The bus stopped on the Flood Dragon River bridgehead, where all the passengers disembarked, including Jintong, with the help of Parrot Han. His eye was caught by a line of new houses on the northern bank of the river, and by a new concrete bridge not far from the old stone one. Vendors selling fruit, cigarettes, sweets, and the like had set up their stalls near the bridgehead. Parrot Han pointed to some buildings on the northern bank. “The township government moved its offices and the school away, and the old Sima family compound has been taken over by Big Gold Tooth – Wu Yunyu’s asshole son – who built a birth control pill factory, and makes illicit liquor and rat poison on the side. He doesn’t do a damned thing for the people. Sniff the air,” he said, raising one hand. “What do you smell?” Jintong saw a tall sheet-metal chimney rising above the Sima family compound, spewing clouds of green smoke. That was the source of the stomach-churning smell in the air. “I’m glad Grandma moved away,” Parrot Han said. “That smoke would have suffocated her. These days the slogan is ‘Eight Immortals Cross the Sea, Each Demonstrating His Own Skills.’ No more class, no more struggles. All anyone can see these days is money. I’ve got two hundred acres of land over in Sandy Ridge, and plenty of ambition. I’ve set up an exotic bird breeding farm. I’ve given myself ten years to bring all the exotic birds in the world here to Northeast Gaomi Township. By then, I’ll have enough money to secure influence. Then, with money and influence, the first thing I’m going to do is erect a pair of statues of my parents in Sandy Ridge…” He was so excited by his plans for the future, his eyes lit up blue and he thrust out his scrawny chest, like a proud pigeon. Jintong noticed that when they weren’t selling something, the vendors on the bridgehead were watching him and Parrot Han, who never stopped gesticulating. His feelings of inferiority returned, accompanied by regrets that he hadn’t gone to see slutty Wei Jinzhi the barber for a shave and a haircut before leaving the labor reform camp.
Parrot Han took some bills out of his pocket and stuffed them into Jintong’s hand. “It’s not much, Little Uncle, but I’m just starting out and things are still pretty tight. Besides, that stinking old lady of mine still has a string tied to my money, and I don’t dare treat Grandma the way she deserves, not that I could. She nearly coughed up blood raising me. Things couldn’t have been harder for her, and that’s something I won’t forget even when I’m old and my teeth fall out. I’ll make things right for her once I carry out my plans.” Jintong put the bills back into Parrot Han’s hand. “Parrot,” he said, “I can’t take that.” “Not enough?” That embarrassed Jintong. “No, it’s not that…” Parrot put the bills back into Jintong’s sweaty hand. “So, you look down on your useless nephew, is that it?” “After what I’ve become, I don’t have the right to look down on anyone. You’re special, a thousand times better than your absolutely worthless uncle…” “Little Uncle,” Parrot said, “people don’t understand you. The Shangguan family is made up of dragons and phoenixes, the seed of tigers and panthers. Too bad the times were against us. Just look at you, Little Uncle – you’ve got the face of Genghis Khan, and your day will come. But first go home and enjoy a few days with Grandma. Then come see me at the Eastern Bird Sanctuary.”
Parrot walked over and bought a bunch of bananas and a dozen oranges from one of the vendors. He put them into a nylon bag for Jintong and told him to take them to Grandma. They said good-bye on the new bridge, and as Jintong looked down at the glistening water, he felt his nose begin to ache. So he found an isolated spot, where he put down his bag, and went to the river’s edge, where he washed the dirt and grime off his face. He’s right, he was thinking. Since I’m home, I’ve got to grit my teeth and make my mark – for the Shangguan family, for Mother, and for myself.
Calling upon his memory, he made his way back to the old family home, where so many exciting events had occurred. But what spread out before him was a vast stretch of open land, where a bulldozer was just then knocking down the last remnants of the wall that had encircled the house. He thought back to what Parrot had said while they were on the top of the bus: the three counties of Gaomi, Pingdu, and Jiaozhou each gave up a tract of land for a new city, the center of which was to be the town of Dalan. So the spot where he was standing would soon become a thriving city, and his house was planned as the site for a seven-story high-rise that would house the Dalan Metropolitan Government offices.
Streets had already been widened, paved with gravel over clay, and bordered by deep ditches, in which workers were in the process of burying thick water mains. The church had been razed, and a sign that read “Great China Pharmaceutical Company” hung above Sima’s house. A fleet of beat-up old trucks was parked on the onetime church grounds. All the millstones from the Sima family mill house were lying here and there in the mud, and on the spot where the mill had once stood a circular building was going up. Amid the rumbling of a cement mixer and the biting odor of heated tar, he passed by teams of surveyors and gangs of laborers, most of them drunk on beer, as he walked out of a construction site that had once been his village and onto the dirt path that led to the stone bridge over the Black Water River.
As he was crossing the bridge to the southern bank of the river, he spotted the stately seven-story pagoda on the hill; the sun was just setting, and its fiery red rays seemed to set the bricks ablaze and turn the bits of straw between them to cinders. A flock of doves circled the structure, a single column of white smoke rose from the kitchen of the hut in front. The fields lay in a deathly silence broken only by the roar of heavy equipment at the work site. Jintong felt as if his head had been pumped dry, except for the hot tears slipping into the corners of his mouth.
In spite of the pounding of his heart, he forced himself to walk toward the sacred pagoda. Long before he reached it, he saw a white-haired figure standing in front of the pagoda, leaning on a cane fabricated out of an old umbrella handle and watching his progress. His legs felt so heavy he could barely put one foot in front of the other. His tears continued to flow unobstructed. Like the straw in the building, Mother’s white hair looked as if it had caught fire. With a muffled shout, he fell to his knees and pressed his face up against her bony knees, deformed from a lifetime of physical labor. He felt like a man at the ocean bottom, where sounds and colors and shapes ceased to exist. From somewhere deep in his memory, the smell of mother’s milk rose, overwhelming all his senses.
2
Not long after returning home, Jintong fell seriously ill. At first, it was only a weakness in his limbs and soreness in his joints. But that was followed by vomiting and diarrhea. Mother spent all she’d accumulated over the years by collecting and selling scrap to pay doctors from all over Northeast Gaomi. But none of the injections or medicines made any difference in his health. One day in August, he took her hand and said, “Mother, all my life I’ve brought you nothing but trouble. Now that my life is about over, you won’t have to suffer any longer…”
She squeezed his hand. “Jintong, I won’t permit you to talk like that! You’re still young. I may be blind in one eye, but I can still see good days ahead. The sun is bright, the flowers smell like heaven, and we have to keep moving into the future, son…” She spoke with all the energy she could muster, but sad tears had already dripped onto his bony hand.