The Vagrants

Fretful too were the members of the city council, the Muddy River Communist Party branch, and other officials. The first leaflet, a letter questioning Gu Shan's retrial, had not induced much alarm; it was more of a nuisance, some people dissatisfied with their lives, for whatever reason, using the dead woman's body as an excuse to make a fuss. Better to wait, the mayor had decided, and he had requested increased surveillance at night. But the extra security guards, cold and hungry in their late-night patrolling, were not able to catch the people who posted the second leaflet. A democratic wall movement in Beijing had begun a new page in the nation's history, the leaflets informed the citizens of Muddy River; why did they never get a chance to hear the news, to know what was going on in the national capital; why could they not speak their minds without being put to death like Gu Shan?

The news of the protest had been accessible to only a few high-ranking officials, and the connection made between Gu Shan's execution and the situation in Beijing seemed a sinister conspiracy, more so when uncertainties raged over how to react to the democratic wall movement not only in the provincial capital but also in Beijing. Daily these veterans of local politics read and reread the news, fresh off the classified wire service, about developments in Beijing. There were clearly two camps, both with significant representation in the central government and among party leaders. Were the leaflets in Muddy River the spawn of the democratic wall seven hundred miles away? And what should they do, which side should they take?—the questions puzzled these people who had never worried over the lack of a meal, a bed, or a job. Offices became minefields where one had to watch out for oneself, constantly defining and redefining friends, enemies, and chameleons who could morph from friends to enemies and then back again. With their fates and their families’ futures in their hands, these people sleepwalked by day and shuddered by night. What would they do about these leaflets that only spelled trouble?

In the period of indecision and uncertainty, old winter-weary snow began to melt. The ground became less solid, the black dirt oozing with moisture in the sunshine. The willow trees lining both sides of the main street took on a yellow hue, which lasted a day or two before the buds turned green. It was the best green of the year-clean, fresh, shining. Boys from middle schools cut off the tender tips of the willow branches, took out the soft pith, and turned the sheaths into willow flutes. The few musical ones among them played simple melodies on the flutes and made girls their age smile.

The ice in the river rumbled at night, resisting the spring, but when the daytime came, its resolve was melted in the sunshine. The middle school boys, despite repeated warnings from their schools and parents, let the ice drifts carry them downstream, their feet planted on the ice as firmly as possible; when the drifts came closer, they tried to push one another off into the water. Sometimes one of them lost his balance and plunged into the river, and all the other boys would stamp their feet and shriek, making animal-like noises. The soaked boy dodged the ice drifts, scrambled onto the bank, and ran home, laughing too because this kind of failure did not bother him. The same thing could happen to anyone; the next day, he would be one of the winning boys, laughing at another boy falling in. It was a game, and it guaranteed neither a permanent victory nor a loss that would last beyond overnight.

Down from the mountains and over the Cross-river Bridge, villagers came with newly hatched chicks and ducklings in bamboo baskets, the first batch of edible ferns picked by the small hands of children with smaller children on their backs, deer that had not escaped the hunters’ buckshot and now came in disjointed forms: antlers, hides, jerky, bucks’ members labeled as deer whips and said to improve a man's performance in his bedroom business.