Pow!

‘They must be out.’

    ‘If so, there has to be someone to watch the place,’ Mother said.

    She knocked again, neither too hard nor too soft. As if she were saying: I won't stop until you come out to see who's here.

    Her efforts were finally rewarded. We heard the sound of a door opening, followed by a girl's crisp command to the dogs: ‘Shut up!’ Next, the sound of footfalls approaching the gate. Then, at last, a question—impatiently delivered—from the other side: ‘Who is it?’

    ‘It's us,’ Mother replied. ‘Is that Tiangua? I'm Yang Yuzhen, Luo Xiaotong's mother. We're here to wish you a happy New Year.’

    ‘Yang Yuzhen?’ The name was not familiar to the girl.

    Mother nudged me to say something. Tiangua, Lao Lan's only child, had grown quite a bit, and her mother could have had a second child if she'd wanted. She hadn't. I dimly recalled someone saying that Lao Lan's wife was ill and had not been out of the house in years. I knew Tiangua, a girl with dull brown hair and two lines of snot above her mouth. She was a bigger slob than me, and couldn't begin to compare with my sister. I didn't like her one bit. So why did Mother want me to say something? Was I supposed to believe that my voice carried more weight than hers?

    ‘Tiangua,’ I said finally, ‘open up. It's me, Luo Xiaotong.’

    Tiangua stuck her head out through a small opening in the gate, and the first thing I noticed was that there was no snot above her mouth and that she was wearing a nice jacket. Then I saw that her hair wasn't as dull brown as I remembered, and that it was neatly combed. In a word, she was a better-looking girl than I recalled. She sized me up with a squint and a strange look, and those slitted eyes and light hair reminded me of the foxes I'd seen recently. Again the foxes. I'm sorry, Wise Monk, I don't want to talk about them but they keep coming back to me. Foxes, which had been raised as rare animals at first but in such large numbers that they had to be wholesaled at a deep discount to Slaughterhouse Village, where they were slaughtered and their meat mixed with dog to be sold. Our butchers didn't forget to pump the slaughtered foxes full of water, though the process was more difficult than with cows or pigs, since they were so much trickier, so much harder to work on. That's where my thoughts roamed when I heard Tiangua's say ‘My dieh isn't home.’

    But, led by Mother, we squeezed in through the gate and pushed Tiangua out of the way. I saw the well-fed wolfhounds jump to their feet, eyes and teeth flashing in the light, metal chains ringing out as they were pulled taut. They were as close to being wolves as dogs could possibly be, and those chains were all that kept them from tearing us limb from limb. On that earlier day, when I'd come alone to invite Lao Lan to dinner, they hadn't seemed as frightening.

    ‘Tiangua,’ Mother said once she'd elbowed her way into the yard, ‘it's all right if your dieh isn't home. We're just as happy saying hello to you and your niang and chatting for a few minutes.’

    Before Tiangua could react, we spotted Lao Lan, standing big and tall in the doorway of his home's eastern wing.

POW! 26

    The three cat-nappers are merciless. One swipe of the net and the cat is caught, one swing of the club and it's out. Into the burlap sack it goes. I want to rush to the cat's rescue but I've been sitting with my legs under me so long that they've gone to sleep. ‘She's just had kittens,’ I shout, ‘let her go !’ My voice cuts through the air like a knife—even I can feel it—but they turn a deaf ear to my cry, their attention caught by the cluster of ostriches sleeping in the corner. They charge at the huddled birds excitedly, like starving wolves. Startled awake, the ostriches screech in anticipation of the inevitable fight or flight. One of the birds, a male, leaps up and strikes the net-holder in the nose with one of its powerful legs. Then the whole group, necks stretched as far as they'll go, takes off in all directions, feet flying; but they quickly come together and bolt for the highway. The thud of ostrich feet pounding the ground fades into the darkness and then vanishes altogether. The injured cat-napper is sitting on the ground holding his nose, blood seeping between his fingers. His partners help him to his feet and console him in hushed voices. But the moment they let go, he slumps back to the ground, as if his bones have turned to tendons and