Off the Books

Lao Song's badge was white.

The full-time staff at the compound wore red badges, with photos, names, and numbers, pinned to the chest, rattling with a kind of licensed pride. Lao Song's white badge hung at his waist, no photo, only a worker number, with the small words Shunyuan Labor printed beneath. For twelve years he opened the gates at six and locked them at night, swept the yard, manned the door, reheated meals for the young who worked late, and watered the half-dead plants for the bosses.

The faces in the compound turned over faster than the notices on the bulletin board. Lao Song never moved. He was like the motion-sensor light in the corner: dark until someone came, dim after they left, and no one ever remembered who had installed him.

The manager from Shunyuan came each Spring Festival with two jars of cooking oil and shook his hand. Lao Song, you are the old hero of our company. Lao Song grinned, showing two yellow teeth. He did not know if he counted as a hero. He only knew the company paid his insurance at the lowest tier, often skipping it; no housing fund, no year-end bonus, and the two jars of oil were his yearly benefit. When the regular staff debated their raise, he mopped the floor nearby, and the mop carried their talk down the drain.

He knew everyone. Section Chief Zhang liked cold tea; Director Li never came on weekends; Bureau Chief Wang's plate ended in seven. He never told. He only kept the lights on and the doors open, so other people's days ran as usual. Once a new hire named Zhao worked past midnight and fell asleep at his desk; Lao Song draped his own old padded jacket over the boy. Zhao thanked him the next day, then was transferred, and the thanks left with him.

The trouble came in the twelfth month.

That winter was cruelly cold. The old wiring in the boiler room gave way, and sparks flew after midnight. On his night round Lao Song saw a red glow at the window of the switch room. He ran over; the door was ajar, and a burnt smell hit his face. Without thinking, he grabbed the extinguisher from the corner and sprayed the smoking conduit, then kicked open the next window for air. The fire went down. Half his eyebrow was singed off.

He pounded on the duty room and shook the dead-asleep young guard awake. Call the fire brigade. Water. Here.

The fire never caught. The building stood. The next day the compound held a meeting. The leader said from the stage that they were fortunate the fire had been caught in time, averting great loss. Lao Song stood at the very back, his white badge swinging at his waist. He waited all morning to hear his name. It never came.

Something else came for him instead.

Bureau Chief Wang was missing an old teacup from his office, suspected taken in the chaos; others said the wrong extinguisher had been used, that the fault should have been reported, a case of unauthorized handling. The investigators spoke with Lao Song, and slowly, between their lines, turned the man who fought the fire into a man under suspicion.

The finest part was the question of blame.

The compound's personnel office said Lao Song was dispatched by Shunyuan, not a staff member, and fire patrol fell outside his duties; his action was overstepping, and any mishap was not theirs to bear. The manager at Shunyuan flipped through the contract and said, true, Master Song was on night round, but the boiler wiring was managed by the client, the compound itself; they only supplied cleaning labor, and electrical matters were, with regret, beyond them.

The two sides passed Lao Song back and forth, like a yam too hot to hold. In the end Shunyuan ruled: Lao Song had acted without authority and failed to report, one demerit, that month's bonus docked, and the next year's contract not renewed.

Lao Song went to the compound for reason. The gate room said, you are not our unit's man; take it up with your company. At the agency the manager held his thermos and said, Lao Song, you are past fifty; go home and rest; it may not be a bad thing.

He had nowhere to plead. Twelve years of swept floors, watched doors, watered plants, and the jacket he had lent another, none of it outweighed a single overstep. He thought: had the fire truly spread that night, had it burned the leader's scrolls and the building's beams, he would likely be recorded as negligent; and now that it had not, he was meddlesome instead.

On the day his contract ended, Lao Song returned the white badge, two keys, and an old jacket. The compound opened and locked as usual. A new outsourced worker took his place, also a white badge, also no photo, also only a number.

No one asked where Lao Song had gone. He had never been on the roster. The incident report read outsourced personnel handled it promptly, without even the character for his surname. In the surveillance replay, the man with the singed brow running with the extinguisher was reduced to a line of small text: outsourced, Shunyuan.

Later the compound changed leaders and held more meetings, and no one mentioned the fire that never burned. Only each twelfth month, when wind poured through that window by the switch room, the corner light flickered on, then off.

Lao Song went home to farm. The words he often said, no one ever heard: I sold my whole life to that compound, and the compound would not even keep my name.