As soon as he stepped up onto the steamy bank of the Salty Water River, Granddad took off his cotton jacket, threw down his pistol, tightened his belt, and waited. He knew Black Eye would come.
The Salty Water River was as murky as a sheet of frosted glass reflecting the golden sunlight.
Black Eye walked up.
Grandma followed, with Father in her arms. She wore the same look of indifference.
The Iron Society soldiers brought up the rear.
‘A civil fight or a martial fight?’ Black Eye asked.
‘What’s the difference?’
‘A civil fight means you hit me three times and I hit you three times. A martial fight means anything goes.’
Granddad thought it over and said, ‘A civil fight.’
‘Who first?’ Black Eye asked.
‘Let fate decide. We’ll draw straws. The longest goes first.’
‘Who’ll prepare the straws?’ Black Eye asked.
Grandma put Father on the ground. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.
She plucked two lengths of straw, hid them behind her back, then brought them out in front. ‘Draw!’
She looked at Granddad, who drew a straw. Then she opened her hand to show the remaining one.
‘You drew the long straw, so you go first!’ she said.
Granddad drove his fist into Black Eye’s belly. Black Eye yelped.
Having sustained the first punch, Black Eye straightened up, a blue glint in his eyes, and waited for the next one.
Granddad hit him in the heart.
Black Eye stumbled back a step.
Granddad drove his final punch into Black Eye’s navel with all his might.
This time Black Eye stumbled back two steps. His face was waxen as he pressed his hand over his heart and coughed twice, spitting out a nearly congealed clot of blood. Then he wiped his mouth and nodded to Granddad, who concentrated all his strength in his chest and abdomen.
Black Eye waved his huge fist in the air and swung it hard, stopping inches away from Granddad. ‘I’ll spare you this one, for the sake of heaven!’ he said.
He also wasted his second punch. ‘I’ll spare you this one for the sake of earth.’
Black Eye’s third punch knocked Granddad head over heels, like a mud clod; he hit the hard, alkaline ground with a loud thud.
After struggling to his feet, Granddad picked up his jacket and his pistol, his face dotted with beads of sweat the size of soybeans. ‘I’ll see you in ten years.’
A piece of bark floated in the river. Granddad fired his nine bullets at it, smashing it to smithereens. Then he stuck his pistol into his belt and staggered into the wasteland, his bare shoulders and slightly bent back shining like bronze under the sun’s rays.
As Black Eye looked at the shattered pieces of bark floating in the river, he spat out a mouthful of blood and sat down hard on the ground.
Cradling Father in her arms, Grandma ran unsteadily after Granddad, sobbing as she called his name: ‘Zhan’ao -’
9
MACHINE GUNS BEHIND the tall Black Water River dike barked for three minutes, then fell silent. Throngs of Jiao-Gao soldiers who had been shouting a charge in the sorghum field fell headlong onto the dry roadbed and the scorched earth of the field, while, across the way, Granddad’s Iron Society soldiers, who were about to surrender, were cut down like sorghum; among them were longtime devil worshippers who had followed Black Eye for a decade and young recruits who had joined because of Granddad’s reputation. Neither their shiny shaved scalps, the raw rice steeped in well water, the iron ancestor riding his tiger, nor the mule hoof, monkey claw, and chicken skull shielded their bodies. The insolent machine-gun bullets streaked through the air to shatter their spines and legs and pierce their chests and bellies. The red blood of the Jiao-Gao soldiers and the green blood of the Iron Society soldiers converged to nourish the black earth of the fields. Years later, that soil would be the most fertile anywhere.
Having suffered defeat together at the hands of a common foe, the retreating Jiao-Gao regiment and Granddad’s Iron Society were immediately transformed from sworn enemies into loyal allies. The living and the dead were cast together. Little Foot Jiang, wounded in the leg, and Granddad, wounded in the arm, were cast together. As Granddad lay with his head against Little Foot Jiang’s bandaged leg, he noticed that his feet weren’t all that little, but their stink overwhelmed the stench of blood.
The machine guns opened fire again, their bullets smashing into the roadbed and the sorghum field, where they raised puffs of dust. Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers tried to bore their way under the ground. The topography couldn’t have been worse: nothing but flatland as far as the eye could see – not a blade of grass anywhere – and the blanket of whizzing bullets was like a razor-sharp sword slicing the air; anyone who raised his head was finished.
Another interval between bursts. Little Foot Jiang shouted, ‘Hand grenades!’
The machine guns roared again, then fell silent. The Jiao-Gao soldiers hurled at least a dozen grenades over the dike. A mighty explosion was followed by shrieks and cries, and an arm wrapped in fluttering grey cloth sailed through the air. Granddad shouted, ‘It’s Detachment Leader Leng, that son of a bitch Pocky Leng!’
The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades. Shrapnel flew, the water in the river rippled, and a dozen columns of smoke rose from behind the dike. Seven or eight intrepid Jiao-Gao soldiers charged the dike, but they had barely reached the ridge when a burst of fire sent them scrambling back, dead and dying jumbled together, until there was no telling who was who.
‘Retreat!’ Little Foot Jiang ordered.
The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades, and at the sound of explosions, the survivors crawled out of the pile of dead and beat a hasty retreat northward, shooting as they ran. Little Foot Jiang, helped to his feet by two of his men, fell in behind them.
Sensing the danger in retreating, Granddad stayed where he was. He wanted to get out of there, but this wasn’t the time. Some of his Iron Society soldiers joined the retreat, and the others were beginning to get the same idea. ‘Don’t move,’ he said in a low voice.
Gunsmoke curled up from behind the dike, carrying with it the pitiful cries of wounded men. Then Granddad heard a familiar voice shout: ‘Fire! Machine guns, machine guns!’
It was Pocky Leng’s voice, all right, and Granddad’s lips curled into a grim smile.
Granddad, with Father beside him, joined the Iron Society. He shaved his forehead and knelt before the ancestor on his tiger mount. When he saw the mended spot where his bullet had made a hole, he smiled to himself. It was as though it had happened only yesterday. Father also had the front of his scalp shaved. The sight of the ebony razor in Black Eye’s hand chilled him, for he still had dim memories of the fight that had occurred more than ten years earlier. But Black Eye shaved his scalp without incident, then rubbed it with each of the freakish fetishes – the mule hoof, the monkey claw, and so on. The ceremony completed, Father’s body truly felt rigid, as though his flesh and blood had turned to iron.
Granddad was welcomed enthusiastically by the Iron Society soldiers, who, urged on by Five Troubles, staged a revolt, demanding that Black Eye acknowledge Granddad as his deputy.
Once the issue of second-in-command was resolved, Five Troubles then worked on their fighting spirit. He said that a thousand days of military training came to fruition in a single moment. Now that the Jap aggressors were wreaking havoc on the nation, he asked how long the men planned to practise their ‘iron’ skills without actually going out to kill the dwarf invaders. Most of the society soldiers were hot-blooded young men whose hatred of the Japanese was in the marrow of their bones, and the silver-tongued Five Troubles spoke like an orator, making them crave action on the battleield, to rage potent as an oil fire. Black Eye had no choice but to agree with him. Granddad took Five Troubles aside. ‘Are you sure your “iron” skills are sufficient to withstand bullets?’ Five Troubles just
