The Garlic Ballads

Zhileng asked, glaring defiandy. “You want me to keep my mouth shut, is that it? Well, you may be afraid of him, but I’m not! My uncle is deputy director of the Municipal Committee Organization Department, and that makes our Wang Jiaxiu look like a cunt hair!”
    “Okay, do what you want,” Gao Jinjiao said. “As long as it includes cremating the body and paying the village committee an administrative fee of ten yuan from the sale of the cow.”
    “If you Fang boys weren’t such worthless garbage you’d carry your father over to the township compound and force Wang Jiaxiu’s hand,” Gao Zhileng said.
    The older one stood there shilly-shallying, but his brother’s eyes blazed. “Let’s go, Brother!” he said resolutely. “Jinju, watch the house. Mother, you come with us.”

    Well, the boys lifted their father’s body off the wagon and lay it facedown on the ground like a dead dog. “Hold on, Number Two,” I said. “Dress your father up first. He’s got a new lined jacket in the house. He needs to look good if he’s going to see an official.” “To hell with looking good!” Number Two said. “He’s dead.” He took down a door and laid his father on it, still facedown. “Turn him face-up, Number Two,” I said. So he rolled my husband over, to let him stare blindly at the sky. Good old Gao Zhileng went home to fetch a couple of ropes to tie the body down. Then the boys carried their father off to the township compound, the older one limping along up front, the younger one behind, and me bringing up the rear. Villagers crowded around me, and even that bastard Gao Ma showed up. But no matter what anyone says about him, he still would have been our son-in-law. Well, he walked up and grabbed the pole out of my oldest son’s hands. Since Gao Ma and my second son are the same height, the door leveled out and the old man’s head stopped lolling from side to side.
    But when we reached the compound, the gatekeeper tried to stop us from entering, so Gao Ma shouldered him aside. The place was deserted except for a big barking dog that was squatting by the kitchen door. The car that killed my husband was parked there. The top was almost covered by a wagonload of green garlic, and the hood was all bloody.
    The three of us waited in the compound with my husband’s body. We waited and we waited, all the way to high noon, but nobody came up to ask what we wanted. Flies were crawling all over my husband’s face, trying to find their way into his eye sockets and mouth and nostrils and ears to put their gunk inside. What’s gunk? You know, maggots. It didn’t take them long to start squirming all over the place. They were everywhere. When one swarm of flies left, another took its place. Then it flew off. I tried to cover the old man’s face with a sheet of newspaper, but the flies kept finding their way under it. Villagers from all over came to gawk—East Village, West Hamlet, Northville, and Southburg— everyone but the officials who should have been there.
    My younger son went to the local café and bought a bunch of oil fritters, brought them back wrapped in newspaper, and tried to get me to eat. But I just couldn’t, not with my husband lying dead in front of me. He’d been there all morning and was starting to smell. My oldest son couldn’t eat, either. In fact, his brother was the only one who could. He scraped a handful of garlic off the car, then stood there with garlic in one hand and fritters in the other, taking a bite out of the left hand, then the right, back and forth, over and over. His eyes were wide and his cheeks puffed way out, and I could tell that deep down he felt bad.
    Finally our waiting paid off. An official turned up, though by then the sun was good and red. It was Deputy Yang, a distant relative until he disowned us for letting our daughter go off with Gao Ma. But at least he’s no stranger. In fact my older son calls him Eighth Uncle, and my younger one does chores for him, like helping him build his house, put up walls, deliver manure, stuff like that. He’s almost one of his hired hands.
    Well, he rode his bicycle through the gate. At last, I thought. After waiting for the stars and the moon, our savior from heaven had arrived! My sons ran up to greet him, with me right on their heels. But what was I supposed to call him? “Eighth Uncle” seemed the safest, I figured. “Eighth Uncle, we need your help. Here, I’ll get down on my knees and beg. As the saying