Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [247]
Six Fingers’ mood lightened at Mak Dau’s blunt words.
As they walked along, a brisk wind whipped up. It was a regular market day and the road was thronged with people laden with baskets of produce hung from shoulder poles. Mak Dau and Six Fingers watched in amusement as a peddler’s broad-brimmed hat blew off. He sprinted after it, but it bowled along faster just out of reach. Finally the peddler gave up the chase and sat down covered in sweat by the roadside, swearing rudely.
They were still laughing at the sight when another sound caught their ears. It was a loud humming like a giant metal fan overhead. Mak Dau looked up and saw a group of black dots on the horizon. The dots got bigger and grew wings like birds. “Planes! It’s the Japs!” someone shouted. The market-goers dropped their baskets and ran frantically for cover.
It was not the first time Japanese planes had flown overhead. Years ago, they had bombed Wai Yeung Village and several members of Ah-Hsien’s family were killed. That was on a market day, too. Six Fingers had never been caught in a bombing raid herself. She stood frozen in shock.
It was still early in spring and in the fields on either side of the road the crops had only just begun to put up tender shoots. There was no cover anywhere. When they looked up again, the birds were so near they could make out the red blob of the Jap flag painted on their tails. Mak Dau hastily put Wai Kwok down under a tall tree by the roadside. “Don’t move!” he shouted. Then he ran to Six Fingers, flung her face down on the ground and lay beside her.
Six Fingers lay in a pile of fresh dog shit. The stink was so bad she could hardly draw breath but she was past caring. She shut her eyes very tightly and repeated over and over: “Buddha have mercy, Buddha have mercy.” She counted four dull booms which seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, and the ground beneath them trembled violently. Separate sounds merged into a terrifying, continuous roar. Objects fell from the sky and hit her on the back with metallic pings—clods of earth perhaps. Her body felt increasingly heavy, as if she was being crushed under layer after layer of cotton-stuffed quilts. Everything went black. I have been buried alive, she thought.
Later, after all the noises died away, the earth stopped trembling and silence fell. Six Fingers was suffocating; her lungs felt as though they were about to burst and her eyes were popping from their sockets. She tried to call “Mak Dau!” but no sound came out. She heard a scratching. The thought came to her that a snake was trying to bore its way through the mud. But it was all too late. She knew she was going to die here.
Suddenly, light appeared and she saw a mud-covered lump with two shiny white eyes, and a pair of hands soaked red.
“Mak Dau, are you hurt…?” she croaked.
The mud-covered mouth cracked open, showing pink gums: “It’s nothing. I scratched my hands digging you out.”
The same thought occurred to both of them at that moment: Wai Kwok!
But where was the tree?
It still stood, but was only half as tall as before. Its top and all the branches had gone, leaving a stump a few feet high. The stump still looked like a tree on one side, but on the other, it was charred coal-black. Flames leapt from it.
Six Fingers and Mak Dau began to search frantically for Wai Kwok. They circled the tree but he was nowhere to be found. They made another circuit, but still could not find him. At the third attempt, Six Fingers found a shoe poking out from under a pile of debris.
It was of black twill, with a white sole made of layered cotton. The upper was embroidered with a tiger’s head. Six Fingers recognized her own handiwork. She had made the shoes when Wai Kwok started school.
Six Fingers gave a slight tug and freed the shoe. Encased in it were a foot and half of the leg, severed at the knee. A bloody crimson froth oozed from the break, and a bone the thickness of a thumb could be seen poking out of the middle.
Six Fingers dropped to the ground in a dead faint.
Kam Sau