longer. Zaohua was slowing Sima Liang down, and when they reached the open ground in front of the kiln, a brick hurled by Wei Yangjiao knocked Sima Liang to the ground. Zaohua ran straight at Wei with the knife, but missed when he sidestepped the attack; Wu Yunyu came up and kicked her to the ground.
“Stop right there!” Mother shouted.
Like vultures spreading their wings, the four attackers bared their arms and began kicking Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua, over and over again. She cried out piteously; he didn’t make a sound. They rolled on the ground, trying to avoid the feet of the attackers, who, in the moonlight, seemed caught up in a strange dance.
Mother stumbled and fell, but got stubbornly back to her feet and grabbed the shoulder of Wei Yangjiao and wouldn’t let go. Known for being sinister and cunning, he drove his elbows back into her, catching her on both breasts. With a loud yelp, she backed off, lost her balance, and sat down hard on the ground. I threw myself down on the ground and buried my face in the mud; it seemed to me that black blood was gushing from my eyes.
And still they kicked Sima Liang and Zaohua in an explosion of savage fury. At that moment, a hulking figure with a mass of unkempt hair, an unruly beard, a face covered with soot, and dressed all in black emerged from the kiln. His movements were stiff as he crawled out and got clumsily to his feet; raising a fist that seemed as big as a pile driver, he swung at Wu Yunyu and shattered his collarbone. This onetime hero sat on the ground and cried like a baby. The other three hardy souls stopped dead. “It’s Sima Ku!” Wei Yangjiao shouted in alarm. He turned to run away, but when he heard the angry roar from Sima Ku, like an explosion out of the earth, he and the others froze in their tracks. Sima Ku raised his fist again; this time it crunched into Ding Jingou’s eye. The next punch drove the bile up and out of Guo Qiu-sheng’s mouth. Before the next punch was launched, Wei Yangjiao fell to his knees and began banging his head on the ground, kowtowing and begging for his life: “Spare me, old master, spare me! Those three forced me to join in. They said they’d beat me up if I didn’t, knock the teeth right out of my mouth… please, old master, spare me…” Sima Ku hesitated for just a moment before delivering a kick that sent Wei Yangjiao rolling backward. He scrambled to his feet and ran off like a frightened jackrabbit. It didn’t take long for his barking voice to break the silence over the road leading to the village: “Go catch Sima Ku – the leader of the restoration corps landlords, Sima Ku, is back – go catch him -”
Sima Ku helped Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua to their feet, then did the same for Mother.
Mother’s voice quaked. “Are you human or are you a ghost?”
“Mother-in-law -” Sima Ku sobbed, but didn’t go on.
“Dad, is it really you?” Sima Liang blurted out.
“Son,” Sima Ku replied, “I’m proud of you.”
Sima Ku turned back to Mother. “Who’s left at home?”
“Don’t ask any questions,” Mother said anxiously. “You must get away from here.”
The frantic beating of a gong and crisp rifle fire came from the village.
Sima grabbed hold of Wu Yunyu and said, slowly so there’d be no misunderstanding, “You piece of shit, you tell that bunch of turtles in the village that if anyone lays a hand on any relative of mine, I, Sima Ku, will personally wipe his family off the face of the earth! Do you understand me?”
“I understand,” Wu Yunyu said eagerly. “I understand.”
Sima Ku released his grip and let Wu fall back onto the ground.
“Hurry, go on now!” Mother slapped the ground with her hand to get him moving.
“Dad,” Sima Ku sobbed, “I want to go with you…”
“Be a good boy,” Sima Ku said, “and go with your grandma.”
“Please, Dad, take me with you.”
“Liang,” Mother said, “don’t get in your father’s way. He has to get out of here.”
Sima Ku knelt in front of Mother and kowtowed. “Mother,” he said sorrowfully, “the boy is going to have to stay with you. Since I could never repay the debt I owe you in this lifetime, you’ll have to wait till my next lifetime!”
“I failed the two girls, Feng and Huang,” Mother replied tearfully. “Please don’t hate me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. And I’ve already exacted vengeance.”
“Go on, then, go on. Run fast and fly far. All vengeance does is lead to more of the same.”
Sima Ku got to his feet and ran back into the kiln. He reemerged a moment later wearing a straw rain cape and carrying a machine gun; shiny ammunition clips hung from his belt. In a flash, he vanished into the sorghum field, making the stalks rustle loudly. Mother called out after him:
“Hear what I have to say – run fast and fly far, and don’t stop to do any more killing.”
Silence returned to the sorghum field. The moonlight cascaded down like water. A tide of human sounds rushed toward us from the village.
Wei Yangjiao led a ragtag bunch of local militia and district public security forces up to the kiln. Carrying lanterns, torches, rifles, and red-tasseled spears, they put on a show of surrounding the kiln. A public security officer named Yang, who had been fitted with a prosthetic leg, lay up against a pile of bricks and said through a megaphone, “Sima Ku, give yourself up! There’s no way out!”
Officer Yang kept it up for a while, with no response from inside the kiln. So he took out his pistol and fired twice at the dark opening of the kiln. The bullets produced echoes when they hit the inside walls.
“Bring me some grenades!” Officer Yang called out. A militiaman crawled up on his belly, like a lizard, and handed him two wood-handled grenades. Yang pulled the pin on one, tossed it in the direction of the kiln, then flattened out behind the bricks waiting for it to go off, which it did. Then he tossed the second one, with the same result. Concussion waves rolled far off into the distance, but still not a sound emerged from the kiln. Yang picked up his megaphone again. “Sima Ku, throw out your weapon, and we won’t harm you. We treat our prisoners well.” The only response was the soft chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs in the ditches.
Yang found the nerve to stand up, the megaphone in one hand and his pistol in the other. “Follow me!” he called out to the men behind him. A couple of brave militiamen, one with a rifle, the other with a red-tasseled spear, fell in behind Yang, whose prosthetic leg clicked with each lurching step he took. They entered the old kiln without event and reemerged a few moments later.
“Wei Yangjiao!” Officer Yang bellowed. “Where is he?”
“I swear I saw Sima Ku come out of that kiln. Ask them if you don’t believe me.”
“Was it Sima Ku?” Officer Yang turned his glare on Wu Yunyu and Guo Qiusheng – Ding Jingou was lying unconscious on the ground. “No mistake?”
Wu Yunyu glanced uneasily at the sorghum field and stammered, “I think it was…”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Was he armed?”
“I think… a machine gun… ammunition clips all over his body…”
The words were barely out of Wu Yunyu’s mouth when Officer Yang and all the men he’d brought with him hit the ground like mowed grass.
6
A class education exhibit was set up in the church. No sooner had the students reached the front door than they burst into tears, as if on command. The sound of hundreds of students – Dalan Elementary had by then become the key elementary school for all of Northeast Gaomi Township – all crying together rocked the street from one end to the other. The newly arrived principal stood on the stone steps and announced in a heavy accent, “Quiet down, students, quiet down!” He took out a gray handkerchief, with which he first wiped his eyes and then blew his nose loudly.
Once the students had stopped crying, they followed their teachers in single file into the church and lined up on a square drawn on the floor in chalk. The walls were covered with colorful ink drawings, all with explanations written beneath them.
Four women with pointers stood in the corners.
The first one was our music teacher, Ji Qiongzhi, who had been punished for beating up a student. Her face was a waxy yellow, her spirit obviously broken. Her once radiant eyes were now cold and lifeless. The new district head, a rifle slung over his shoulder, stood at Pastor Malory’s pulpit while Ji pointed to the drawings behind her and
