21: The Hamlet of Two Wells

The hamlet they came to, two days later, sat in a wide flat hollow at the foot of two slopes that came down from the north, where the land's first true pause from the foothills opened into what would, in another *li* or two, become the small hill country of southern Henan proper.

It was a larger place than any they had seen since the village. It had perhaps eight houses. It had two wells — one at the eastern end, one at the western, both stone-rimmed, with the small old grey patina of stone that had been at a well for many generations. The houses were of mud brick on a stone foundation, with roofs of pine bark that had been mended, in places, with new shingles cut from a recent felling. There was a small open square at the center — the kind of open square that made a place a hamlet rather than only a cluster of households — and at the western edge of the square stood a single old elm tree, very large, with the small wooden bench around its trunk that any traveler in any village in any reign in this country would have recognized as the village headman's seat.

The village headman, on this midmorning, was at the bench.

He was perhaps sixty-five. He was not Cao Ergou. He was, in his way of sitting, more like Old Cui — a small careful man with his hands folded inside his sleeves, his back straight against the elm trunk, his eyes set on the road that came in from the south. He had been there for some time. He had, perhaps, been there since the cock. He had been waiting to see what came along the road today.

Heizi stopped them at the southern edge of the hamlet — at the small marker stone where the path widened into the hamlet's open ground. He did not, this time, send a man around the eastern lip; the country here had no eastern lip. He raised his hand to the brothers. He went forward alone.

He did not call out.

The headman saw him at twenty paces.

The headman did not move. The hands stayed folded inside the sleeves. The eyes followed him in.

Heizi stopped at six paces from the bench. He bowed.

"Grandfather."

"Lad."

"My brothers and I are travelers. We are walking north."

"Yes."

"We have walked since the hour of the rat. We slept one hour. The lame one's foot is bad. The small one is twelve. We can pay only in small work. We ask for one night. Two would be better. We will not stay three."

The headman looked at him for a long moment.

"You said *grandfather*."

"Yes, grandfather."

"You did not say *sir.*"

"No, grandfather."

"And the lame one is lame in which foot."

"The right, grandfather."

"And the small one — twelve, you say."

"Twelve, possibly thirteen, grandfather. He does not know himself."

"And the smith's son?"

Heizi had not, on the path, been given any indication that this man knew of a smith's son. He had not, in his own greeting, mentioned Wang Er.

He stood very still.

"Yes, grandfather. Wang Er. The smith's son."

The headman nodded slowly.

"You are the four. The Pig Path Four. That is what they were calling you in the next hamlet south yesterday morning. *The Pig Path Four.* The riders went through the south hamlet at the second hour of the watch night before last and passed the south basins this morning at the cock. They did not come north this far, by what I have heard from a boy who came up the path at first light. They went east, on a different report. They were carrying the description you would expect, which is the description any man would expect for four boys who had taken a small bundle from a working courier in a gully."

He paused.

"Lad, I am telling you so that you know. The hamlet south of us has been told you exist. The hamlet north of us has not been told yet. The riders have gone east, not north. You are, on this morning, in a small lull. The lull will not last more than three days. You will be — by what you have just told me — willing to pass on by the third morning. You are correct."

He looked at Heizi.

"Lad, who is your foster father."

Heizi paused.

He thought about it.

He had not, in all the road, said the name to anyone but Cao Ergou and the widow Shen and the farmer at the cold spring; and the farmer at the cold spring had asked him to stop saying it, before he had even begun. He thought about whether this old man at this elm tree was Cao Ergou's kind of old man or the watched man's kind of old man. He looked at the hands inside the sleeves, and at the long careful sitting, and at the eyes that had been on the road since the cock.

He decided.

"Old Zhang of the eastern half of —"

"Stop. Lad. The name of the village was for me to ask, not for you to give. Old Zhang. That is enough. I do not know him. But Old Zhang is on Cao Ergou's list, by the look of you. I am on Cao Ergou's list also. He did not put my name into Old Zhang's hand because Old Zhang's hand is two valleys further south than Old Zhang's hand has any business holding paper. But Cao knows me. We were at the watch above Henan border together also. We are three of the same year. I am Wei Lao-han."

He paused.

"Sit down, lad. There are two stools inside my house. Bring the brothers. We will eat at my noon hour. We will see about the foot."

Heizi turned. He waved the brothers in.

Wang Er came up first. He bowed, awkwardly, to the old man at the bench. The old man waved the bow off. Tie-zhu came up next, walking with the bad foot held up against his weight in the way he had been holding it since dawn; the old man, watching him, said only: *get him off it. Now.* Wang Er and Heizi between them got the lame boy onto the bench around the elm. Ah Si came up last and stood at Heizi's elbow with his small bundle clutched to his chest.

The old man watched the four of them. He looked, for a long moment, at Ah Si.

"Small one," he said.

"Grandfather."

"How long have you been on this road."

"I have walked twelve days, grandfather."

"Have you eaten in two of them."

"I — I have eaten, grandfather. Heizi-ge has shared his portion."

