Red Sorghum

blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness. Grandma could hear the
shh-shh
of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance. Thunder rumbled off to the northeast. The bearers quickened their pace. She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step. At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
    The holdup of Grandma’s sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family. Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense. A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma’s sedan chair reached that point. The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily. Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road. Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly. From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes. Grandma, still seated in thecarriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goosebumps on her skin. She didn’t know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
    ‘Nobody passes without paying a toll!’
    Grandma gasped. What was she feeling? Sadness? Joy? My God, she thought, it’s a man who eats fistcakes!
    Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones. If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside. Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called ‘fistcakes’.
    ‘Nobody passes without paying a toll!’ the man bellowed. The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo. He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin. His hand rested on it.
    The thought flashed through Grandma’s mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn’t frighten her, nothing could. She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
    ‘Hand over the toll, or I’ll pop you all!’ He patted the red bundle.
    The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man’s feet. The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
    As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
    ‘Get behind the sedan chair, all of you. I’ll pop if you don’t!’ He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
    The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair. Yu Zhan’ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared. A change came over the highwayman’s face, and he gripped theobject at his belt tightly. ‘Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!’
    With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma’s foot. A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
    ‘Climb down and come with me!’ he ordered her.
    Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
    ‘Climb down, I said!’
    She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers. Her gaze travelled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
    ‘Into the sorghum field!’ the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
    Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the