Red Sorghum

finished peeing, he took her by the hand and led her inside.She followed meekly. They’d barely stepped inside when they heard waves of commotion from the southeast, followed by the crack of rifle fire, like the pop of a tautly stretched piece of silk pierced by a sharp knife.
    Shortly after he and Grandma heard the gunfire, they were herded over to the dike, along with a number of villagers – elderly, young, sick, and disabled – by Japanese soldiers. The polished white flagstones, boulders, and coarse yellow gravel on the dike looked like a line of grave mounds. Last year’s early-summer sorghum stood spellbound beyond the dike, sombre and melancholy. The outline of the highway shining through the trampled sorghum stretched due north. The stone bridge hadn’t been erected then, and the little wooden span stood utterly exhausted and horribly scarred by the passage of tens of thousands of tramping feet and the iron shoes of horses and mules. The smell of green shoots released by the crushed and broken sorghum, steeped in the night mist, rose pungent in the morning air. Sorghum everywhere was crying bitterly.
    Father, Grandma, and the other villagers – assembled on the western edge of the highway, south of the river, atop the shattered remnants of sorghum plants – faced a mammoth enclosure that looked like an animal pen. A crowd of shabby labourers huddled beyond it. Two puppet soldiers herded the labourers over near Father and the others to form a second cluster. The two groups faced a square where animals were tethered, a spot that would later make people pale with fright. They stood impassively for some time before a thin-faced, white-gloved Japanese officer with red insignia on his shoulders and a long sword at his hip emerged from the tent, leading a guard dog, whose red tongue lolled from the side of its mouth. Behind the dog, two puppet soldiers carried the rigid corpse of a Japanese soldier. Two Japanese soldiers brought up the rear, escorting two puppet soldiers who were dragging a beaten and bloody Uncle Arhat. Father huddled close to Grandma; she wrapped her arms around him.
    Fifty or so white birds, wings flapping noisily, sliced through the blue sky above the Black Water River, then turned and headed east, towards the golden sun. Father could see the draught animals, with scraggly hair and filthy faces, and ourtwo black mules, which lay on the ground. One was dead, the hoe still stuck in its head. The blood-soaked tail of the other mule swept the ground; the skin over its belly twitched noisily; its nostrils whistled as they opened and closed. How Father loved those two black mules.
    He remembers Grandma sitting proudly on the mule’s back, Father in her lap, the three of them flying down the narrow dirt path through the sorghum field, the mule rocking back and forth as it gallops along, giving Father and Grandma the ride of their lives. Spindly legs conquer the dust of the road as Father shouts excitedly. An occasional peasant amid the sorghum, hoe in hand, gazes at the powdery, fair face of the distillery owner, his heart filled with envy and loathing.
    Now one of the mules was lying dead on the ground, its mouth open, a row of long white teeth chewing the earth. The other sat suffering more than its dead comrade. ‘Mom,’ Father said to Grandma, ‘our mules.’ She covered his mouth with her hand.
    The body of the Japanese soldier was placed before the officer, who continued to hold the dog’s leash. The two puppet soldiers dragged the battered Uncle Arhat over to a wooden rack. Father didn’t recognise him right away; he seemed just a strange, bloody creature in human form. As he was dragged up to the rack, his head turned to the left, then to the right, the crusty scab on his scalp looking like the shiny mud on the riverbank, baked by the sun until it wrinkles and begins to crack. His useless feet traced patterns in the dirt. The crowd slowly recoiled. Father felt Grandma’s hands grip his shoulders tightly. The people seemed to shrink in size, their faces clay-coloured or black. Crows and sparrows suddenly silenced, the people could hear the panting of the guard dog. The officer holding its leash farted loudly. Before the puppet soldiers dragged the strange creature over to the rack, they dropped it to the ground, an inert slab of meat.
    ‘Uncle Arhat!’ Father cried out in alarm.
    Grandma covered his mouth again.
    Uncle Arhat began to writhe, arching his buttocks as he rose to