Thousand Pieces of Gold

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  “Look who dares call us foolish.”

  A shrill, inhuman scream, more terrible than anything Lalu had ever heard, ripped through the cluster of farmers like a crack of lightning, followed by a second, even more piercing, shriek and a rumble like thunder.

  Lalu’s head jerked up. A thick ochre haze was hurtling down the mountainside toward the village.

  “Bandits!”

  The farmers scattered, racing for their homes and hiding places. Lalu, her legs weak from months of hunger and cramped from squatting, limped after them. Grit from the swirling dust burned her eyes and rasped down her throat. She covered her face with her hands and struggled on blindly.

  A glancing blow knocked her flat. Crawling to her knees, she gaped at the horse that blocked her path. It was the big, handsome stallion A Gao’s father had purchased the year of the good harvest. How she had admired its strength and beauty! Now it shook and whimpered above her like a frightened colt. Where his big brown eyes had been were two bloody holes. A long needle, the kind used for making shoes, protruded from the left hole.

  A Gao came up from behind and made a grab for the halter. The horse circled crazily, kicking and screaming.

  “Help me,” A Gao pleaded.

  “How could you?” Lalu gasped.

  “I had to,” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “You know the bandits only take good horses. This way he’ll be blind, but he’ll still be ours.”

  “You blundering idiot,” A Gao’s father panted as he tried to corner the animal. “I told you to tether him tightly.”

  He leaped up, snatched the needle and hurled it, dripping, onto the ground. The horse screamed and reared, his hooves beating a staccato tattoo against the courtyard walls. Lalu tried to roll away, but the bloodied pits held her in their grip.

  “Come on,” A Gao said, dragging Lalu to her feet. “The bandits are at the edge of town already.”

  FIVE

  The bedlam inside the house restored Lalu to reality. Their mother, with the newest baby strapped to her back, was throwing sweet potatoes into a basket, half dragging A Da who clung wailing to the hem of her pants. A Fa trailed after them, alternately trying to get their mother’s attention and chew on a potato their mother had dropped.

  “There’s no time to take the little ones away. You’ll all have to hide in the fertilizer pit,” her father ordered.

  Lalu, frantically helping her mother scoop up the sweet potatoes, protested. “There’s no room.”

  “What if the babies cry?” her mother added.

  “You’ll just have to make sure they don’t,” he said, hurrying them into the courtyard.

  Flies buzzed furiously as A Cai helped their mother and the baby into the pit. He passed A Da and A Fa down to her, then Lalu and the basket of sweet potatoes. Finally, A Cai squeezed into the crowded hole. Manure and refuse swilled around their ankles. Flies wriggled in and out of their ears and nostrils.

  “It stinks,” A Fa complained.

  “That’s what makes it a good hiding place,” their mother said. “A Cai, you’re too tall. Crouch down.”

  “There’s no room.”

  “Everyone move back so A Cai can squat.”

  “He’s sitting in shit,” A Fa giggled.

  “Shh or the bandits will steal you away forever.”

  “Lalu, rest your basket of potatoes on A Cai so you can carry A Da,” their mother said.

  “Wait, I’m losing my balance.”

  The basket slipped and the potatoes slid and plopped into the murky mess. The flies nearest the bottom rose in noisy spirals, causing the ones above to whir and thrum against the closely huddled bodies.

  “I told you to wait,” A Cai snapped.

  A Fa began to cry. “That’s the only basket we brought. What will we eat?”

  “Never mind,” their mother soothed. “We’ll fish them out and wash them off.”

  “I won’t eat shit,” A Fa sobbed.

  A Da started to cry.

  “Quiet,” their mother commanded in a hoarse whisper. “You’ll start the baby crying, and believe me, if the bandits find us, you won’t need to worry about eating.”

  “But I’m hungry,” A Fa whined.

  “Me too,” A Da lisped between wails.

  “Listen. If you promise to stop crying, I’ll bring the other basket,” Lalu said.

  The children quieted immediately.

  “There’s no time,” their mother said. “I can hear the bandits chopping in doors already.”

  The children began to snivel.

