The Golden Rat by Don Wulffson

Author:Don Wulffson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2007-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

8

Baoliu awoke a hundred times that night. Zhou snored. Water dribbled through their roof of trash. He tried to get comfortable but couldn’t. His knee and jaw ached, and again and again, things stung him—insects and spiders, he guessed. He slapped at them, pinched and crushed them, and scratched under his clothes at itching lumps. Several times during the night he crawled out into the rain to try to wash away the filth and vermin, numb the stinging, and stretch his cramped muscles. And then he could only crawl back in for more of the same.

Toward morning, the rain stopped, and Baoliu drifted into a deep sleep. He heard Zhou leave.

Birds began to squall somewhere.

He opened his eyes onto a triangle of sunlight. Clawed feet hopped overhead. A blackbird settled on a gnarled branch, and triggering a shower of water and leaves, took off effortlessly.

His torn shirt hanging open, he crawled from the sodden lean-to and sat on a lump of rock. Zhou was some distance off, a long stick in hand and chasing something.

Baoliu groaned getting to his feet and headed down through half-submerged grass and heaps of trash.

Zhou waved, watched Baoliu for a moment, and then went back to what he was doing—trying to spear frogs with a stick. Already, one lay on a fallen tree trunk, its legs and head removed and its white belly flayed open.

Picking up a pointed scrap of bamboo, Baoliu joined Zhou in the hunt, chasing after frogs. There weren’t many, and the few Baoliu spotted leaped away as soon as he came near. He managed to spear only one; Zhou collected six, and also a small rat.

“I’ll clean the rest of them,” said Baoliu.

“Yeah—good,” Zhou mumbled, sitting down and handing him the knife.

The first frog he picked up was still half-alive, its eyes moving and its body inflating and deflating with spastic, feeble breaths. He stabbed it, and sliced off its head.

“Sorry,” said Baoliu, “sorry I got you into all this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Zhou, rubbing at a cut above a black eye. “It could’ve been worse.”

“The ones who attacked us—what were they so afraid we’d find out?”

“I don’t know,” said Zhou. “The only thing I’m sure of is that people up in Minkao seem to know something we don’t. And they’re trying to protect Shen Manfong’s family.”

“From what? And why would they be living in a place like this? From the ka-di, they received four thousand tongqian.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“The little girl we talked to in Minkao,” said Baoliu, “she said something about a girl named Linlin and her grandfather—a man with one eye. They’re somewhere in this ravine.”

“We can find them later. Right now I’m more interested in eating.” He gestured toward the flayed frogs. “And finding some way to cook these things.”

The two started looking around for dry firewood; there was none—everything was wet, saturated. They wrapped their catch in leaves, and after collecting their gear, headed down the ravine, where the rising sun was turning piles of sodden debris into steaming, stinking little mountains.

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