The Garlic Ballads

there smacking its lips stupidly without taking a sip.
    “Drink, drink,” she urged the animal. “Drink some water.”
    The cow stood there without moving, a heated stench rising from its hide. The parakeets were at it again, their squawks rising like shifting clouds. The half-moon, a bit higher in the sky now, flooded the yard with golden rays. The stars had lost some of their glitter.
    “Throw in some more bran husks,” Fourth Uncle said.
    Fourth Aunt did as she was told.
    “Come on, girl,” he said, patting the cow gently. “Drink up.”
    The cow lowered her head, snorted into the basin, then began lapping up the water.
    “What are you standing around for?” Fourth Uncle snapped at his sons. “Hitch up the wagon and load the garlic!”
    After fetching the wagon bed, they rolled out the wheels and axles and assembled the vehicle. There were too many thieves in the village to leave it outside the gate. All the garlic had been stacked in bundles by the southern wall, under sheets of plastic.
    “Sprinkle some water on it to keep it from drying out,” Fourth Uncle said. His eldest son did as he was told.
    “Why not take Number Two along?” his wife asked him.
    “No,” he said curtly.
    “Stubborn ass,” she groused. “At least get something decent to eat in town, since I don’t have anything to send with you.”
    “I thought there was still half a grainy flatcake,” Fourth Uncle said.
    “That’s all you’ve eaten for days.”
    “Get it for me.” He led the cow out the gate and hitched it to the wagon. Then he walked back into the yard, threw a tattered coat over his shoulders, stuffed the cold flatcake down the front of his shirt, picked up a switch, and headed out the gate.
    “The older you are, the more mule-headed you get,” she complained. “I don’t know what else to call someone who won’t let his own son help him sell his harvest.”
    “He’s afraid I’ll skim off all the profits,” Number Two said sarcastically.
    “Father’s just thinking about our well-being,” his elder brother rebuked him.
    “Who asked him to?” Number Two grumbled on his way inside to go back to bed.
    Fourth Aunt heaved a sigh as she stood in the yard listening to the creaking axles of the wagon slowly taper off in the murky darkness. Gao Zhileng’s parakeets set up a frenzy of squawks, and poor Fourth Aunt was a bundle of nerves as she faltered in the yard, which was now draped in dull yellow moonlight.

    The cell door swung open and the policemen removed Number Forty-six’s handcuffs. She took a couple of jerky steps before flopping onto her cot, where she lay as if dead.
    “Officers,” Fourth Aunt implored as they were closing the door, “please let me go home. My husband’s fifth-week memorial service is coming up.…”
    The clanging door was her only answer.

C HAPTER 10

    County Boss Zhong, put your hand over your heart and think:
As government protector, where is the kindness in your soul?
If you are a benighted official, go home and stay in bed;
If you are an upright steward, take charge and do some good…
.
—from a lament by Zhang Kou, sung standing on the steps of the government office after a glut in garlic had driven thousands of villagers to seek aid from the county administrator, who refused to get out of bed

1.

    Jinju had nearly made it to Gao Ma’s yard when, with an anguished yelp, she collapsed. The fetus raised his fists and thundered, “Let me out! God damn it, let me out of here!”
    “Gao Ma … come here … help me … come mind your son.
    She crawled across the yard, then stood up by holding on to the door jamb. Four bare walls, a rusted pot, puddles of black water, and some rats that jumped out from behind the pot were all she saw inside. It looked as if a bull had been turned loose, and a sense of impending doom gripped her. As the child in her belly struck out with fists and feet, she wailed, “Gao Ma … Gao Ma …”
    The baby punched her. “Stop shouting! Gao Ma’s a fugitive, a criminal! How did I wind up with parents like you?” He kicked her, sending shivers up her spine; again she yelped, and everything turned black. As she fell, she banged her head against the one table not smashed by her brothers.

    Father, worn out from the beating he had administered, sat on the doorstep smoking his pipe. Mother, equally tired, sat on the bellows to catch her breath and wipe her tear-filled eyes. Jinju lay curled atop a pile of grass and weeds, neither crying