Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

years, but he was still a man to be listened to. He was used to ordering people around, and had the voice for it. The recently rehabilitated bad elements jumped up as if they were shot out of their seats, sweat dripping from their faces.
    “And you —” Hong pointed at Yang Qi, ratcheting up his anger a notch or two. “You damned turncoat, you lily-livered scumbag who kneels before class enemies, you stand up too!”
    Yang tried, but when his head bumped up against the wet necktie hanging from a low branch, his legs buckled and he sat down hard, his back resting against the apricot tree.
    “You, you . . . you people—” Like a man standing on the deck of a wave-tossed boat, he tried but failed to point steadily at any of the men standing at their open-air tables. “You people,” he said, launching into a tirade, “think you’re home free. Well, look around and you’ll see that this spot under the sky —” He pointed skyward and nearly fell over. “This spot still belongs to the Communist Party, even though there are dark clouds in the sky I’m telling you, here and now, that your dunce caps have only been removed temporarily, and before long there’ll be new ones for you to wear, this time made of iron or steel or brass. We’ll weld them to your scalps, and you’ll wear them to your death, into your coffin. That is the answer you get from this proud member of the Communist Party!” He pointed to Yang Qi, who was snoring away under the apricot tree. “You’re not only a turncoat who kneels before class enemies, you’re a profiteer who has dug holes at the base of the wall that is our collective economy.” He then turned to Wu Qiuxiang. “And you, Wu Qiuxiang, I took pity on you and spared you from having to put on a dunce cap. But it’s in your blood to exploit the masses, and you were just biding your time till the weather turned so you could sink roots and began to flower. Listen to me, all of you. Our Communist Party, we members of Mao Zedong’s party who have survived countless intraparty struggles over the proper line, we tempered Communists who have weathered the storms of class struggle, we Bolsheviks, will not knuckle under, we will never surrender! Land distribution? I’ll tell you what that is. It’s a scheme to make the broad masses of middle and lower poor peasants suffer a second time, be beaten down all over again.” Raising his fists in the air, Hong shouted, “We will keep the struggle alive, we will bring Lan Lian to his knees, we’ll lop the top off this black flag! That is the mission of enlightened Communists of the Ximen Village Production Brigade and all middle and lower poor peasants! The cold, dark night will come to an end —”
    The sound of an engine and a pair of blinding lights coming from the east brought Hong’s tirade to an end. I flattened up against the wall to keep from being discovered. The engine was shut down, the lights turned off, and out from the cab of the ancient Jeep emerged Jinlong, Panther Sun, and others. Vehicles like that are considered trash these days, but for a rural village in the early 1980s, it had a domineering presence. Obviously, Jinlong, a village branch secretary of the Communist Party, was somebody to reckon with. This signaled the beginnings of his progress up the ladder.
    Jinlong strode confidently in through the gate, followed by his companions. All eyes were on the current top leader of Ximen Village. Hong Taiyue pointed to Jinlong and cursed:
    “Ximen Jinlong, I must be blind. I thought you were born and grew up under the red flag, that you were one of us. I had no idea that the polluted blood of the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao ran in your veins. Ximen Jinlong, you’re been a fraud for the last thirty years, and I fell for it. . . .”
    Jinlong signaled Panther Sun and the others with his eyes. They ran up and grabbed Hong Taiyue by the arms. He fought, he cursed:
    “You’re a bunch of loyal sons and grandsons of counterrevolutionaries and members of the landlord class, running dogs and spitting cats, and I’ll never knuckle under to you!”
    “That’s enough, Uncle Hong. This play is finished.” Jinlong hung the battered canteen around Hong Taiyue’s neck. “Go home and get some sleep,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Aunt Bai. We’ll pick a good date for the wedding. That way you can wallow in the muck with the landlord class.”
    Jinlong’s companions spirited Hong away, his feet dragging along the