Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

the same.”
    Sima Ku got to his feet and ran back into the kiln. He reemerged a moment later wearing a straw rain cape and carrying a machine gun; shiny ammunition clips hung from his belt. In a flash, he vanished into the sorghum field, making the stalks rustle loudly. Mother called out after him:
    “Hear what I have to say — run fast and fly far, and don’t stop to do any more killing.”
    Silence returned to the sorghum field. The moonlight cascaded down like water. A tide of human sounds rushed toward us from the village.
    Wei Yangjiao led a ragtag bunch of local militia and district public security forces up to the kiln. Carrying lanterns, torches, rifles, and red-tasseled spears, they put on a show of surrounding the kiln. A public security officer named Yang, who had been fitted with a prosthetic leg, lay up against a pile of bricks and said through a megaphone, “Sima Ku, give yourself up! There’s no way out!”
    Officer Yang kept it up for a while, with no response from inside the kiln. So he took out his pistol and fired twice at the dark opening of the kiln. The bullets produced echoes when they hit the inside walls.
    “Bring me some grenades!” Officer Yang called out. A militiaman crawled up on his belly, like a lizard, and handed him two wood-handled grenades. Yang pulled the pin on one, tossed it in the direction of the kiln, then flattened out behind the bricks waiting for it to go off, which it did. Then he tossed the second one, with the same result. Concussion waves rolled far off into the distance, but still not a sound emerged from the kiln. Yang picked up his megaphone again. “Sima Ku, throw out your weapon, and we won’t harm you. We treat our prisoners well.” The only response was the soft chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs in the ditches.
    Yang found the nerve to stand up, the megaphone in one hand and his pistol in the other. “Follow me!” he called out to the men behind him. A couple of brave militiamen, one with a rifle, the other with a red-tasseled spear, fell in behind Yang, whose prosthetic leg clicked with each lurching step he took. They entered the old kiln without event and reemerged a few moments later.
    “Wei Yangjiao!” Officer Yang bellowed. “Where is he?”
    “I swear I saw Sima Ku come out of that kiln. Ask them if you don’t believe me.”
    “Was it Sima Ku?” Officer Yang turned his glare on Wu Yunyu and Guo Qiusheng — Ding Jingou was lying unconscious on the ground. “No mistake?”
    Wu Yunyu glanced uneasily at the sorghum field and stammered, “I think it was…”
    “Was he alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was he armed?”
    “I think… a machine gun … ammunition clips all over his body…”
    The words were barely out of Wu Yunyu’s mouth when Officer Yang and all the men he’d brought with him hit the ground like mowed grass.
6
    A class education exhibit was set up in the church. No sooner had the students reached the front door than they burst into tears, as if on command. The sound of hundreds of students — Dalan Elementary had by then become the key elementary school for all of Northeast Gaomi Township — all crying together rocked the street from one end to the other. The newly arrived principal stood on the stone steps and announced in a heavy accent, “Quiet down, students, quiet down!” He took out a gray handkerchief, with which he first wiped his eyes and then blew his nose loudly.
    Once the students had stopped crying, they followed their teachers in single file into the church and lined up on a square drawn on the floor in chalk. The walls were covered with colorful ink drawings, all with explanations written beneath them.
    Four women with pointers stood in the corners.
    The first one was our music teacher, Ji Qiongzhi, who had been punished for beating up a student. Her face was a waxy yellow, her spirit obviously broken. Her once radiant eyes were now cold and lifeless. The new district head, a rifle slung over his shoulder, stood at Pastor Malory’s pulpit while Ji pointed to the drawings behind her and read the descriptions beneath them.
    The first dozen or so drawings described Northeast Gaomi Township’s natural environment, its history, and the state of society prior to Liberation. After that came the drawing of a nest of venomous snakes with red forked tongues. A name was written on each snake’s head, and on one of the largest heads was the name of Sima Ku and Sima Ting’s father. “Under the cruel