The Golden Mountain Murders

by David Rotenberg

  His feet felt heavy, his hands wet. He stopped and looked down at the rice paddies of his family farm, at the small plot that he had cleared for their house – and his hands flew up in the air like doves at the end of their tethers and his knees gave out and a howl came from him that filled the valleys all the way from the Green Mountains to the sea.

  Xiao Ming awoke with a start. She pulled back the blind. Shanghai’s summer sun lit her face from without but it was the joy from within that made her luminous as she shouted to the world, “Daddy’s coming home today.”