he said, winking. “Probably because of my stellar sense of humor.”
“I don’t think twitching your fingers counts as humor,” Nap says.
“So now you are the comatose comedy expert, ah?”
Nap grabbed a pair of shorts and threw them at his father. “You weren’t funny even before the accident,” Nap muttered.
His father shook his head dourly. “Whatever happened to honor your parents.”
“Bible never said anything about honoring dad jokes.”
His father tsked before clambering back onto the roof. “Let’s gooooooo!” he yelled, setting off the Lhasa Apso three houses down. Then he leapt into the air, gown billowing around him.
Nap crawled through the window, walked to the edge of the roof, and lowered himself.
“Jump!” his father said after dusting himself off, holding out his arms.
“Yeah, nope,” Nap said as he landed.
“Don’t be like that, lah. Remember I used to catch you in the swimming pool?”
“When I was six?”
“Not like you’ve gotten much bigger.” His father dodged Nap’s punch and grinned again. “You won’t guess what I found!”
Then he started sprinting down the road. Nap was glad for two things as he ran after: his inhaler and the shorts he’d forced his father to start wearing. He’d been mooned enough times for a lifetime of therapy.
The air was tinged with mist. Nap lost track of the houses blurring together in their variations of two stories and garages; sedans, vans, and pickups; American flags, garden gnomes, basket weave scarecrows. It must have been two miles before his father finally began to slow down before turning off the road and up a hill.
“Every time,” Nap wheezed. “Why. Running. Every time.”
“Life is too short to waste walking,” his father said.
“Life’s going to be very short if I die of an asthma attack. What’s so special here anyway.”
“Up ahead,” his father said, marching to a thicket. He pushed aside the bushes and dropped to his knees, rummaging into what looked like freshly dug soil. After a moment he dragged out a bulging duffel bag, snapped off a lock, and unzipped it. He pulled out an airlock bag that held big red and black sticks. Golden Chinese characters were printed on the side. Nap could guess what they said.
“Holy shit, are those Dragons?” Nap picked up the stick and gently ran his fingers down the length of the firework. “I heard these were even banned in Russia. Peter Lewis wanted to get his hands on one so bad . . .”
His father grinned. “Who you think these belong to?”.
They made their way up the hill to a small playground where his father started to set up the fireworks in the sand.
“Wait,” Nap said.
“Hmm?”
Nap went to one of the swings and sat down, still wheezing.
His father sat down in the other swing, then jumped up. “Ah, that’s cold.”
“Maybe you should wear actual clothes.”
“Life is too short…”
“To wear pants,” Nap said. “We know.”
His father gingerly lowered himself back into the swing. “How is school? And your friends?”
Nap snorted. “Nelson’s the one who has those.”
“Don’t be so weird then,” his father said.
Nap kicked at his father’s swing. “At least I get good grades.”
His father fell surprisingly quiet, stirring the sand with his toes. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I know that. That’s all I ever asked about, right?”
Nap looked away, then shrugged. “S.O.P for Asian parent, right? Although letting me do Art must have been the Eurasian exception.”
His father gave a small laugh, but it was empty. Moonlight gleamed on roofs and trees, and Nap couldn’t figure out if there were two frogs chirping or a dozen. He started scratching a smiley face on the sand with his toe.
“All we ever asked was what prizes you got,” his father said suddenly. “What teachers said what good things. I never once asked why you did it, what inspired you.”
Nelson’s chest was uncomfortably tight. He smiled weakly. “Follow your dreams but be the best at them. Pretty par for Eurasians to mix the worst of the West and the East.”
His father looked up at the sky where the moonlight danced on the drifting clouds. “You know, growing up, moving to the West was all any of us wanted to do. It is so hard being a people who don’t belong in the country we have lived in for generations.”
The wind had picked up, prickling Nelson’s arms, but his father didn’t seem to notice as he continued. “Longer than most Malaysians actually. And some part of us thought it would be different lah out here. Like that’s where our real people were, like we were some kind of European diaspora.”
He smiled ruefully. “Two decades later, watching white guy after another get a promotion that should have gone to me, paying higher interest for every loan, having to explain for the thousandth time English is my first language…” He let out a heavy breath as he looked at Nap. “I did not want that for my children. And I thought if I could just push you hard enough, give you the chances I didn’t have lah, you would make it to a place where you were finally accepted, no asterisks.”
“Well, I might have been a lost cause on that one,” Nap said, smirking weakly. “Weirdos don’t tend to fit in anywhere.”
His father looked down. “Nelson got bullied a lot in school.”
Nap blinked. “He always seemed popular to me.”
“He found a way to make himself liked, I guess. Maybe it was ok to be the exotic friend if it meant he had some,” his father said. “You were different lah. You could not accept any role that was handed to you. I worried about you a lot.”
Nap shrugged again. “Hey, good grades and art prizes, so something paid off, right?”
“Did I ever say how proud I am of you?”
Nap had to look down again; his eyes were uncomfortably wet. “Do you remember when you showed up at my window that first night?”
His father blinked, then grinned. “I thought you would wake the whole neighborhood up,” he said. “An impressive flurry of words I definitely never taught you.”
“I was on the verge of fetching Mom and telling her you were faking. I didn’t really believe it until I saw them sticking you full of needles the next day. You didn’t even flinch.”
His father was quiet a moment. “Why didn’t you?”
“I guess, faking or not, I was just happy you came to see me.”
