18: The Courier and the Wood

The hunger had begun, by the eighth day, to be a thing he carried in his head as much as in his stomach.

It was the way Heizi had heard old men speak of the Da-ye three famine. They had said: *the hunger does not stay in the belly. The hunger goes up. It gets behind the eyes. It gets behind the back of the throat. It begins to choose the words you say. It begins to choose the things you see.* Heizi had not, at fourteen, believed them; he had thought them old men dressing up an ordinary discomfort with the small dignities of language. He understood now. The hunger had gone up.

The widow Shen's millet had lasted four days. Cao Ergou's pork had been gone in two, by small even portions. The dried wild greens Wang Er had pulled along the third stream — small bitter mustard tops, a hand of wild garlic — had gone in a single afternoon. They had, for the past two days, been eating only what they could find by walking — small cold tubers Tie-zhu, who knew plants better than the others, dug from the wet bank with his uncle's old paring knife; the inner bark of one young pine which they had stripped and chewed for the small green bitter sweetness in it; a single small fish Wang Er had managed to take from a quiet pool with a sharpened stick at the second hour of the morning.

It was not enough.

Ah Si, who had been thin to begin with, had stopped speaking on the road. He had not stopped working — he carried his bundle, he kept the pace, he gathered the small kindlings whenever they made a fire — but the small ordinary remarks of a child, the *Heizi-ge, what is that bird?* and the *Tie-zhu, do you know this leaf?*, had thinned with the food and were now nearly gone. He saved his words. Heizi understood, watching him, that the boy had been here before, in the months after his mother died; that the boy had a small private discipline of using less of himself when there was less to use.

They came out of the third valley on the eighth morning into a low wooded country that ran north and east, with no clear ridge ahead, with the road they were walking — a small contour path, not a road in the magistracy's sense, only the path the country's small old feet had made over generations — bending eastward through a stretch of dry brush.

It was on the contour path, at the noon hour of the eighth day, that they saw the courier.

Wang Er, who was walking second, saw him first. Wang Er stopped on the path. He raised his hand. Heizi stopped behind him. The two younger boys, behind, stopped without sound — they had learned, in eight days, the geometry of a single raised hand on a path.

Wang Er motioned for Heizi to come forward.

Heizi came up. He looked.

The path, at this place, ran along the upper edge of a small dry gully — a place where a winter stream ran in years of heavy snow, and where, in this thin spring, the bottom was only a course of round dry stones. The path here was narrow and flat. Below the path, in the gully, perhaps a hundred paces ahead, a man had stopped.

He was alone. He was on foot. He had on the brown of low magistracy — the unbleached hempen robe with the dark cord at the waist — and at his belt he carried a small bound roll of bamboo slips. At his back was a small leather satchel. He was not in armor. He was not, by what Heizi could see at this distance, armed except for a short knife at the belt.

He had stopped because he was eating.

He had set himself down on a flat stone in the bottom of the gully. He had taken from his satchel a small bundle wrapped in white cloth, and from the bundle he had taken what looked, at this distance, like a piece of millet bread and a piece of dried meat. He was eating slowly, with the unhurried attention of a man halfway through a long day's run, who had earned a quiet hour.

A magistracy courier.

Heizi knew the dress. The village had received couriers four times a year — at the levy, at the conscription roll, at the spring registry, at the autumn tally. The courier was the magistracy's hand in small valleys. He carried the slips up and the slips down. He did not, as a rule, fight. He carried, as the man below was carrying, his food in a small white-cloth bundle, and a short knife for cutting bread and rope, and a small leather satchel for the slips. He moved alone because the magistracy's paper trusted itself; the slips were not, ordinarily, worth robbing for.

Heizi stood for a long moment looking down.

He thought of the small bundle of millet bread.

He felt the hunger behind his eyes.

He turned and looked at Wang Er.

Wang Er's face was the face it had been on the path: slow, even, watching. Wang Er had thought already, in the half-minute since stopping, what Heizi had only just begun to think.

"Brother," Wang Er said, very low, "the bread."

"Yes."

"And the satchel. Whatever is in it."

"Yes."

"He is alone. He is not armed. He has not seen us."

"He is alone. He is not armed. He has not seen us."

