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By Root 4038 0

he swept the floor, shelled walnuts, and searched for kindling along mountain trails. But he couldn’t participate in the harvest, and he couldn’t cook for himself. He was deaf and dumb. Whenever he wanted to communicate, he contorted his face with such passion that it seemed as if the power of speech had fled precisely at that moment and he was just beginning to grapple with its loss. But in fact he had never spoken. The villagers ignored his contorted face, and they didn’t address him by any of the usual terms for an adult: “uncle,” or “big brother,” or “little brother.” To them, he was simply Shazi, the Idiot, and although he was well cared for, he was never treated like a full-fledged person. Wei Jia was the only villager who took an interest—he was too young to understand that his uncle was disabled. Sometimes the child played with the Idiot, and the man’s face lit up with joy. Mimi and I often talked with him, engaging him with eye contact, but the villagers were quick to tell us it was pointless. “He doesn’t understand anything you say,” Wei Ziqi always told me.

On the first day of school I was surprised to see the Idiot accompanying us, and I asked Wei Ziqi if anything was wrong. “It’s nothing,” he said. “We just have a little problem to take care of at the government office.”

We drove out of the village, and Wei Jia leaned forward with both hands on the dashboard. The boy was obsessed with automobiles—he seldom saw cars, and the experience of riding in one was a rare treat. It was anything but passive: at every turn, I felt Wei Jia edging toward the windshield, trying to see what was around the bend. He lurched forward on hills; he leaned back at stops. He should have been in the backseat—I knew it was wrong to keep a child on my lap like that. But nobody in rural China uses child seats, and it would have broken Wei Jia’s heart to be relegated to the back. And so I held him tightly, and Mimi drove carefully, and the six of us descended into the valley of the Huaisha River.

The walnut harvest had begun, and the roads were busy with farmers on their way to the fields. We passed dozens of men who carried thin sticks, ten feet long and perfectly straight. Some of them rode bicycles to their orchards, poles balanced across the handlebars like knights at the joust. They used the sticks to knock walnuts off the trees, and the road was full of discarded husks. They crunched beneath our tires—another drive-through harvest.

In the valley we began to see packs of children on foot, dressed in new clothes and making their way down the road. “See, they have backpacks, too,” Cao Chunmei said to Wei Jia. “They’re going to school just like you.”

We passed a farmer carrying insecticide in a plastic box on his back. “He’s going to school with his backpack, too,” I said.

“That’s not a backpack,” Wei Jia said quickly. It was the first time he’d spoken since we left the village; his arms were stiff against the dash. For an instant we caught a whiff of insecticide, the heavy sweet smell filling the car, and then it was gone.

AS WE APPROACHED BOHAI Township, Wei Ziqi asked Mimi to stop at the government office. She was pulling into the driveway when he finally explained why the Idiot had come along.

“The government is supposed to pay a monthly fee to help us take care of him,” Wei Ziqi said. “That’s the law. I’ve asked the Party Secretary in Sancha about it, but she hasn’t helped. So the only thing to do is to come here ourselves. I’ll ask them to pay the fee now, and if they don’t, then I’ll leave the Idiot until they’re willing to pay it. It’s their responsibility.”

“You’re going to leave him at the government office?” Mimi asked.

“Yes,” Wei Ziqi said. “It’s the only way to get their attention.”

Mimi asked how much the monthly fee should be.

“Fifty yuan at the very least,” Wei Ziqi said. It was the equivalent of about six dollars.

Before we could respond, Wei Ziqi had already helped his brother out of the car. He led him through the front courtyard, which was decorated by a massive sculpture. It consisted of a shiny steel