Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

“Please, please, lay them to rest. Father, Mother, our children …”
    Sweat poured down Sima’s neck from his bowed head. With an exasperated gesture, he walked back to where his men were standing, and said softly, “Brothers, I have tolerated your bullying tactics, your thievery, your fights, your taking advantage of widows, your grave-robbing, and all the other sins against heaven and earth. One trains soldiers for a thousand days, all for a single battle. And now, today, we have a job to do, even if the crows gouge out our eyes and peck out our brains. I, the town head, will take the lead, and I will fuck eighteen generations of women in the families of any one of you who tries to slack off! After we’ve finished, I’ll take you back and get you all drunk. Now on your feet,” he said to the carter, pulling him up by his ear, “and get that cart over here! Men, pick up your weapons, the battle is on!”
    At that moment, three dark-skinned youngsters swam up through the waves of wheat. It was Aunty Sun’s mute grandsons. They were all wearing the same colored shorts, and nothing else. The tallest of the three was brandishing a sword that whipped in the air, making a whistling sound. The second was carrying a wood-handled dagger; and the shortest brought up the rear dragging a long-handled sword. With wide, staring eyes, they grunted and made a series of gestures describing their anguish. As a light flickered in Sima Ting’s eyes, he patted each of them on the head. “Youngsters,” he said, “your grandma and your brothers are there on the cart. We are going to bury them. Those damned crows have gone too far. They are the Japs, so let’s take the fight to them! Do you understand what I’m saying?” Yao Si, who had reappeared from somewhere, made some signs to the boys. Tears and flames of outrage spewed from the eyes of the mutes, who charged the crows, their knives and swords flashing in the air.
    “You slippery devil, where the hell have you been?” Sima demanded of Yao Si, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him violently.
    “I went to get those three.”
    The mutes jumped up onto the back of the cart, quickly bloodying their flashing knives and swords, sending dismembered crows thudding to the ground. “Charge!” Sima Ting shouted. The men swarmed up to the cart to fight the crows. Curses, the sounds of battle, the screeches of crows, and the flapping of wings created a sheet of noise that joined a convergence of fetid smells — death, sweat, blood, mud, wheat, and wildflowers.
    The torn and broken bodies were laid out pell-mell in the pit. Pastor Malory stood atop the new earth beside the pit and intoned, “Dear Lord, deliver the souls of these unfortunate victims …” Tears streamed from his blue eyes down through the purplish scars from the whip; from there they dripped onto his ripped black robe and the heavy bronze crucifix on his chest.
    Sima Ting pulled him down off the ridge of the pit. “Malory,” he said, “go over there and take it easy. Don’t forget that you barely escaped the jaws of death yourself.”
    As the men shoveled dirt into the pit, Pastor Malory cast a long shadow under the setting sun. Mother stood there watching him and feeling her heart race beneath her heavy left breast. By the time the sun’s rays had turned red, a massive grave mound had risen in the middle of the cemetery. Sima Ting led the survivors in kowtowing before the mound and discharging several obligatory but feeble wails. Mother urged the family members of the victims to kowtow to Sima Ting and his funeral detail to show their gratitude. “There’s no need for that,” Sima said.
    The members of the funeral detail walked toward the sunset on their way home. Mother and my sisters were well behind the ragged column of people, which stretched for at least a quarter of a mile, with Pastor Malory bringing up the rear on unsteady legs. Thick human shadows lay across the fields of wheat. Under the sun’s blood-red rays, the seemingly endless expanse of quiet was broken by the tramping of feet, the whistling of the wind past the stalks of wheat, the hoarse sounds of my crying, and the first drawn-out mournful hoot of a fat owl as it woke from a day’s sleep in the canopy of a mulberry tree in the cemetery. It had a heart-stopping effect on everyone who heard it. Mother stopped to look back at the cemetery, where purple mist rose from the ground. Pastor Malory bent down to pick up my