"He has shared more than his portion. I can see his ribs from here. Lad" — to Heizi — "you are a fool, but you are a useful kind of fool. Come. Bring the small one."

He stood up — slowly — and the four boys followed him around to the back of the elm, where a small low door opened on the western side of the small house behind the elm tree. He pushed open the door. The room inside was warm. A small fire burned in a stone hearth at the far wall. A small clay pot sat on the fire. A long low bench ran along one wall.

A woman came out of the back room — perhaps fifty-five, broad-faced, broad-handed, with grey threading through black hair tied back in a single braid. She looked at the boys. She did not, by the look of her face, find them surprising; the headman had clearly told her some hours ago that they might come.

"Get the lame one's foot off the floor. The bench. The small one — by the fire. The other two — sit."

They sat.

The woman knelt in front of Tie-zhu. She unwrapped the bandage on the foot. The skin was red. There was, along the inner ridge, a small crack with a bead of clear liquid at it. The woman looked at the foot for a long beat. She looked up at Tie-zhu. She did not say anything to him about the foot. She turned her head and called, low: *Lan-gu, water. The ash-water. The basin from the back.*

A girl came out of the back room.

Heizi looked at her.

She was not the daughter at the cold spring. She was someone else. She was perhaps sixteen — older than the cold-spring's Lan, older than Mei-er had been. Her face was longer and quieter. She had the same single braid as her mother, but the braid was tied at the end with a small dark ribbon. She carried a wooden basin of water that smelled, faintly, of ash and of something else — a small herb Heizi could not name.

She came to the bench. She set the basin down. She did not look at any of the boys' faces. She knelt beside her mother. She lifted the lame boy's foot, very gently, and lowered it into the ash-water in the basin.

Tie-zhu hissed in his throat. His face did not change. The water was hot.

"Hold it there," the woman said. "Slowly, slowly, do not move. Lan-gu will keep his foot in the water. I will see to the small one."

The woman went to Ah Si by the fire. She knelt beside him. She took, from a small pocket of her apron, a piece of dried fruit — a shriveled red date the size of a finger joint — and placed it in his hand. She closed his hand over it. She said, very quietly: *eat. Slowly. Do not chew in one bite. The body will refuse it. Slowly.*

Ah Si nodded. He put the date in his mouth.

The woman stood.

She turned to Heizi.

"Lad, you. Up. Outside. Help the old man with the wood. The small one is in my hand now. The lame one is in Lan-gu's hand. The smith's son will help me with the noon. You will help my husband."

Heizi nodded. He went out.

The old man — Wei Lao-han — was already at the woodpile beside the back of the house, stacking, in the slow steady rhythm of a man who used woodwork as the small steadying labor of any morning. Heizi joined him. The two of them stacked for an hour. The old man did not, in the first half-hour, speak.

Then the old man said, in the low voice of a man who had been thinking a careful thing through:

"Lad."

"Yes, grandfather."

"Cao told me, last week, that he had seen four boys headed north on a list Old Zhang had sent up the road. He sent the boy who carries his charcoal down to the south basin to tell me. The boy said: *four lads, eldest fifteen, dark, long-faced; smith's son with a hammer; lame one; small one of twelve.* Cao said: *if they come, watch them; they will be a year on the road before they understand what kind of road it is; do not let the eldest get himself killed in the first month.*"

He paused.

"I have been at this bench since the cock for three mornings, lad. Today is the third. I had begun to think you had gone past me on the eastern fork. Then I saw you on the path."

He paused again.

"Cao was right about you, lad. You have a face. The face will get a man killed in the first month if it is not watched. You have the look of a young man who is going to do a thing or refuse to do a thing without thinking about either, because he is fifteen, and a fifteen-year-old's face does not yet know that there is a third option."

Heizi did not answer.

"The third option," the old man said, "is to ask. To ask before you do or refuse. To ask an old person, when the choice comes, what an old person sees. You are not always going to have an old person to ask. But when you do — ask. Lad, ask."

"Yes, grandfather."

"Now. The patrol. I am to tell you what an old person sees. The patrol has gone east. They will be three days east. They will not, in three days, find the four boys they are looking for, because the four boys are here. They will, on the fourth day, turn back. They will turn back not on the path you came north on; they will turn back on the next path east of it, looking. They will, by the seventh day, come past the next hamlet north of us. They will, by the eighth day, come past us. By the ninth day they will be back at their own post writing slips."

He paused.

"You will leave on the morning of the seventh day. Not before. Not after."

"Grandfather — that is five days from now."

"Yes."

"That is too long. You said yourself we should not stay more than three."

"I said you would be willing to pass by the third morning. I did not say you should pass. The lame one's foot, lad — look at it. Did you see the crack? That foot will not walk a hard road for four more days. Push it now and it will give out within a *li* and you will be carrying him. Carrying a grown lad, lad. You will not get far. You will be on the easy paths because you are slow with him, and the easy paths are exactly where the patrol will look on its return."

