Yu Hua - Brothers

"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?"