‘When that day comes, we’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you!’
‘I don’t need your help! I can fight my own battles!’
‘You have my undying admiration!’ Jiang said.
Detachment Leader Leng mounted his bicycle and was about to ride off when Granddad stepped up and grabbed the front of his shirt. ‘When this war with Japan is over, Leng,’ he said with murder in his eyes, ‘you and I have some unfinished business!’
‘You don’t scare me!’ Leng snarled.
Pushing down hard on his pedal, he rode off, followed by his two dozen troops, like a pack of dogs chasing a rabbit.
‘Commander Yu,’ Jiang said, ‘the Jiao-Gao regiment will always be your devoted ally.’
He thrust his hand out to Granddad, who reached out awkwardly and shook it. Tough though it was, Granddad could also feel its warmth.
5
THE TIME: FORTY-SIX years later. The place: the spot where Granddad, Father, and Mother had fought a heroic battle against a pack of dogs led by the three from our family – Blackie, Red, and Green. On one stormy night lightning split open a mass grave where Communists, Nationalists, commoners, Japanese, and puppet troops were buried – a site called All-Souls Grave – spreading rotting bones over a ten-yard area, where they were washed clean by the rain and turned a sombre white. I was home on summer holiday at the time, and when I heard that All-Souls Grave had opened up I rushed over to see for myself, our blue-coated little dog following hard on my heels. It was still drizzling, and the dog darted in front of me, his paws splashing loudly in the muddy puddles. It wasn’t long before we were in the midst of bones that had been sent flying with explosive force, and Blue ran up to sniff them, quickly shaking his head to show that they didn’t interest him.
People stood fearfully around the exposed graveyard. I squeezed in among them until I could see the skeletons at the bottom of the pit, piles of bones exposed to the sun for the first time in all those years. I doubt that even the provincial party secretary could have told which of them belonged to Communists, which to Nationalists, which to Japanese soldiers, which to puppet soldiers, and which to civilians. The skulls all had the exact same shape, and all had been thrown into the same heap. The scattered raindrops beat a desolate rhythm on the white bones, forceful and fiendish. Skeletons lay on their backs, nearly submerged in the icy water, like fermenting sorghum wine that had been stored up for years.
The villagers picked up the bones that had been scattered around the area and tossed them back in. A momentary dizziness came over me, and when it passed I took another look, discovering the skulls of dozens of dogs mixed in with the human heads in the grave. The bottom of the pit was a shallow blur of white, a sort of code revealing that the history of dogs and the history of men are intertwined. I helped pick up the scattered bones, but put on a pair of white gloves just to be on the safe side. Noticing the hateful stares of the villagers, I quickly took them off and stuffed them into my pants pockets, then walked down the bone-strewn road all the way to the edge of the sorghum field, a good hundred yards away.
There in the short green grass, still dripping with water, lay the curved dome of a human skull. The flat, broad forehead showed that it hadn’t belonged to any ordinary person. I picked it up with three fingers and had started running back with it when I spotted another muted gleam of white in the grass not far away. This one was a long, narrow skull with several sharp teeth still in its opened mouth; I knew it was one I didn’t have to pick up, for it belonged to the same species as the little blue-coated friend tagging along behind me. Maybe it had been a wolf. All I knew for sure was that it had been blown over here by the explosive force, for the specks of dirt on its freshly cleaned surface proved it had lain in the mass grave for decades. I picked it up anyway. The villagers were tossing bones stolidly into the grave, some cracking and splitting when they hit. I tossed in the fragment of the human skull. But when it came to the large canine skull I hesitated. ‘Toss it in,’ an old man said; ‘the dogs back then were as good as humans.’ So I tossed it into the open pit. Once All-Souls Grave had been filled in, it looked just as it had before the lightning hit. In order to calm the frightened souls of the dead, Mother burned a stack of yellow spirit money at the head of the grave.
After helping fill in the pit, I stayed with her to look down at this resting place of a thousand bodies, and kowtowed three times.
‘It’s been forty-six years,’ Mother said. ‘I was fifteen then.’
