morning to help mill the wheat. The sweat on its back darkened its hide as it trotted to avoid the sting of the switch. The bleat of a goat beyond the wall heralded the arrival at the gate of the mule that had entered the world the same day I had. The donkey kicked out with its rear hooves. “Let the mule in,” Mother said, “and hurry.” Malory ran over to the gate and shoved the young animal’s lovely head backward to put some slack in the tethering chain. He then unhooked it from the post and jumped back as the mule burst through the gate, ran up to its mother, and grabbed a nipple in its mouth. That calmed the donkey. “Humans and animals are so much alike,” Mother said with a sigh. Malory nodded in agreement.
While our donkey was nursing its bastard offspring around the open-air millstone in Malory’s compound, Sha Yueliang and his band of men were scrubbing their mounts. After brushing the mane and sparse hair of their tails, they dried the donkeys’ hides with fine cotton cloths and waxed them. The twenty-eight donkeys emerged from the grooming like new animals; twenty-eight riders stood proud and energetic and twenty-eight muskets shone brightly. Each man had two gourds tied to his belt, one large and one small. The larger one held gunpowder, the smaller one held birdshot. Each gourd had been treated with three coats of tung oil. All fifty-six polished gourds glinted in the sunlight. The men wore khaki trousers and black jackets, their heads covered by coolie hats woven from sorghum stalks. As squad leader, Sha Yueliang wore a red tassel in his hat. With a satisfied look at his men and their mounts, he said, “Stand tall, brothers. We’ll show those people what a band of men with shiny black donkeys and muskets is made of.” He mounted his donkey, smacked it on the rump, and rode off. Now, horses may be swift, but donkeys are model parade animals; men on horses ride with an air of majesty, while men on donkeys ride with a sense of fulfillment. Before long, the squad appeared on the streets of Dalan. After being pounded by a summer of rain, the streets were hard and sleek, unlike the harvest season, when they would be so dry and dusty that a galloping horse would raise a cloud of dust. Sha’s band of men left a trail of white hoofprints and, of course, the clopping sounds that formed them. Sha’s donkeys were all shod, just like horses. A stroke of genius, thanks to Sha. The crisp clatter first attracted neighborhood children, then Yao Si, the township’s bookkeeper, who came out in a Mandarin robe that belonged to an earlier age, a pencil tucked behind his ear, and planted himself in front of Sha Yueliang’s donkey. Bowing deeply and smiling broadly, he asked, “What troops do you command? Will you take up residence here or are you just passing through? I am at your service.”
Sha leaped down off his donkey and replied, “We’re the Black Donkey Musket Band, an anti-Japanese commando unit. We have been ordered to set up a resistance in Dalan. For that we need quarters, feed for our mounts, and a kitchen. Simple food, like eggs and flatbread, will do just fine for us. But our donkeys are resistance troop mounts, and must be fed well. The hay must be fine and free of impurities, the fodder made of crumbled bean cakes and well water. Not a drop of muddy water from the Flood Dragon River.”
“Sir,” Yao Si said, “duties of this magnitude cannot be entrusted to the likes of me. I must seek instructions from the venerable township head, who has recently been appointed head of the Peace Preservation Corps by the Imperial Army.”
“That cocksucker!” Sha Yueliang cursed darkly. “Anyone who serves the Japanese is a traitorous dog!”
“Sir,” Yao Si explained, “he did not accept the assignment willingly. As the owner of vast acres of land and many draft animals, he wants for nothing. The duty was forced upon him. Besides, someone has to do it, and who better than our steward…”
“Take me to him!” Sha demanded. His men dismounted to rest at the township office while Yao Si escorted Sha to the gate of the township head’s residence, a compound with seven rows of fifteen rooms, each with a connecting garden and separate gate, one leading to the next like a maze. Sha Yueliang’s first sight of Sima Ting was in the midst of an argument with Sima Ku, who was lying in bed nursing wounds sustained in a fire on the fifth day of the fifth month. He had burned down a bridge, but instead of immolating the Japanese, had managed only to burn the skin off his own backside. Taking far too long to heal, his injuries were now compounded by bedsores, which forced him to lie on his belly with his backside elevated.
“Elder brother,” Sima Ku said as he propped himself up on his elbows and raised his head high, “you bastard, you stupid bastard.” His eyes were blazing. “The head of the Peace Preservation Corps is a running dog of the Japanese, a donkey belonging to the guerrilla forces, a rat hiding in a bellows, a person hated by both sides. Why did you accept the job?”
