Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

was Fan Tong, which sounded just like the words for “rice bucket.” He had an astonishing capacity for food.
    County Chief Chen had deep emotional ties with donkeys; Secretary Fan was in love with donkey meat. When Father saw the two old and ugly animals, his face darkened and tears wetted his eyes. I knew he was thinking about the black donkey we’d owned, the “snow stander” that had been written up in the newspaper, the one that had accomplished something no other donkey in the world could match. He wasn’t alone in missing that donkey; I missed him too. When I thought back to my elementary school days, I recalled how much pride that donkey brought us three children. And not just us: even Huang Huzhu and Huang Hezuo, the twin girls, got their share as well. Though Father and Huang Tong, and Mother and Qiuxiang, barely spoke and seldom even greeted one another, I always felt a special closeness to the Huang twins. If you want to know the truth, I felt closer to them than I did to my half sister Lan Baofeng.
    The two donkey traders apparently knew Lan Lian, since they nodded and smiled meaningfully. Father immediately dragged me over to the oxen market, almost as if he was running away from something, or he’d received a sign from heaven. We could never buy a donkey, since no donkey in the world could compare with the one we’d once owned.
    The donkey market had been nearly deserted; the oxen market was just the opposite, with all sizes, shapes, and colors of animals available. How come there are so many oxen, Dad? I thought they’d been killed off during the three years of famine we just got through. It looks like these animals popped up through cracks in the earth or something. There were Southern Shandong oxen, Shaanxi oxen, Mongol oxen, Western Henan oxen, and a bunch of mixed breeds. We entered and, without a second glance, headed straight for a young bull that had just recently been haltered. Looking to be about a year old, it had a chestnut-colored coat, a satiny hide, and big, bright eyes that signaled both intelligence and a mischievous nature. We could tell he was fast and powerful by looking at his strong legs. Young as he was, he already had the frame of a fully grown adult ox, like a young man with fuzz above his lip. His mother, a long-bodied Mongol, had a tail that dragged along the ground and forward-jutting horns. These oxen take great strides, are impatient by nature, can withstand extreme cold and rough treatment, survive easily in the wild, are excellent in front of a plow, and are well suited to pulling a cart. The animal’s owner was a middle-aged man with a sallow complexion and thin lips that did not cover his teeth; a pen was hooked in the pocket of his black uniform, which had missing buttons. He looked like an accountant or storekeeper. A cross-eyed boy with shaggy hair stood behind the owner; he was about my age and, like me, a school dropout. We sized each other up; there was a spark of recognition.
    “In the market for an ox?” the boy called out to me. He added conspiratorially, “This one’s a half-breed. Sire’s a Swiss Simmental, mother’s a Mongol. They mated on the farm. Artificial insemination. The Simmental bull weighed in at eight hundred kilos, like a small mountain. If you’re in the market, this is the one you want to buy. Stay away from the female.”
    “Shut up, you little brat!” the sallow-faced man scolded. “If I hear another word out of you I’ll sew your mouth shut!”
    With a giggle, the boy stuck out his tongue and ran over behind the man. Then he secretly pointed to the mother with the crooked tail, to make sure I noticed.
    Father bent down and reached out to the young ox, like a member of the gentry class inviting a bejeweled, well-dressed young lady to dance in a brightly lit dancehall. Many years later, I saw that very gesture in foreign movies, and invariably thought of my father and that young ox. Father’s eyes flashed, a radiance I think you only see in the eyes of a loved one from whom you’ve been cruelly separated for so long. What really amazed me was that the ox actually walked up, wagged his tail, and licked Father’s hand, once, then a second time. Father stroked his neck.
    “I’ll take this one.”
    “You can’t buy just the one,” the trader said in a tone that ruled out any bargaining. “I can’t take him from his mother.”
    “I only have a hundred yuan,” Father insisted, “and I only want that young one.”