laid them out on the dike on the western edge of the bridge, heads facing south, feet north. Pulling Father along behind him, Granddad walked down the column of bodies, counting them. Wang Wenyi, Wang’s wife, Fang Six, Fang Seven, Bugler Liu, Consumptive Four… one face after another. Tears ran down Granddad’s deeply lined face like rivers of molten steel in the light of the torches.
‘What about Mute?’ Granddad asked. ‘Douguan, did you see Uncle Mute?’
The image of Mute’s razor-sharp sabre knife slicing off the Jap’s head, and of the head sailing, screaming, through the air, flashed into Father’s mind. ‘On the truck,’ he said.
The torches encircled one of the trucks. Three men climbed onto it as Granddad ran up. They lifted Mute’s body over the railing and onto Granddad’s back. One man held Mute’s head, another his legs, and they staggered up the dike with their load, to lay it on the easternmost edge of the grisly column. Mute, bent at the waist, was still gripping his blood-spattered sabre knife. His lifeless eyes were staring, his mouth open, as though frozen on a scream.
Granddad knelt and pressed down on Mute’s knees and chest; Father heard the dead man’s spine groan and crack as his body straightened out. Granddad tried to wrench the sword free, but the death grip thwarted his attempts. He brought the arm down so that the sword lay alongside Mute’s leg. One of the women knelt and rubbed Mute’s eyes. ‘Brother,’ she said, ‘close your eyes, close them now. Commander Yu will avenge your death…’
‘Dad, Mom’s still in the field…’ Father began to weep.
With a wave of his hand, Granddad said, ‘You go… Take some people with you and carry her back…’
Father darted into the sorghum field, followed by several villagers with torches, whose burning oil brushed the dense stalks. The aggrieved dry leaves crackled and burned when they were splattered, and as the fires spread, the stalks bowed their heavy heads and wept hoarsely.
Father parted the sorghum to reveal the body of Grandma, lying on her back and facing the remote, inimitable sky above Northeast Gaomi Township, filled with the spirits of countless stars. Even in death her face was as lovely as jade, her parted lips revealing a line of clean teeth inlaid with pearls of sorghum seeds, placed there by the emerald beaks of white doves.
‘Carry her back,’ Granddad said.
A group of young women lifted her up. With torches casting a wide net of light along the route, the sorghum field turned into a fairyland, and each member of the procession was surrounded by an eerie halo of light.
One woman carried Grandma’s body onto the dike and laid it at the westernmost end of the corpses.
The old man with the white beard asked, ‘Commander Yu, where will we find enough coffins for them all?’
Granddad thought for a moment. ‘We won’t carry them back,’ he said finally, ‘and we don’t need coffins. For now, we’ll bury them in the sorghum field. Once I’ve rallied our forces, I’ll come back and give them a proper send- off.’
The old man sent a group back to weave additional torches, since they would be burying the dead through the night. ‘While you’re at it,’ Granddad added, ‘bring some draught animals so we can tow that truck back with us, and chop down enough sorghum stalks to cover the bodies and line the bottoms of the graves before filling them in with dirt.’
Grandma was the last to be interred. Once again her body was enshrouded in sorghum. As Father watched the final stalk hide her face, his heart cried out in pain, never to be whole again throughout his long life. Granddad tossed in the first spadeful of dirt. The loose clods of black earth thudded against the layer of sorghum like an exploding grenade shattering the surrounding stillness with its lethal shrapnel. Father’s heart wept blood.
Grandma’s grave mound was the fifty-first in the field. ‘Fellow villagers,’ the old man said, ‘on your knees!’
The village elders fell to their knees before the line of graves, the fields around them vibrating with the sound of weeping. The torches were beginning to die out. Just then a star fell from the southern sky, its brilliance not fading from view until it had passed below the tips of sorghum.
It was nearly dawn when the old torches were replaced by new ones. A milky gleam gradually penetrated the fog over the river. The dozen or so draught animals grazed noisily on the sorghum stalks and chewed the fallen ears of grain.
Granddad ordered the people to remove the linked rakes from the road and push the first truck across the highway and into the ditch on the eastern shoulder. When it was done, he picked up a shotgun, aimed at the gas tank, and fired, filling it with holes through which the gasoline spurted out. Then, taking a torch, he stepped back, aimed carefully, and flung it. A towering white flame shot into the air, igniting the frame and quickly turning the truck into a pile of twisted metal.
The villagers put their shoulders to the undamaged truck loaded with rice, pushing it across the bridge and onto the highway, then tipped the burned-out hulk of the third truck into the river. The gas tank of the fourth truck, which had retreated to the road south of the bridge, was also blasted by the shotgun and set afire, sending more flames shooting up into the heavens. All that remained on the bridge were piles of cinders. Flames rose into the sky to the north and south of the river, punctuated by the occasional crack of an exploding shell. The Jap corpses, burned to an oily crisp, added the stench of roasted flesh to the acrid smell in the air. The people’s throats itched, their stomachs churned.
‘What’ll we do with their bodies, Commander Yu?’ the old man asked.
‘If we bury them, they’ll stink up our soil! If we burn them, they’ll foul our air! Dump them into the river and let them float back home.’
Thirty or more corpses were dragged up onto the bridge, including the old Jap, who had been stripped of his general’s uniform by the Leng Detachment soldiers.
‘You women look away,’ Granddad announced.
He took out his short sword, split open the crotches of the Jap soldiers’ pants, and sliced off their genitalia. Then he ordered a couple of the coarser men to stuff the things into the mouths of their owners. Finally, working in pairs, the men picked up the Japanese soldiers – basically decent men, perhaps, maybe handsome at one time, virtually all in the prime of their youth – and,
The faint rays of dawn found the villagers too exhausted to move. The fires along the banks were dying out beneath the still-dark sky. Granddad told the villagers to hitch the animals up to the front bumper of the undamaged rice truck.
The animals strained, the ropes were yanked taut, and the axles groaned as the truck crawled forward like a clumsy beetle. The front wheels kept veering from side to side, so Granddad halted the animals, opened the door, and slid into the cab to try his hand at steering. The ropes snapped taut as the animals strained forward again, and Granddad wrestled with the steering wheel until he began to get the hang of it. Now the truck was heading straight, the terrified villagers fell in behind it. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Granddad felt around the dashboard with the other. He snapped on a switch, sending two rays of light shooting out the front.
‘It opened its eyes!’ someone shouted from behind him.
The headlights lit up the road ahead as well as the hairs on the animals’ backs. Feeling very good about things, Granddad pushed and turned and twisted and pulled every button and switch and lever and knob he could find. A shrill noise rang out, and the horn began to blare. So you haven’t lost your voice! Granddad was thinking. Deciding to have a little fun, he turned the ignition switch; a rumbling emerged from its belly as the truck shot forward crazily, knocking down mules and oxen, and bumping horses and donkeys out of the way, scaring Granddad so badly he was drenched with sweat, front and back. Having climbed onto the tiger’s back, he didn’t know how to get down.
The dumbstruck villagers watched the truck knock the animals down and drag them along. It travelled a few dozen yards before careening into a ditch west of the road and coming to a shuddering halt, the raised wheels on one side spinning like windmills. Granddad smashed the glass and climbed out, his hands and face smeared with blood.
He stood looking at the demonic creature, a grim smile on his face.
After the villagers had unloaded the rice from the back of the remaining truck, Granddad blasted holes in the gas tank and once again ignited the gasoline with a torch. The flames licked the heavens.