“That’s shit! What you’re saying is pure shit!” Sima Ting defended himself. “Only a damned idiot would take on the job willingly. The Japanese stuck a bayonet up against my belly. Through Ma Jin-long, the interpreter, their commander said, ‘Your younger brother Sima Ku joined the bandit Sha Yueliang to burn a bridge and launch an ambush. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Imperial Army. At first we planned to burn down your residence, Felicity Manor, but since you seem like a reasonable man, we have spared you.’ So you are one of the reasons I am the new head of the Peace Preservation Corps.”
Sima Ku, having lost the argument, cursed angrily, “This goddamned ass of mine, I wonder if it will ever heal.”
“I’d be happy if it never healed,” Sima Ting said heatedly. “You’ll give me a lot less trouble that way.” Turning to leave, he spotted a smiling Sha Yueliang standing at the door. Yao Si stepped forward, but before he could make the introductions, Sha announced, “Corps Head Sima, I am Sha Yueliang.”
Sima Ku rolled over in bed before his brother could react. “I’ll be damned, so you’re Sha Yueliang, nicknamed Sha the Monk.”
“At present I am the commander of the Black Donkey Musket Band,” Sha replied. “My thanks to the Sima brothers for setting the bridge on fire. You and I, hand in glove.”
“So you’re still alive, are you? What sort of birdshit battles are you fighting these days?”
“Ambushes!” Sha said.
“Ambushes, is it? If not for me and my torch, you’d have been trampled into the mud!” Sima Ku said.
“I have a salve for treating burns,” Sha said with a broad smile. “I’ll have one of my men bring it over.”
“Lay out some food,” Sima Ting instructed Yao Si, “to welcome Commander Sha.”
Yao Si replied timidly, “All our money went to set up the Peace Preservation Corps.”
“How stupid can you be?” Sima Ting said. “The Imperial Army doesn’t serve our family alone, it serves eight hundred households. And the musket band was raised not for our family, but for all the citizens of the township. Get every family to contribute some food and money, since these men are the people’s guests. We’ll supply the wine and liquor.”
“Corps Head Sima serves two masters well, and gains equally from both.”
“What can I do?” Sima Ting pleaded. “As old Pastor Malory said, ‘Who will go to Hell, if not me?’“
Pastor Malory took the lid of his pot and dumped noodles made of the new flour into the boiling water, then stirred them with chopsticks before replacing the lid. “The fire needs to be a little hotter,” he shouted to Mother, who nodded and stuffed more golden, fragrant wheat stalks into the belly of the stove. Without letting go of the nipple, I looked down at the flames licking out of the stove and listened to the stalks crackle and pop as I thought back to what had just happened: They had laid me in the basket – on my back at first, although I quickly rolled over onto my belly, so I could watch Mother roll the noodles. As her body moved up and down, those two full gourds on her chest bounced around, summoning me, passing me a secret sign. Sometimes they threw the two datelike heads together, as if kissing or whispering to one another. But most of the time they were bouncing up and down, bouncing and calling out, like a pair of happy white doves. I reached out to touch them, saliva oozing from my mouth. Then, all of a sudden, they turned bashful and edgy, as a blush fell over their faces and delicate pearls of sweat streamed down the valley between them. I saw a pair of blue lights dancing on them; they were spots of light from Pastor Malory’s eyes. Then two hands with blond hair reached out from the blue eyes to take my food from me, sending yellow flames leaping from my heart. I opened my mouth to cry, but that only made things worse. The tiny hands retreated back into Malory’s eyes, but the big hands attached to his arms reached out to Mother’s chest. He stood tall and massive behind her; those ugly hands reached around and covered the two white doves. He stroked their feathers with his coarse fingers, then pinched and scissored their heads. My poor gourds! My precious doves! They struggled to free their wings, then tucked them close to their bodies, close and tight, until they were as small as they were ever going to get, before pumping themselves up and spreading their wings, as if wanting desperately to fly away, all the way to the far ends of the wilderness, to the edge of the sky, floating gently up to be with the clouds, bathed by the winds and stroked by the sun, then to moan with the wind and sing with the sun, and finally to sink silently earthward and disappear into the depths of a lake. Loud wails burst from my throat; a river of tears clouded my eyes. Mother and Malory’s bodies writhed in unison, Mother moaned softly. “Let me go, you donkey. The baby’s crying.” “The little bastard,” Malory said resentfully.
