These words brought a fresh glimmer of tears to Autumn’s eyes. Seeing that he’d struck a nerve, Lu Beiping pressed on, vowing that tonight he’d peel aside every protective layer that concealed the sorrow at Autumn’s core.
—Autumn, I know you’ve got a lot of things weighing on you. Don’t be so tough on yourself. If you want to cry, just let yourself cry! Let it all out, then stand up and face the world like a man! I just hate to see you shuffling around here so subserviently in front of Kingfisher and Stump!
Autumn wiped his eyes.
—Bei, he said, it’s been years since I cried in front of another person. But it seems that every time I talk to you, something just brings the tears streaming out.
Lu Beiping felt a slight lurch in his chest. Both of them sat there for a while, saying nothing, while Lu Beiping studied Autumn’s face in the wavering lamplight. A pair of tear-tracks gleamed on his dark, hollow cheeks. As he looked at them, Lu Beiping felt as if their light had reached deep inside him and plucked a string that had long lain silent.
—Autumn . . . Lu Beiping stood up, preparing to take his leave. Then he stopped with a cry of surprise: What the . . . ! Smudge?
The big dome of Smudge’s head was framed in the window. The thatch shutter propped on its bamboo rod obscured half of his impish grin.
—You little devil, Lu Beiping said. Have you been eavesdropping on us?
Smudge threw a backward glance around the clearing, probably to make sure that Kingfisher hadn’t moved from the foot of the tree, then went around to the door and strode ostentatiously into the room.
—Hmph! So many friends you’ve got now, Four Eyes! Why don’t you talk with me nay more?
—Oh, don’t be silly, Lu Beiping said, giving the boy a tap on the forehead. You’d better be careful, Smudge. You know what they say, children who eavesdrop will never grow up.
—I don’t want to grow up, Smudge retorted. Four Eyes, that Kambugger’s an evil bastard. He came up with your foreman this afternoon looking for the kine, my Pa she greeted him nice, the foreman looked plenty happy, then just ere they left, Kambugger said something to Kingfisher that made his face go all grave.
Autumn caught Lu Beiping’s eye and gave him a knowing grimace.
—That old shrimp. What harm can he do you?
—Gentlemen, Lu Beiping said, narrowing his eyes and affecting a look of frosty menace: Kambugger may be an evil bastard, but I can be an evil bastard too.
Autumn stared at him in surprise. Smudge giggled.
—Show me, show me! Smudge cried, and running over he snatched the glasses off of Lu Beiping’s face then clambered up onto Autumn’s cot. Lu Beiping grabbed Smudge, but Autumn took the glasses and hid them from Lu Beiping, and soon all three of them had collapsed in a tangled heap on the bed.
In the midst of this there came a loud bang from the direction of the other cabin, followed by Jade and Kingfisher’s voices shouting over each other.
Autumn, Lu Beiping, and Smudge ran to the window. Outside, the lychee tree stood like a paralyzed monster, its frozen limbs splayed in the moonlight. The sounds of muffled argument began again, and as they competed with each other the voices grew louder and higher pitched.
—Kingfisher, Jade said sharply, a beseeching note in her voice: You can’t do this. If you make him leave, I’ll leave.
—You’ll leave? You want to leave? You wouldn’t dare!
There was another bang, followed immediately by the rumbling of a deep voice. Kingfisher hollered:
—Stump! Don’t you try to play the peacekeeper! She won’t let him go, you won’t let her go—then, fine! I’ll go! Is that what you want?
—Calm down, Kingfish, calm down! Stump burbled. ’Tis all but hooey and hearsay. Whose word do you trust more, his or mine? I—
—He doesn’t trust anyone! Jade interjected shrilly. Nobody but his own self! And his goddam spirits!
Whap! There was the sharp smack of flesh on flesh, and Jade shrieked:
—Kingfisher! You dare hit me! You dare!
The two little ones, who had just woken up, added their wails to the uproar, and a multilayered clamor of voices and noises ensued.
—I’ll give you one better, you rotten, low-down, motherfucking piece of shit!
Thock! Swisssssh! THUNK-tock-tock-tock . . .
From the sound of it, dipper, broom, and cowbell had been hurled in quick succession.
