Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

scorched aroma. Dad and the ox were performing drills out on the threshing floor as more red children than I could count appeared on the top of the wall. I put my hand over my pocket. What would I do if they all wanted black beans? Dad was wearing skin-tight clothes with a green lotus-shaped piece of cloth on each shoulder and a tall horn-shaped piece of tin plate on his head. He had painted the right side of his face with red grease paint, creating a stunning contrast with the blue birthmark on the left side. He was barking unintelligible commands as he drilled; to me they sounded like curses, but I was sure the red children on the wall understood every word, because they clapped rhythmically and thumped their heels against the wall and whistled; a few even took little horns out from under their stomachers and tooted along, while others brought drums up from the other side of the wall, placed them between their knees, and pounded away. At the same time, our family ox, sporting red satin cloth on his horns and a big red satin flower on his forehead, which made him look like a jubilant bridegroom, was running around the outer edge of the threshing floor. His body glistened, his eyes were bright as crystal, his hooves like lit lanterns that carried him in a graceful, smooth, and easy gait. Each time he passed by the red children, they pounded their drums and shouted their approval, producing waves of cheers. In all, he circled the floor ten times or more before joining Dad in the center, where Dad rewarded him with a chunk of bean cake. Then Dad rubbed his head and patted him on the rump.
    “Watch the miracle!” he sang out in a more resonant voice even than Braying Jackass.
    Big-head Lan Qiansui gave me a puzzled look, and I knew he was having trouble believing my narration. You’ve forgotten after all these years; or, maybe what I saw that night was a fanciful dream. But dream or no dream, you played a role; or maybe I should say that, without you, there’d have been no such dream.
    As Dad’s shout died out, he cracked his whip on the ground, producing a crisp little explosion that sounded as if he’d hit a plate of glass. The ox reared up until he was nearly vertical, supported solely by his hind legs. That is not a difficult maneuver for an ox, since it replicates the mating posture of a bull. What was not so easy was how he kept his front legs and body up straight with nothing to help him keep his balance but his hind legs; then he began to walk, one awkward step at a time, but remarkable enough to cause stupefied gapes from anyone who saw him. That a massive ox could actually stand up and walk on his hind legs, and not just four or five steps, or even nine or ten steps, but all the way around the outer edge of the threshing floor, was something I’d never imagined, let alone seen with my own eyes. He dragged his tail along the ground, his front legs curled in front of his chest, like a pair of stunted arms. His belly was completely exposed, his papaya-sized gonads swung back and forth, and it was almost as if the sole function of the spectacle was to show off his maleness. The red children on the wall, normally eager to make noise, were silent. They forgot to toot their horns and beat their drums, they just sat there slack-jawed, looks of disbelief on their little faces. Not until the ox had made a complete revolution and once again had all four hooves on the ground did the red children regain their composure and once again hoot and holler, clap their hands, beat their drums, blow their horns, and whistle.
    What followed was even more miraculous. The ox lowered his head until it was touching the ground, then, straining hard, he lifted his hind legs off the ground, very much like a human headstand, but infinitely harder to manage. It didn’t seem possible that an animal weighing 800 or more catties could support all that weight on his neck alone. But our family ox did just that. — Allow me to once again describe those papaya-sized gonads: stuck up all alone against the skin of his belly, they appeared somehow redundant. . .
    You went out to work the next morning for the first time — plowing the field. Our plow was made of wood, its blades, which had been forged by a blacksmith in Anhui, shiny as a mirror. Wooden plows like ours were no longer being used by the production brigade; they had been replaced by Great Harvest brand steel plows. Deciding to stick to tradition, we shunned those industrial