Red Sorghum

big-wheeledwagon. Granddad cradled Second Grandma, one arm under the nape of her neck, the other under the crook of her legs, as if she were a priceless treasure. He walked past the smashed gate out into the street, where Uncle Arhat waited with the wagon. He had hitched one of the mules to the wagon shafts; the poor mule whose rump Granddad had beaten bloody was tied to the rear crossbar. Granddad laid the now-screaming Second Grandma onto the bed of the wagon. He knew how badly she wanted to be strong, but he also knew she didn’t have the will.
    Now that he’d taken care of Second Grandma, he turned to see Uncle Arhat, his weathered face streaked with an old man’s tears, walking up with the corpse of Little Auntie Xiangguan. Granddad’s throat felt as if it were in the grip of a pair of metal tongs. He coughed violently, racked by dry heaves. Gripping the axle to support himself, he looked skyward and saw in the southeast the enormous emerald fireball of the sun bearing down on him like a wildly spinning wagon wheel.
    Taking the body of Little Auntie in his arms, he looked down into a face twisted by torment; two stinging tears fell to the ground.
    After laying Little Auntie’s corpse next to Second Grandma, he lifted a corner of the comforter and covered the girl’s terror-streaked face.
    ‘Get up on the wagon, Manager Yu,’ Uncle Arhat said.
    Granddad sat impassively on the railing, his legs dangling over the side.
    Uncle Arhat flicked the reins and started out slowly, the axles of the wagon turning with difficulty. Long-drawn-out groans emerged from the dry, oil-starved sandalwood, followed by loud creaks that sounded like death rattles as the wagon bumped and rolled out of the village and onto the road heading towards our village, from which the scent of sorghum wine rose into the air. Although Second Grandma looked as if she had been rocked to sleep by the bumpy ride, her misty grey eyes remained open. Granddad put his finger under her nose to see if she was breathing. Weak, but he could feel it; that put him at ease.
    A vast open field all around, a wagon of suffering passing through, the sky above as boundless as a dark ocean, black soilflat as far as the eye could see, sparse villages like islands adrift. As he sat on the wagon, Granddad felt that everything in the world was a shade of green.
    The shafts of the wagon were much too narrow for our big mule, the spoked wheels much too light. Its belly was squeezed so uncomfortably between the shafts that it wanted to start running; but Uncle Arhat controlled the metal bit in its mouth, so it could only nurse a silent grievance and raise its forelegs as high as possible, as though it were prancing. Mumbled, sobbing curses tumbled from Uncle Arhat’s mouth: ‘Fucking swine . . . fucking inhuman swine . . . slaughtered the whole family next door, ripped open the daughter-in-law’s belly . . . Depraved . . . Unborn baby looked like a skinned rat. . . . Potful of soupy yellow shit . . . Fucking swine . . .’
    The black mule tied to the back of the wagon plodded along behind, its head bowed, although it was impossible to tell whether the look on its long face was one of indignation, anger, shame, or capitulation.

6
    FATHER RECALLED THAT the mule-drawn wagon carrying Second Grandma and the corpse of Little Auntie Xiangguan arrived in our village at noon. A strong wind from the northwest raised clouds of dust on the roads and rustled leaves on the trees. Dead skin peeled from his lips in the parched air. When the wagon, one mule in front and another at the rear, appeared in the village, he ran like the wind to meet it. Uncle Arhat was hobbling along beside the bumping, creaking wagon. The mules, Granddad, and Uncle Arhat all had a gummy, dust-covered residue in the corners of their eyes. Granddad sat on the railing, holding his head in his hands like a clay idol or a wooden icon. The scene sucked the words right out of Father’s mouth. At a distance of about twenty yards from the wagon, his sensitive nose detected an inauspicious odour emanating from the wagon. Frightened, he turned and ran back home,blurting out to Grandma, who was anxiously pacing the floor, ‘Mom, Dad’s back, the mule’s pulling a long wagon, dead people in the back.’
    Grandma’s face fell. After a momentary pause, she rushed outside with him.
    The wagon wheels ground to a bumpy halt, creaking one last time as the wagon stopped just beyond the gate.