The two of them looked at each other for one beat. The beat had in it all the things they did not need to say — that eight days had made them men of a different kind than they had been at the village; that what they were about to consider would, in the village, have been a hanging thing; that they were not in the village; that the man below was the magistracy and that the magistracy had read names from a slip at their well one morning, and that the small bundle of millet bread on the flat stone in the gully belonged, by the long unspoken accounts of a wronged country, to four boys who had not eaten well in two days.

Tie-zhu came up behind them. He looked over Wang Er's shoulder. He said nothing. After a moment he stepped back and laid a hand briefly on Ah Si's shoulder, in the small wordless gesture of an older brother holding a younger one back.

"How," Wang Er said.

Heizi thought.

He thought slowly, the way Old Zhang had taught him to think about a field. The path above the gully ran along the upper edge for some distance. Below the path, where the man sat, the gully sloped away to the east; the man's back was toward the western slope. The man was eating; he was looking down at his bread, not up at the path. The eastern lip of the gully — the lip behind the man — was thicker brush than the western. A man going over the eastern lip with care could come around behind him without being seen, if the man did not turn. The descent into the gully on the western side — Heizi's side — was steeper than the eastern, but possible, with care. The bottom of the gully was dry round stones. The footing was bad; a man running on the bottom would turn an ankle in three steps.

He measured.

"Wang Er," he said, very low. "You will take the eastern lip. You will go far enough up the path that he will not see you cross. You will come down behind him through the brush. Slowly. Do not make the brush move. When you are eight paces behind him, stop. Wait. Do not enter the gully."

Wang Er nodded.

"Tie-zhu, Ah Si — stay here. Keep low. Watch the path east and west. If you see anyone coming from either direction, give a single small whistle — like the one we used yesterday for the rabbits."

Tie-zhu nodded. Ah Si nodded. Heizi noted, in the small running register, that the small one's face had not changed. The boy had absorbed the new circumstance without comment.

"And me," Wang Er said.

"You will wait until I have come down the western slope. I will stop ten paces from him. He will hear me on the stones; I cannot help it. He will turn. When he turns toward me, you will come out of the brush and put yourself between him and the eastern lip — between him and the way back to the road east. He will then see you. He will then have nowhere to run that does not put either you or me in his path. He will stop. He will think. He will give us the satchel."

"And if he does not."

Heizi did not answer at once.

He had, in his head, not yet thought past the giving of the satchel.

He thought now.

"If he does not — if he runs at me — you will come up behind him at the run. You will use the hammer flat to take him at the shoulder. Not the head. Not the head, Wang Er. Do you hear me. We are not killing him."

"Heizi."

"Wang Er, do you hear me."

Wang Er looked at him.

The slow honest face of the smith's son was not, in this moment, a face Heizi was entirely sure he could read. The face had in it the same patience it had had at the gate three nights ago when Heizi had said *brothers* aloud for the first time, and the same patience it had had at the cold stream when he had carried Ah Si across, and the same patience it had had in the night under the rock when the quiet runaway had stood twenty paces below them on the contour path. But the face had also, today, the small new shadow of a young man who had been hungry for two days and who was looking down at a small white-cloth bundle of millet bread.

"Wang Er."

"I hear you."

"The shoulder. The flat of the hammer. Not the head."

"The shoulder. The flat. Not the head."

"All right."

Wang Er turned. He moved off down the path to the east, slowly, low, with the hammer's sling held tight against his back to keep the iron from clinking against the wooden handle. He went perhaps fifty paces. He turned and went over the eastern lip of the gully. The brush closed behind him.

Heizi waited.

He waited a count of two hundred breaths — Wang Er would need that long to come around.

Then he turned to Tie-zhu.

"If anything goes wrong — if there is any sound from me you do not understand — you will take Ah Si and you will go back along the path west. You will go to the small stand of pines we saw at the noon hour yesterday. You will wait there. If Wang Er and I do not come by sundown, you will go on. You will use the names. You will carry the road."

Tie-zhu nodded. The lame boy's face was older than it had been an hour ago; Heizi noted that, too.

"Heizi-ge."

Heizi turned.

Ah Si was looking up at him. The small flat eyes were steady.

"I am not afraid," the boy said.

"I know."

"You should not be either."

Heizi thought about this. He nodded once. He did not, on the path, say anything else.

He went down the western slope.