His father looked down with a small smile, and now it was his eyes glistening in the moonlight. “Who’s the cheesy one now.”
Nap shoved his father off the swing, and his father kicked him off his. They snorted up sand as they sat up.
“Ah, damn,” his father said.
“What?” Nap said just before he felt the first drops of rain. “Shit.”
His father sighed, then grabbed the bag. “Race you home!”
“Goddammit, not again,” Nap said, but his father was already a pale green streak down the hill.
*
Nap woke up next to his bowl of cereal, his little sister sticking a rolled up paper towel in his ear.
“Joan,” Nap growled. “I swear to God, I’m going to pound you.”
“Mo–om,” Joan whined.
“Napolean, stop bothering your sister,” his mother mumbled from the counter.
Nap rolled his eyes and resumed eating his soggy cereal.
Suddenly Joan jumped out of her chair. “Nelson!” she shouted.
Nap’s spoonful of cereal froze halfway to his mouth as he brother walked in.
“Hey shrimp,” Nelson said to Joan, prying himself free. He nodded to Nap. “Yo.”
Flecks of milk and cereal were shaking into the bowl.
“Why’re you back from college?” Joan asked.
Nelson looked at their mother. She nodded slightly as she wiped her hands on a dish cloth.
“Come here, Joan,” she said, sitting at the table. She lowered her eyes. “It’s about Dad.”
“This is bullshit,” Nap whispered.
Nelson’s eyes flashed. “Hey, watch your mouth.”
Their mother wasn’t looking at them.
“This. Is. Bullshit!” Nap hissed, standing up so quickly the chair fell over.
Nelson stood up, his eyes flashing. “I said watch it, Nap.”
“Or what?” Nap said facing up to Nelson as if he wasn’t five inches shorter and forty pounds lighter.
“Stop it,” Joan said. “You’re making Mom cry.”
“Don’t you get it, moron?” Nap said. “Why do you think Nelson’s here? Why do you think Mom’s been moping for days?” The room suddenly was spinning and blurring, and he stumbled back a step. “They’re pulling the plug on Dad.”
In the silence that followed Nap could hear the kettle sighing, the ticking of the wall clock, the Lhasa Apso three houses down, his mother’s ragged breaths. Nelson was still glaring, but there wasn’t any sting it in anymore.
“Stop joking,” Joan whispered. “Stop it.”
“Joan,” his mother said softly, putting her hand on Joan’s.
“Stopitstopitstopit” Joan started screaming, her voice cracking.
Nelson grabbed her by the shoulders. “Calm down, ok? Calm down!”
“Don’t tell her to calm down!” Nap yelled. “You and Mom want to kill Dad off, and we should fucking calm down?”
Nelson rounded on Nap. “Don’t you dare say that!” he said. “You think this is easy? You think we can just keep paying the bills when the doctors have been saying Dad’s been brain dead for weeks?” Nelson pounded the table. “Dad’s dead. Do you get it?”
He choked and leaned heavily on the table. “He’s dead, Nap.”
“What do you know?” Nap screamed. “What the fuck do any of you know?”
Nap ran for his room and locked the door. He hugged himself in the corner until it was long dark, ignoring every plea for him to come out.
*
At 2 A.M. came the tap, tap, tappity tappity tap.
Nap grabbed the duffel bag from under the bed and climbed out the window. He marched to the hill without saying a word.
“Bad day, huh?” his father said as they approached the hill.
Nap heaved the duffel bag on the ground next to the sandbox. “Hey, Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“What if we didn’t light the fireworks tonight?”
“Are you kidding? The weather’s perfect lah.”
“People are going to wake up.”
“Forget your inhaler?” his father said, winking.
Nap paused, biting his lip. “What if I didn’t go home?”
His father frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Nap looked away. “They want to pull the plug.”
“Ah,” his father said, then nodded. “That’s about right.”
“But I’m gone, they’ll have to look for me,” he said in a rush. “They won’t have time to do anything else.”
His father studied the sand, not saying anything.
“It’d be like this, but all the time.”
His father stirred the sand with his feet. “No,” he said, finally.
“No, listen, I’ve thought it through,” Nap said getting up. “There’s someone I know. I think they’ll help…”
“No,” his father said again.
“Why not?” Nap said. “Why not try?”
His father rose suddenly and enfolded him. Nap was almost surprised to find himself sobbing into the hospital gown.
“It’s not fair,” Nap said. “It’s not fair!”
“Maybe,” his father said. “But somehow I got to spend two months with you. Really with you. That’s more than I could have asked for.”
“It’s not fair,” Nap whispered.
His father kissed the top of his head. “I love you, Nap.”
“I love you too, Dad,” Nap sobbed.
Nap clung to his father and didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until his father was shaking him.
“Bangun, bangun,” his father said. “Time to light up the sky.”
The Dragons exploded in purple and green with ear-splitting booms that set dogs and cats screaming for miles. Neither of them bothered to run.
Nicola Koh is a Malaysian Eurasian 17 years in the American Midwest, an atheist who lost their faith completing their Masters of Theology, and a minor god of Tetris. They got their MFA from Hamline University and were a 2018 VONA/Voices and 2019/20 Loft Mentors Series fellow. Their fiction has appeared in places like the Margins, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, and the Account. Nicola enjoys taking too many pictures of their animal frenemies, crafting puns, and listening to public domain audio books after injuring their neck reading (which they console themselves by calling a literary wound of honour). See more at nicolakoh.com.
