black pistol. The fox had a fat hen in its mouth and was scampering along the base of the wall, the hen’s foot scraping the ground. Commander Long fired; flames shot from the muzzle of her pistol. The fox stopped in its tracks and dropped the hen. “You hit it!” one of the women shouted. But the glossy eyes of the fox swept the women’s faces. Its long face was haloed in moonlight; it wore a sneer. The women were stunned by that mocking grin, and Commander Long’s arm fell weakly to her side. But then she steeled herself and fired another round. It didn’t come close, did, in fact, raise a puff of dirt in the vicinity of the women. With no more concerns, the fox picked up the hen and slipped nonchalantly through the metal ribs of the enclosure, the women watching its exit as if in a trance. Like a puff of green smoke, the fox disappeared among the war relics in the scrapyard, where the grass grew tall and will-o’-the-wisps dotted the landscape – a fox paradise.
The following morning, my eyelids felt weighted down as I pulled a full cartload of chicken droppings over to the pig farm. When I turned the corner of the scrapyard, I heard a shout behind me. I turned and saw the rightist Qiao Qisha running briskly toward me. “The director sent me to help you,” she said indifferently. “You push from behind,” I said, “and I’ll pull.”
The two wheels of the heavy cart kept getting stuck in the soft earth of the narrow road, and each time that happened, I had to turn and tug with all my might, my arched back nearly touching the ground. At the same time, she pushed with everything she had. Once the wheels were free, she’d look over at me before I turned around. The sight of her jet black eyes, the fine hairs on her upper lip, her fair nose and nicely curved chin, as well as her expression, which was filled with hidden meaning, reminded me of the fox in the chicken coop. That look lit up a dark place in my brain.
The pig farm was about a mile from the chicken farm, and the road passed by a fertilizer pit for the vegetable garden unit. My teacher, Huo Lina, walked past us carrying a load of manure, her slim waist compressed by the weight of her load until she seemed about to snap in two. At the pig farm, we delivered our chicken droppings to the woman in charge, Ji Qiongzhi, my former music teacher, who dumped the slimy, stinking mess into the pig troughs.
One of the members of the food processing team was an athletic fellow who could high-jump nearly two meters using the latest flop method. Naturally, he was a rightist. He displayed a great deal of concern for Qiao Qisha, and was extremely friendly to me, one of those cheerful rightists, unlike the ones who went around scowling the day long. Wearing a towel draped around his neck and a pair of goggles, he worked happily on the pulverizer, which filled the air with dust. The leader of his team was another special case, an illiterate man named Guo Wenhao who created clapper-talk lyrics that were sung all over the farm. On our very first trip with coarse fodder made of yams, he entertained us with one of his lyrics:
“There’s this animal farm leader, Ma Ruilian, who has a new vocation. She carries out experiments at the breeding station, mating a sheep and rabbit with high elation. She angered her assistant, Qiao Qisha, and hit her in the belly, ha ha ha. A horse and a donkey produce a mule, but a rabbit sheep would be a new creation. If a sheep can marry a rabbit, a boar can take Ma Ruilian for gestation. With anger in her breast, she told Li Du with detestation. Tolerant Director Li counseled hesitation. These rightists, he said, don’t understand cessation. Little Qiao went to medical school, Yu Zheng uses a newsletter for his narration. Ma Ming studied in the American nation, Zhang Jie’s dictionary is a clarification. Even rightist Wang Meizan, whose head knows no sensation, is a great athlete, cause for celebration…”
“You there, rightist!” Guo Wenhao shouted. Wang Meizan brought his legs together. “Yo!” he responded. “Load the Qiao girl up with fodder.” Wang replied, “Will do, Leader Guo.”
Wang Meizan loaded our cart with fodder, as Guo Wenhao asked me over the roar of the pulverizer, “Are you a Shangguan?” “Yes,” I said, “I’m the little Shangguan bastard. “A bastard can become a great man. You Shangguans are an incredible family. Sha Yueliang, Sima Ku, Birdman Han, Speechless Sun, Babbitt. You’re really something…”
On our way back to the chicken farm with the feed, Qiao Qisha blurted out, “What’s your name?”
“Shangguan Jintong. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” she said. “We work together, so we might as well know each other’s name. How many sisters do you have?” “Eight. No, seven.” “What about the eighth?”
“She turned traitor,” I replied with annoyance. “That’s all you need to know.”