6
I WAS FIFTEEN then. When the Japanese surrounded the village, your maternal grandfather and grandmother lowered me and your young uncle into a dry well. We never saw them again. Later on I learned they were killed that very morning.
I don’t know how many days I hunkered down inside that well. Your uncle died there, and his body began to stink. The toad and yellow-banded snake stared at me until I nearly died of fright. I was sure I’d die down in that well. But finally your father and your granddad came along.
Granddad wrapped the fifteen ‘38’ rifles in oil paper and tied them with rope, then carried them to the edge of the well. ‘Douguan, look around and make sure nobody can see us.’
Granddad knew that Detachment Leader Leng and the Jiao-Gao soldiers still had their hearts set on these guns. The night before, when he and the others were asleep in a tent at the foot of the village wall, Blind Eye, who was keeping guard, heard something bump up against a wax tree on the downward slope. Then he detected the soft sound of footsteps coming towards the tent; he could tell there were two people, one brave, the other not so brave. He could hear them breathing. Raising his rifle, he shouted, ‘Halt right there!’ The men threw themselves to the ground in panic and began crawling backward. Getting a fix on the direction, Blind Eye aimed and pulled the trigger Bang! He heard the men roll down the slope and dart in among the stand of wax trees. He aimed and fired again. Someone yelled. Granddad and the others, awakened by the gunfire, ran up, weapons in hand, just in time to see two dark figures dart across the ditch and vanish into the sorghum field.
‘There’s nobody around, Dad,’ my father said.
‘Remember this well,’ Granddad said.
‘I will. It belongs to Beauty’s family.’
‘If I die,’ Granddad said, ‘come get these guns and use them as a bartering chip to join up with the Jiao-Gao regiment. They’re at least better than Detachment Leader Leng’s troops.’
‘Let’s not join up with anyone,’ Father said. ‘Let’s recruit our own army. We still have a machine gun.’
Granddad snorted with a wry smile. ‘It’s not as easy as you think, son,’ he said. ‘I’m worn out.’
After Father uncoiled the rope from the rickety windlass, Granddad tied it around the bundle of guns.
‘Are you sure the well is dry?’ Granddad asked.
‘I’m sure Wang Guang and I played hide-and-seek here once.’ Father bent over to peer into the well, where he saw the outlines of two bodies in the dark recesses.
‘Dad, there’s somebody down there!’ he screamed.
They knelt on the step at the mouth of the well and strained to see who it was.
‘It’s Beauty!’ Father said.
‘Take a good look. Is she alive?’
‘I think I can see her breathing – there’s a snake coiled beside her – and her baby brother Harmony’s there, too. . . .’ Father’s words echoed off the walls of the well.
‘Are you afraid to go down there?’
‘I’ll go down, Dad. Beauty’s my best friend!’
‘Watch out for that snake.’
‘Snakes don’t scare me.’
Granddad untied the well rope from the bundle of guns and secured it around Father’s waist, then lowered him slowly into the well, keeping the weight on the windlass.
‘Be careful,’ Father heard Granddad say from the top of the well as his foot touched a protruding brick and he stepped down on the floor. The black snake with the colourful band raised i
ts head menacingly and flicked out its forked tongue, hissing at Father. During his days of fishing and crabbing at the Black Water River, Father had learned how to deal with snakes, and he and Uncle Arhat had eaten one, baked in dry cow dung. Arhat told him that snake meat is a cure for leprosy; after eating it, they had both felt hot all over.
Now Father stood at the bottom of the well without moving, and, the instant the snake lowered its head, he reached down, grabbed it by the tail, and shook it with all his might until he heard its bones crack. Then he grabbed it just behind the head and twisted it hard. ‘Dad,’ he shouted, ‘stand clear!’
Granddad backed away from the mouth of the well as the half-dead snake came flying out. Granddad’s skin crawled. ‘That little imp’s got the nerves of a thief!’
Father helped Beauty sit up and shouted in her ear, ‘Beauty! Beauty! It’s me, Douguan. I’m here to save you!’
Father tied the rope around Beauty’s waist. Granddad carefully turned the windlass and hauled Mother out of the well. Then he brought up the body of my young uncle.
