Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

at the cement stanchion and steel supports. “Technician Jiang,” he shouted, “come up here!” With a boost from his comrades, Jiang climbed onto the stanchion, followed by his young apprentice. Clumps of ice clung to the stanchion like mushrooms, and as Sima Ku reached out to take the boy’s hand, he slipped on the ice and crashed to the ground; the boy managed to stay atop the stanchion. Sima fell right on his backside, from which blood and pus had never stopped seeping out. “Oh, mother —” he screamed. “Dear mother, that hurts like hell!” His men ran up and helped him up off the ice. But that did not stop the screams of pain, screams loud enough to reach the heavens. “Elder brother,” one of them said, “you’re going to have to bear it as best you can. Don’t expose yourself.” That brought an end to the screams. As he stood there shuddering, Sima barked out an order: “Get on with it, Technician Jiang. Just make cuts in a few of them and we’ll leave. The painkilling medication that damned Sha Yueliang gave me is only making it worse.” One of his men said, “Elder brother, I think that’s what he had in mind, and you fell for it.” Sima replied testily, “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the saying that ‘when you’re sick, any doctor will do’?” “Bear it the best you can, elder brother,” the man repeated. “I’ll take care of the problem once we get home. There’s nothing better for burns than badger oil. Works every time.”
    Whoosh.
An explosion of blue sparks, white around the edges, erupted amid the bridge supports, so bright it brought tears to the men’s eyes. Gaps in the bridge, bridge stanchions, steel supports, dogskin overcoats, foxskin caps, yellow sleds and Mongol ponies, and everything around the bridge came into full view, even a single hair that had fallen onto the ice. The two people on the bridge, Technician Jiang and the young apprentice, were hunkering down on the steel support like a pair of monkeys, their “big opium pipe” spewing white-hot flames as it cut into the metal. White smoke curled upward as the riverbed gave off the strangely fragrant odor of burning metal. Sima Ku watched the sparks and arc lights in rapt fascination, forgetting the pain in his backside. The sparking flames ate through the metal like silkworms consuming mulberry leaves. In hardly any time at all, a piece of the support fell from the bridge and stuck at an angle in the thick ice below. “Cut, cut, cut the fucking thing to pieces!” Sima Ku bellowed.
    “It’s nearly time, elder brother,” the man applying the badger oil to Sima Ku’s injured backside said. “The train is due just before dawn.” A dozen or more randomly located steel bridge supports had been cut with the torch, which was still spewing blue and white flames under the bridge. “Those fuckers are getting off easy!” Sima Ku cursed. “Are you sure the bridge will collapse under the weight of the train?” “If I cut any more, I’m afraid the bridge might collapse of its own weight before the train even reaches it.” “All right, you can come down now. As for you men,” he said to the others, “help those two hardy fellows down and reward them each with a bottle of our liquor.” The blue sparks died out. The brigade members helped Technician Jiang and his apprentice down off the stanchion and onto one of the sleds. In the darkness just before dawn, the winds died out, turning the air bone-chilling cold. The Mongol ponies pulled the sleds tentatively through the darkness across the ice. Before they’d gone a mile, Sima Ku called them to a halt. “After a hard night’s work,” he said, “it’s time to sit back and watch the show.”
    The sun had barely turned the edge of the sky red when the cargo train steamed up. The river glistened, the trees on both banks were glazed with gold and silver, the steel bridge sprawled silently across the river. Sima Ku rubbed his hands nervously as curses dripped from his mouth. The train clanged menacingly as it pressed down on them; when it neared the bridge, a loud whistle resounded between heaven and earth. Black smoke spewed from the engine, white mist flew from its wheels, the grinding of steel on steel made the men shudder in fear as the icy surface of the river trembled. The brigade members watched the train fitfully, the horses’ ears pressed back against the mane on their necks. The loutish, vulgar train rushed up onto the bridge, which