A month later, Liu Mancang was released.
The storeroom door was unlocked. The iron lock had rusted from a month of humidity; the key had to be turned several times before it gave. The door opened, and the light shone on Liu Mancang's face. He was thinner-his cheekbones standing out like rocks, his eyes sunken deep into their sockets. A beard had grown wild, covering most of his face. He sat in the corner, squinting at the sudden brightness, the same way he had squinted when he was dragged through the door a month ago.
"Come out, you're free." Wang Laosan stood outside, jerking his chin. "Zhao Yunfei left a suicide note saying it had nothing to do with you. The case is dropped."
Liu Mancang didn't move. He sat against the wall, staring at the light outside the door. The light was so bright it hurt his eyes. The sunlight of July was like a sharpened blade, cutting a clear line across the storeroom floor. He was on the dark side of the line; outside was the light side. But he couldn't step across.
"Mancang?" Wang Laosan called him again, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice.
Liu Mancang crawled out of the storeroom. His legs had gone soft from sitting; he could barely stand. He supported himself against the doorframe. The house outside was still the same-the courtyard still the same compound. But he felt different from the last time he had stood here. The world looked brighter, the red flag on the compound building redder, the green grass at the edge of the threshing ground greener. Everything was clearer, like newly polished glass. He wondered if Zhao Yunfei had seen the world this way when he lay down in the wheat field-bright, clear, peaceful.
He didn't go home. He walked to the edge of the wheat field.
The wheat field had been harvested. The ground was bare, yellow stubble clumped together, autumn seedlings already sprouting. The furrows had been plowed open, turning up fresh dirt. He stood in the threshing ground, looking at the place where he had knelt that night.
He remembered Chen Xiulan's bloodied face. Moonlight on her wound. The steady calm in her eyes.
He remembered Zhao Yunfei, the panic on his face. His footsteps running toward the pond bank.
He remembered himself, kneeling in the furrow, looking up at the two people, thinking, I've been used. But it turns out, being used feels better than being useless.
When he raised his head again, Chen Xiulan was standing not far away, holding a textbook. Dressed as she always was-a clean blouse, hair tied back simply, standing at the edge of the field like a stalk of wheat that had survived the harvest wind.
"You're out," she said.
"Yes."
Silence. The wind passed through the field. A few lingering birds on the harvested ground hopped a few steps, taking flight at no definite destination.
"Thank you," he said suddenly. The two words came out of his mouth without his permission, and he was shocked at himself-thanking the woman who had used him, who had set him up to take a fall for someone else. But once the words were out, he felt lighter within. As if a weight had finally been lifted and set down.
Chen Xiulan didn't answer.
She opened the textbook. It was the language reader. The book was old, the spine mended with brown paper and paste. She flipped to a page and began reading aloud. The words in the text were simple, no different from what she taught to the first graders every day: "In spring, the earth awakens. Swallows fly back from the south. The river thaws. Everything is full of life."
She read it as if reciting a spell. Her voice was soft, thin, carrying across the air of the harvested field. Each word landed clearly on the soil.
Liu Mancang listened. He didn't understand. But he listened anyway, sensing that she wasn't just reading for him. She was reading for the wheat field.
When Chen Xiulan finished, she closed the book. She watched the setting sun spread across the horizon, dyeing the harvested wheat field gold. The color was almost exactly the same as the sunset on the evening of the day she and Zhao Yunfei had sat on the hill behind the school. But by now, everything had changed.
A month later, the school started its fall semester.
Twenty-two children enrolled, seven more than the year before. This meant new desks, new chairs, new blackboards. The production team approved the funding but had no extra manpower, so she did it all herself.
She painted the walls, replaced the windows, repaired the classroom. She went to the county to buy books, carrying them back through forty miles of mountain road. She planted flowers in front of the classroom, morning glories climbing a bamboo trellis, reaching toward the center of the schoolyard. When the wind blew, the green leaves rustled, like countless little hands waving.
Zhao Youcai resigned from his post as village Party secretary.
The commune approved it. He left the compound and returned to farming at home. It was said that every day from dawn until nightfall, he could be found working in the fields, saying nothing. At dusk, he would squat at the entrance of the village, smoking his pipe, watching the school down the road. The setting sun fell on his face, carving deep wrinkles, like furrows on land that had weathered the cold season.
Wang Cuiying would, as always, fan herself with a palm-leaf fan on the stone roller. She watched more, said less. Occasionally, she would walk around to Chen Xiulan's yard, bringing a bowl of dragon's-eye or a handful of peanuts, placing them on the stone table in the yard, and leaving.
Liu Mancang left the village.
No one knew where he went. He locked his rammed-earth house, took a cloth bag, and walked out of the village entrance. No one saw him off, and no one saw him go. A few days later, someone passing by found that his door lock had been pried open and there were suspicious burn marks on the floor inside. Zhao Youcai went to look. On the floor where Liu Mancang had burned something, there was a half-burnt corner of a notebook page, the writing on it already blurred by the fire. Only a few scattered characters could still be made out: "...field..." "teacher..." "don't go."
Zhao Youcai picked up the remnant and looked at it for a long time. Then he burned it.
In the first month of the new semester, Chen Xiulan received a letter.
The envelope had no return address. The postmark was from a city far away. She opened it under the kerosene lamp, finding only one sentence inside:
"The wheat field is still there. So is the testimony."
No signature.
She read it once, then again. The kerosene lamp flickered, drawing the uneven shadow of the letter paper. She pressed the letter against her chest, looking at herself in the lamplight. A thin face, a scar at the temple, eyes as deep as a well.
She folded the letter, tucked it into the account book drawer, the same drawer where she had stored the ninety-yuan account book. She locked it and placed the key under the alarm clock, just as she had done on that night long ago.
The next morning, she woke early as always. She washed up, tied her hair, adjusted her clothes, went into the kitchen, and made herself a bowl of cornmeal porridge. She took a bite of steamed bun and a mouthful of pickled vegetables, the way she had eaten every day for five years.
After breakfast, she walked out of the yard and headed toward the school.
The morning light on the road was thick with dew. The wheat sprouting in the fields on both sides was tender green, just emerging from the earth, thin and slender. Like newborns, like testimony growing from the soil.