‘Dad, send the guns down!’ Father said.
‘Stand clear.’
The windlass creaked as the bundle of guns was lowered into the well. Then Father untied the rope and put it around his waist.
‘Pull me up, Dad,’ he said.
‘Is the rope secure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make sure it’s tight. This is no time to be careless.’
‘It’s good and tight, Dad.’
‘Did you tie a square knot?’
‘What’s wrong with you, Dad? It was me who tied the rope around Beauty, wasn’t it?’
Father and Granddad looked down at Beauty as she lay on the ground. Her skin was stretched taut over her cheekbones, her eyes were sunken, her gums protruded, and her hair was a tangled mess. Her baby brother’s fingernails had turned blue.
7
MOTHER’S HEALTH IMPROVED under the loving care of the lame woman Liu. She and Father had been good friends, but after her rescue from the well they were like brother and sister. Then Granddad came down with a serious case of typhoid fever, and at times he seemed on the brink of death. Once, as he lay there semiconscious, he hallucinated that he smelled the sweet fragrance of sorghum porridge, so Father and the others quickly picked some sorghum, and the woman Liu cooked it in front of Granddad until it was soft and pasty. After he ate a bowlful, the capillaries in his nose burst and released a torrent of thick, dark blood. His appetite returned then, and he was on the mend. By mid-October, he was able to hobble out into the garden to soak up the warm rays of the late-autumn sun.
I heard that at the time a clash between the troops of Pocky Leng and Little Foot Jiang occurred near Wang Gan Aqueduct, with heavy casualties on both sides. But Granddad was far too sick to worry about that – or anything else, for that matter.
Father and the others threw up a few temporary shelters in the village, then scavenged the junk piles for the odds and ends they would need to harvest enough sorghum to get them through the winter and the spring. Autumn rains had fallen steadily since the end of August, turning the dark earth into a sea of mud. Half of the rain-soaked stalks lay rotting on the ground, where the fallen seeds had taken root and were already beginning to germinate. Tender green stalks crowded their way through the spaces between the blue-grey and dark-red patches of decay, and the ears of sorghum swayed in the air or dragged along the ground like bushy, matted foxtails. Steel-grey rainclouds, heavy with water, scurried across the sky, and cold, hard raindrops thudded into the stalks. Flocks of crows struggled to stay aloft on wings weighted down with moisture. During those foggy days, sunlight was as precious as gold.
Father, who ruled the roost after Granddad fell ill, led Wang Guang, Dezhi, Guo Yang (whom we called Gimpy), Blind Eye, and Beauty over to the marshland, where they fought the corpse-eating dogs with rifles. The ensuing battles would turn Father into a marksman.
Every once in a while, Granddad asked him weakly, ‘What are you doing, son?’
With a murderous frown creasing his brow, Father would say, ‘We’re killing the dogs, Dad!’
‘Let it lie,’ Granddad would say.
‘I can’t,’ Father would reply. ‘We can’t let them feed on people’s bodies.’
Nearly a thousand corpses had piled up in the marshland, all laid out by the Jiao-Gao soldiers, who lacked the time to give them a proper burial. The few spadefuls of dirt that had been tossed haphazardly over the corpses were washed away by the autumn rains. The bloated corpses produced an exceptional stench that brought crows and mad dogs scurrying over to rip open the abdomens, which intensified the reek of death.
When the dog pack was at full strength, they were probably six hundred in all, made up primarily of village dogs whose masters lay rotting in the marshland. The remainder, those that came and went in a frenzy, were dogs from neighbouring villages that had homes to return to. They were led by our family’s three dogs: Red, Green, and Blackie.
The hunters split up into three teams: Father and Mother, Wang Guang and Dezhi, Gimpy and Blind Eye. They dug trenches in the marshland and took up positions to watch the paths that had been scratched out by the dogs. Father cradled his rifle; Mother held her carbine. ‘Douguan, why can’t I hit what I’m shooting at?’ she asked.
‘You’re too eager. If you take careful aim and squeeze the trigger, you can’t miss.’