—Mercy, woman! Peace, peace! Hit me all you want, just don’t curse the spirits!
Suddenly they all fell silent.
Autumn was standing in the doorway.
—Quit fighting, you all. He’s gone.
Outside they heard the splashing tumult of the herd’s departure, like a bulldozer rolling down the creekbed. While they were busy fighting, Lu Beiping had mustered his cattle and, leading Maria and her calf on a rope, slipped away into the moon-dappled forest.
—Four Eyes! Kingfisher roared. Halt! He rushed out the door, jumped onto a pile of logs near the head of the creek, and shouted after Lu Beiping: Hear me out, son! I’ve got one question for you! Then you can leave!
The sloshing footsteps quickened. Obviously Lu Beiping was in no mood to stick around. Kingfisher, growing more flustered, bellowed desperately into the trees:
—Four Eyes! Kambugger said you’re not clean! Tell me straight, what did you do to get sent up into the mountains? What did he mean by that, not clean?
—Peh! Jade spat in his ear. You’ve got some nerve, asking him a question like that. Is Kambugger clean? There’s nothing that man loves better than to stick his dick up a cow’s asshole. What right’s he got to judge who’s clean? Hmph! You and him are quite the pair.
Now Jade turned and shouted into the forest:
—Four Eyes! Wait up! I’m coming with—
A heavy male hand yanked her back. Jade stumbled and sat down heavily on the rocks.
—Four Eyes! she wailed at the top of her lungs: Four Eyes! Please! Then she broke down and sobbed.
Chapter 10
Cockfight
Lu Beiping’s new hut and corral had traded places: The corral now bordered on the creek; the hut nestled in the shade of the trees. The roof thatch was now reinforced with strips of bamboo, the timbers of the frame were nailed together with metal staples, and the kitchen was equipped with a real lime-and-clay hearth stove—the whole setup, as Chu quipped to Lu Beiping while the workers gathered their tools at the end of the day, was a fitting headquarters for the Cattle Commander. Gosh, he said with a sly smile: Do you suppose the foreman hopes you’ll integrate? Or maybe that’s what you had in mind, to spend the rest of your life up here on Mudkettle Mountain making revolution? Lu Beiping studied his friend’s sun-browned face, feeling an overwhelming sense of remove that even the phrase “overwhelming sense of remove” wasn’t strong enough to capture. Even their language was of two different worlds; he’d almost forgotten about “integration,” “making revolution,” and all the rest of the re-ed lingo. Fate had consigned them to separate dimensions. Being flung to the far side of an ever-widening gulf between him and his old life and all his old friends wasn’t something he’d have chosen voluntarily, but at this point, returning to the old way of things wasn’t something he’d do voluntarily either. Wow, he thought, I really have become a citizen of the shadow world.
The foreman himself had led the work team into the jungle to rebuild Lu Beiping’s ruined campsite. Typhoon Number Five had thrown the entire Agrecorps into chaos, and even the epic cross-battalion land-reclamation campaign currently in progress had been blown to the winds, as the troops massed at the work site several counties over scattered back to their own units. Lu Beiping didn’t know it at the time, but “Big Number Five” had dealt a near-mortal blow to Hainan Island’s rubber industry. Over the past two years the endless string of Operations and Campaigns aimed at accelerating ru
bber production had, literally, worn the orchards to the breaking point, and when the typhoon tore through the groves, the overworked trees, their midriffs whittled thin by the knives of overeager tappers, split clean in two as if snipped by divine scissors. The newly planted groves, where the planters had sacrificed windbreak acreage in order to inflate production statistics, were in the sorriest state of all. Whirling into these defenseless stands, the wind had wrought murderous havoc, bending the young, breaking the old, beheading the tall, ripping the short clean from the soil. Almost without exception the stands of four-year-old saplings, all of them nearing rubber-bearing age, had been rendered useless, and the new groves were now wastelands of naked stumps. Needless to say, the flash floods had taken a vicious toll on the livestock and on the human inhabitants of the camps as well. On a neighboring plantation a squad of sixteen re-ed girls who’d called themselves the Steel Swineherds had been swept away and never seen again.
