Chapter 2802 Lodging

Swallowing his anger, Tan Shuangxi produced the receipt form. "If you could please press your fingerprint here."

The Fang girl stamped her print while sobbing, her voice trembling with tears. "When he passed—were you there with him?"

"Yes. We stayed by his side and did everything we could."

"Weren't you afraid of catching it?" the old man said coldly.

Tan Shuangxi softened his tone. "Sir, you haven't served in the Fubo Army. In the troops, men become brothers to one another. It has to be that way—it's how we survive on the battlefield and complete our missions. There, even strangers quickly become close friends." He spoke with conviction, thinking to himself that this much, at least, wasn't a lie. Hu Weide had been irritating, true, but once on the battlefield, everyone's bonds grew tighter than ever. It was only that an accident had cut things short not long after.

Hu Weide's wife said, "You're too kind. I know Ah Wei had an unpleasant temperament and never got along well with others..."

Indeed, his habit of showing off and talking big was merely the mildest of his faults. His real problem—the one that made him nearly impossible to get along with—was his stubborn self-righteousness. Hu Weide's death was half his own doing. It had started as a minor wound. He refused the medic's bandage and insisted on following the old country remedy of sprinkling dry soil to stop the bleeding. The result was tetanus. He suffered in the company for three or four days before they sent him to the rear hospital, where nothing more could be done.

Even the trained medical soldiers had been reluctant to tend to him, for he was like a man possessed. After the disease took hold, Hu Weide's entire body went rigid. At the slightest sound—wind rustling through leaves, a shaft of sunlight falling across his face—his already taut muscles would convulse again. His body arched like a fish on a hot skillet, arms thrust vertically into the air, face contorted by spasms, mouth emitting hissing, guttural groans. The tetanus bacillus caused total-body muscle tension and seizures; when the respiratory muscles spasmed, the patient lost the ability to breathe and died—or so the medic who'd escorted him to the medical team explained upon returning. Everyone had heard of tetanus during first aid training, but the Clostridium tetani bacterium itself and the horrifying transformation it wrought were blind spots for all of them. Even the medic couldn't explain the particulars, only repeating what he'd heard from the Senator doctors: wounds must be cleaned and disinfected; once tetanus sets in, there's no hope even if you're sent to Lingao. And so, how Hu Weide had actually died, when he had died, what his final moments were like—what Tan Shuangxi knew amounted to nothing more than what appeared on the death notification. The claim of "staying by his side" was merely a comforting lie.

"Thank... you..."

The Fang girl murmured the words, staring blankly at the floor. Over and over she repeated, "...You still loved me... It's all my fault... I should never have let you enlist, not even if you beat me to death..."

Tan Shuangxi let Chen Linhuang lead him out of Hu Weide's house in a daze. He sat beneath a large tree by the threshing ground for a while before feeling that he had returned to himself.

Chen Linhuang spoke apologetically. "Sorry, comrade. That's just how Father Fang is. He looked down on Ah Wei from the start—only agreed because his daughter insisted."

"With that mean, harsh manner of his, I can't imagine what it must be like working for someone like that." Zhang Laicai looked at Chen Linhuang with sympathetic eyes.

Chen Linhuang laughed. "His words may be ugly, but he pays well. Let him say what he wants; I won't lose any flesh over it."

"He treats people like that, and he pays more?"

"Father Fang's wages are the highest around here—same rate as the state-run farms," Chen Linhuang said. "Otherwise, why would anyone put up with working so hard for him?"

Tan Shuangxi fell silent. He gazed wistfully across the threshing ground. The sun was setting, bathing the fields and houses in gold. But amid this beautiful scene, there would never again be Hu Weide. In a few more years, only the Fang girl—who had shared the bond of marriage with him—would still remember him.

He suddenly recalled something and turned back. A moment later, he emerged again. Zhang Laicai looked surprised. "What did you go back for?"

"I wanted to ask the Fang girl where in Fujian Ah Wei was from. If we ever get a chance to go there, we could look for his family."

"Any luck?"

"No." Tan Shuangxi spread his hands and shook his head. "The Fang girl only knows he was probably from somewhere around Zhangzhou or Quanzhou in southern Fujian. Ah Wei never said exactly where."

"Forget it, let's go." Zhang Laicai lost interest. "We'd better hurry, or we'll be walking in the dark."

"Worst case, we can ask for lodging at the village office," Tan Shuangxi said.

The two set off at a brisk pace, retracing their steps along the country path. Before long, Chen Linhuang caught up and stopped them, handing each a packet wrapped in lotus leaves. Judging by the oil stains seeping through, it was likely cooked food.

"The Fang girl asked me to bring you some glutinous rice chicken. It's what we laborers eat—simple fare, but it'll fill your bellies on the road."

