“Fellow villagers, the Jap horse soldiers have already set out from the county seat. I’ve heard eyewitness accounts, this is not a false alarm, run for your lives before it’s too late…” Sima Ting’s shouts entered their ears with remarkable clarity.
Shangguan Fulu and his son opened their eyes and saw Shangguan Lü sitting beside the donkey’s head, her own head lowered as she gasped for breath. Her white shirt was soaked with sweat, throwing her solid, hard shoulder blades into prominent relief. Fresh blood pooled between the donkey’s legs as the spindly leg of its foal poked out from the birth canal; it looked unreal, as if someone had stuck it up there as a prank.
Once again, Shangguan Lü laid her twitching cheek against the donkey’s belly and listened. To Shangguan Shouxi, his mother’s face looked like an overripe apricot, a serene golden color. Sima Ting’s persistent shouts floated in the air, like a fly in pursuit of rotting meat, sticking first to the wall, then buzzing over to the donkey’s hide. Pangs of fear struck Shangguan Shouxi’s heart and made his skin crawl; a sense of impending doom wracked him. He lacked the courage to run out of the barn, for a vague sense of foreboding told him that the minute he stepped out the door, he’d fall into the hands of Jap soldiers – those squat little men with short, stubby limbs, noses like cloves of garlic, and bulging eyes, who ate human hearts and livers and drank their victims’ blood. They’d kill and eat him, leaving nothing behind, not even bone scraps. And at this very moment, he knew, they were massing in nearby lanes to get their hands on local women and children, all the while bucking and kicking and snorting like wild horses. He turned to look at his father in hopes of gaining solace. What he saw was an ashen-faced Shangguan Fulu, a blacksmith who was a disgrace to the trade, sitting on a sack of hay, arms wrapped around his knees as he rocked back and forth, his back and head banging against the wall. Shangguan Shouxi’s nose began to ache, he wasn’t sure why, and tears flowed from his eyes.
With a cough, Shangguan Lü slowly raised her head. Stroking the donkey’s face, she sighed. “Donkey, oh donkey,” she said, “what have you done? How could you push its leg out like that? Don’t you know the head has to come out first?” Water spilled from the animal’s lackluster eyes. She dried them with her hand, blew her nose loudly, then turned to her son. “Go get Third Master Fan. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to buy two bottles of liquor and a pig’s head for him, but we’ll just have to spend the money. Go get him!”
Shangguan Shouxi shrank up against the wall in terror, his eyes glued to the door, which led to the lanes outside. “The l-lanes are f-filled with J-Japanese,” he stammered, “all those J-Japanese…”
Enraged, Shangguan Lü stood up, stormed over to the door, and jerked it open, letting in an early-summer southwest wind that carried the pungent smell of ripe wheat. The lane was still, absolutely quiet. A cluster of butterflies, looking somehow unreal, flitted past, etching a picture of colorful wings on Shangguan Shouxi’s heart; he was sure it was a bad omen.
4
The local veterinarian and master archer, Third Master Fan, lived at the eastern end of town, on the edge of a pasture that ran all the way to Black Water River. The Flood Dragon riverbank wound directly behind his house. At his mother’s insistence, Shangguan Shouxi walked out of the house, but on rubbery legs. He saw that the sun was a blazing ball of white above the treetops, and that the dozen or so stained glass windows in the church steeple shone brilliantly. The Felicity Manor steward, Sima Ting, was hopping around atop the watchtower, which was roughly the same height as the steeple. He was still shouting his warning that the Japanese were on their way, but his voice had grown hoarse and raspy. A few idlers were gaping up at him with their arms crossed. Shangguan Shouxi stood in the middle of the lane, trying to decide on the best way to go to Third Master Fan’s place.
Two routes were available to him, one straight through town, the other along the riverbank. The drawback of the riverbank route was the likelihood of startling the Sun family’s big black dogs. The Suns lived in a ramshackle compound at the northern end of the lane, encircled by a low, crumbling wall that was a favorite perch for chickens. The head of the family, Aunty Sun, had a brood of five grandsons, all mutes. The parents seemed not to have ever existed. The five of them were forever playing on the wall, in which they’d created breaches, like saddles, so they could ride imaginary horses. Holding clubs or slingshots or rifles carved from sticks, they glared at passersby, human and animal, the whites of their eyes truly menacing. People got off relatively easy, but not the animals; it made no difference if it was a stray calf or a raccoon, a goose, a duck, a chicken, or a dog, the minute they spotted it, they took out after it, along with their big black dogs, converting the village into their private hunting ground.
The year before, they had chased down a Felicity Manor donkey that had broken free of its halter; after killing it, they’d skinned and butchered it out in the open. People stood by watching, waiting to see how the folks at Felicity Manor, a powerful and rich family in which the uncle was a regimental commander who kept a company of armed bodyguards, would deal with someone openly slaughtering one of its donkeys. When the steward stamped his foot, half the county quaked. Now here were all these wild kids, slaughtering a Felicity Manor donkey in broad daylight, which was hardly less than asking to be slaughtered themselves. Imagine the people’s surprise when the assistant steward, Sima Ku – a marksman with a large red birthmark on his face – handed a silver dollar to each of the mutes instead of drawing his pistol. From that day on, they were incorrigible tyrants, and any animal that encountered them could only curse its parents for not giving it wings.
While the boys were in their saddles, their five jet black dogs, which could have been scooped out of a pond of ink, sprawled lazily at the base of the wall, eyes closed to mere slits, seemingly dreaming peaceful dreams. The five mutes and their dogs had a particular dislike for Shangguan Shouxi, who lived in the same lane, although he could not recall where or when he had managed to offend these ten fearsome demons. But whenever he came across them, he was in for a bad time. He would flash them a smile, but that never kept the dogs from flying at him like five black arrows, and even though the attacks stopped short of physical contact, and he was never bitten, he’d be so rattled his heart would nearly stop. The mere thought of it made him shudder.
Or he could head south, across the town’s main street, and get to Third Master Fan’s that way. But that meant he would have to pass by the church, and at this hour, the tall, heavyset, redheaded, blue-eyed Pastor Malory would be squatting beneath the prickly ash tree, with its pungent aroma, milking his old goat, the one with the scraggly chin whiskers, squeezing her red, swollen teats with large, soft, hairy hands, and sending milk so white it seemed almost blue splashing into a rusty enamel bowl. Swarms of redheaded flies always buzzed around Pastor Malory and his goat. The pungency of the prickly ash, the muttony smell of the goat, and the man’s rank body odor blended into a foul miasma that swelled in the sunlit air and polluted half the block. Nothing bothered Shangguan Shouxi more than the prospect of Pastor Malory looking up from behind his goat, both of them stinking to high heaven, and casting one of those ambiguous glances his way, even though the hint of a compassionate smile showed that it was given in friendship. When he smiled, Pastor Malory displayed teeth as white as those of a horse. He was forever dragging his dirty finger back and forth across his chest – Amen! And every time that happened, Shangguan Shouxi’s stomach lurched amid a flood of mixed feelings, until he turned tail and ran like a whipped dog. He avoided the vicious dogs at the mutes’ house out of fear; he avoided Pastor Malory and his milk goat out of disgust. What irritated him most was that his wife, Shangguan Lu, had special feelings for this redheaded devil. She was his devout follower, he was her god.