20: The Long Path

The country opened.

By the noon of the ninth day they came out of the narrow valley of the cold spring onto a long shoulder of hill that ran north and east, and from the shoulder they could see — for the first time since leaving the village — country that had nothing in it that Heizi could name. The eastern horizon, in the cool clear midmorning, was a low blue line of further hills they had no road to and no list of names for. The northern horizon was a slow rise of wooded slope toward what might, by the way the wooded line broke at one place, have been a low pass. Below them, in the long shoulder's lee, ran a small dry watercourse that the spring had not yet flooded; beyond the watercourse, another shoulder; beyond that, more shoulders, like the slow even folds of a hempen blanket laid down across the country.

Heizi stopped on the shoulder.

He looked, for the first time since the persimmon tree, at distance.

He had not, in his life until this morning, ever been in country he could not, by some line of sight, retrieve to a thing he knew. The village had been at the center of every horizon he had grown up with. Even on the ridge above the bean fields, his most adventurous walk as a small child, the village had been visible at his back; even at the saddle pass into Cao Ergou's valley, the village had been visible at his back if he had turned. He had not turned. He had kept his promise to himself. But the village had been there, behind him, at every step, the way a man's shadow is behind him at every step of a noon road.

This morning the village was no longer behind him. The village was over more horizons than he could count. The village was in another country.

He stood on the shoulder and felt the size of this fact in his chest. He felt it in the way a man might feel, in his chest, the new size of a room into which he has just been admitted. The room was very large. The room had no clear walls.

The brothers came up beside him.

Wang Er did not speak. The smith's son had, since the gully and the courier, said almost nothing on the road; Wang Er was in the small private grief of a young man who had decided he was not yet a killer, and who had also decided he had given up something — some option, some future possibility of being one — by the deciding, and who was working out, internally, in his slow honest way, what to do with the gap. He stood beside Heizi and looked at the country and breathed.

Tie-zhu came up. The lame boy did not stop on the path; he came past Heizi and Wang Er to a flat stone three paces beyond, and sat down on it, and unwrapped the bandage on the bad foot, and looked at the foot. The foot, in the morning light, was red along the inner ridge, with a small cracked place where the skin had begun to give yesterday. Tie-zhu turned the foot in his hand. He did not, Heizi noticed, allow his face to change. He rebound the foot with the small careful patience he had brought out of his uncle's carpenter shop, and he stood up, and he walked the next ten paces with a small new careful set to the foot — a set, Heizi understood, that was costing him something every step.

Ah Si came up last. The small one was thinner than he had been three days ago; the wadded coat that had been Heizi's at twelve hung looser on the small thin shoulders. The boy stood beside Heizi and looked out over the long shoulder of hill at the country.

"Heizi-ge."

"Yes, little brother."

"How far is far enough."

Heizi thought about this.

"We will know it when we see a place we can stay for more than one night," he said, finally. "We will know it when we walk into a hamlet and the people in it do not flinch. We will know it when there is a name to the village that we do not have to memorize and burn."

"Will that be soon."

"I do not know."

The boy nodded. He did not press. He shouldered his small bundle. He went on.

They walked the rest of the morning along the long shoulder. The path was good — wider than the contour paths of the past week, more even, with the small intermittent traces of mule trains that had not, by the look of the dust, passed in some weeks. They saw, by the noon hour, a small distant column of smoke in the east — perhaps a village, perhaps two valleys away — and Heizi marked it without changing course. They were not, today, going east.

At the noon, they ate.

They ate the last of the widow Shen's pork — small portions, the meat thinned by knife to slivers; the courier's bread had gone yesterday — and a portion of the millet the farmer at the cold spring had given them, eaten dry and chewed slowly because they had no fire. Wang Er counted the rations, in a low voice, as they ate.

"Three days of millet, brother. Two if Ah Si gets his fair share."

Heizi nodded.

"He will get his fair share."

"Then two."

