Liu Mancang's drunken stupor had mostly worn off.
He had no idea how he had ended up in this wheat field. Moments ago, he had been in his own rammed-earth house, downing cheap spirits with a dish of salted radish. By the third bowl, he had started to blur. Then nothing. Now he was kneeling in a furrow, one knee grinding against a stone, pain shooting through him and making him grimace. His mouth was full of the taste of blood-he wasn't sure if he had bitten his own tongue. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and tasted a coppery sweetness.
Moonlight spilled over the wheat ears. It was June, the wheat already deep gold, ready for the sickle in a few days. When the wind blew, waves of wheat rolled toward the distance. Liu Mancang propped himself up on his hands; a chill was creeping from his palms up his arms. He shivered.
Three paces to his left, Zhao Yunfei lay on his back in the furrow. The corner of his mouth was split, seeping beads of blood. One lens of his glasses was shattered, the moonlight catching it at an angle and throwing a thin thread of light.
Directly in front of Liu Mancang sat Chen Xiulan.
Blood trickled from her temple. It ran along her eyebrow into her left eye, overflowed at the corner, traced the bridge of her nose, and reached the corner of her mouth. She did not wipe it away. With those blood-streaked eyes, she fixed her gaze on Liu Mancang's face.
Then she spoke.
"Remember. Say you raped me."
The wind stopped. It was as if the entire wheat field had been seized by the throat.
Liu Mancang opened his mouth. He wanted to speak-but he couldn't. He stared at the gash on her temple, beads of blood rolling down one by one.
"Do you understand?" Chen Xiulan's voice did not sound like that of a woman with a gaping wound on her forehead. It was too steady. So steady it sent a chill down the spine.
"You're crazy." Liu Mancang forced out these three words from his throat.
"Yes, I'm crazy." Chen Xiulan pushed herself up from the ground. Her knees were trembling, but she held. She reached down, grabbed the left waistband of her dress, and yanked. A tearing sound-the rip ran from her waist all the way down to her thigh.
Zhao Yunfei struggled to sit up, his lips trembling. "Xiulan-"
"Shut up." Chen Xiulan did not look at him. She was aiming at something.
"Run now. Go back the long way around the north bank of the pond. Don't let your feet touch the wheat field soil-the pond bank is yellow clay. When you get home, wash these clothes. Scrape the black dirt off your shoes."
"I'm not leaving. If I go, you-"
"If you don't go, all three of us are finished." Chen Xiulan turned her head to look at him. Her voice cracked open. "Your father is the Party secretary. You're the record keeper. I'm the teacher. Liu Mancang is a bachelor. Think about it-whose word counts?"
Zhao Yunfei froze. The wind blew, and the bloodied scrape on his face stung, making him flinch.
"Run."
Zhao Yunfei watched her turn and walk away. Then he ran. His footsteps headed north, crunching over wheat stubble-one step deep, one step shallow-until the sound of the wheat waves swallowed them.
Only two people remained in the wheat field. One kneeling, one standing.
Chen Xiulan bent down and found a stone in the dirt. It was not easy searching among the dense, hard stubble; her hand groped several times before coming across a greenish rock the size of her palm. She gripped it and struck the strap of her left sandal. Crack-the plastic strap snapped, the break jagged and uneven. She pulled the broken sandal off her foot, then removed the right sandal as well. She stacked the two together, walked to the edge of the pond, and threw them in.
Two ripples spread across the water's surface. One large, one small. The large one expanded from the center; the small one was swallowed by the large one, merging into a single body. Then the water gradually calmed, as if nothing had ever fallen in.
Liu Mancang knelt in the furrow, watching all of this, his gaze vacant, like a man resigned to being pushed around.
"Mancang."
She walked back, crouched in front of him, face to face. The moonlight came from behind her, her features in shadow, like water sunk in darkness. She reached up and smeared the blood across her face-from the corner of her eye all the way down to her chin. It looked more terrifying than the wound itself. But she was so close now that he could smell the soap in her hair-jasmine-scented, the cheapest kind sold at the commune supply cooperative.
"What happened tonight. If you can't hold it together-" She stopped there. She didn't say "if you can't hold it together, then what." She swallowed the rest of the sentence and finished it with her eyes.
