18Cars stopped. Pedestrians scrambled onto the covered walkways. Coming down s**o Lane – Dead Man’s Lane as the Cantonese called it – was his father’s ragtag band of old men playing the funeral dirge, their erhus wailing and the cymbals clanging. Weng slipped behind the pillar of a shophouse. His father had never talked about his other job, the one he did when there was no carpentering job for him in the boatyard. His old man had been coughing a lot at night, great heaving coughs that seemed to wrench out his lungs. Yet, here he came blowing the flute, his face set and impassive like the rest of the musicians, who looked like the sad clowns from a Chinese opera in their ill-fitting blue jackets, and hats blown askew by the wind. Weaving in and out of the crowd on the walkway, Weng followed