  “I’ll go,” A Cai sighed, trying to raise himself.

  “You’re wedged in,” Lalu said, hoisting herself up and out of the pit. She leaned over. “Remember, you must be quiet or I won’t come back.”

  She ran across the courtyard and into the house. Her father was putting the last potatoes into a basket. “What are you doing?”

  “The potatoes we had fell into the manure,” Lalu said breathlessly. The boisterous clamor outside grew louder. She reached for the basket. “Here, I’ll take these back.”

  “No, we must have something to give the bandits or they’ll tear the place apart.”

  “The children are crying. Let me take a few to quiet them.”

  Her father scooped up two handfuls and threw them into the apron of Lalu’s jacket. She turned to run. Bang! The door shook, showering dust and bits of thatch onto Lalu and her father.

  “Open up!” a voice roared above the clatter of hoofbeats, splintering wood, and terrified screaming.

  “Quick, behind the stove,” her father said.

  Lalu scrambled up, the potatoes dropping and rolling across the floor as she squeezed into the narrow crevice. Through a crack, she saw the door burst open and a bandit stride in, kicking aside the splintered crossbar.

  “What are you hiding?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. See, I’ve gathered some sweet potatoes for you,” Lalu’s father said, thrusting the basket toward him.

  The bandit’s knife slashed the basket from his hands and potatoes spilled all across the floor. “You dare insult me with one basket!”

  “It’s all we have left.”

  “Liar!”

  Lalu shrank against the wall as the bandit knocked her father aside. Breaking pots, smashing crockery, and upsetting baskets, he strode across the trail of manure to the back of the stove where she hid.

  Rough hands yanked Lalu out and threw her down.

  Her father bent to help her. “That’s my daughter.”

  The bandit kicked her father across the room. “I know,” he leered, jerking Lalu off the floor.

  She kicked and drummed her fists against him, but he overpowered her easily, trapping her legs between his and pinning her arms against his side, hugging her to him. She sank her teeth into his arm. He laughed and twisted his arm free, then snapped her jaws between his fingers and forced her to face him. She stared defiantly, screwing up her nose at his stale garlic breath.

  His small, sharp eyes glittered. “Don’t recognize me, do you?”

  The voice was disturbingly familiar. She looked more closely at the swarthy face that loomed above her. Black eyes and long nose were embedded in greasy, pockmarked skin. Stiff black hairs formed a scraggly, off-kilter mustache and beard that hid twisted, misshapen lips. Shave his forehead, comb the hair into a neat queue, take away the mustache and beard, and he would look just like her father’s old laborer, the one who had worked for them the year of the winter wheat.

  “Chen,” she breathed.

  “Smart as well as fierce!” he roared.

  Her father rose. “Let her go!” he commanded.

  “Careful how you speak to me, I’m not your laborer anymore.”

  Her father stepped forward, raising clenched fists.

  “Let’s not have any foolish show of bravery,” Chen sneered. “A single whistle and my men will come pouring through that door and smash you to pulp, just like this.”

  Dragging Lalu
with him, he swiftly stamped the sweet potatoes until the floor was caked with rusty red smears.

  Angry tears spurted down Lalu’s cheeks. “How can you, a farmer, do such a terrible thing?” she cried.

  “Quite easily,” he said, his voice as cold and sharp as the edge of the knife he held. “I never was a farmer. Only a hired laborer. Someone to get rid of when times are bad. But now I’m a bandit leader. Boss of fifty men.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lalu saw her father reaching stealthily for the sickle. At the same instant, Chen knocked it out of reach.

  “You just don’t understand, do you? A single whistle. A shout. And your wife and children will be worse than dead. Remember, I know your hiding places.” He kicked meaningfully at the closest glob of manure. “Even if I didn’t, your little fox has left a trail a blind man can follow.”

  Lalu’s father sank to his knees. “Please, I beg you. Let her go.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you for this little fox.”

  Lalu gasped.

  “She’s not for sale,” her father said. But his sagging shoulders betrayed defeat.

  Lalu stiffened, refusing to give in as easily. She had persuaded her father to allow her to work in the fields, she would persuade Chen not to take her.

