“Where will you run away to?” Ida was troubled.
“Yes, where will I run away to?”
The youth wrung his hands. The green light shooting from his eyes terrified Ida. She sensed that although he was shy, he was a bit like the chained wolf. Was it possible that he did change into a wolf, and that was why his family wanted to kill him? When she looked at the window again, the lamps were already out. Inside all was quiet.
“What will you do?” Ida asked him.
“Hey,” he was suddenly relaxed. “I will sleep in the forest near here. I’m already used to it. Father told me to raise the wolf. I was taking care of it before I’d been on the farm very long. In the end they wanted to force me to leave. My wolf ran into the house and it collapsed. It was my fault. But I worry about my little brother. Father might also order him to take care of the wolf. My brother is weak, he’d be done for.”
“Don’t worry too much, he can change,” Ida said, to comfort him.
“Maybe. What good is it to worry?” The young boy was suddenly impatient. He walked off by himself into the bushes.
The wind blew as Ida continued to climb up the mountain. Something tripped her, and she almost fell down.
“Manager Jin Xia! Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for my son. I want to catch him and bring him back. The boy’s very destructive, and I’m afraid something will happen.”
“I think not. Just now he was fine.”
Ida and Jin Xia stood side by side next to a rock projecting out of the ground. The moon hid behind the clouds. Dark surrounded them. Jin Xia lit a cigarette with his lighter. “Mr. Jin Xia, do you think your son should grow up like a wolf?”
“Yes, but he has to be fastened with an iron chain.”
“It’s too cruel.”
Jin Xia laughed piercingly. That green light shone in his eyes. “People here are all like this, right?”
When Ida lowered her head tears fell down. She left him, her spirits low, and walked back down the slope.
The sky began to lighten with morning haze, the lake water in distant places shone with white light, and birds sang on the mountainside. Some object in Ida’s heart was also little by little reviving. Was this the farm where she’d lived before? Why didn’t anyone work? In several days she hadn’t seen a single person in the rubber trees. Only one day, she saw in the distance an Eastern woman wearing a black skirt, walking alone in the woods. Ida had heard that her companions from work all lived on the mountain slope, but when she went there she didn’t see a single building, or even tents. She had also gone once to Mr. Reagan’s home. The building hadn’t fallen down after all, but it looked like there was no one inside. The jeep parked at the entrance was covered in dust so thick its color couldn’t be seen. Last month, Ida had tried to make up her mind to pass the night in this building. Originally she had planned to enter through the back door in the middle of the night, but Mr. Reagan changed his mind. He told her his home wouldn’t suit her. If she came, he would be hurt. Now he didn’t appear to want this home himself.
She heard people speak of the farm’s boundaries. It seemed the farm had already expanded to the neighboring counties. And their farm, which made up its center, was deadly quiet. The only lively things were those drenched crows. No matter where she walked Ida would run into them. It was also possible that the farm had disbanded and her fellow workers were already returned home. When Ida thought of this, the future turned into a stretch of desolate beach extending all the way to the horizon. Lara had told her that the other workers all lived on the mountainside, but probably she’d said this to keep Ida’s courage up. Not far from where they slept there was a canteen, and a black cook who made food there. All three of them went to the canteen to eat, but they never met any other workers, not once. Behind the canteen there were toilets and showers. All of these appeared to have been finished only recently. There was an employee responsible for sanitation. Canteen, toilets, and showers constituted a small civilized world. Why had Mr. Reagan arranged this strange life for her?
“It’s because of love,” Lara said to her. “His inner heart is a wasteland now.”
Ida panicked at discovering a nest of dead snakes in among the reeds, large ones and small ones, more than ten altogether. It was the striped kind of snake most common to the farm. The site showed no signs of a massacre. It might be death by poisoning. She stood to the side for a while with a weng weng buzzing in her head, as though someone kept on saying something to her. The lake water became so bright, so insidious. She gazed a moment at her face in the water of the lake. That youthful face made her think of her dead mother, especially about the eyes and brow. She thought that it might have been her mother’s wish for her to come here, poor and vagrant. Crows flew past, and the wind fanned by their wings made ripples on the water’s surface. Her face dispersed.
“Miss Ida, don’t you have a home?”
Someone in the water spoke to her. It was a child. She stared attentively, searching, but could not see anyone in the water. The person was behind her. It was Jin Xia’s older son.
“Little one, what are you doing following me?”
Ida looked into the child’s shining wolf eyes and began to smile.
“You have a home, but you won’t go back to it,” she said.
The youth stood there bashfully, looking at the water-logged ground, as if he wanted to say something, but hesitated.
“Miss Ida, tell me, will my dad kill my little wolf?” he finally said.
“No, why?”
“Last year I saw him sharpen his knife and then he cut off one of the little wolf’s paws. His left hind foot. The little wolf howled for three whole days and three nights. He covered the house in blood. Afterward my father cried, and I cried, too. He cried when he told me that this way the little wolf won’t be able to run away. Did you know that little wolves always want to run away?”
He squatted gloomily by the watery ditch, poking at the leeches in the water with a stick. Ida observed from above his fiery-red, babylike hair. The tremor in her heart was indescribable.
Someone rustled in the reeds. It was that Eastern woman again. She appeared in a flash and then was gone.
The boy didn’t raise his head.
“That women has no home. We call her the lunatic, poor woman. One time she lost a shoe at the door of our house and ran away barefoot. Maybe our little wolf scared her.”
“What is your name?” Ida finally asked him.
“My name is Little Wolf. My dad says our family has two little wolves.”
“It sounds nice,” Ida said sincerely.
Little Wolf was suddenly infuriated. He stood up and spoke with hatred: “You woman, why are you complimenting me? I don’t need you to say nice things about me.” He threw the stick, abandoned her, and walked into the reeds.
Ida thought that maybe the manager Jin Xia’s whole family was frightening. Mr. Reagan had brought him in to be the manager, so surely something in Jin Xia’s temperament must have appealed to him. Living in their wooden house eaten by termites, caring for a wolf, this family was not, in reality, a threat to anyone except themselves. Where had Mr. Reagan found this man? Thinking about the family, Ida did not notice her pain easing. It was truly a miracle cure. She stretched her long arms, jumped twice, and filled her lungs with fresh air. Mr. Reagan’s making her live under a tree was a brilliant idea.
Ida stopped drifting around. She felt there were a few things she wanted to do.
A long time ago, when Ida was still at her old home, she’d often watched the people there making bricks out of yellow clay. They baked the bricks in the scorching sun, then built houses with them. Now there happened to be this same clay beside the forest where she was staying. She started by making a brick mold with her hands, then industriously began the manual work. Her sweat dripped into the clay bricks, and her hands became extremely rough. Every day, in the setting sun, she heard the mountain flood scream past in her ears.