Brothers (21 page)

Snot and tears flowed down the children's faces. Song Gang wiped some from his face and hurled it away, accidentally hitting the pants leg of one of the spectators, who immediately grabbed Song Gang by the collar and started swearing at him. Baldy Li wiped the mucus from his face and splashed the mans sandals. The man then grabbed Baldy Li by the hair and, with one boy in each hand, thrust both of them to the ground, demanding that they use their shirts to clean up the mess they had made. Still weeping, Baldy Li and Song Gang began to use their hands to wipe up the man's pants and sandals but ended up smearing him with even more tears and snot. The man, initially furious, became merely annoyed, and said, "Quit it! Damn. Just stop wiping."

But Baldy Li and Song Gang held on to the man's legs, as if they had finally found a savior and were clinging to him for dear life. As the man backed away the boys hung on, crawling forward on their knees. They begged him, "Save our father! Please, save our father!"

The man pushed them away and raised his foot to kick them off of him, but they still clung on. After dragging the children a dozen yards, he found them still clutching him, beseeching. The man, now out of breath, stood there wiping away his sweat. He complained to the crowd, "Look at this! My pants, my sandals, my socks. What the fuck is this?"

Mama Su from the snack shop walked over and stood in front of the gathered crowd. The wailing of the children had reddened her eyes. "They're just kids."

Furious, the man responded, "What do you mean
kids?
They're two little fucking demons."

"Then do a good deed," Mama Su responded, "and help these two little demons collect their father's body."

"What?" the man roared. "You want me to carry that filthy, stinking corpse?"

Wiping her eyes, Mama Su replied, "I didn't say you needed to carry the body yourself. I have a cart here that I can lend you."

Mama Su went back to her snack shop and returned with a cart. On behalf of the two children, she begged the bystanders to help lift Song Fanping onto the cart. The crowd started dispersing, and Mama Su, losing her temper, singled out a few of them for the task: "You, you, you, and you."

Mama Su pointed at Song Fanping lying on the ground. "No matter whether this was a good man or not, now that he's dead, we have to bury him. We can't just leave him lying here."

Finally four people walked out of the crowd and squatted down, grabbing hold of Song Fanping's arms and legs. Shouting "One, two, three," they hoisted him up. All four were red in the face from the exertion, remarking that the dead man was as heavy and cumbersome as an elephant. They placed Song Fanping next to the cart, and, with another "One, two, three," they heaved him onto it, as it creaked under the weight of his large frame. The men dusted off their hands. One of them raised his to his nose, sniffed, and told Mama Su, "We want to go wash our hands in your shop."

"Then go." She nodded. She turned to the man who was still being grasped by Baldy Li and Song Gang. "Do some good, and take their father home for them."

Looking down at Baldy Li and Song Gang, he grimaced. "Looks like I've got to haul the dead man away."

He yelled at Baldy Li and Song Gang, "Let the fuck go of me!"

Only then did Baldy Li and Song Gang finally loosen their grips. They got up from the ground and followed the man to the front of the cart. Hoisting the end of the cart, the man barked at them, "Quick! Where's home?"

Song Gang furiously shook his head. He pleaded, "Take him to the hospital."

"Fuck." The man threw down the cart. "He's already dead. What fucking hospital would we go to?"

Song Gang didn't believe him and turned to Mama Su. "Is my father dead?"

Mama Su nodded. "He's dead. Go home, child."

This time Song Gang no longer wailed but, rather, bowed his head and quietly wept. Baldy Li also bowed his head and wept as they heard Mama Su tell the man pulling the cart, "You will be rewarded in the next life."

The man took up the cart and walked on ahead, snarling, "Fucking reward, yeah. Eighteen generations of my descendants are now going to be cursed along with me, is more like it."

So that was the afternoon Baldy Li and Song Gang held each others hands and walked home, weeping, with a bloodied and battered Song Fanping lying on the cart behind them. The children wept until their hearts broke. They stumbled along, weeping and sobbing, until they choked up, but after a while their wails exploded again like grenades. Their wailing overpowered the revolutionary singing and slogan-shouting on the streets. Like the flies that had earlier swarmed around Song Fanping, the parading crowds and assorted idlers all came swarming up to them, crowding around the cart as it trudged forward. The man pulling the cart scolded Baldy Li and Song Gang, "Quit your crying! You've brought the whole damn town over. Now everyone is watching me pull this corpse."