He paused.

"Five days here. The foot will be ready. The small one will eat. The smith's son will rest his hands. You will rest yours. You will be ready, on the morning of the seventh day, to walk a hard road. The patrol will be gone by the eighth. You will be three days north of us before they come around through this hamlet looking on their way back to the post. Three days, lad, is the difference between a road they search and a road they do not."

Heizi thought.

He thought slowly.

He thought of every reason he should refuse — that staying was the danger he had been warning the brothers against; that the cold-spring hamlet had warned them not to stay, and they had not, and they had been right not to; that the foothills were a country in which a moving party was harder to find than a sitting one. He thought of every reason he should accept — that the lame boy's foot was the lame boy's foot, and the small boy had not eaten enough, and his own hands had begun, in the past two mornings, to shake very faintly when he reached for his sandals at first light.

He remembered the old man's instruction: *ask.*

He looked at Wei Lao-han.

"Grandfather. I have one question."

"Ask, lad."

"Will the patrol burn this hamlet, if they find that you have hidden us."

The old man looked at him for a long beat.

"Lad, that is the right question. That is the only question."

"Grandfather."

"They will not. They will not, because we will not, in the seventh-day morning, have you with us. We will, on the seventh-day morning, send you north on the upper pasture path, which the patrol will not be on; we will, on the eighth-day morning, see them through the hamlet without flinching; we will, on the eighth-day morning, give them a bowl of porridge each, and water their horses at the western well, and answer their questions with the small even faces of people who have not seen four boys this season, because by then we will not have. The patrol will write a slip and ride on. The hamlet will not burn. I have seen patrols come past in five seasons. They have not, since the third year of Wen-di, burned a hamlet that did not flinch."

He paused.

"Lad."

"Yes, grandfather."

"You will, however, take no comfort from this. You will take only the small mathematics of it. The mathematics says: stay. The mathematics says: foot. The mathematics says: small one. The mathematics does not say: this place is safe. There are no safe places, lad. There are only places where the small mathematics works."

Heizi nodded.

"All right, grandfather. Five nights."

"Five nights."

They went back inside.

That afternoon Tie-zhu's foot lay in the ash-water for two more long quarter-hours, and the woman packed it, between the soakings, with a small green poultice she made from a jar of dried herbs Heizi did not recognize. By dusk the crack on the inner ridge had closed; the redness had begun to come down. Tie-zhu, lying on the low bench, did not weep, although Heizi understood, watching the small relaxation of the long careful face, that for the first time in nine days the foot was not, on its own private register, asking him to stop walking.

The small one, by the fire, ate three small portions of millet over the course of the afternoon — slowly, at the woman's instruction, in long pauses with cold water in between. By dusk his color had come up by the smallest amount; the small thin shoulders had lifted a small fraction in their carriage; the boy's voice, when he spoke (he asked the woman, finally, whether the small dark date she had given him at noon had come from the south or the north of this country — the first ordinary remark Heizi had heard out of him in three days) had the small natural cadence of a child who had remembered, in the warmth of a fire and the kindness of an unrelated woman, that he was a child.

That night they slept on the floor of the old man's main room. They had, around them, the small steady breathing of an old man and an old woman in the back room and the small softer breathing of the daughter Lan-gu in a small alcove behind a curtain. They had a roof. They had a fire, banked low, in the hearth.

Heizi, lying on his back beside Wang Er, listened to the small steady breathing of the household, and to the small intermittent quiet sound of the wind in the elm tree at the back of the house, and to the small distant call of an owl on the eastern slope.

He did not sleep at once.

He thought of what the old man had said — *there are no safe places, lad. There are only places where the small mathematics works.* He thought of the small mathematics. He thought of five nights. He thought of the lame boy's foot. He thought of the small one with the date in his mouth. He thought of the patrol going east this morning, on a different report, and turning back on the fourth day, and coming through here on the eighth.

He thought, for the first time on the road, that they had been given a small piece of luck.

He was not yet old enough to know what luck cost.

He slept.

In the back room, the old man Wei Lao-han, beside his sleeping wife, lay awake on his cot for some time, with his old hands folded across his chest. He had taken in four boys today; he had told them they would be safe for five nights; he had looked at the eldest's face and had filed, in a small careful interior register of his own, the same thing Cao Ergou had filed before him — that the eldest had a face, and that the face would, in the years ahead, do things this country had not yet seen.

He had not, in his telling of the small mathematics, told the eldest the small thing he had elected not to say: that he himself had been wrong, twice, in his life, about whether a hamlet would burn. The small mathematics worked, on average; it did not work every time. The first time it had not worked was Wen-di seventeen — a hamlet in the Henan border country. The second time was Da-ye three. Both times he had survived only because he had not, on the days the burnings came, been in the hamlets that burned.

He lay awake for some hours.

He hoped, in the slow patient way of an old man who had learned to hold hope at the end of the arm, that the small mathematics would work this time also.

He did not, on the small old internal register he had been keeping for forty years, write anything down.

He slept.