"All right. Two."

"And then?"

"Then we trust the next name."

Wang Er thought about this.

"The fourth," Wang Er said. The brothers, on the road, had been numbering the names of Old Zhang's list as they consumed them. The first had been Cao Ergou. The second the widow Shen. The third was the watched man, whom they had been warned to go around. The fourth was —

"The fourth," Heizi said. "The widow's old brother-in-law, with the lame mule, in the foot of the next valley but one. The widow said: ask after the lame mule, and he will know."

"And if he is not at home."

"Then the fifth."

"And if the fifth is not at home."

"Then the sixth."

"And if the names run out."

Heizi did not, on the long shoulder, in the noon light, allow himself to answer.

Wang Er did not press it.

They went on.

They saw their first other walkers in the late afternoon.

They came around a small bend in the path — a place where the path wound down through a stand of low oak — and ahead, perhaps a hundred paces off, stood three figures on the path. Two adults, one child. The adults were a man and a woman. The man was perhaps thirty. The woman was perhaps the same. The child was small, perhaps four; the woman was carrying her on her back in a hempen sling. The three of them were sitting on a flat log at the side of the path, eating something, very slowly, that did not look like enough to be a meal.

Heizi raised his hand.

The brothers stopped.

Heizi watched the three for a long moment. They had, by their dress — the unbleached hemp, the patched coats, the small bundle of belongings sitting on the path beside the woman's foot — the look of refugees. The man's face, even at this distance, was the long thin face of a man who had been on a road too long. The woman's face was turned partly toward the child on her back; she was, every few moments, breaking off a small piece of the food in her hand and reaching back to pass it to the child's mouth. The child took the food without sound.

"Heizi," Wang Er said, very low. "Brother."

"Yes."

"We have two days of millet."

"I know."

"They have less."

Heizi watched.

He watched for another count of breaths.

He thought of the conversation on the path two mornings after they had left — the quiet runaway in the dark. *We will not call out to them. We will not approach. We will let them pass, and we will pass them. If they call to us — if they ask for water, for food — we will give what we can, and we will not stop. We will not let them follow us. We will not follow them. We are four on a road. We will be four still tomorrow night.*

He thought of the conversation under the rock the night after — *and if it is a girl. — If she is alone, and she is not bound for the camp — if she is going north herself, by her own road — we will give what we can give and we will pass.*

He thought of Cao Ergou at the slab. *You will find bodies. You cannot bury them all. Choose, on each one, by what your bones tell you that day.*

His bones, on the path, in the late afternoon, said: *not this one. Not this one with what you have.*

His bones said: *the woman has a child. The child is four. The child is small enough that she cannot walk, and the woman is carrying her, and the man is thin enough that he cannot carry her in turn. They have sat on the log because they cannot all walk and the woman needs to set the child down and put the breath back in her own lungs. They have sat on the log because they cannot move. If you give them half your millet, you will all be hungry tomorrow. If you give them all your millet, your brothers will not eat tomorrow. If you give them the bread, you will not eat tonight. They will not, even with all of it, reach the next hamlet, because they have a child and the child cannot walk much further on what you can give them. You cannot save them.*

His bones said: *but you can see them. The seeing is the only honor you can give them. They are in a country full of small ledgers, and someone, somewhere on the road behind them or ahead of them, is keeping one for them, and you are not the keeper.*

He stood for a long beat on the path with the brothers behind him.

He stepped forward.

He walked, slowly, the hundred paces. He came down to the flat log. The man on the log saw him at perhaps fifty paces and his hand went, in the small quick reflex of a man who had been hunted some days now, to the small bundle at his foot. The man's shoulders stiffened. The woman did not move; the woman, with the child on her back, had not the energy to be startled.

Heizi stopped at six paces.

"Sir."

"Lad."

The man's voice was the tired voice of a man who had been answering the address *sir* for many days from many strangers and had no faith left in any of them.

