Big Breasts and Wide Hips Read Free Page A

are never seen without rouge and lipstick, dressed like that? Just then, a wagon master known to all as “Old Titmouse” emerged from the compound across the way on his new wagon, with its dark green canopy and rubber tires. The women clambered aboard even before it came to a complete stop. The wagon master jumped down and sat on one of the still damp stone lions to silently smoke his pipe. Sima Ting, steward of Felicity Manor, strode out from the compound with his fowling piece, his movements as quick and nimble as a young man. Jumping to his feet, the wagon master glanced at the steward, who snatched the pipe out of his hand, took several noisy puffs, then looked up at the early-morning rosy sky and yawned grandly. “Time to go,” he said. “Wait for me at the Black Water River Bridge. I’ll be along shortly.”
    With the reins in one hand and his whip in the other, the wagon master turned the wagon around. The women in the bed behind him shouted and chattered. The whip snapped in the air, and the horses trotted off. Brass bells around the horses’ necks sang out crisply, the wagon wheels crunched on the dirt road, and clouds of dust rose in the wagon’s wake.
    After taking a piss in the middle of the road, Sima Ting shouted out at the now distant wagon, then cradled his fowling piece and climbed the watchtower, a thirty-foot platform supported by ninety-nine thick logs and topped by a red flag that hung limply in the damp morning air. Shangguan Lü watched him as he gazed off to the northwest. With his long neck and pointy mouth, he looked a little like a goose at a watering trough.
    A cloud of feathery mist rolled through the sky and swallowed up Sima Ting, then spat him back out. Bloody hues of sunrise dyed his face red. To Shangguan Lü, the face seemed covered by a dazzling layer of sticky syrup. By the time he raised the fowling piece over his head, his face was red as a cockscomb. She heard a faint metallic click. It was the trigger sending the firing pin forward. Resting the butt of the piece against his shoulder, he stood waiting solemnly. So did Shangguan Lü, as the heavy dustpan numbed her hands, and her neck was sore from cocking it at such a rakish angle. Sima Ting lowered his fowling piece and puckered like a pouting little boy. She heard him curse the gun: “You little bastard, how dare you not fire!” He raised it again and pulled the trigger.
Crack!
Flames followed the crisp sound out of the barrel, simultaneously darkening the sun’s rays and lighting up his red face. Then an explosion shattered the silence hanging over the village; sunlight filled the sky with brilliant colors as if a fairy standing on the tip of a cloud were showering the land below with radiant flower petals. Shangguan Lü’s heart raced from excitement. Though only a blacksmith’s wife, she was much better with a hammer and anvil than her husband could ever hope to be. The mere sight of steel and fire sent blood running hot through her veins. The muscles of her arms rippled like knotted horsewhips. Black steel striking against red, sparks flying, a sweat-soaked shirt, rivulets of salty water flowing down the valley between pendulous breasts, the biting smell of steel and blood filling the space between heaven and earth. She watched Sima Ting jerk backward on his perch, the damp morning air around him soaked with the smell of gunpowder. As he circled the tiny platform, he broadcast a warning to all of Northeast Gaomi Township:
    â€œAll you elders, fellow townsmen, the Japs are coming!”
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    Shangguan Lü emptied her dustpan onto the exposed surface of the
kang
, whose grass mat and bedding had been rolled up and put to one side, then cast a worried look at her daughter-in-law, Shangguan Lu, who moaned as she gripped the edge of the
kang.
After tamping the dirt down with both hands, she said softly to her daughter-in-law, “You can climb back up