The Taste of Freedom

There was a Chinese fucker in the park with me and the Hammer today. We see him every now and then. He is one of the people who like to walk around the park repeatedly. Circles it like a buzzard. Likes the Hammer. Calls her Fuzzy.

I was eating berries off the bush when he stopped to pet the dog and talk. "What you eat?" he asked me.

"Salmon berries," I told him.

"Salmon berries," he repeated. "What about that one?" he asked, pointing at an orange one.

"That's a salmon berry too," I told him. I do not think he believed me. Us white guys are always trying to get the Chinese to eat poisonous shit. "You've never eaten salmon berries before?" I asked.

"Never," he answered. "Never eat anything grow in the bush in Canada."

"There is a lot of poisonous things growing in our woods. I eat all kinds of shit growing wild. Brought up to know the difference between one thing and another. Eat some," I told him, pulling down a branch heavy with fruit.

He backed away faster than a Canuck from success. "No thank you," he told me before asking, "What salmon berry taste like?"

"Tastes like boyhood to me," I told him. "Tastes like the Freedom I enjoyed when I was a young boy before my country turned sour some forty years ago."

"You think Canada sour? Go China some time," he suggested before returning to his buzzard path.