As the foreman told all this to Lu Beiping, his eyes grew red and he began to tear up. This was the first time Lu Beiping had ever seen the foreman cry. (And it wouldn’t be the last, he added to Tsung.)
In the silence that followed Lu Beiping reported his own losses to the foreman. Judas, the scrawny old bull with the spotted back, had run off alone in search of shelter and been killed by a windborne stone in a gully on the far side of the ridge. And Alyosha, the lead bull with the mottled brown hide, had led the herd up into the bowl of Mudkettle Mountain, where they’d all weathered the storm safely except for Alyosha, who . . . disappeared.
—Disappeared? the foreman asked, noticing the odd catch in Lu Beiping’s voice. How?
—Well, the migrant woodcutters who live up there told me . . . Lu Beiping began falteringly. They told me Alyosha was . . . eaten. By a giant snake. That lives up on the mountain. All I found was the wooden cowbell I made for him, lying on the forest floor.
Lu Beiping felt tears burning in his own eyes. He said nothing else about what he and Autumn had seen and heard up in the high valley.
—A giant snake? the foreman said, a look of amazement flashing briefly across his swarthy face. You mean the Snakeweird of Mudkettle Mountain? You’re kidding me.
Overhearing their conversation, the workers who’d been busy hammering and thatching laid their tools aside and crowded round.
—I’ll be damned! Friend Lu saw the Snakeweird! Did you hear that? It ate a whole—
—Nonsense! boomed the foreman. Get back to work!
Amid the faces of the workers, Lu Beiping picked out the fat moon-cheeks of Sergeant Fook. Both Fong and the foreman’s son, however, were absent today.
In its most basic outlines Lu Beiping told the foreman the story of how Maria had given birth overnight at the height of the storm. As usual he didn’t mention Jade. When he finished, the foreman laid a brawny arm across Lu Beiping’s shoulders and gave him a hearty squeeze.
—Well done, son, well done, said the foreman, still wiping his nose. Don’t fret about that brown bull. We gained one, we lost one, it equals out. You know, thanks to the diligent job you’ve done with the cattle, our unit had the fewest livestock losses of the entire battalion! If he’d been in charge—the foreman gestured at the Gaffer, who was busy tinkering with the oxcart—I fear we’d have lost the entire herd. You’re a real hero, Lu. I’m going to recommend you for a medal.
—I don’t want a medal, Lu Beiping said quietly.
The foreman tightened his grip painfully on Lu Beiping’s shoulder.
—What was it you called that bull who got killed by the stone? Judas? Ha! What queer names you come up with. No loss at all, as far as I’m concerned—it was about time that old coot bit the dust. And we’d already planned to slaughter one of the animals, throw a big ration supp to celebrate our unit’s successful weathering of the typhoon. We all need a little extra grease in our bellies to make up for the hard times we’ve just been through.
Once again the foreman had quite a bit to say to Lu Beiping. This time, though, Lu Beiping sensed no insincerity in his words.
He freed himself gently from the foreman’s grip, went over to the newly built corral and busied himself laying a bed of fresh straw for Maria and her calf. The foreman turned and started rallying a group of men to go over the ridge and butcher Judas’s corpse, so that the entire team could haul down the meat when the day’s work was done. And he didn’t forget to lead the others to the site of the old corral and bucket away what manure remained—when it came to Production, that all-important matter, the foreman’s stance was never ambiguous.
As Lu Beiping gazed from afar at the foreman’s bear-like figure, he felt, suddenly and surprisingly, a great deal less antipathy for his “father-in-law.” Perhaps it was because of those earnest tears he’d shed over the damage wreaked by the typhoon, the loss of human life.
—Well done, son, well done! Chu crowed, leering at him from the crest of the roof where he lay belly down, tying bundles of thatch.
Fook, perched atop the Gaffer’s oxcart, chipped in:
—Yeah, Lu, you’re a real hero!
Once again the creek’s babbling filled the night, and Lu Beiping couldn’t sleep.