Heizi opened the small hempen sack. He took out a single small piece of millet — perhaps a fifth of what they had remaining, perhaps a little more — and laid it down on the flat log at the woman's elbow. He did not approach the man. He did not approach the child.

He said: "For the small one."

The woman looked at him.

She did not, on the log, weep. She had no weep left in her. She looked at the small piece of millet, and at Heizi, and at the bundle of three brothers behind him on the path, and her eyes — slow, very slow, in the late afternoon light — took him in.

She nodded.

She did not say *thank you*. The thanking would have been a small luxury of language she did not have on this afternoon. She nodded. The nodding was the thanking.

The man, beside her, looked at Heizi.

"Lad."

"Yes, sir."

"Where do you go."

"North."

"Do not go through the next hamlet."

"Sir?"

"The next hamlet, on this path. The one with the two stone basins at the head. Do not go through it. There are riders in it. We came up from it this morning. They did not stop us — we are nothing — but they were drinking at the basins and they had with them a man in brown with a satchel of slips. They were asking, of every walker who went by, whether they had seen four boys on the path. They asked us. We had not seen you yet. We told them so. They let us pass. They will not be in the hamlet by sundown; they were preparing to ride. They will be on the next path north of it."

He paused.

"They have the description, lad. The lame one. The small one. The smith's son with the hammer. You. They said *the dark one with the long face*. They said the dark one is the one to take. The other three they did not care about as much."

Heizi did not answer.

He stood for a long moment with the empty hand by his side.

The brown of low magistracy. The satchel of slips. The four-boy description. He had let the courier go, eight days ago, in the gully east of the third valley; the courier had reached his post, had written his slip; the slip had moved by relay through the magistracy's ordinary channels for perhaps four days; a patrol had been dispatched at — he could feel, as he stood on the path, the small interlocking gears of the magistracy's slow careful machinery — had been dispatched at the day after the slip had been received, with an outer reach of a week's ride. The patrol was here. The patrol was — at this moment — sitting at the two stone basins of the next hamlet, and at this moment preparing to ride, and at this moment the courier, who had been brought along to identify them by sight, was sitting beside them at the basins drinking water that had been drawn for him and waiting.

The man on the log was watching him.

"Lad."

"Yes, sir."

"There is a path that goes east of the hamlet, around the small ridge. It is not on the maps. It is the path the village's pigs take to the upper pasture. It is not a road. It is a track. You will find it, if you leave this path two *li* before the hamlet, at a place where there is a small shrine of three stones piled together. A small shrine. Three stones. The track goes east of it. Take the track. It will rejoin the main path five *li* north of the hamlet."

He paused.

"That is what I owe you for the millet, lad. That is the only thing I have to give you. Take it."

Heizi bowed.

He did not, on the path, say anything more.

He turned. He walked back to the brothers.

When he came up to them, they did not ask. They had seen, by the small shape of his shoulders coming back, that something had happened on the log that was not a small kind giving and a small kind receiving. He told them, in three sentences. He told them about the riders at the basins. He told them about the courier among them. He told them about the small shrine of three stones and the track east.

Wang Er listened.

He did not speak when Heizi was done.

Tie-zhu said: "How far to the small shrine."

"Two *li* before the hamlet. The hamlet is, by the man's reckoning — and by the column of smoke in the east this morning — perhaps four *li* from us now. The shrine is two *li*."

"We can be there by sundown."

"We can be there before sundown if we walk fast."

Wang Er said: "And the track east."

"Five *li* of pig path. We will not be on the main path until the hour of the rat."

"We will not sleep tonight."

"No. We will not sleep tonight."

Wang Er nodded.

"All right. Let us walk fast."

They walked fast.

They walked past the family on the log without speaking. The man raised his hand once as they went by; Heizi raised his in return. The woman did not look up. The child on her back, who had taken the small piece of millet without sound, was watching Heizi with the quiet flat eyes of a small creature whose hunger had been, for the moment, quieted; the child's eyes followed him as the four of them went past and on up the path. He felt the eyes on him for a long way after he had passed them.

