Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

procession. Finally, the last stretcher passed, leaving the icy roadway a mess from all the tramping it had withstood. Melted snow was now nothing but dirty water and mud; unmelted snow was spotted with fresh blood, giving it the horrifying look of rotting skin. My heart clenched as my nostrils filled with the smell of melting snow and the stench of human blood. That and the repulsive smell of sweaty bodies. We got back on the road, with considerably more trepidation now; even the milk goat, which had been prancing along proudly with its army cap, trembled fearfully, like a new recruit on his first day in battle. The rest of the people paced up and down on the road, unable to decide whether to keep going or to head back. The road to the southwest led to a battlefield, that was a given, and would take us straight into a forest of weapons and a hailstorm of gunfire; everyone knew that bullets don’t have eyes, that artillery shells aren’t given to apologies, and that soldiers are tigers down off the mountain, none of them vegetarians. People cast questioning glances back and forth, but no answers were forthcoming. Without looking at anyone, Mother forged ahead with her cart. When I turned to look, I saw that some of the refugees had turned and were heading to the northeast, while others fell in behind us.
    We spent the first night after the fighting in the same place we’d spent the first night of the evacuation: the same little courtyard and the same little side room, complete with the coffin in which the old woman had lain. The only difference was that nearly all the buildings in the tiny village had been leveled; even the three-room hut where Lu Liren and members of the county government had lived was now nothing but a pile of rubble. We entered the village just before nightfall, when the setting sun was a blood-red ball. The street was littered with broken bodies; twenty or more mangled corpses had been stacked neatly in an open square, as if connected by an invisible thread. The air was hot and dry; a number of trees with charred limbs appeared to have been struck by lightning.
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First Sister stubbed her toe on a helmet with a hole in it. I stumbled and fell after stepping on a bunch of spent cartridges that were still warm to the touch. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air, mixed with the pungent odor of gunpowder. The black barrel of a lonely cannon poked out from a pile of broken bricks, pointing up at cold stars flickering in the sky. The village was quiet as death; we felt as if we were walking through the legendary halls of Hell. The number of refugees following us home had slowly dwindled until finally there were no more — we were alone. Mother had stubbornly brought us here. Tomorrow we would cross the alkaline-blanketed northern bank of the Flood Dragon River, then the river itself, and from there to the place we called home. We’d be home. Home.
    Amid the ruins of the village, only that little two-room hut remained standing, as if it had continued to exist just for us. We pulled away the fallen beams and posts that blocked the door and went inside. The first thing we saw was the coffin, which brought home the realization that after nearly twenty days and nights, we were right back where we had spent that first night. “The will of Heaven!” Mother said tersely.
    As soon as it was light outside, Mother got busy putting the kids and our belongings — rifle included — on the cart.
    Suddenly the road was swarming with people, most in army uniforms, and all equipped with leather belts from which wood-handled grenades hung. Spent cartridges lay here and there on the ground, and in the roadside ditch artillery casings lay alongside dead horses with their bellies blown open. Mother abruptly reached into the cart for the rifle and flung it into the icy water in the ditch. A man carrying two heavy wooden cases on a shoulder pole looked at us in astonishment. He laid down his load and retrieved the rifle.
    As we neared Wang Family Mound, a blast of hot air hit us in the face, as if from a huge smelting oven. Smoke and mist hung over the village, trees at the entrance were covered with soot, and hordes of flies that seemed out of place swarmed from the rotting innards of dead horses to the faces of dead humans.
    To avoid trouble, Mother turned onto a path that skirted our village; the badly rutted path made the going difficult for our cart, so she put it down, took the oil jug off the handle,