Red Sorghum

live on what slips through her fingers.’
    ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll go see the misbegotten ingrate in a couple of weeks.’
    Two weeks later, he rode up on his donkey, only to find the main gate shut tight. Grandma ignored his shouts. After he’d yelled himself hoarse, he turned and rode away.
    Granddad was already working in the distillery by the time Great-Granddad next returned, and Grandma’s five dogs constituted an impregnable line of defence. His pounding at the gate was met by a chorus of barks, and when, at last, the woman Liu opened the gate, he was immediately surrounded by dogs, content to bark for the moment. Poor Great-Granddad quaked in fright.
    ‘Who are you looking for?’ the woman Liu asked him.
    ‘And who are you?’ Great-Granddad fired back indignantly. ‘I’ve come to see my daughter!’
    ‘Just who is your daughter?’
    ‘The woman who runs this place.’
    ‘Wait here. I’ll go tell her.’
    ‘Tell her her real father’s here!’
    The woman Liu returned with a silver dollar in her hand. ‘You there, old man, the mistress says she has no father, but she’s willing to give you a silver dollar to buy some buns for your trip.’
    ‘Misbegotten ingrate!’ Great-Granddad railed. ‘Get your ass out here! Who the hell do you think you are, disowning your own father as soon as you’re rolling in money!’
    The woman Liu flung the silver dollar to the ground. ‘Go on, you pigheaded old man,’ she said. ‘If you make the mistress mad, you’ll get more than you bargained for.’
    ‘I’m her father!’ he insisted. ‘She murdered her father-in-law. Is her own father going to be next?’
    ‘Go on,’ the woman Liu urged him, ‘get going. If you don’t, I’ll have to set the dogs on you!’
    She gave a signal to the dogs, and they crowded up closer. The green dog nipped the leg of the donkey, which brayed, jerked the reins free, and galloped away. Great-Granddad bent over, picked up the silver dollar, and stumbled after thedonkey, with the barking dogs on his heels all the way to the edge of the village.
    The third time Great-Granddad came to see Grandma, he demanded one of the big black mules, insisted that her father-in-law had promised him one before he was murdered, and that his death did not invalidate the promise. He threatened to take his complaint to the county government if Grandma reneged on the promise.
    ‘You’re nothing to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you. And if you keep harassing me, I’ll report you to the authorities.’
    Great-Granddad found someone to write out a complaint for him, then rode his donkey into town to see Magistrate Cao and bring formal charges against Grandma.
    Following the shock of having his hat shot full of holes by Spotted Neck, Magistrate Cao had returned home and promptly fallen ill. So, when he read the complaint, which was linked to the homicides at Northeast Gaomi Township, sweat dripped from his armpits.
    ‘Old man,’ he said, ‘you’ve charged your daughter with having an illicit affair with a bandit. Where’s your proof?’
    ‘Your honour, County Magistrate,’ Great-Granddad replied, ‘the bandit in question is sharing my daughter’s kang at this very minute. He’s none other than Spotted Neck, the man who shot your hat full of holes.’
    ‘Old man, you know, don’t you, that if what you’re saying is true your daughter’s life is in danger.’
    ‘Magistrate, honour compels me to forsake family loyalty . . . but for . . . my daughter’s property . . .’
    ‘Why, you money-grubbing old son of a bitch!’ the magistrate bellowed. ‘You’d sacrifice your own daughter to get your hands on that little property she has! No wonder she disowned you. You’re no ‘father’ in my book. Give him fifty lashes with a shoe sole and send him on his way!’
    Poor Great-Granddad – not only was his complaint rejected, but the fifty lashes left his buttocks in such sad shape he couldn’t even sit on his donkey, and had to lead it behind him as he staggered home. Shortly after leaving town, he heard hoofbeats behind him, and when he turned to look, herecognised the county magistrate’s black colt. Fearing for his life, he fell to his knees.
    The rider was Magistrate Cao’s right-hand man, Master Yan. ‘Old man,’ he hailed him, ‘get up, get up. The magistrate said that, since he’s your daughter’s foster-dad, there’s a certain kinship between the two of you. The whipping was intended as