Chen Xiulan stood up and walked toward the village. Very slowly. Every step as if treading on blades. Her left foot was bare, her right foot also bare. The wheat stubble scraped the soles of her feet, each step a fresh pain. But she did not stop. When she reached the bend by the pond bank, she paused, bent down, scooped up two handfuls of yellow clay, and smeared it over her calves, her feet, and the hem of her dress. She rubbed it evenly. Only then did she continue forward.
The wheat field grew quiet. In the distance, a frog at the pond's edge tested a croak, then stopped, as if waiting for something to pass.
Liu Mancang knelt alone in the furrow for a long time. The moonlight turned him into a dark lump in the middle of the wheat field, like a rock turned up from beneath the earth.
When Chen Xiulan reached the village entrance, she spotted the figure fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan on the stone roller. That was Wang Cuiying, the most well-informed woman in the village, who sat here every evening to enjoy the cool air. Nothing big or small ever escaped her notice. Chen Xiulan clenched her fist until her knuckles went white-then she began to run.
The sound of bare feet slapping against the muddy ground was urgent and sharp, like the crack of a leather belt.
When Wang Cuiying heard the footsteps and looked up, the fan in her hand fell to the ground with a smack. She watched Chen Xiulan stumble toward her-her dress torn in a long gash, half her face covered in blood, one foot bare, yellow clay smeared up one leg. Chen Xiulan stopped two paces away, her body swaying slightly, as if she had finally reached the finish line she had set for herself.
"Auntie..."
Chen Xiulan's lips quivered violently, her voice splintering into fragments. Tears and blood mingled, dripping along her chin into the hollow of her collarbone. On the way here, she had rehearsed every word she needed to say-but when the moment came, the tears still arrived before the script.
"Liu Mancang-he-in the wheat field-he-"
She didn't need to finish. In this village, a woman running home disheveled from the wheat field in the middle of the night, dress torn, face covered in blood-she didn't need to say anything. Everyone would fill in the blanks. The facts didn't matter. The image was all that mattered.
Wang Cuiying's scream cut through the night sky like a knife.
Windows lit up, one after another. Dogs began to bark, spreading from the east end to the west end. Someone ran out of their courtyard carrying a kerosene lantern, the flame swaying with the motion. Someone shouted over the wall-a voice tinged with both anxiety and excitement.
In less time than it takes to smoke a pipe, four militiamen had dragged Liu Mancang out of his rammed-earth house.
Flashlight beams shone on him. He was shirtless, his ribs standing out one by one like corn stalks drying at the edge of a field-skin stretched over bone. Both arms were twisted behind his back, hemp rope biting into his flesh. He grunted through gritted teeth.
"Move!"
Militia Company Commander Wang Laosan slapped him on the back of the head, shoving him forward. Liu Mancang's bare feet dragged along the ground; the threshold scraped a patch of skin off his big toe, leaving a faint trail of blood.
By the time Zhao Youcai arrived, buttoning his Mao suit, the village compound yard was packed with people in the darkness. Liu Mancang was suspended from the old locust tree, the rope looped over the thickest branch, hoisting him until only his toes brushed the ground. His face had turned the color of pig's liver; beads of sweat fell from his chin. Someone spat at him. Someone held up a lantern for a closer look. A few old men squatted at a distance, smoking their pipes, saying nothing.
"Everyone, disperse."
Zhao Youcai's voice split the crowd like a blade. He was thin and dark, short, with prominent cheekbones and eyes like two black beans sunk into their sockets. Seventeen years as village Party secretary had taught few people to defy his will.
He looked up at Liu Mancang hanging from the locust tree, but his mind was elsewhere.
"Mancang. Do you confess?"
Liu Mancang's face was purple from the rope. His lips were coated in a layer of dry skin. A thousand words crowded his throat-he wanted to say it wasn't him, wanted to say they had the wrong man, wanted to say go ask Zhao Youcai where his son was tonight. But he couldn't. Because he had promised Chen Xiulan. Not in words-in silence. And once silence begins, it doesn't let you decide what to say and what not to say.
"Uncle Youcai... I'm innocent."
"She came to me," he added. "She seduced me."
A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. Even Zhao Youcai's mouth twitched.
