Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

and a dogskin cap on his head, stepped out of the line of carts ahead and ran over.
    “Wang Jin!” he shouted angrily. “What are you doing out of line? What’s the idea? Are you trying to make our Iron and Steel Company lose face?”
    “Political Instructor,” Wang Jin said with a frown, “we broke an axle.”
    “You couldn’t let it happen a little earlier or a little later, could you? You had to wait till we were going into battle, didn’t you? I told you to check your cart carefully before we left, didn’t I?” He slapped Wang Jin angrily.
    “Ouch!” Wang Jin yelped as he lowered his head; blood trickled out of his nose.
    “Why did you hit my father?” the gutsy youngster asked the political instructor.
    The political instructor froze. “I didn’t do it intentionally,” he said. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have bumped him. But if the provisions don’t get there in time, I’ll have you both shot.”
    “We didn’t break the axle on purpose,” the youngster said. “We’re poor and we had to borrow this cart from my aunt.”
    Wang Jin pulled some ratty cotton filling out of his sleeve and stuffed it up his bloody nose. “Political Instructor,” he muttered, “please be reasonable.”
    “Reasonable?” the political instructor said menacingly. “Getting provisions up to the front lines is reasonable. Not getting them there is unreasonable. I’ve had enough of your prattling. You’re going to transport these two hundred and forty pounds of millet up to Taoguan Township if you have to lug it on your backs!”
    “Political Instructor, you’re always saying how we need to be practical and realistic. Two hundred and forty pounds of millet… he’s just a boy … please, I beg you …”
    The political instructor looked up into the sunny sky, then down at his watch, and surveyed the area. His gaze fell first on our wooden-wheeled cart, then on Wang Chao’s rubber-tired cart.
    Wang Chao was a bachelor, a practiced barber who had made plenty of money, some of which he spent on his favorite food, pig’s head. Well fed, he had a square face, big ears, and a healthy complexion. Nothing like a farmer. In his cart he carried a box with his barber’s tools and an expensive quilt wrapped with a dog’s pelt. The cart was made from the wood of a scholar tree, coated with tung oil that made the wood shine. It was a good-looking, good-smelling cart. Before setting out, he’d pumped up the tires, so that the cart bounced lightly on the hard surface of the road, hardly disturbing its contents. A strong man, he was never without a flask of liquor, from which he drank regularly as he moved spryly, singing little ditties and having a grand old time. Among us refugees, he was royalty.
    The political instructor’s dark eyes rolled in his head as he headed over to the side of the road with a smile on his lips. “Where are you people from?” he asked pleasantly.
    No one answered him. Then his glance shifted to the face of Wang Chao and his smile vanished, replaced by a look as formidable as a mountain and as forbidding as a remote monastery. “What do you do for a living?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Wang Chao’s big, oily face.
    Wang Chao rather stupidly looked away, tongue-tied.
    “By the looks of you,” the political instructor said, “if you’re not a landlord, you’re a rich peasant, and if you’re not a rich peasant, you’re a shop owner. Whatever you are, you certainly don’t make a living by the sweat of your brow. No, you’re a parasite who lives by exploiting others!”
    “You’ve got me all wrong, Commander,” Wang Chao protested. “I’m a barber, a man who makes a living with his hands. I live in two run-down rooms. I’ve got no land, no wife, and no kids. If I eat my fill, no one in the family goes hungry. I eat for today, and let tomorrow take care of itself. They checked my background at the district and gave me a label as an artisan, which is the same as a middle peasant, basic work.”
    “Nonsense!” the one-armed man said. “As I see it, you may have a clever mouth, but a parrot can’t talk its way through Tong Pass. I’m commandeering your cart!” He turned to Wang Jin and his son. “Take down the millet and load it on this cart.”
    “Commander,” Wang Chao said, “this little cart cost me half a lifetime of savings. You’re not supposed to appropriate poor people’s possessions.”
    The one-armed man replied angrily, “I gave one of my arms