  “Think of your wife and children,” she said.

  Chen’s knife blade grazed Lalu’s neck as he snapped her head back with a yank of her braid. “Did your father think of them when he took away my livelihood?”

  Lalu bit her lip. She shouldn’t have mentioned his family, but it was too late to back down. “There are other farmers to work for.”

  “Not since the drought.”

  “We’ve been hungry too. The younger children are covered with sores and their stomachs are bloated like dead fish.”

  “But you’re alive. My wife and children are dead. From starvation.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not,” Chen lashed. “Who cares about a common laborer?”

  He burst into ugly laughter, splattering Lalu with a spray of saliva. “Do you really think a sentimental fool can be a bandit chief? When the drought came, I joined the bandits and led a raid on my own village. Sold my children and gave my wife to the rest of the men to use. That’s why they made me chief.”

  He held Lalu at arm’s length, examining her like a farmer about to purchase livestock. “Pretty face. Nice white teeth and shiny hair. But such big feet! The brothels in Shanghai like bound feet and smooth white skin. You are burned black.” He smiled lasciviously. “Of course, my men wouldn’t care. You could be a common wife to them. My wife lasted a week. But you’re tough. I’m sure you’d last at least a month.” He nuzzled his scratchy beard against her cheek. “Then again, maybe I’ll keep you for myself.”

  Lalu heard her father groan. She gritted her teeth, determined not to show her fear.

  Chen raised his head and shouted. “Zhuo.”

  A short, stocky bandit filled the gaping hole where the door had been.

  “Bring me some seed.”

  Almost immediately, Zhuo returned with two small bags no larger than Lalu’s fists. Chen took the bags. “Round up the men and bring me my horse,” he ordered.

  He threw a bag in front of Lalu’s father. It burst, scattering soybeans.

  Lalu stared at her father, willing him not to pick them up. He reached out, hesitated, then looked up at Lalu, his eyes pleading for understanding. She twisted her face away, a sob strangling in her throat. Behind her, she heard him snatch the bag and scoop up the spilled seed.

  “Two bags,” her father begged. “She’s worth two bags of seed.”

  Laughing scornfully, Chen tossed the other bag down, flung Lalu over his shoulder like a side of pork, and stalked out the door.

  SIX

  The bandits rode silently, in single file, sometimes allowing the horses to walk, other times breaking into a trot, and occasionally, for no apparent reason, beating the horses into a gallop. Lalu’s eyes smarted and teared from the gritty, yellow gray dust that swirled around them. Squeezed between Chen and the pommel of the wooden saddle, her pants rubbed like sandstone between her legs where the soft inner flesh of her thighs had scraped raw from the long ride. She strained forward, her collar chafing painfully where Chen’s knife had grazed her neck. A long, low branch whipped against her. The horse stumbled and a bolt of fire shot up Lalu’s spine. She bit her lip, tasting blood.

  Long after she thought she could not bear the torment another moment, they halted. Chen dismounted and Lalu sagged with relief. Behind her, she heard the other bandits dismount, the sounds of snapping branches and brush being dragged.

  The arrogance with which they left her mounted and free to kick her horse into a gallop depressed Lalu more than if she had been tied and heavily guarded, for it confirmed what she already knew. Escape was hopeless. Earlier, she had tried to keep track of landmarks. While there was still some light and they were covering familiar ground, she had been able to tag unusual rock formations, trees, and mountains. But since they had entered strange territory and dusk had deepened into night, it had become impossible. Besides, even if she did somehow elude her captors and find her way home, her parents would not dare take her back. She had not been kidnapped. She had been sold. She belonged to Chen.

  A flash of light followed by a burst of flames lit the darkness and Lalu saw the broken columns of a ruined temple. In the distance she saw another fire flare. Seconds later, a third fire sparked on the horizon. Was this some strange bandit ritual of thanksgiving? Then where was their sacrifice?

  She trembled as Chen and his men let out a roar and rushed toward her, their faces ghostly pale in the flickering light. She kicked the horse. It reared, and she felt herself tossed into the darkness.

