His shout was like a command: a hail of bullets tore through the air from three machine guns mounted on the Japanese trucks. The sound was dull and muted, like the gloomy barking of dogs on a rainy night. Father watched as two shells opened holes in the breast of Grandma’s jacket. She cried out in ecstasy, then crumpled to the ground, her carrying pole falling across her back. One of the baskets of fistcakes rolled down the southern slope of the dike, the other down the northern slope. Snow-white cakes, green onions, and diced eggs were scattered in the grass on both sides of the dike.
After Grandma fell, a mixture of red and yellow fluid from the boxy skull of Wang Wenyi’s wife sprayed the area all the way to the sorghum stalks beside the dike. Father watched the diminutive woman stagger backward as the bullet hit her, then topple down the southern slope of the dike and roll into the water. The contents of one pail of mung-bean soup spilled onto the ground, followed by the second, like the blood of heroes. The first pail clanked down the dike into the Black Water River, then bobbed to the surface. It floated down past Mute, banged one or two times into a stanchion, then was picked up by the current and carried past Commander Yu, past my father, past Wang Wenyi, past Fang Six and Fang Seven.
‘Mom -’ Father screamed as though his guts were being ripped out as he leaped to the top of the dike. Commander Yu tried to grab him, but was too late. ‘Come back here!’ he bellowed. Father didn’t hear the command, he didn’t hear anything. His skinny little frame flew along the narrow ridge of the dike, shimmering in the sun’s rays. He threw down his Browning pistol, which landed amid the torn leaves of a golden bitterweed. He ran like the wind, his arms thrust out in front like wings, as he ran towards Grandma. The dike was still, but dust swirled noisily; the glimmering water stopped flowing. The sorghum beyond the dike remained dignified and solemn. Father was still running along the dike: Father was a giant, Father was magnificent, Father was gorgeous. He screamed at the top of his lungs: ‘Mom – Mom – Mom -’ A single word drenched with human blood and tears, with deep familial love, with the loftiest of causes. When he reached the end of the eastern dike, he jumped over the rake barrier and scrambled up the western bank. Beneath the dike, the stony face of Mute sped by.
Father threw himself down on Grandma and called out ‘Mom!’ one more time. She lay face down on the ground, pressed against the wild grass. The aroma of sorghum wine seeped from two exit wounds in her back. Father gripped her shoulders and rolled her over. There were no wounds on her face, which looked the same as always. Not a hair was out of place; her fringe neatly covered her forehead; her brows drooped slightly. Her eyes were half open; the lips on her pale face showed up bright-red. Father grasped her warm hand and called ‘Mom!’ yet another time. She opened her eyes wide as a smile of supreme innocence spread across her face. She reached out to him.
The idling engines of the Jap trucks, which had stopped at the bridgehead, revved intermittently.
A tall figure appeared briefly on the dike to drag Father and Grandma down off the top. It was Mute, to his everlasting credit. Before Father had a chance to get his bearings, another gale of bullets truncated and smashed countless stalks of sorghum.
The four trucks closed up ranks just beyond the bridge, then stopped. Eight machine guns mounted on the first and last trucks were spraying so many bullets they formed hard ribbons of crisscrossing light that spread like broken fans, sometimes to the east of the road, sometimes to the west. Sorghum stalks wailed in concert, their shattered, severed limbs drooping low or arching high into the air. Bullets raised puffs of yellow dust on the dike and produced a tattoo of muffled thuds.
The soldiers on the outer slopes flattened themselves against the wild grass and black dirt, keeping perfectly still. The machine guns strafed the area for about three minutes, then stopped as abruptly as they had begun. The ground around the trucks was littered with the golden flashes of spent casings.
‘Hold your fire,’ Commander Yu ordered softly.
The Japs were silent. Thin wisps of gunsmoke floated above the river, carried eastward by gentle air currents.
Father told me that in that moment of absolute quiet Wang Wenyi stumbled up onto the dike, where he stood stock-still, fowling piece in hand, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the picture of great suffering. ‘Mother of my children!’ he shrieked. Before he could take another step, dozens of machine-gun shells ripped a nearly transparent crescent moon in his belly. Gut-stained bullets tore wetly through the air above Commander Yu’s head.
Wang Wenyi toppled off the dike and rolled into the water directly opposite the body of his wife. His heart was still beating, and there wasn’t a mark on his head or face; a sense of perfect understanding flooded his mind.
Father once told me that Wang Wenyi’s wife had fed her three sons so well they grew up chubby, lively, and flourishing. One day they went out to tend the sorghum, leaving their sons behind to play in the yard. A Japanese biplane streaked through the air above their house, making a strange growling sound as it laid a single egg, a direct hit on Wang Wenyi’s yard, blowing all three children to bits that flew up to the eaves, were draped on the branches of trees, stained the wall.
… On the day Commander Yu raised the flag of resistance against the Japanese, Wang Wenyi was brought over by his wife.
Gnashing his teeth with rage, Commander Yu glared down at Wang Wenyi, half of whose head lay submerged in the river. ‘Don’t any of you move!’ he snarled in a low voice.
8
SCATTERED SORGHUM DANCES on Grandma’s face, one grain landing between her slightly parted lips to rest on flawless white teeth. As he gazes at her lips, which are gradually losing their colour, Father sobs ‘Mom,’ and his tears fall on her breast. She opens her eyes amid the pearly drops of sorghum. Rainbows of colour, as though reflected off the pearls, are embedded in her eyes. ‘Son,’ she says, ‘your dad…’
‘My dad, he’s fighting.’
‘He’s your real dad…’ Grandma says. Father nodds.
She struggles to sit up, but the movement of her body pumps streams of blood out of the two holes.
‘Mom, I’ll go and get him,’ Father says.
She waves her hand and sits up abruptly. ‘Douguan… my son… help your mom up… Let’s go home, go home…’
Father falls to his knees, drapes her arms around his neck, then stands up with difficulty, lifting her off the ground. Fresh blood quickly soaks his neck and assails his nose with the aroma of sorghum wine. His legs tremble under the weight of her body; he staggers into the sorghum field as bullets whizz overhead. He parts the densely packed plants, stumbling forward, his sweat and his tears merging with Grandma’s fresh blood to turn his face into a demented mask. Grandma is getting heavier as the passing sorghum leaves lacerate him mercilessly. He falls, she falls on top of him. He strains to crawl out from under her, and after he lays her out on her back, she looks up, breathes a long sigh, and smiles weakly. Unfathomable mystery is embedded in that smile, an iron that burns a horseshoe brand into his memory.
Grandma lies on the ground, the warmth of her breast slowly dissipating. She is dimly aware that her son is undoing her jacket, that he is covering the wound over her breast with his hand, then the wound beneath her breast. Her blood stains his hand red, then green; her unsullied breast is stained green by her own blood, then red. Bullets have pierced her noble breast, exposing the pink honeycomb beneath it, and Father is in agony as he looks down at it. He cannot staunch the flow of blood, and as he watches it flow he can see her face pale. Her body grows so light it might float up into the air.