Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

enveloped us. My lips were turning numb. “Father, can I go out and run around? I'm freezing.”
    Father's reply was, “Grate your teeth. The armed work detachment shoots their prisoners when the morning sun is still red.”
    “Who are they shooting this morning, Father?”
    “I don't know,” Father said. “But we'll find out soon enough. I hope they shoot some young ones.”
    “Why?”
    “Young people have young bodies. Better results.”
    There was more I wanted to ask, but Father was already losing his patience. “No more questions. Everything we say down here can be heard up there.”
    While we were talking, the sky turned fish-belly white. The village dogs had formed a pack and were barking loudly, but they couldn't drown out the wailing sounds of women. Father emerged from our hiding spot and stood for a moment in the riverbed, cocking his ear in the direction of the village. Now I was really getting nervous. The scavenger dogs prowling the space under the bridge were glaring at me as if they wanted to tear me limb from limb. I don't know what kept me from getting out of there as fast as I could. Father returned at a crouch. I saw his lips quiver in the dim light of dawn but couldn't tell if he was cold or scared. “Did you hear anything?” I asked.
    “Keep quiet,” Father whispered. “They'll be here soon. I could hear them tying up the condemned.”
    I moved up close to Father and sat down on a clump of weeds. By listening carefully, I could hear a gong in the village, mixed in with a man's raspy voice: “Villagers — go to the southern bridgehead to watch the execution — shoot the tyrannical landlord Ma Kuisan — his wife — puppet village head Luan Fengshan — orders of armed work detachment Chief Zhang — those who don't go will be punished as collaborators.”
    I heard Father grumble softly, “Why are they doing this to Ma Kuisan? Why shoot him? He's the last person they should shoot.”
    I wanted to ask Father why they shouldn't shoot Ma Kuisan, but before I could open my mouth, I heard the crack of a rifle, and a bullet went whizzing far off, way up into the sky somewhere. Then came the sound of horse hoofs heading our way, all the way up to the bridgehead; when they hit the flooring, they clattered like a passing whirlwind. Father and I shrank back and looked at the slivers of sunlight filtering down through cracks between the stones; we were both frightened and not quite sure just what was happening. After about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, we heard people coming toward us, shouting and clamoring. They stopped. I heard a man whose voice sounded like a duck's quack: “Let him go, damn it. We'll never catch him.”
    Whoever it was fired a couple of shots in the direction of the hoofbeats. The sound echoed off the walls where we were hiding; my ears rang, and there was a strong smell of gunpowder.
    Again the quack: “What the fuck are you shooting at? By now, he's in the next county.”
    “I never thought he'd do anything like that,” someone else said. “Chief Zhang, he must be a farmhand.”
    “He's a paid running dog of the landlord class, if you ask me,” the duck quacked.
    Someone walked to the railing and started pissing over the side of the bridge. The smell was rank and overpowering.
    “Come on, let's head back,” the duck quacked. “We've got an execution to attend to.”
    Father whispered to me that the man who sounded like a duck was the chief of the armed work detachment, given the added responsibility by the district government of rooting out traitors to the Party; he was referred to as Chief Zhang.
    The sky was starting to turn pink on the eastern horizon, where thin, low-hanging clouds slowly came into view; before long, they, too, were pink. Now it was light enough to make out some frozen dog turds on the ground of our hiding place, that and some shredded clothing, clumps of hair, and a chewed-up human skull. It was so repulsive I had to look away. The riverbed was as dry as a bone except for an ice-covered puddle here and there; clumps of dew-specked weeds stood on the sloped edges. The northern winds had died out; trees on the embankments stood stiff and still in the freezing air. I turned to look at Father; I could see his breath. Time seemed to stand still. Then Father said, “Here they come.”
    The arrival of the execution party at the bridgehead was announced by the frantic beating of a gong and muted footsteps. Then a booming voice