"Having food at all is good enough. This is too kind." They were, in fact, rather hungry.

"The Fang girl can't make many decisions on her own; Father Fang rules the household," Chen Linhuang explained. "Please don't think poorly of it."

Chen Linhuang hurried off. Tan Shuangxi and Zhang Laicai exchanged a look laden with complicated emotions, then departed in silence with the packets in hand.

By the time they returned to the village office, the sun hung low on the western horizon. They requested lodging there and were fortunate that when the building had been constructed, accommodations for visiting officials had been taken into account; there were three dormitory rooms. The village head also invited them to dinner.

After the meal, the village head had someone set up a small table beneath the large tree on the threshing ground in front of the office, inviting them to drink tea and chat. Several of the village's "prominent figures" came as well. The Mainland Campaign had been underway for two years now; although newspapers and bulletins reached the village, news was still relatively scarce. With two witnesses from the front arriving, everyone naturally wanted a good conversation.

The village head poured tea for everyone. The teapot and cups were clearly Australian in style, and the hot water was even stored in a thermos bottle—almost exactly like the reception room at battalion headquarters. Tea-drinking had actually become a popular pastime only in recent years. In the past, only the wealthy with a touch of refinement could afford such "elegant pursuits." Now, a large bag of crude tea could be had for a few cents, and these days, a few cents was no longer an amount anyone needed to scrimp and save.

"...Nowadays we've got living banks," the village head said. "Selling eggs for a few days is enough to buy tea. Not just tea, either—salt, odds and ends, all of it scraped from chicken backsides!"

Developing the courtyard economy was a major priority, with chicken-raising particularly encouraged. Eggs had become an important source of income for farmers.

As for where the eggs went, it was the "Egg Factory" recently opened by the Heaven and Earth Society—in truth, a food-processing plant specializing in eggs. Purchased eggs were processed into "egg powder," "salted yolks," and "flying whites"—dried egg whites. These also frequently appeared on the Fubo Army's mess tables as military rations.

The group drank tea and talked of various matters, especially the war in Liangguang; everyone wanted to hear about it. The two men naturally obliged, embellishing their experiences along the way. Through their narration, the listeners felt transported to the campaign itself—at times excited, at times wringing their hands, at times sighing endlessly...

After dinner, more and more children gathered on the threshing ground, laughing and playing together. A few of the older ones huddled in a group, apparently discussing something. Each held a wooden stick with a paper flag pasted on top. Fragments of their argument drifted over: "I'm not being it today... You go first... Then I'll be it... No cheating..."

Soon the children divided into two camps, taking positions on opposite sides of the threshing ground. Were they playing Cops and Robbers? That was a rite of passage for children growing up in villages around here.

The group playing "bandits" looked much as they had in Tan Shuangxi's day, wielding tree branches as weapons. A few mischievous ones had commandeered brooms from home to use as great swords; most likely, they'd get a beating when they returned later. Among the children playing "government troops," someone shouted "Form ranks!" and the ragtag assembly actually arranged itself into a double line of battle. The shorter children stood in the front row, the taller ones behind, all shouldering their sticks on their right side. From within the formation, another child bellowed "Load!" The children in line lowered their sticks, stood them on the ground, and pretended to reach into their pockets to perform the loading action before raising their sticks into a firing stance.

"Well now—they've learned it pretty well!" Tan Shuangxi couldn't help but praise them; their drill work rivaled that of new recruits.

The next command followed: "Return sights to zero." Tan Shuangxi grinned broadly. Who had taught them this? It was remarkably professional.

The other group of children began trotting forward. They had no formation, but each was brimming with spirit, voices raised in earth-shaking cries: "Kill the Baldies!" "Capture Ma the Pig-dragger alive!"

From the battle line came a burst of mouth-simulated gunfire. A few children even acted out the recoil and muzzle climb. On the opposite side, children screamed dramatically and fell to the ground one after another. A few—whether from slow reactions or by script—continued running forward, waving their weapons.

Another command rang out from the line: "Fix bayonets—charge!" The two groups of children crashed together. Soon the game ended amid crying from children on one side or the other. Several peasant women plucked their mud-covered offspring from the pile and headed home for the second half of the evening's discipline session, Political Security Bureau style.

Tan Shuangxi and Zhang Laicai awkwardly wiped tea and tea leaves from their chins and clothes. That cry of "Kill the Baldies" from the children had made them both spray their drinks. The village head explained, slightly embarrassed, that the game had been taught by the village's stationed police officer—a veteran of the Chengmai Campaign. Even the children's makeshift Minie rifles, those sticks, had been selected by the officer to approximate the proper shape. As for those lines that verged on sedition, they had been taught by Chief Wan of the Heaven and Earth Society; no naturalized citizen would dare joke about such things, not even under pain of death.

(End of Chapter)