A good number of people came over to ask who it was lying there dead on the cart. At least forty or fifty people approached the man pulling the cart, putting him in an even fouler mood. At first he responded that the dead man was named Song Fanping and was a teacher at the middle school. But as more and more spectators continued to inquire, he got tired of explaining and instead told them to use their eyes and figure it out for themselves: Whoever is crying nonstop must be the relatives of the deceased. After a while he felt that even saying this much was too exhausting, so when another person asked him, he simply said, "Don't know."

The man was drenched in sweat from pulling the cart under the fierce sun. Plus, he was pulling a cart with a dead man, and on top of that his lips were parched from answering so many questions. He was, therefore, seething when an acquaintance came up and asked him, "Hey, which of your relatives has died?"

The man pulling the cart exploded: "You're the one with the dead relative!"

The acquaintance was stunned. "What?"

He yelled again, "You're the one with the dead relative!"

Now the acquaintance's face turned black. Without a word he stripped off his shirt, revealing all his muscles, and raised his right hand to point at the man pulling the cart. "What the fuck did you say? Say it again and I'll have you lying on the cart, too."

He added, quite pleased with himself, "I'll turn this flatbed into a double bed."

The man pulling the cart threw it down and retorted, "Well, it'd be a double bed for your bedroom!"

He walked right up to the other man and screamed in his face, "You fucking listen well this time—I said every last person in your family is lying there dead!"

The other man threw a fist right into the cart pullers mouth. The cart puller staggered back a few steps, and just as he managed to steady himself, the other man followed with a kick that landed him onto the ground. He then leapt on top of the cart puller and started punching him in the face.

Baldy Li and Song Gang were still wailing as they trudged along, but when they turned around, they saw that the cart puller was crushed under another man and getting pummeled. Song Gang immediately pounced on the two men, followed by Baldy Li. The boys attacked like two wild dogs, biting the other mans legs and shoulders. The man started howling, kicking his legs and flailing his arms to throw off the two boys. When he got up, the boys pounced on him again. Song Gang had the man's elbow between his teeth, Baldy Li bit down on his waist, and together they ripped his clothes and tore his flesh. The man grabbed the boys by their hair and punched their faces, but they clung on like death itself and refused to let go. They landed wild bites all over his body, reducing this man, who was as big and strong as Song Fan-ping had been, to a squealing mess, like a pig at slaughter. The mêlée ended when the cart puller got up and went over to pull Baldy Li and Song Gang back, saying, "That's enough."

Only then did Baldy Li and Song Gang loosen their jaws. The other man, soaked in blood, was petrified by the boys’ attack, and he stood there, staring like an idiot, as they went on their way.

They continued their journey, the boys covered in wounds and the man's face drenched in blood. People kept approaching them, though the two boys didn't dare cry anymore and the cart puller no longer said a word. As they walked the two children kept turning back to take careful looks at the man pulling the cart. When they saw that blood was mingling with the sweat dripping down his face, Song Gang pulled his shirt off over his head and passed it to him, saying, "Uncle, please wipe your sweat."

The cart puller shook his head. "No need."

Song Gang walked alongside him for a bit, holding his shirt in his hands. Then he asked, "Uncle, are you thirsty?"

The cart puller continued in silence, with his head down. Song Gang asked, "Uncle, I have money. I'll go buy you a popsicle."

The cart puller shook his head again, saying, "No need. When I'm thirsty, I just swallow my saliva."

Wordlessly the three of them headed home. For some time now Baldy Li and Song Gang had held back their tears. Song Gang would continually turn back solicitously to ask after the cart puller, but every time he did so, he would see his dead father and start weeping again. Baldy Li too was infected by his tears, though neither child dared sob out loud for fear of being scolded by the cart puller. Therefore they muffled their cries by covering their mouths, and no sound came from the cart puller behind them either. When they were almost home, they heard him speak again, his voice suddenly kind: "Stop crying, you're making my eyes red."

