"Check it out again," Wheatie Liu said without looking up.
At twilight, two or three average-sized pale yet pretty stars appeared in the sky, sort of to the south and sort of to the west, as Broad Bean ran breathlessly into the village for the second time. "No one dared enter the home of the murderer Talented Wu all afternoon!" Broad Bean reported. This time he did not fan himself with his straw hat.
"Sit down, have a drink," Wheatie Liu said, patting the edge of the red-lacquered brick bed, his kang. Broad Bean saw a bottle and some snacks on little plates on the nearby red-lacquered table- only three plates, and what they held is not important. "You're drinking again?" Sitting cautiously on the edge of the kang, Broad Bean kept his eyes glued to Wheatie Liu.
"Why shouldn't I?" Liu said. "I'm happy!"
So Broad Bean joined him. He held out one of the little ceramic cups, which was filled noisily; they clinked cups and drained them. A noisy refill, more clinking and draining. "I'll drain his old lady!" Wheatie Liu said, opening his mouth wide. He turned thoughtful, refilled his cup, and drained it. "That murderer got off cheap!" Liu said, turning thoughtful again as he refilled his cup and drained it. This time, Broad Bean fumbled with his cup to catch up. He tossed down the wine, and the blood drained from his face. "No more for me!" he said as he leaned over the edge and heaved twice. "That murderer stinks to high heaven!" He jumped off the kang, hand over his mouth, and ran outside, where he emptied the contents of his stomach for the benefit of a black pig strolling through the yard: urrp-the stuff landed right on the pig's tail. A quick swish transferred it up to its snout, all but the little bit that soared over to the window-splat.
"So the murderer stinks that bad, does he?" Wheatie Liu asked tensely as he walked into the yard, undid his pants, and sent a stream of piss into the pigsty.
The Background
Time for some background:
Now I won't bore you with talk about what kind of mountains Fritter Hollow has or what its waters are like. Suffice it to say that Fritter Hollow has both mountains and waters, heavy on the former-a whole undulating range of them, like a string of cow patties-and you could probably walk for five or six days without reaching the end. Not much in the way of waters, however. In fact, one scrawny, twisting stream is about it.
The people here are not rice eaters-that should be obvious. The barren slopes of the mountains yield only stumpy buckwheat, stumpy oats, and stumpy millet-that and some long millet and huge quantities of mountain yams, with an occasional crop of mung beans. Naturally, you'll also find wild hemp, with its bright-blue flowers. Not much in the way of legumes and tubers: mostly yellow yams, purple yams, yellow radishes, and carrots. People are quick to admit that yellow-skinned radishes, those coarse, chunky things, are pretty awful, but they keep pushing out their red-skinned cousins, which can't gain a toehold no matter how hard they try. The other green you see sometimes is cabbage, which carefully forms itself into tight little circles, each layer of leaves wrapping itself around the treasure lying at the center, which, when the thing is sliced open, is revealed to be nothing more than a skimpy cabbage heart.
In truth, Fritter Hollow was once a bitterly barren place. Now while people often equate the word bitter with poverty, in 1992 no one was prepared to call Fritter Hollow impoverished. That is because our great and wise government decided to permit the locals to dig tunnels into the mountains, some deep and some shallow, from which black rock was extracted. Narrow, twisting asphalt roads were built, pale-faced folk from the south moved in, and that led to a surfeit of tales regarding loose behavior. Generally speaking, southerners call that black, flammable stuff coal, but in Fritter Hollow it's called charcoal; it stands to reason that the black tunnels are called charcoal pits. The discovery that the term charcoal pits was unacceptable is linked to Wheatie Liu, Fritter Hollow's village chief, which meant he had the responsibility of overseeing activities at the charcoal pits even though people could no longer call them that; when 1992 rolled around, Wheatie Liu was being called the mine boss. Which is also what people once called the murderer Talented Wu.
Who, then, is Talented Wu?
A Village Tale
In order to tell this story reasonably well, it is necessary to introduce Talented Wu, the murderer. Strictly speaking, you'd be lucky to find a single person in Fritter Hollow with anything good to say about Talented Wu. The explanation is as apparent as the cobblestones in the road. Talented Wu, the murderer, led a bunch of men over to the mountain quarries west of the village, where they dug seyen or eight tunnels without extracting a single lump of coal; not only that, he wound up owing the village the grand sum of 140,000 yuan. That does not take into account the two hard-luck fellows who were crushed to death, both of whom were posthumously admitted into the Party: one was Small Stuff Wu, who had incredibly small genitals-about the size of lima beans-hence the name Small Stuff, and the other was Greater Principle Zhou, about whom more later (although the randy things I'll have to say about him should probably be kept from any women present).
People familiar with the history of Fritter Hollow do not have to be reminded of the following list of village chiefs:
Dog Killer Li 1948-1952 Nine Changes Li 1953-1959 Rich Furs Wu 1959-1965 Good Stuff Wu 1965-1967 Defend the
East Liu
1967-1976 Talented Wu 1976-1986 Wheatie Liu 1986-
And now the rest of you know that Talented Wu was village chief for an entire decade. People who emerged from their mother's womb in 1942 are, for the most part, considered to have been born in the year of the horse, but some who arrived on the scene a little late might well be considered a sheep. Talented Wu was born in the year of the horse, making his appearance in the twelfth month. He was a soldier for a time, serving in the western province of Qinghai, where there's a whole lot of salt; Talented Wu once said he had frequent nosebleeds. From there, he went to Sichuan to repair a cavernous pit that was dark as pitch and wet as an underground spring. After that, he came home, where his ability to use a gun got him elected head of the local militia, and his subsequent experience as militia head got him chosen village chief. That, more or less, is Talented Wu's story. But it is necessary to describe him physically, his good looks, as it were: of medium height, he had an oblong face with fair skin and dark, bushy brows. He was so good-looking that he managed to bring a sloe-eyed Sichuan girl home with him. There was talk that he had got her pregnant up on the Sichuan mountain where he was working, and sure enough, not long after she arrived in Fritter Hollow, she lay down one day, and out popped a baby boy.
Everybody called the girl the Sichuan dolt. If she had been from the northeast they would have called her the Northeast dolt; if from Hunan, they would have called her the Hunan dolt; and so forth. Easier that way.
Altogether, the Sichuan dolt presented Talented Wu with two sons: Golden Oil (the elder brother) and Silver Oil (his younger one). Both inherited their father's good looks. The older boy enjoyed his share of conquests in the corn patch, including one with the wife of Greater Principle Zhou. But now both boys are tasting the bitterness of prison life. How they keep themselves busy during the day is not documented, but at night they hunt for lice. As a rule, rather than pop lice between their thumbnails, people in prison set them free to find a new home elsewhere in the cell. While in prison, Golden Oil and Silver Oil exhaustively debate the question, Do lice eat grass?