  Oblivion, as sweetly warm and comforting as her mother’s arms, embraced Lalu. Harsh shouts pricked the edges of her consciousness. Unwilling to give up the peace that had spread like liquid warmth through her tortured limbs, Lalu resisted until stinging slaps and punches pried her eyes open.

  She expected a ring of faces. But there was only one. Chen’s. The other men were already mounted, restless, eager to leave. Lalu felt foolish relief. The bandits had been rushing for their horses, not for her. The fires were not a religious rite, but beacons to guide them.

  “You stupid whore, you could have damaged my horse,” Chen snapped, flinging Lalu over the saddle. “If my men didn’t need a woman, I’d kill you.”

  So he had already decided to give her to his men, Lalu thought dully. What was it he had said? “You could be a common wife to them. My wife lasted a week. But you’re tough. I’m sure you’d last at least a month.” What did he mean?

  Dimly she remembered a night as a child when she had wakened to strange, muffled sounds from her parents’ room. Frightened, she had leaped out of bed and run to them.

  From the doorway, she saw the darkness of her father’s larger bulk heave, panting, against her mother, who, flattened against the bed, moaned, then issued the short, sharp cry of a wounded bird.

  Lalu scrambled up onto the bed, beating her fists against her father, sobbing, “Leave Mama alone.”

  Her mother grabbed Lalu’s arms and ordered her back to her own bed.

  “But he was hurting you,” Lalu cried.

  Her mother had pushed her away. “You’re too young to understand.”

  Now, years later, she still did not really understand. Vaguely she realized that what her parents did at night was not unlike the coupling that occurred between animals. No one talked about it directly, but from the accumulated knowledge gleaned from years of whispers, she sensed it was something that was all right if it happened between husband and wife, shameful and terrible if the man and woman were not married.

  Nevertheless, it happened. In places called brothels. During bandit raids. Sometimes with soldiers quartered in the village. And once, she had heard her mother and some of her friends whispering about a neighbor who had suddenl
y vanished because she had “disgraced” herself.

  Lalu blushed hotly, remembering the time she had studied two dogs locked together. The male had mounted the female. She had quivered dreadfully, but she had not died. Did Chen’s wife die because there were fifty men, not one? Then how did women in the brothels survive? Surely they coupled with more than that. Was there something bandits did that made it worse?

  After Pan’s wife was used by a bandit, she had hung herself. Everyone agreed she had done the proper thing, and her husband had built a paifang to commemorate her courage and virtue. Should she try to kill herself? Was that what Chen’s wife had done? Then why had she waited a week? And why did Chen think she, Lalu, would last a month?

  She knew it was important for her to sort it all out and try to make sense of it. But her head throbbed from the constant jolting. Her throat demanded water. And her body, exhausted beyond endurance, cried for sleep. Strange night noises were an added distraction. She cocked her ear. Was a wild animal crashing through the undergrowth? Or more than one? From the amount of noise, it sounded like a pack. She glanced up at Chen. It was too dark to see much more than shadow, but he seemed unconcerned, letting the tired horses make their own pace.

  Suddenly, there was a rush of dark shadows and excited shouts as bandits greeted cohorts left behind to light the beacons. Lalu clutched the pommel.

  “What took so long?”

  “We thought the devil had snared you.”

  “So, you captured a goddess.”

  “More like a whore!”

  The men’s voices blared like thunder claps in the quiet of the night. Chen shouted above the hubub. “Silence until we reach camp!”

  Immediately, the men stopped their excited talk and only the rhythmic drumming of hoofbeats, the chatter of cicadas, and the hum of an occasional mosquito broke the silence as they headed toward the third beacon.

  Lalu had supposed the third fire marked the camp, but it did not. Again, there was a burst of excitement as the bandits greeted each other, and again, Chen ordered the men silent. She was amazed at the way the bandits obeyed him. Obviously his command was absolute. If he decided to take her for himself, surely the men would not dare contradict or disobey. Wouldn’t that be better than being thrown like a piece of meat to a pack of starving beasts? And if Chen kept her for himself, wouldn’t they be husband and wife?