Father and Mother were watching the path in the southeast corner of the field, a two-foot-wide white scar in the earth. The troops emerging onto this path were led by our dog Red, whose thick coat shone after his rich diet of human corpses. His legs had grown firm and muscular from all the exercise, and the battles with humans had put a keen edge on his intelligence.
The fog-shrouded paths were quiet when the sun’s red rays began to light up the sky. The canine forces had dwindled after a month of seesaw battles, so that the dogs lying among the corpses probably numbered a hundred, and a couple of hundred others had deserted. Their combined forces now, in the neighbourhood of 230, tended to run in packs, and since Father and the others were becoming better marksmen all the time, the dogs always left behind at least a dozen corpses after each frenzied attack.
They were waiting for the dogs’ first sortie of the day, like people anticipating the arrival of food on the table. Noticing the rustling of distant stalks of sorghum, Father said softly, ‘Get ready, here they come.’ Mother silently released the safety catch on her rifle and laid her cheek against the rain-soaked stock. The rustling movement flowed to the edge of the marshland like an ocean wave, and Father could hear the panting dogs. He knew that hundreds of greedy canine eyes were fixed on the broken and severed limbs in the marshland, that the dogs’ red tongues were licking the putrid remnants caught in the corners of their mouths, and that their stomachs, filled with green bile, were growling.
As though on command, more than two hundred of them broke out of the sorghum field, barking madly. The fur on their necks stood straight up; bright coats glistened in the fog. Wang Guang and Gimpy opened fire as the dogs ripped the flesh from the corpses with single-minded ferocity. The wounded dogs yelped in pain, while those that had been spared continued to tear frantically at their prey.
Father took aim at the head of a clumsy black dog and pulled the trigger. The dog yelped as the bullet shattered its ear. Then Father saw the head of a spotted white dog explode and the animal crumple to the ground, a piece of dark intestine still in its mouth. It never made a sound. ‘Beauty, you hit it!’ he shouted.
‘Was it me?’ she squealed excitedly to Father, who had lined Red up in his sights. Hugging the ground as he ran, he streaked from one patch of stalks to another. Father pulled the trigger and the bullet whizzed past Red, barely missing his back. He picked up a woman’s bloated leg in his razor-sharp teeth and began to eat, each powerful bite making a loud crunch as the bone shattered. Mother fired; her bullet struck the dark earth in front of Red and spattered his face with mud. He sh
ook his head violently, then picked up the pale leg and ran off. Wang Guang and Dezhi wounded several dogs, whose blood smeared the corpses and whose whimpers struck terror into the hunters’ hearts.
When the pack retreated, the hunters closed up ranks so they could clean their weapons. Since they were running low on ammunition, Father reminded them to make every bullet count, emphasising the importance of eliminating the leaders of the pack. ‘They’re as slippery as loaches,’ Wang Guang said. ‘They always slink away before I can reload.’
Dezhi blinked his rheumy eyes and said, ‘Douguan, how about a sneak attack?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they have to go somewhere to rest,’ Dezhi said, ‘and I’ll bet it’s near the Black Water River. After stuffing their bellies, they probably go there for the water.’
‘He’s got a point,’ Gimpy agreed.
‘Then let’s go,’ Father said.
‘Not so fast,’ Dezhi cautioned. ‘Let’s go back and get some grenades. We’ll blow ’em up.’
Father, Mother, Wang Guang, and Dezhi split up to follow two separate paths made by the dogs in the muddy earth, which had turned springy from all the claws that had passed over it. The paths led straight to the Black Water River, where Father and Mother could hear the roar of water and the sounds of the dogs. The paths converged as they neared the riverbank to form a broad single path.
That’s where Father and Mother met up with Wang Guang and Dezhi. And that’s where they spotted more than two hundred dogs spread out over the weed-covered riverbank; most were crouching, although some were gnawing at shiny clods of black earth stuck between their toes. A few stood at the water’s edge, raising their legs to piss into the river, while others were drinking. Now that their bellies were full, they circled the area, passing dark-brown canine farts. The weeds were nearly covered with reddish or white dogshit, and the odour of the turds and farts was different from any Father and the others had ever smelled. It was easy to spot the three leaders, even though they were spread out among the others.