He filed the eyes.

In some other year, in some other valley, on some other path, he would think of them; the small flat eyes of a four-year-old whose mother had been carrying her too long, who had taken the small piece of his millet without sound, who had watched a tall thin boy in a wadded coat go past on the path with three brothers. Heizi would not, in the years to come, ever know what became of the family on the log. He would assume, as a man assumes the small unverified facts of a country he is leaving, that they had not made the next hamlet, or had made it and had not lived through the winter; he would assume it without testing it; he would let the assumption sit in him as a small unweighed grief, in the small interior register he was beginning to keep.

The seeing was the only honor he could give.

They walked at the fast even pace of men who had a clock above their heads.

The small shrine of three stones came up on the path in the failing late-afternoon light at exactly the place the man on the log had said it would. The shrine was three small flat field stones, piled together at a hollow in the brush; on the topmost stone was a small bowl with the dried remnant of a pinch of millet — some farmer's offering, weeks old, to whatever spirit watched this fork of the country. Heizi paused at the shrine for one beat. He laid, on the topmost stone, a single grain of his own millet, very small. He did not say anything aloud. He went on.

The track east was small. It was, as the man had said, a pig path — narrow, low to the ground, with the small slick ground of a place where many small clean feet had passed. The brush was thick across it in places. They went through single file, in silence, with the small careful patience of people walking a path that had not been written on any map.

Behind them, west, somewhere on the main path, Heizi understood that the patrol — having mounted, having ridden — was now moving north along the very path they had just left. The patrol would come, in perhaps an hour, to the family on the log. The patrol would, perhaps, ask the family the same question they had asked them this morning. The man on the log would, perhaps, give a different answer this evening than he had given this morning.

Heizi did not know.

He hoped — although he understood that hope, on a road, was a thing a man should not lean against — that the man on the log would say, again, *we have not seen them*. He had no reason to give such an answer except the small kindness Heizi had laid on the log beside the woman's elbow. The kindness, in the slow patient ledgers of this country, might or might not cover the lie.

They walked the pig path through the dusk and into the dark.

The hour of the rat came on them in the brush, and they were not yet at the main path north of the hamlet. Tie-zhu's foot had begun, by now, to drag. Ah Si was being held up, on the steeper places, by Wang Er's hand on his coat. Heizi led, by feel, by the small ground sense he was learning, by the smell of the brush and the angle of the wind and the small intermittent light of a thin moon coming through the canopy.

They came out onto the main path at perhaps the second hour of the rat.

The path, at this place, was wide. There were no riders on it. There were no other walkers. The night had the small steady quiet of a country that, for the moment, was not being hunted on this exact piece of ground. Heizi did not believe the quiet. He understood that the patrol was somewhere north of them now, at a hamlet they had not reached; that the patrol's circle had passed them in the dark; that they had gotten through the smallest ring of it by the small mercy of a man on a log.

He gathered the brothers in a low place under an old oak by the path.

"Brothers," he said. "We will sleep one hour. No more. We will go on at the third hour of the rat. We will be far enough north of the hamlet by the second hour of the cock that the patrol — even if it turns and comes back south — will not find us in this brush in daylight."

They lay down under the oak.

Wang Er took the watch.

Heizi did not, this time, argue.

He lay on his back and looked up into the dark canopy of the old oak, where the small thin moon broke through the leaves in pieces. He thought of the family on the log. He thought of the small flat eyes of the four-year-old. He thought of the man in brown at the two stone basins, drinking water that had been drawn for him, waiting to identify the dark one with the long face.

He thought of Mei-er at the brazier in the dream of two nights ago, lifting the lid, the steam coming up, the dried mushroom in the millet — *eat your breakfast, little brother. There will be a long day.*

There had been.

He slept.