Liu Mancang. Forty-two years old. Father dead, mother remarried. Living alone in a rammed-earth shack, not even a heated kang. He smelled like three days' sweat mixed with stove ash. His hair was matted, his fingernails permanently rimmed with black dirt. Women took detours past his house. Children ran when they saw him. The idea that Chen Xiulan had seduced him was a joke so cruel it didn't even need refuting-like a butterfly propositioning a rotting log.
Zhao Youcai ignored the defense and turned toward the steps. He didn't want to interrogate the man in front of everyone. As he passed through the crowd, his peripheral vision swept the gathering. He still didn't see Zhao Yunfei. That absence made his heart beat faster than any testimony.
Wang Cuiying was draping a jacket over Chen Xiulan's shoulders. Chen Xiulan sat on the stone steps, curled into herself, the blood on her face already forming a thin dark red scab. She kept her head down, fingers twisting the torn edge of her dress. As Zhao Youcai walked past, he glanced down at her feet. Both bare. The skin of her instep so coated in yellow clay that its original color was invisible.
But her calves-his gaze lingered there. When she had run in, the yellow clay was smeared evenly and thick, even reaching the hollow behind her knees. Mud splashed up while fleeing wouldn't be this uniform. This was from rubbing.
"Xiulan, tell me what happened."
Chen Xiulan didn't look up. Her voice squeezed out of her throat: "I went to check the wheat... He grabbed me from behind. I screamed. No one heard. Later I grabbed a rock and hit him, broke free."
Zhao Youcai took in every word, but his mind was working on something else-a temple wound from an iron plowshare on the side, not the front. He filed it away.
"Going to the wheat field at night?" someone muttered.
Chen Xiulan snapped her head up. "What of it? Can't I go check my own family's field? My husband is away in the county town and doesn't come back. I carry more than a dozen acres alone. If I don't go check, who will?"
No one spoke. Every word she said was true. The identity of a neglected wife became her strongest shield. When they sympathized with her, they wouldn't think too hard about what didn't add up.
Zhao Youcai patted the dirt off his knees. "Lock him in the storeroom. Send him to the station tomorrow."
"Don't send him yet." Chen Xiulan stood up. The jacket slid off her shoulder, moonlight falling on her exposed shoulder blade. "I'll go to the commune health center tomorrow for an examination. Get the evidence first."
Zhao Youcai looked at her. He saw something: when she said "get the evidence," the muscle at the corner of her mouth tightened. Not fear. Effort. In seventeen years, he had seen all kinds of liars: after lying, they unconsciously relaxed. But Chen Xiulan grew tauter. That was the sign of a decision, not a lie.
"All right," he said. "With solid evidence, no one can run."
He said it for everyone. He also said it for himself.
Liu Mancang was untied and dragged toward the storeroom. As the rope loosened, he collapsed. Wang Laosan and another man took an arm each. Liu Mancang lifted his head and looked into the crowd. Not at Chen Xiulan. At Zhao Youcai. In that look was something only Zhao Youcai could understand-not "I owe you," but "You owe me."
Zhao Youcai looked away.
That night, few people slept.
Chen Xiulan kept a kerosene lamp burning all night. She sat on a stool in the main room, staring at the wedding photo on the wall until dawn. In the photo, Zhang Jianguo was smiling, his eyes squinted into slits, with red cloth flowers in her hair. Six years ago. The third year of marriage he left for the county machinery factory. From then on, their conversations shrank to the money he sent and the date of his next return.
The clock ticked. Every second stamped hard on the silence.
In the deep hours, she stood up, walked to the chest of drawers, and pulled open the bottom drawer. She took out the account book for the literacy program funds. Last year, ninety yuan was missing. If Zhao Youcai wanted to make something of it, it would be enough to drive her out of the school. She flipped to the last page. The remarks column was blank-an open mouth, a pit waiting for something to fall into it. She stared for a long time. Then she closed the book.
She locked the drawer and placed the key under the alarm clock.
A draft slipped through the door crack, making the lamp flame waver. She looked at the window. In the moonlight outside, a dark figure moved along the base of the wall. The shadow flickered and disappeared. She went to the window. The clothesline swayed. Her printed blouse swung silently like a person suspended in midair. The gate was latched. But she saw fresh footprints on the ground-large, heading east.
Someone was out there. Watching her. At her most vulnerable moment, when she had just gambled everything.