Old Kuang's Popcorn

When the twelfth month came, the mouth of Firecracker Lane belonged to Old Kuang.

He arrived earlier than anyone. The sky was still the color of bruised steel, the north wind whining through the wires, and there he came with his old carrying pole. At the front swung a black gourd-shaped iron thing; at the back, a clay stove with two spent coals glowing dim and red in its mouth. In the sack rode the corn he had soaked through the whole autumn -- small kernels, tooth-white, and when you bit one open a milky sweetness.

Forty years. He was the last man in the city still working that hand-cranked black machine. The young ones had all switched to electric drums that whirred and spun and scattered essence of perfume -- fast, sweet -- but Old Kuang would not move. "Corn is corn and perfume is perfume," he said. "They are two different things. What comes out fast is not crisp; what comes out sweet is not fragrant."

His trick was not in his hands but in his ears.

The machine had once worn a pressure gauge, but the glass had long since gone cloudy with soot and the needle had drifted crooked. Old Kuang never looked at it. He only cranked. The crank was a bent iron rod that squeaked in his grip, and the fire in the belly of the gourd licked and hushed. Old Kuang half-closed his eyes and listened to the sound. What others heard as noise, he heard as tension -- the instant the crank ran light from heavy, the moment the furnace dropped from a roar to a puff, and he knew: the corn had arrived.

Then he rose, aimed the mouth of the gourd at the old sack in the corner, and with one foot on the lever -- BANG.

A muffled thunder, a white column of smoke, and a hot breath of scorched sweetness across the face. The children had long since pressed their palms to their ears and shrunk against the wall; when the smoke cleared they rushed in to grab the still-burning white fat flowers.

Old Kuang never coaxed the children, never minded the noise. He only tied the sack tight, weighed it in his hand, and sat back down to crank the next batch.

The lane trusted him. Though not everyone. Widow Qian, who sold vegetables, was a hot temper. Once, queuing, she urged him: "Old Kuang, hurry, my grandson is crying with hunger!" Old Kuang did not look up. "It cannot be hurried. Corn keeps its own hour. Press it and it simply will not speak." Widow Qian muttered, but in the end she waited.

The first snow fell that year, and a young man set up at the lane's mouth with an electric popper that scattered rose essence -- a batch every five minutes, ringed with children. Old Kuang's stall stood cold for a few days. Someone advised him: "Sprinkle a little essence too, or the trade will be taken from you." Old Kuang shook his head. "Sprinkle it, and it is no longer Old Kuang's corn."

The young competitor had not mastered his machine. Once the latch was not seated, and it went off early; the scalding flowers sprayed out and burned a little girl's arm. The child wept, the young man panicked, the onlookers murmured. Old Kuang did not watch the spectacle. He moved his own sack over, popped a fresh batch for the girl, and pressed it into her hands. The little girl, still catching her breath between sobs, pinched a flower and laughed through her tears. The young man's face went red, and he said nothing.

The real test came at year's end.

At the west end of Firecracker Lane lived a newlywed whose husband had gone away to labor, leaving her to winter with a half-year-old child. One day she came with half a cloth bag of old corn -- rations from her husband's family, kept two years -- wanting it popped for the baby's tidbit. Old Kuang scooped a handful into his palm. The kernels were dark, and bitten open they carried a moldy stink; the hearts were hollow. This corn would not pop; forced, it would only scorch to a shell and feed the child a mouth of ash.

He did not say it aloud. He only said, "This corn is damp. Let me mix in half new." And he measured half a ladle of his own good corn into the mix and popped it together. The white flowered sack he weighed, and charged her the usual few coins. The young wife thanked him and went home with the baby. She never knew that more than half of that bag had been Old Kuang's own corn.

Old Kuang kept his own accounts. He read people.

On the eve of New Year's Eve the wind stopped and the snowlight was blinding. Old Kuang popped his last batch. As he cranked, something felt wrong -- the gauge glass cracked clean through with a snap, and the needle slumped to a number that would never move again. He looked down and smiled. "It stopped counting long ago."

The children pressed their ears once more. This time, beneath the bang, there seemed to be something else.

Old Kuang wiped the black gourd with oil, bound it with hemp rope, and leaned the pole in the corner. When spring came again, would the mouth of Firecracker Lane still hear that one BANG? No one could say. But the lane's children, in their dreams, still remembered that scorched sweetness.