A dozen or so people had followed them all the way to their front door. They all stood by, but when the cart puller looked at them and asked if they could help lift Song Fanping, they remained silent. The cart puller didn't speak to them again and let Baldy Li and Song Gang help him. He told the boys to hold down the handles of the cart so that it would not tilt up on one end. Then he reached under Song Fanping's armpits and dragged the body off the cart, into the house, and onto the bed in the inner room. The cart puller was half a head shorter than Song Fanping, and dragging him was like dragging an overgrown tree. The cart puller's head drooped from exhaustion, and he wheezed like an accordion. After he had dragged Song Fanping onto the bed, the man walked out and sat down on a bench for a very long time, head bent and breathing hard. Baldy Li and Song Gang stood to one side, not daring to say a word. After he caught his breath, the man looked about him and saw people still standing outside the door. He asked Baldy Li and Song Gang, "Who else do you have?"

The children replied that they still had a mother, who was about to return from Shanghai. The man nodded and said that he felt better knowing that. He waved the boys over right in front of him, patted them on the shoulders, and asked, "You've heard of Red Flag Alley?"

The children nodded and said that they had. He continued, "I live at
the front of the alley. My surnames Tao, and my full name is Tao Qing. If you need anything, come over to Red Flag Alley to look for me."

He stood up and walked to the door. The spectators outside immediately stepped aside, afraid of brushing against the man who had just embraced a dead man. Song Gang and Baldy Li followed him outside. When Tao lifted the cart, Song Gang said in imitation of Mama Su, "You will be rewarded in the next life."

The man nodded and left. Baldy Li and Song Gang saw him lift his hand to wipe his eyes.

That afternoon Baldy Li and Song Gang stayed at the dead Song Fanpings side. Song Fanpings flesh was shredded and streaked with dried blood, and the children were terrified by his appearance. His body was motionless, his gaping mouth was motionless, his eyes were wide open, and the pupils within were two dull little pebbles without a hint of light. Baldy Li and Song Gang had wept, wailed, and even bit, and now they started to tremble.

The brothers could see the heads and bodies of people hovering outside their window and hear the buzz of their conversation. Those people were discussing what kind of man Song Fanping was and how he had died. When someone mentioned how pitiful these two kids were, Song Gang let out a few sobs, followed by Baldy Li, and then both boys continued to gaze out fearfully. They also heard the buzz of the countless flies that had descended onto Song Fanpings corpse. The flies multiplied, swarming around the room like flurries of black snowflakes, to the point that their buzzing even drowned out the talk outside. Flies began to bite Baldy Li and Song Gang, as well as the people outside peering in—the children could hear the slapping of hands on limbs, faces, and chests. The spectators cursed as they left, having been driven away by the flies.

The light in the room began to glow red. The two children walked outside their house, and seeing that the sun was going down, they remembered that Song Fanping had promised he and Li Lan would be home by sunset. Baldy Li and Song Gang held each others hand and headed once again for the bus depot. When they passed the snack shop next to the station, they saw Mama Su seated inside. Song Gang explained to her, "We're here to wait for our mother. She's returning from Shanghai."

The two children walked to the part of the station where the buses pulled in. They stood on tiptoe and craned their necks in the direction
of the highway. At the far edge of the horizon, beyond the fields, a cloud of dust was rolling in. They could make out that it was a bus headed their way and could hear the blare of the bus s horn. Song Gang turned to Baldy Li and said, "Mamas back."

Song Gangs face was drenched in tears, while Baldy Li's had flowed down his neck. The bus moved toward them in a cloud of dust that enveloped and blinded them. Once the dust had dispersed, they saw passengers carrying bags and suitcases emerging from the depot. First a handful of people, then an entire line filed past the two boys, but Baldy Li and Song Gang did not see Li Lan. They waited until the last person emerged from the depot, but they still did not see their mother walk out the door.

Song Gang timidly approached the last passenger. "Is this the bus from Shanghai?"

The man nodded. He looked at the boys’ tear-streaked faces and asked, "Whose children are you? Why are you standing here?"