Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard

11. The Great Mountain Flood

 The Great Mountain Flood The day after I received Baby Dragon’s letter, I went to see Uncle Cricket in the village office after work. ‘‘Uncle Cricket,’’ I said with a big smile. ‘‘You have taught me many great revolutionary ideas and I certainly would like to learn more, like Big Quilt has done with you. Would you take me up as your special student and teach me more of the Great Leader ’s ideas? And by the way, if there’s another chance for one of us to go to school, would you please consider me?’’ ‘‘Well, Fan Shen,’’ said the Party secretary, looking at me without much interest. ‘‘Your enthusiasm is good, but you must remember that learning from revolutionary peasants is a long process, and you have just started. You will certainly learn more working in the fields than in school, as the Great Leader says. I’m too busy to take a special student now, but I will pay more attention to your progress. When you are ready, I will bring the matter up to the Party Committee and we will discuss it.’’ From his official tone, I knew perfectly well that he had no intention of helping me at all, and to get him to help me, I needed something more substantial than words. I needed a chance to do him a favor big enough that he would help me get out of the village. Fortunately, beginning in the second year of our settlement in Big Porcupine, a drought began to develop in the region, which eventually brought me the chance I needed. It was an extremely hot year. In early January, a villager by the name of Broken Shoe claimed that he had seen a wild red goat on Nipple Hill. ‘‘That’s a bad omen,’’ everybody said. ‘‘A red goat in winter, a scorched earth in summer.’’ It meant that a terrible drought was coming. Even Uncle Cricket appeared apprehensive, although he denounced the prophetic vision as superstition at the village meeting. But the superstitious peasants were right. There was hardly a drop of rain after we plowed the fields in March. It was so dry that by May, the Dragon Gorge River below our cave-houses  earth had dried up and two of the three wells in the village had become muddy wallows infested with knots of black toads. The third was reduced to a yield of one small bucket of water an hour, barely enough for the residents to drink. Each day, two of us had to stand in line to get water from the well, and it took two or three hours to collect the water we needed. In June, the water from the well trickled out so slowly that it had to be rationed : a half bucket per household per day. Horses, cows, pigs, and goats, getting little water, started to wither and die. Some people began secretly praying to the Sea Dragon on old Nipple Hill for rain. The practice was repeatedly denounced by the Communist Party Committee, and Uncle Cricket threatened to take action against the offenders. To counter the superstition, he called an emergency meeting of the Party Committee of the Third Production Team in June and they decided to dig a new well. Sinking a water well is an important event for a Shaanbei village. Traditionally, the site for the well is divined by a feng shui master—a master of Wind and Water—who chooses the location according to the qi, the ‘‘vital energy,’’ of the village. Those masters had all been banished or killed off during the revolutionary years, however; and the government had declared the practice of feng shui a relic of feudal society. So Uncle Cricket took it upon himself to find a suitable site. No one knew exactly how he came up with the spot, but it was certainly an odd location for a new well, right in the backyard of Broken Shoe, with whose wife Uncle Cricket was rumored to be having an affair. To compensate for the loss of the backyard, Uncle Cricket offered Broken Shoe the lucrative job of tractor driver, the principal duty of which is to drive ‘‘the Pomp-Pomp,’’ the single-cylindered tractor, to transport goods between the village and the county. Broken Shoe was overjoyed by the offer. His frequent absences would, of course, make other people happy as well. Work on the new well started immediately...