The slope was steeper than he had thought from above. The dust under his sandals slid; he set his weight back; he came down at the pace of a man who knew he was about to do a thing he could not afford to do badly. The small round dry stones of the bottom turned under his feet. He stopped at the bottom for a beat to find his balance. He went forward, slowly, along the gully, around the slight bend.

The man on the flat stone heard him at four paces.

The man's head came up. He had, in his hand, a piece of the millet bread. He held it suspended for a quarter-second. Then, with the unhurried quickness of a man who had been a courier for some years and who had been startled before, he set the bread down on the stone, stood up, and laid his right hand on the handle of his short belt knife.

He did not draw the knife.

He looked at Heizi.

He was perhaps thirty. He was thinner than the riders who had come to the village. He had the small reddened eyes of a man who had been on roads in the wind for many days. His face was not unkind. It was the face of a working man of the lower magistracy, who had a wife in some town two valleys over, and a child or two, and a paper salary that was always two months late.

"Lad."

"Sir."

"You are alone?"

"No, sir."

The man's eye flicked, very briefly, to the upper edges of the gully — first west, then east. He did not yet see Wang Er; the brush was thick. He did not see Tie-zhu and Ah Si; they were lower than the lip on the western side. The eye came back to Heizi.

"You are a runaway."

"Yes, sir."

The man did not move. His hand stayed on the handle of the knife.

"How many."

"Four, sir."

The man looked at him for a long moment.

"Lad."

"Sir."

"What do you want."

"The bread, sir. The satchel, if there is food in it. The white cloth. We will not take the slips. We will not take the satchel itself if you ask it. We will not — we will not take more than we need."

The man did not answer at once.

Heizi understood, watching the man's face, that the courier was thinking; was running, in his own head, the small calculations of a working man — what would he lose, in the satchel, if he let it go; what would he have to write on the next slip about the road; what would happen if he resisted and was hurt and could not run the next leg.

The man looked at Heizi for a long beat.

"Lad," the man said, more quietly. "Look at me. You are fifteen. Sixteen. You have not done this before. I can see it in your face. I will tell you a thing. You will let me eat the rest of this bread, because I have run since the hour of the rooster. I will then lay the bundle on this stone. There is a second small piece in the satchel. There is also a small piece of dried meat. I will lay all of it on the stone. You will take it. You will not approach me until I have stepped back. I will step back ten paces. You will come forward. You will take the bundle. You will go up the eastern lip. We will not see each other again."

He paused.

"I will not draw on you. I do not draw on a boy. I have not done so in twelve years on these roads. I have been robbed twice before. Both times the boys were younger than you. Both times we managed it without anyone being hurt. We will manage it this time."

He looked at Heizi.

"Lad, do you understand me."

Heizi nodded.

"Sir, yes."

"All right."

The man — slowly, with the small careful patience of a man who was trying not to startle a young person with a knife's reach — sat back down on the flat stone. He picked up the piece of bread. He did not put it in his mouth at once. He looked at Heizi for one more beat.

"Where," he said, "is the second."

"In the brush, sir. Behind you."

The man nodded — as if he had thought as much. He did not turn his head. He did not, in the small careful arithmetic that had been working in him since he saw Heizi, give the second any new attention. He simply continued to eat — slowly, in two bites, finishing the small piece of bread — and Heizi understood, with the first small shock of a particular kind of understanding he would have many times in his life, that the man had decided. The man had decided to live. The man had decided, as soon as he had seen Heizi's face on the gully bottom, that this was a robbery he would survive, and he was now carrying out the small inner program of survival, beat by beat.

The man finished the bread. He brushed the crumbs off his hands. He opened the satchel. He took out, slowly, a second piece of millet bread, slightly larger than the first, and a small piece of dried meat about the size of three fingers, and he laid both on the white cloth on the flat stone, and he folded the cloth around them in a small neat parcel.

He stood up.

He stepped back from the stone.

He stepped back five paces. He stopped. He stepped back five more. He stopped.

He looked at Heizi. He held up his empty hands, briefly, palms forward — the small ancient gesture, the one Heizi had seen old men in the village make to a stray dog or to a startled child. *Nothing. Nothing in my hands.*

"Lad. Take it and go."

Heizi stepped forward.

He came up to the flat stone. He picked up the small parcel. The cloth was warm where the man's hand had been. The bread inside the cloth was dense and good, the small weight of a real meal in his palm. He could smell — through the cloth — a small fragrance of something he had not eaten in a year, which was the small clear fragrance of a single dried jujube the courier had also laid into the bundle, perhaps for some reason of his own.

