Red Sorghum

clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards. The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt. She stared at Yu Zhan’ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
    Yu Zhan’ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
    ‘Hold it right there!’ the highwayman commanded feebly. ‘I’ll shoot if you take another step!’
    Yu Zhan’ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up. Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face. When Yu Zhan’ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran. Yu Zhan’ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear. He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
    ‘Spare me, gentlemen! I’ve got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.’ The highwayman skilfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan’ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth. The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.
    Yu Zhan’ao reached down, took the thing from the man’s belt, and shook off the red cloth covering, to reveal the gnarled knot of a tree. The men all gasped in amazement.
    The bandit crawled to his knees, knocking his head on the ground and pleading for his life. ‘Every highwayman says he’s got an eighty-year-old mother at home,’ Yu Zhan’ao said as he stepped aside and glanced at his comrades, like the leader of a pack sizing up the other dogs.
    With a flurry of shouts, the bearers and musicians fell upon the highwayman, fists and feet flying. The initial onslaught was met by screams and shrill cries, which soon died out. Grandma stood beside the road listening to the dull cacophony of fists and feet on flesh; she glanced at Yu Zhan’ao, then looked up at the lightning-streaked sky, the radiant, golden, noble smile still frozen on her face.
    One of the musicians raised his trumpet and brought it down hard on the highwayman’s skull, burying the curved edge so deeply he had to strain to free it. The highwayman’s stomach gurgled and his body, racked by spasms, grew deathly still; he lay spread-eagled on the ground, a mixture of white and yellow liquid seeping slowly out of the fissure in his skull.
    ‘Is he dead?’ asked the musician, who was examining the bent mouth of his trumpet.
    ‘He’s gone, the poor bastard. He didn’t put up much of a fight!’
    The gloomy faces of the bearers and musicians revealed their anxieties.
    Yu Zhan’ao looked wordlessly first at the dead, then at the living. With a handful of leaves from a sorghum stalk, he cleaned up Grandma’s mess in the carriage, then held up the tree knot, wrapped it in the piece of red cloth, and tossed the bundle as far as he could; the gnarled knot broke free in flight and separated from the piece of cloth, which fluttered to the ground in the field like a big red butterfly.
    Yu Zhan’ao lifted Grandma into the sedan chair. ‘It’s starting to rain,’ he said, ‘so let’s get going.’
    Grandma ripped the curtain from the front of the carriage and stuffed it behind the seat. As she breathed the free air she studied Yu Zhan’ao’s broad shoulders and narrow waist. Hewas so near she could have touched the pale, taut skin of his shaved head with her toe.
    The winds were picking up, bending the sorghum stalks in ever deeper waves, those on the roadside stretching out to bow their respects to Grandma. The bearers streaked down the road, yet the sedan chair was as steady as a skiff skimming across whitecaps. Frogs and toads croaked in loud welcome to the oncoming summer rainstorm. The low curtain of heaven stared darkly at the silvery faces of sorghum, over which streaks of blood-red lightning crackled, releasing ear-splitting explosions of thunder. With growing excitement, Grandma stared fearlessly at the green waves raised by the black winds.
    The first truculent raindrops made the plants shudder. The rain beat a loud tattoo on the sedan chair and fell on Grandma’s embroidered slippers; it fell on Yu Zhan’ao’s head, then slanted in on Grandma’s face.
    The bearers ran like scared jackrabbits, but