The so-called meat stick was in fact a silver-skinned eel that had risen to the surface and was writhing clumsily in the water. Its snakelike head was the size of a fist, its eyes cold and menacing, like those of a ferocious snake. As its head broke the surface, bubbles oozing from its mouth popped in the air. “It’s an eel!” Second Sister shouted, picking up her bamboo carrying pole and crashing it down on the head, the hook on the end sending water splashing. The eel’s head fell below the surface, but floated right back up. Its eyes were smashed. Second Sister swung again; this time the eel’s movements slowed and it stretched out stiffly. Throwing down her pole, Second Sister grabbed the head and dragged the eel out of the water. By then it was frozen stiff; it had indeed turned into a meat stick. The girls trudged home, with Third and Fourth Sisters carrying water and Second Sister carrying the hammer in one hand and the eel in the other.
Mother sawed off the eel’s tail and cut the body into eighteen parts, each severed chunk hitting the floor with a thunk. Then she boiled the Flood Dragon River eel in Flood Dragon River water and produced a mouthwatering soup. Beginning that day, Mother’s breasts were youthful again, though scars from the wrinkles mentioned earlier remained on the tips, like the crumpled pages of a book.
That night the delicious soup also lightened Mother’s mood and put a saintly look back on her face, like the merciful expression of the Guanyin Bodhisattva or the Virgin Mary, with my sisters seated around her lotus perch. Her loving children were with her on that peaceful night. Northern winds howled over the Flood Dragon River, turning our chimney into a whistle. Ice-covered branches of the trees in the yard cracked as they swayed in the wind; an icicle broke free of the house eave and shattered crisply on the laundry stone below.
On that same wonderful night, Sima Ku was crossing the metal railroad bridge over the Flood Dragon River, some thirty li from the village, and on the verge of adding a new chapter to the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. That rail line was the Jiaoji Line, built by the Germans. The Wolf and Tiger Brigade warriors had fought a heroic, bloody battle, employing every conceivable tactic to slow down the construction, but in the end they’d been unable to stop the unyielding steel road from slicing through the soft underbelly of Northeast Gaomi Township, dividing it in two. In the words of their forebear Sima the Urn: Goddamn it, that’s the same as slicing open the bellies of our women! The metal dragon had belched thick black smoke as it rolled through Northeast Gaomi, as if rolling right across our chests. Now the rail line was in the hands of the Japanese, who turned it to transport coal and cotton, ultimately for weapons and gunpowder to be turned on us.
Orion’s Belt was drifting west; a crescent moon hung just above the treetops. A punishing west wind swept over the frozen river, evoking creaks and groans from the steel bridge as it swayed. It was a bitterly, almost demonically, cold night, so cold that the ice kept cracking to create cobwebs over the surface of the river. The cracks were louder than gunfire. Sima Ku’s sled brigade reached the foot of the bridge and stopped at the river’s edge. Sima Ku jumped down off his sled, his backside feeling as if it had been clawed by a cat. Dim starlight made the river glimmer slightly, but the sky between the stars and the ice was so black you couldn’t see the fingers of your hand. He clapped his hands, the sound echoing around him from other clapping hands. The mysterious darkness energized and excited him. Later, when asked how he’d felt before destroying the bridge, he’d said, “Great, just like New Year’s.”
His troops groped hand in hand up to the bridge, where Sima Ku climbed onto one of the stanchions, took a pickax from his belt, and hacked away at one of the supports. Sparks flew and loud clangs rang out. “Legs of a whore!” he cursed. ” Nothing but steel.” A shooting star streaked across the sky, trailing a long tail and hissing as it filled the sky with lovely blue sparks, momentarily lighting up the space between heaven and earth. Thanks to the light of the shooting star, he had a good look at the cement stanchion and steel supports. “Technician Jiang,” he shouted, “come up here!” With a boost from his comrades, Jiang climbed onto the stanchion, followed by his young apprentice. Clumps of ice clung to the stanchion like mushrooms, and as Sima Ku reached out to take the boy’s hand, he slipped on the ice and crashed to the ground; the boy managed to stay atop the stanchion. Sima fell right on his backside, from which blood and pus had never stopped seeping out. “Oh, mother -” he screamed. “Dear mother, that hurts like hell!” His men ran up and helped him up off the ice. But that did not stop the screams of pain, screams loud enough to reach the heavens. “Elder brother,” one of them said, “you’re going to have to bear it as best you can. Don’t expose yourself.” That brought an end to the screams. As he stood there shuddering, Sima barked out an order: “Get on with it, Technician Jiang. Just make cuts in a few of them and we’ll leave. The painkilling medication that damned Sha Yueliang gave me is only making it worse.” One of his men said, “Elder brother, I think that’s what he had in mind, and you fell for it.” Sima replied testily, “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the saying that ‘when you’re sick, any doctor will do’?” “Bear it the best you can, elder brother,” the man repeated. “I’ll take care of the problem once we get home. There’s nothing better for burns than badger oil. Works every time.”