The hut had a clean, new-house smell, the grassy scent of new thatch mixing pleasantly with the odor of freshly spread lime in the drainage ditch. The cattle, too, seemed satisfied with their new creekside quarters; after a short spell of trumpeting and jostling they settled down for the night, and from time to time Lu Beiping heard them ruminating sleepily in the corral, like a bunch of old monks yawning in a monastery. It had been a tiring day. After entertaining visitors from dawn till dusk, he was thoroughly exhausted, and expected to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Maybe he was suffering from that lofty-sounding malady the scholars of old complained of in books—the “pacing sickness.” Ha, Lu Beiping thought, laughing to himself: A new house and a new bed have turned me from a mountain man into a poet.
He remembered the year he got downcountried, lying in his bunk on the steamship bound for Hainan Island and listening to the water whispering under the hull. But after a short while the sound of water seemed to be coming not from beneath his pillow, but from over his head, as if waves were washing back and forth across the roof of the hut.
In the darkness before him he watched the oxcart of Chance, in which he lay captive, creak to a halt at a fork in the road. The typhoon had changed everything, and yet at the same time it had changed nothing at all. What if he were to leave, pull out now? Would that make everything change for real? Up in the hollow, he and Kingfisher had had a bitter and probably irreversible falling out. He didn’t really belong in the world of the driftfolk, had never really belonged there. Autumn was right that he was now “Jade’s man,” but Jade had had many men, and he was just one passing stranger who had stumbled into her arms. To leave her now made a kind of sense, both emotional and practical. He had feelings for her, it was true, and not just of the sexual kind; but would he really, for Jade’s sake, for the sake of a woman like Jade, throw away his own tiny life in this godforsaken mountain backwater? As far as things down at camp were concerned, it was the whole silly affair with Han that had gotten him exiled here to begin with. Whether she’d died from malaria, been murdered, fallen off a cliff, been eaten by wild pigs—what was it to him? Wasn’t all this just a game of make-believe? It was starting to seem pointless to dirty his stockings wading through this swamp of bad juju and foul intrigue. By happy coincidence, the typhoon had swept away his fateful date with Wing; why not take this as a chance to turn over a new leaf—he’d finally proved himself as a cowherd, made a respectable showing in the arena of corral counts and manure yields—and retire honorably while his fortunes were running high? He could request a new assignment, invent some excuse to get transferred back to camp, and the parade of absurdities that had been the past four months would vanish like dust into the wind.
The water rang loud in
his ears. Swollen by the runoff from the surrounding mountains, Mudclaw Creek had gone from a tinkling rivulet to a gong battered by a Loi tribesman at a raucous holiday festival.
Three nights ago, up in the hollow, he’d also stayed awake listening to the water. Probably no one except the kids had slept that night. As he was driving the cattle down the creek earlier that evening, Lu Beiping had sworn a solemn oath never to go back. But Autumn—not Jade—had waylaid him, popping out of the trees halfway down the tunnel of branches (how did he manage to find his way through the jungle in utter darkness?) and stood before him in the ankle-deep water, blocking his way. Where are you going? he asked breathlessly, his dark figure almost invisible in the shadows. Your hut’s gone, your corral’s gone. Maybe you’ll be fine sleeping outside with your cattle, but if you do, it might not be long till we don’t have a roof over our heads. Autumn spoke unusually quickly and articulately. Lu Beiping stood, silent and obstinate, surrounded by his cattle. Bei, Autumn said, you know how flighty Jade can be. If you leave . . . His voice fell off abruptly, then he said: Please, Bei, I beg you. Won’t you come back? Please?
At that moment, for some inexplicable reason, Autumn seemed to possess a kind of authority over him.
So Autumn hollered to the cattle, and Lu Beiping had no choice but to turn around and march back up to the hollow. All night Jade sat huddled behind the hearth stove, sobbing, refusing to see any of them. Kingfisher and Stump nursed their water pipes beneath the lychee tree. Autumn and Lu Beiping sat on the far side of the creek among the sleeping cattle, listening to the water, waiting for morning to come.
Autumn shouldn’t have held me back, Lu Beiping thought to himself. And I shouldn’t have given in. I should have stood by my decision.
Rolling over in bed in his newly rebuilt hut, Lu Beiping remembered the other time the babbling water had kept him awake all night, right after meeting Smudge, during his first few weeks in the jungle. Smudge was the second scrap of red paper that Fate had flung at his feet. Now, maybe, he was due for a third . . .
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