Red Sorghum

glances, and the others rushed up, threw him to the ground, and began raining blows on him with fists and feet. When they’d had their fill, they took off his belt, stuck his head into the crotch of his pants, tied his hands behind his back, and threw him to the ground.
    Like a stranded tiger or a beached dragon, Yu Zhan’ao struggled to get free, rolling around on the ground like a ball for as long as it takes to smoke a couple of pipefuls. Finally, having seen enough, old Du went up, untied Granddad’s hands, and freed his head from his pants. Yu Zhan’ao’s face was pallid as a sheet of gold paper as he lay on the pile of firewood like a dying snake. It took him a long time to catch his breath. Meanwhile, the others held on to their tools, just incase he took it into his head to get even. But he just staggered over to one of the vats, ladled out some wine, and began gulping it down. When he was finished, he climbed back up onto the pile of firewood and fell fast asleep.
    From then on, Yu Zhan’ao got roaring drunk every day, then climbed up onto the pile of firewood and lay there, his moist blue eyes half closed, a mixed smile on his lips: the left side foolish, the right side crafty, or vice versa. For the first few days, the men watched him with interest; after a while, they began to grumble. Uncle Arhat tried to get him to do some work, but Yu Zhan’ao just looked at him out of the corner of his eye and said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? I’m the master here. That kid in her belly is mine.’
    By then my father had grown in Grandma’s belly to about the size of a little ball, and in the mornings the sound of her retching in the yard drifted over to the western compound. The experienced old-timers talked about nothing else. When the woman Liu brought over their food, they asked her, ‘Old Woman Liu, is the mistress with child?’
    She glared at them. ‘Watch out, or someone might cut out your tongue!’
    ‘Looks like Shan Bianlang knew what he was doing after all!’
    ‘Maybe it’s the old master’s.’
    ‘No wild guessing! Do you really think a spirited girl like that would let one of the Shan men touch her? I’ll bet it was Spotted Neck.’
    Yu Zhan’ao jumped up from the pile of firewood and gestured gleefully. ‘It was me!’ he shouted. ‘Ha ha, it was me!’
    They had a good laugh over that, and cursed him roundly.
    On more than one occasion, Uncle Arhat urged Grandma to dismiss Yu Zhan’ao, but she invariably replied, ‘Let him rant and rave if he wants to. I’ll fix his wagon sooner or later.’
    One day she walked into the compound, her thickening waist obvious to all, to speak with Uncle Arhat.
    Avoiding her eyes, he said softly, ‘Mistress, it’s time to break out the scales and buy the sorghum.’
    ‘Is everything ready? The compound and the grain bins?’
    ‘Everything’s ready.’
    ‘When did you do it in the past?’
    ‘Just about now.’
    ‘Let’s wait a while longer this year.’
    ‘We might lose out. There are at least ten other distilleries.’
    ‘The harvest has been so good this year there’s more than they can handle. Put up a notice that we’re not ready yet. We’ll buy when the others have had their fill. By then we can name our own price, and the grain will have more time to dry out.’
    ‘You’re probably right.’
    ‘Anything else we need to talk about?’
    ‘Not really, except for that hired hand. He gets so drunk every day he can hardly move. Let’s pay him off and get rid of him.’
    Grandma thought for a moment. ‘Take me to the distillery so I can see for myself.’
    Uncle Arhat led the way to the distillery, where the workers were just then pouring fermented mash into the distiller. The firewood beneath the cooker crackled and the water roiled, sending clouds of steam into the distiller, a three-foot-high wooden vessel with tightly woven bamboo strips at the base, which fitted over the cooker. Four men with wooden spades ladled the sorghum mash, a green-spotted, sweet-smelling fermented mixture, from the vat into the steaming distiller. Since the steam had nowhere else to go, it filtered up through the cracks in the base, and the alert men dumped the mash wherever the steam was coming through, to keep the heat from dissipating.
    When they saw Grandma approaching, they threw themselves into their work. From his firewood perch, Yu Zhan’ao, who looked like a dirty-faced, ragged beggar, stared at Grandma with a cold glint in his