Every night the same fox came to harass the chickens, and every other night it stole off with one of the hens. On off nights, it didn’t steal a hen not because it couldn’t, but because it didn’t want to. Its nightly activities fell into two categories: nights when it was hungry, and nights when it merely wanted to cause a disturbance. This drove the women chicken tenders to distraction, and cost them lots of sleep. Commander Long fired at least twenty bullets at the fox, but never harmed a hair of its fur. “That fox is a demon for sure,” one of the women said. “It can recite a charm to ward off bullets.”
“Nonsense!” a tall woman nicknamed “Wild Mule” disagreed sharply. “No mangy fox can turn into a demon.”
“If that’s true, how come Commander Long, who was a sharpshooter in the militia, keeps missing?” asked the other woman.
“I think it’s intentional. The fox is a male, after all,” Wild Mule said salaciously. “Maybe a handsome green visitor comes to her bed late at night, when everything’s quiet.”
Commander Long stood under the tattered netting silently listening to the women’s talk, fiddling with her pistol, apparently lost in thought. The wanton laughter roused her from her ruminations; tapping her gray cap with the muzzle of the pistol, she strode into the chicken coop, skirting the laying pens, and planted herself in front of Wild Mule, who was gathering eggs. “What did you say just now?” she demanded angrily. “I didn’t say anything,” Wild Mule replied calmly, a brown egg in the palm of her hand. “I heard you!” Commander Long raged as she tapped the wire with her pistol. “Exactly what did you hear?” Wild Mule asked provocatively. Commander Long’s face turned the color of the egg Wild Mule was holding. “I’ll never forgive you for that!” she sputtered as she turned and walked away, enraged. Wild Mule looked at her back and said, “If your heart is pure, not even the devil can scare you! Don’t be fooled by her serious appearance, fox. She’s lusting, all right. The other night, you think I didn’t see with my own eyes?” “Wild Mule,” one of the more prudent women counseled, “that’s enough. Where do you find all this energy on the six ounces of noodles you’re given to eat?” “Six ounces of noodles? Fuck her and her six ounces of noodles!” She pulled a pin out of her hair, poked a hole in each end of the egg she was holding, and quickly sucked it dry. Then she put the outwardly whole egg with the others. “Anyone who wants to report me, go ahead. My dad’s found me a husband in the Northeast, and Fm leaving next month. There are enough potatoes up there to form mountains. How about you, planning on reporting me?” she asked Jintong, who was shoveling chicken droppings by the window. “You’re the most likely one, a fragrant baby rooster, just the type favored by our armless leader. An old cow like her, with bad teeth, has to graze on tender grass!” Jintong was totally befuddled by the verbal assault. Holding his shovel out in front of him, he said, “Want some of this chicken shit?”
That afternoon, when they reached the vegetable unit’s fertilizer pit with their load of four crates of eggs, Qiao Qisha asked Jintong to stop. He slowed down and lowered the cart handles to the ground. “Have you seen them?” Qiao Qisha asked when he turned around. “They all steal eggs, even Commander Long. You’ve seen the one called Wild Mule, what good shape she’s in? Those women get more nutrition than they need.” “But these eggs have been weighed,” Jintong said. “Are we supposed to go hungry, even when we’re delivering a load of eggs? Fm about to drop from hunger.” Picking up two of the eggs, she darted into the fenced-off enclosure and disappeared behind two tanks. A few moments later, she reappeared with what looked like two whole eggs and put them back into the load. “Qiao Qisha,” Jintong said worriedly, “that’s like a cat covering up its own shit. When they weigh this load at the farm, they’ll know what’s happened.” She laughed. “Do you think Fm stupid?” she said as she picked up two more eggs and motioned to him. “Come with me,” she said.
Jintong followed her into the enclosure, where white pollen floated above tall artemesia stalks, filling the air with a dizzying fragrance. She squatted down beside a tank and removed something wrapped in oilpaper from a gap between the tractor tread and a wheel. Her crime kit. It included a tiny drill bit, a hypodermic needle, a piece of rubberized fabric dyed the color of an eggshell, and a little pair of scissors. After drilling a tiny hole in one of the eggs, she inserted the hypodermic needle and slowly drew out the contents. “Open your mouth,” she said, and emptied the contents down Jintong’s throat, making him her accomplice. Once that was done, she drew water out of an upturned steel helmet lying next to the tank and inserted it into the shell. Finally, she cut out a small piece of fabric to cover the hole. All this with practiced efficiency. “Is this what they taught you at the medical school?” Jintong asked. “That’s right,” she said with a smile. “Egg theft!”