Whoosh. An explosion of blue sparks, white around the edges, erupted amid the bridge supports, so bright it brought tears to the men’s eyes. Gaps in the bridge, bridge stanchions, steel supports, dogskin overcoats, foxskin caps, yellow sleds and Mongol ponies, and everything around the bridge came into full view, even a single hair that had fallen onto the ice. The two people on the bridge, Technician Jiang and the young apprentice, were hunkering down on the steel support like a pair of monkeys, their “big opium pipe” spewing white-hot flames as it cut into the metal. White smoke curled upward as the riverbed gave off the strangely fragrant odor of burning metal. Sima Ku watched the sparks and arc lights in rapt fascination, forgetting the pain in his backside. The sparking flames ate through the metal like silkworms consuming mulberry leaves. In hardly any time at all, a piece of the support fell from the bridge and stuck at an angle in the thick ice below. “Cut, cut, cut the fucking thing to pieces!” Sima Ku bellowed.
“It’s nearly time, elder brother,” the man applying the badger oil to Sima Ku’s injured backside said. “The train is due just before dawn.” A dozen or more randomly located steel bridge supports had been cut with the torch, which was still spewing blue and white flames under the bridge. “Those fuckers are getting off easy!” Sima Ku cursed. “Are you sure the bridge will collapse under the weight of the train?” “If I cut any more, I’m afraid the bridge might collapse of its own weight before the train even reaches it.” “All right, you can come down now. As for you men,” he said to the others, “help those two hardy fellows down and reward them each with a bottle of our liquor.” The blue sparks died out. The brigade members helped Technician Jiang and his apprentice down off the stanchion and onto one of the sleds. In the darkness just before dawn, the winds died out, turning the air bone-chilling cold. The Mongol ponies pulled the sleds tentatively through the darkness across the ice. Before they’d gone a mile, Sima Ku called them to a halt. “After a hard night’s work,” he said, “it’s time to sit back and watch the show.”
The sun had barely turned the edge of the sky red when the cargo train steamed up. The river glistened, the trees on both banks were glazed with gold and silver, the steel bridge sprawled silently across the river. Sima Ku rubbed his hands nervously as curses dripped from his mouth. The train clanged menacingly as it pressed down on them; when it neared the bridge, a loud whistle resounded between heaven and earth. Black smoke spewed from the engine, white mist flew from its wheels, the grinding of steel on steel made the men shudder in fear as the icy surface of the river trembled. The brigade members watched the train fitfully, the horses’ ears pressed back against the mane on their necks. The loutish, vulgar train rushed up onto the bridge, which seemed to stand there loftish and unyielding. In a matter of seconds, the faces of Sima Ku and his men turned ashen, but seconds later, they were jumping up and down on the ice, whooping it up. Sima Ku’s joyous shouts were the loudest of all, his jumps the highest, even given the seriousness of the injuries to his backside. The bridge collapsed in a matter of seconds, sending the engine and the load of railroad ties, steel rails, sand, and mud straight down. The engine hit one of the pilings, which also collapsed. The sound was deafening as chunks of ice bathed in the morning light, along with huge rocks, twisted metal, and shattered ties, flew high into the sky. Dozens of loaded rail cars accordioned up behind the engine with a roar; some fell into the river below, others sprawled across the tracks at rakish angles. Explosions began to erupt, starting from a car carrying high explosives and followed by detonated ammunition. The icy surface of the river split open, sending the water beneath gushing upward. Mixed with the water were fish, shrimp, even some green-shelled turtles. A booted human leg landed on the head of one of the Mongol ponies, nearly knocking it senseless and causing its front legs to crumple. A wheel from the train, which weighed hundreds of pounds, crashed into the ice, raising a geyser of water that fell muddily back to the surface. Powerful waves of sound turned Sima Ku deaf as he watched the Mongol ponies run crazily across the ice, dragging their sleds behind them. The brigade troops stood or sat in a daze, dark blood seeping out of some of their ears. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t hear himself; his men’s mouths were open, as if they too were shouting, but he couldn’t hear them either…