Baldy Li continued shaking his head. "No rubbing for me today. You go and get some sex drive for yourselves."
"Fuck," said the middle-schoolers. "These two little fucking cowards."
Long-haired Sun Wei commanded, "Pull those two little cowards up, then kick them down again."
Just as Victory Zhao and Success Liu were about to pull the boys up, the stout-hearted revolutionary Blacksmith Tong arrived and roared, "Stop!"
Blacksmith Tongs roar made the three middle-schoolers tremble. Sun Wei mumbled, "They're little landlords."
"What little landlords?" Blacksmith Tong pointed at Baldy Li and Song Gang. "They are the blossoms of our nation."
Sun Wei looked over Blacksmith Tongs thick arms and torso and didn't say anything more. Tong pointed at the three middle-schoolers and said, "You are also the blossoms of our nation."
The middle-schoolers peered at one another and began to cackle. They continued cackling as they walked off. Blacksmith Tong looked first at them, then at Baldy Li and Song Gang on the ground, and sauntered away, proclaiming, "You are all the blossoms of our nation."
Baldy Li and Song Gang struggled to their feet. Bruised and battered, they looked at each other. Song Gang simply couldn't understand why he wasn't able to sweep long-haired Sun Wei to the ground. He asked Baldy Li what had gone wrong. Didn't he use the crucial move? Baldy Li huffed, "That move doesn't exist. Your father was bullshitting us."
Song Gang shook his swollen face. "He's our father. Fathers don't lie to sons."
Baldy Li hollered, "He's your dad, not mine."
The two of them stood there, shouting at each other. Finally Song Gang wiped the tears from his face and blew his nose. He said, "Let's go ask Papa."
Baldy Li and Song Gang came to the front entrance of the middle school. A struggle session was getting out. Song Fanping stood with his placard hanging from his neck, along with two others, as a group of students who had just walked out surrounded them and shouted slogans condemning them. A few people wearing red armbands were also saying something. The two boys didn't know that these people, after getting out of the big struggle session inside, were holding another small rally here. The boys squeezed through the crowd and went right up to Song Fanping. Song Gang tugged at his father's sleeve, asking, "Papa, you taught us the most important move in the sweeping leg kick, didn't you?"
Song Fanping stood bowed and motionless. Song Gang started crying pitifully. He pushed at his father. "Papa, tell Baldy Li you taught us…"
Song Fanping remained silent. Baldy Li started yelling, "You lied to us. You didn't teach us how to do the sweeping leg kick. You lied to us about the characters on the wooden placard. They mean landlord,’ but you told us they meant ‘Chairman Mao of the land.'"
At that moment Baldy Li had no way of knowing what a terrible fate his words would bring down on Song Fanping, and he was stunned by what followed. When the people heard Baldy Li's words, they were initially flabbergasted, then they proceeded to strike, kick, and pummel Song Fanping until he was barely breathing. They roared as they stomped and kicked him on the ground, demanding that he confess how he had wickedly attacked "our great leader, our great teacher, our great general, our great helmsman — Chairman Mao."
Baldy Li had never seen anyone pummeled like this before. Song Fanping's face was completely covered in blood, and even his hair was soaked red. He lay there as countless adults and children stomped on him, his body like a platform as countless people stepped over him. His face didn't flinch, but his eyes did — twitching to the side so that he could glimpse Baldy Li and Song Gang. When he looked at Baldy Li, it was as if he was saying something with his gaze, a gaze that terrified Baldy Li. After a while Baldy Li was squeezed out of the circle and could no longer see Song Fanping's eyes. He only saw Song Gang wailing as he tried to force his way back into the circle. There were more and more spectators, and Song Gang was pushed farther and farther away. Finally he opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He walked next to Baldy Li, his face full of tears and snot, his mouth opening and closing as if he was yelling at Baldy Li, but Baldy Li couldn't hear a thing. After Song Gang yelled silently for a while, he punched Baldy Li and Baldy Li punched him right back. The two boys took turns punching each other, as if taking turns dealing out a deck of cards. Altogether, they punched each more than thirty-six times.
CHAPTER 12
AFTER SONG FANPING had been beaten to a pulp, he was taken away and locked up in a room in a large warehouse. The following week, Song Gang and Baldy Li stopped speaking to each other. Song Gang, in any event, couldn't speak at all; he had yelled so hard that day and his throat had become so red and swollen that now, when he tried to speak, no sound came out. Baldy Li knew that it was his revelation that had sent Song Fanping to that prisonlike warehouse, and when he lay down to sleep at night, all he could think about was Song Fanping being kicked and stomped as Song Fanping's eyes anxiously sought out his and Song Gangs. Baldy Li trembled but refused to cede an inch. He mocked Song Gang for having a mouth that was good only for farting.
Baldy Li was now on his own. He roamed the streets alone, sat under trees alone, squatted by the river and drank alone, talked to himself as he stood on the street looking, waiting, hoping for another child his age to wander over. Covered in sweat and scorched by the sun, he saw around him only parading people and parading flags. Children his age were all led by their mothers’ hands as they were pulled past him one after another. No one spoke to him or even deigned to look at him. Only when some passerby accidentally bumped into him or spat on his foot, only then might someone realize he was there. Only the three middle-schoolers showed any interest in him, and each time they saw him they would wave eagerly and call out, "Hey, kid, come show us some of your sex drive."
They waved at him as they enthusiastically walked over. He knew that what they really wanted was to practice their sweeping leg kicks. They wanted to kick him until he shat in his pants and his face swelled up. Baldy Li therefore ran for his life, and the three middle-schoolers ran after him, laughing and saying, "Hey, kid, don't run. We won't kick you."
That summer, in order to get away from the middle-schoolers’ kicks, Baldy Li often ran until he collapsed. His eight-year-old legs sore and shaking, his eight-year-old lungs burning for oxygen, his eight-year-old heart pounding wildly, his eight-year-old self ran until he almost died. Finally Baldy Li limped into the alley where Blacksmith Tong, Tailor Zhang, Scissors Guan, and Yanker Yu resided.
Now, of course, they were known as Revolutionary Blacksmith, Revolutionary Tailor, Revolutionary Scissors, and Revolutionary Tooth-Yanker. When a customer brought a bolt of fabric to Tailor Zhang's shop, Zhang would first grill him, asking him about his class background. If he was a poor peasant, Tailor Zhang would greet him with a smile; if he was a middle peasant, Zhang would reluctantly take the fabric; and if he was a landlord, Zhang would immediately raise his fist and shout revolutionary slogans until his ashen-faced landlord customer ran out of the shop with his fabric. Even as he disappeared down the alley, Tailor Zhang would stand at his shop door, declaiming to his departing landlord client, "I will make you the shabbiest funeral garb, no, just a sheet for wrapping your corpse."
The two Scissors Guan were even more revolutionarily enlightened than Tailor Zhang. They didn't take any money from their peasant customers, they took extra from the middle-peasant ones, while the landlord customers had no choice but to scamper away. As the landlords fled, the two Scissors Guan would raise their loudly snapping scissors and stand outside their shop yelling that they were going to snip off their landlord dicks. Scissors Guan yelled, "We're going to snip you into a cockless landlady."