when it sees me coming. Dogs’ fear of me proves how much I take after my dieh, a panther. The Magistrate’s dog looked mean, but I could tell from its bark that it was expecting to be backed up by its master to make me think it wasn’t afraid. Me, Gaomi County’s King of Hell for dogs! The dog’s barks brought Chunsheng and Liu Pu riding up from two sides. I was a stranger to Liu Pu, but Chunsheng was a friend of mine. He’d often visited the shop, where he was treated to cut-rate food and drink. “What are you doing here, Xiaojia?” he asked. “Searching for herbal stuff,” I said. “My wife is sick, and she sent me out to find some heartbreak grass with red roots and green leaves. Know where I can find any? If so, tell me, and hurry, because she’s in a bad way.” By then the Magistrate had ridden up and was giving me the once-over with a pitiless look in his eyes. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What is your name?” He sputtered when I didn’t answer. When I was still a little boy, my mother told me to act dumb in the presence of an official. “He’s Dog-Meat Xishi’s husband,” Chunsheng whispered, “a borderline idiot.” Well, fuck you, Chunsheng! I felt like saying. I was just saying how you were a friend of mine, and that’s no way for a friend to talk. Would a real friend say that his friend is a borderline idiot? Meow meow, fuck you! Who are you calling a borderline idiot? If that’s what I am, then you’re a total idiot.
When Niu Qing pulled the trigger, only buckshot came out of the barrel. But the Magistrate fired a single bullet each time he pulled the trigger. A neat little hole dotted Song Three’s head, and if that doesn’t prove it was the Magistrate, I don’t know what does. But then why would the Magistrate want to kill Song Three? Oh, now I get it. Song Three, you must have stolen money from the Magistrate, something most people would not dare to do. Stealing from the Magistrate was signing your own death warrant. Most of the time you pranced around the yamen like a big shot and refused to even acknowledge my presence. You refused to settle up the five strings of cash you owed the shop, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask you for it. Well, things worked out in the end. We’re out the money, but you’re out for good. Now, which was more important, your money or your life? Your life, of course, so take your unpaid debt and talk it over with the King of Hell.
————
4
————
Government troops were swarming our way even as the sound of gunfire hung in the air. They dragged the top half of Song Three’s body out of the oil. His head reeked of sesame oil, which dripped along with his blood back into the cauldron. It looked like a newly fried hawthorn berry. Meow meow. The soldiers laid him out on the ground, where his legs, a thread of life still in them, twitched uncontrollably, evoking the image of a half-dead chicken. The soldiers stared wide-eyed at the soon-to-be corpse, not knowing what to do. One of their officers rushed up and bundled my dieh and me into the shed, then turned to look in the direction from which the bullet had come and fired his weapon. I’d never had a rifle fire that close to me, a foreign rifle, at that—I’d heard it was a German weapon whose bullets could penetrate a wall at over a thousand yards. The other soldiers took his lead and fired at the same spot. Smoke emerged from their muzzles when they stopped shooting, and the smell of gunpowder engulfed us, like New Year’s, when firecrackers are set off. “Go after him!” the officer commanded. Meow meow. The soldiers took off running, whooping and hollering. If Dieh hadn’t grabbed me by the arm, I’d have taken out after them to watch the fun! Those morons, I was thinking, what do they think they’re going to find? By the time you dragged Song Three out of the boiling oil, the Magistrate was already back in the yamen, thanks to his spirited horse, a Red Rabbit thoroughbred. With its sleek red coat, it looked like a fiery red blur when it galloped at high speed, faster and faster, filling the air with