The cattle merchants scrambled to their feet when they saw my father. They'd be wearing mirrored sunglasses even early in the morning, an eerie sight, though they smiled as a show of respect. He'd take me down off his shoulders, get down on his haunches ten feet or so from the merchants, take out a crumpled pack from which he'd remove a crooked, damp cigarette. The cattle merchants would take out their packets, and ten or more cigarettes would land on the ground by Father's feet. He'd gather them up and lay them back down neatly. ‘Lao Luo, you old fuckhead,’ one of the merchants would say, ‘smoke ’em. You don't think we're trying to buy your favours with a few paltry cigarettes, do you?’ Father would just smile and light his cheap smoke as the village butchers started showing up, in twos and threes, looking like they were fresh from a bath, though I could smell the scent of blood on their bodies (which goes to prove that blood—whether from cows or pigs—never washes off). The cattle, smelling the blood on the butchers, would huddle together, their eyes flashing with fear. Excrement would spurt from the bungholes of the young cows; the older ones looked composed, though I knew they were pretending—I could see the tails draw up under their rumps to keep from emptying their bowels and the tremble in their legs, like the ripples on a pond from a passing breeze. Peasants care deeply for their cows; to kill one, especially one advanced in years, has long been considered a crime against nature. A leprous woman in our village often ran over to the head of the village and wailed at the graveyard in the late-night stillness. Only one phrase, over and over: ‘Who among our ancestors killed a cow and left his sons and grandsons to suffer for it?’ Cows cry. Before that old milk cow that so troubled my father was slaughtered, it fell to its knees in front of the butcher and a torrent of tears spilt from its watery blue eyes. The hand holding the knife trembled as tales about cows flooded the butcher's mind. The knife slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground. Weak at the knees, he knelt in front of the cow, loud wails bursting from his lungs. That was the end of his butcher days; he became a specialist in raising dogs instead. When he was asked why he'd knelt in front of the cow and wailed, he'd answered: ‘I saw my dead mother in its eyes, and I thought it was her reincarnated soul.’ This one-time butcher's name was Huang Biao; and after he began raising dogs, he tended that cow the way a son would care for his ageing mother. When the fields were lush with edible grass, we'd see him leading the old cow over to the edge of the river to graze. Huang Biao walked along, followed by the cow, no tether needed. People heard him say: ‘Let's go down to the river, Mother, where there's lots of nice, fresh grass.’ And people heard him say: ‘Let's go home, Mother, it's getting dark. You don't see too well and I don't want you to eat anything poisonous.’ Huang Biao was a man of vision. People laughed when he began raising dogs. But after only a few years there were no more laughs. He bred local dogs with German wolfhounds who produced litters that were both fearless and smart, fine animals that made wonderful watchdogs, excellent at alerting their masters to trouble. They could smell from half a mile away the officials and journalists on their way to the village, coming to investigate trafficking in illegal meat. They'd bark up a din, warning the butchers in time to clean up the area and hide the incriminating evidence. A couple of newspaper reporters once came to the village posing as meat merchants, hoping to expose the illegal meat trade for which the place had become notorious. They went so far as to smear pig and cow blood on their coats to get past the butchers’ sharp eyes, but they could not fool the noses of Huang Biao's mixed-breed dogs, a dozen of which chased them from one end of the village to the other, nipping and biting at their heels until the men's IDs fell out of the crotches of their pants. The complicity of corrupt local officials was just the beginning—Huang Biao also played a major role in keeping the inspectors from finding evidence of illegal meat production in the village. He also bred food dogs, stupid animals that wagged their tails for anyone—owner or thief, it made no difference. With their simple minds and gentle dispositions, the food dogs spent most of their time eating and sleeping, which put plenty of meat on their bones. The supply of those dogs always fell short of the demand—customers lined up to buy them as soon as they were born. Blossom Hamlet, about five or six li from our village, was home to families of Korean descent for whom dog meat was the number-one delicacy. This meant they were skilled dog-meat chefs who opened restaurants in the county seat, in the big cities, even in the provincial capital. Blossom Hamlet dog meat gained its fame thanks mainly to the supply of animals from Huang Biao. His meat smelt like dog when it was cooked but gave off a beefy aroma. Why? Because he weaned the pups days after they were born in order to speed up the bitches’ reproductive cycle and fed them milk that came, unsurprisingly, from his old cow. When they saw how rich the sale of dogs made Huang Biao, some mean-spirited people in the village attacked him cruelly: ‘Huang Biao, you think you're a dutiful son by treating an old milk cow like your mother, but you're really a shameless hypocrite. If that old cow is your mother, then you shouldn't squeeze her teats to feed a bunch of puppies. If you do, you've turned your mother into a bitch. And if she's a bitch, then you're a son of a bitch. And if you're a son of a bitch, that makes you a dog, doesn't it?’ Incensed by this hounding, he showed the whites of his eyes. Instead of trying to figure out why they kept taunting him, he picked up his trusty butcher's knife and went after them and the murder in his eyes made them run for their lives. But one day Huang Biao's lovely new wife set the dogs loose, the stupid ones following the smarter mongrels, on her husband's tormentors, and in a matter of moments human shrieks and canine growls filled the village's twisting streets and byways. As she laughed gloriously, her skin as white as ivory, he stood there with a silly smile, scratching the coal-black skin of his neck. Before taking a wife, Huang Biao had been a frequent visitor to a spot beneath Wild Mule's window, where he sang to her in the middle of the night. ‘Go home, little brother,’ she'd say to him. ‘I've got my man. But don't worry, I'll find you a wife.’ And she did—a girl who worked in a roadside shop.