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granddad and father returned to their razed home, where they retrieved fifty silver dollars froma hiding place in the wall. then, dressed as beggars, they went to a small shop in town, near therailway station, where a red lantern hung. they bought five hundred bullets from a heavily made-up woman, then hid out for several days, until they found a way to sneak out through the towngate. they planned to settle accounts with pocky leng.

on the afternoon of the sixth day following the ambush and battle at the black water riverbridge – the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month in the year 1939 – granddad and fatherdrove a billy goat, nearly dead from the dung building up inside it, to the sorghum field at thewestern edge of the village. more than four hundred japs and six hundred of their puppet soldiershad encircled our village like a steel hoop on a barrel. granddad and father hurriedly cut openthe billy goat’s stitched-shut rectum, and after relieving itself of pounds of dung, it dumpedseveral hundred cartridges onto the ground. they quickly scooped them up, ignoring the stinkingfilth, and engaged the invaders in a solemn and stirring battle in the sorghum field.

although they killed dozens of japanese soldiers and dozens of puppet soldiers, they were stilloutnumbered. as night fell, the villagers tried to breach the encirclement at the southern edge ofthe village, where there was no gunfire, but were met by a withering hail of machine-gun fire.

hundreds of men and women were killed instantly in the sorghum field, and their mortallywounded comrades crushed countless stalks of red sorghum in their own death agonies.

the japs torched the village before withdrawing. flames shot up into the heavens, and keptburning, turning half the sky white. the moon that night was full and blood-red, but the warbelow turned it pale and weak, like a faded paper cutout hanging grimly in the sky.

‘where to now, dad?’

no response.