Heizi looked up at the man.

The man was watching him. The wind moved a little in the brush along the gully. The man's hand was still away from the knife at his belt.

Heizi thought.

He thought of Wang Er, in the brush, with the hammer.

He thought of Tie-zhu and Ah Si on the path above.

He thought of the conversation with Wang Er about the shoulder and the flat and the head.

He thought, then, of a thing he had not thought of yet, which was: *this man is alive. I am not killing him. He will go on east along this road, by the order he has been carrying his slips along, and he will arrive at his next post by sundown, and he will write on the next slip that he was robbed by four boys at the gully east of the third valley. He will write the time. He will write our description. He will write the direction we went.*

He thought: *Old Zhang said the patrols would not look in the foothills. Old Zhang did not say the patrols would not be sent into the foothills if they were called.*

He thought: *if I let him live, he will call them.*

He stood with the parcel in his hand.

The hand of his foster father came back to him then, in his mind — the old hand, on his own head, on the threshold step the morning after the persimmon tree, the low even voice: *You are not a boy who can kill. You will be made to. The world will require it of you. You will fail it sometimes. The failing will cost you. But you must, all the same, live anyway.*

He understood, with a clarity that came down on him suddenly in the gully bottom in the noon light, the actual price of what Old Zhang had been telling him.

The price was — *now*.

The courier's eyes were on him. The eyes did not look afraid, even now. The eyes were a working man's eyes; they had read his face, and they had decided to live, and they were waiting for him to confirm the decision.

Heizi laid the parcel under his arm.

He stepped back from the flat stone — once, twice.

"Sir," he said. He could not make his voice steady. The voice came out the voice of a fifteen-year-old in a gully bottom with a robbery in his hand. "Sir. Go. Go east. Do not — do not stop. Do not turn around."

The man bowed his head — a small even bow, the bow of a working man to a working man, a small acknowledgment of a transaction completed.

He turned.

He walked east along the gully bottom.

He walked at the pace of a man who knew he was being watched. He did not look back. He went fifty paces, a hundred, two hundred. He came around the small bend of the gully where the eastern lip rose. He went out of sight.

Heizi stood for a long moment with the parcel under his arm.

Wang Er came out of the brush behind him.

The smith's son looked at Heizi. He did not say anything. He did not need to. Wang Er understood, with the same slow clarity Heizi understood, that the man was now going to a post he would reach by sundown, and that the slip he would write tonight would, by tomorrow's dawn, be on its way to a magistracy office, and that within the week a patrol would be in this gully looking at the small round dry stones and the place where a man had eaten his noon meal and had been let go.

"Brother," Wang Er said, very low.

"Yes."

"You should have done it."

"I know."

Wang Er looked at him.

"I could not have done it either," Wang Er said. "I could not have lifted the hammer to his head. I have thought, since you sent me up the lip, of nothing else. I have thought of his head. I could not have done it."

Heizi looked at him.

Wang Er's face was wet. The smith's son had not, on this morning, in the brush above the gully, allowed any of the wet down his face. It was down now.

"We are not killers, brother," Wang Er said. "Not yet. Maybe not ever. We will pay for it."

"We will pay for it."

"Yes."

Heizi nodded. He did not, in the gully bottom, weep. He held the parcel under his arm. He looked east — at the bend around which the courier had gone, where the small dust of his sandals had not yet settled.

"We are not going east," Heizi said. "We are going north. We will move tonight. We will move all night. We will not stop at the next village."

"Yes."

"And Wang Er."

"Yes."

"Thank you. For not lifting the hammer."

Wang Er did not answer.

They went up the western slope of the gully, slowly, with the parcel under Heizi's arm, and at the path above Tie-zhu and Ah Si stood up out of the low brush, and the four of them did not speak, but began at once — without any further conversation — to walk fast north along the contour, away from the gully and the post and the slip the courier was, even now, beginning the long careful trot east toward writing.

A long way off, in the bright cool noon, a single hawk turned, slowly, in a wide arc above the gully — circling, in its small unbothered way, the small flat stone where a man had eaten his bread, and where the wind was beginning, in the small dry country, to pick up a single dropped crumb and carry it east.