Red Sorghum

gift.

10
    THE TWENTY-THIRD day of the twelfth month in the year 1923; the Kitchen God is sent to heaven to make his report. A member of Spotted Neck’s gang had kidnapped my grandma that morning. The ransom demand was received in the afternoon: the distillery was to pay one thousand silver dollars for the hostage’s safe return. If they failed to do so, they could retrieve her body from the Temple of the Earth God at the eastern edge of Li Village.
    By rummaging through chests and cupboards, Granddadscraped together two thousand silver dollars, which he stuffed into a flour sack and told Uncle Arhat to deliver on one of the mules.
    ‘Didn’t they only ask for one thousand?’
    ‘Just do as I say.’
    Uncle Arhat left on the mule.
    Uncle Arhat returned with my grandma before nightfall, escorted by two mounted bandits with rifles slung over their backs.
    When they spotted Granddad they said, ‘Proprietor, our leader says you can sleep with the gate open from now on!’
    Granddad told Uncle Arhat to fetch a crock of the piss-enhanced wine for the bandits to take back with them. ‘See what your leader thinks of this wine,’ he said. Then he escorted the bandits to the edge of the village.
    When he returned home, he closed the gate, the front door, and the bedroom door behind him. He and Grandma lay on the kang in each other’s arms. ‘Spotted Neck didn’t take advantage of you, did he?’
    Grandma shook her head, but tears rolled down her cheeks.
    ‘What’s wrong? Did he rape you?’
    She buried her head in his chest. ‘He . . . he felt my breast. . . .’
    Granddad stood up angrily. ‘The baby, is he all right?’
    Grandma nodded.
    In the spring of 1924, Granddad rode his mule on a secret trip to Qingdao, where he bought two pistols and five thousand cartridges. One of the repeaters was German-made, called a ‘waist-drum’, the other a Spanish ‘goosehead’.
    After returning with the pistols, he locked himself up in his room for three days, breaking the weapons down and putting them back together over and over and over. With the coming of spring, the ice in the river melted, and fish that had spent a suffocating winter at the bottom swam sleepily to the surface to bask in the sun. Granddad took the pistols and a basketful of cartridges down to the river, where he spent the entire spring picking off fish. When there were no more large ones, he went after little ones. If he had an audience, he shot wildly, hittingnothing; but if he was alone, each round smashed a fish’s head. Summer arrived, and the sorghum grew.
    It poured rain on the seventh night of the seventh month, complete with thunder and lightning. Grandma handed Father, who was nearly four months old, to Passion and followed Granddad into the shop in the eastern compound, where they closed the doors and windows and had Uncle Arhat light the lamp. Grandma laid out seven copper coins on the counter in the shape of a plum blossom. Granddad swaggered back and forth beyond the counter, then spun around, drew his pistols, and began firing –
pow pow, pow pow, pow pow pow
– seven rapid shots. The coins flew up against the wall; three bullets fell to the floor, the other four were stuck in the wall.
    Grandma and Granddad walked up to the counter, where they held up the lantern and saw there wasn’t a mark on the surface.
    He had perfected his ‘seven-plum-blossom skill’.
    Granddad rode the black mule up to the wine shop on the eastern edge of the village. Cobwebs dotted the frame of the door, which he pushed open and walked inside. A strong smell of putrefaction made his head reel. Covering his nose with his sleeve, he looked around. The fat old man was sitting beneath the beam, a noose around his neck. His eyes were open; his black tongue was sticking out through parted lips.
    Granddad spat twice to clear out his mouth and led the mule to the edge of the village where he stood thoughtfully for a long time, while the mule pawed the ground and swished its hairless tail to drive away swarms of black flies as big as beans. Finally, he mounted the mule, which stretched out its neck and began heading home; but Granddad jerked back the icy metal bit in its mouth and smacked it on the rump, turning down the path by the sorghum field.
    The little wooden bridge over the Black Water River was still intact at the time, and whitecaps from the swollen river splashed up onto the bridge planks. The roar of the river frightened the mule, which balked