Under the Red Flag Read Free Page A

she was a strongwoman who knew what was hers. Some said the Red Guard was no good; if you got something you had to pay for it. A few women declared the rascal deserved such treatment.
    “Dear Revolutionary Masses,” the tall leader started to speak. “We all have heard the crime Mu Ying committed. She lured one of our officers and one of our poor peasants into the evil water, and she beat a Red Guard black and blue. Shall we let her go home without punishment or shall we teach her an unforgettable lesson so that she won’t do it again?”
    “Teach her a lesson!” some voices cried in unison.
    “Then we’re going to parade her through the streets.”
    Two Red Guards pulled Mu off the bench, and another picked up the tall hat.
    “Brothers and sisters,” she begged, “please let me off just this once. Don’t, don’t! I promise I’ll correct my fault. I’ll be a new person. Help! Oh help!”
    It was no use resisting; within seconds the huge hat was firmly planted on her head. They also hung a big placard between the cloth shoes lying against her chest. The words on the placard read:
    I am a Broken Shoe
My Crime Deserves Death
    They put a gong in her hands and ordered her to strike it when she announced the words written on the inner side of the gong.
    My pals and I followed the crowd, feeling rather tired. Boys from East Street were wilder; they threw stones at Mu’s back. One stone struck the back of her head and blood dropped on her neck. But they were stopped immediately by the Red Guards, because a stone missed Mu and hit a man on the face.Old people, who couldn’t follow us, were standing on chairs and windowsills with pipes and towels in their hands. We were going to parade her through every street. It would take several hours to finish the whole thing, since the procession would stop for a short while at every street corner.
    Bong, Mu struck the gong and declared, “I am an evil monster.”
    “Louder!”
    Dong, bong
—“I have stolen men. I stink for a thousand years.”
    When we were coming out of the marketplace, Squinty emerged from a narrow lane. He grasped my wrist and Bare Hips’s arm and said, “Someone is dead at the train station. Come, let’s go have a look.” The word “dead” at once roused us. We half a dozen boys set out running to the train station.
    The dead man was Meng Su. A crowd had gathered at the railroad two hundred yards east of the station house. A few men were examining the rail that was stained with blood and studded with bits of flesh. One man paced along the darker part of the rail and announced that the train had dragged Meng at least seventy feet.
    Beneath the track, Meng’s headless body lay in a ditch. One of his feet was missing, and the whitish shinbone stuck out several inches long. There were so many openings on his body that he looked like a large piece of fresh meat on the counter in the butcher’s. Beyond him, ten paces away, a big straw hat remained on the ground. We were told that his head was under the hat.
    Bare Hips and I went down the slope to see the head. Other boys dared not take a peep. We two looked at each other, asking with our eyes who should raise the straw hat. I held out my wooden scimitar and lifted the rim of the hat a little with thesword. A swarm of bluebottles charged out, droning like provoked wasps. We bent over to peek at the head. Two long teeth pierced through the upper lip. An eyeball was missing. The gray hair was no longer perceivable, covered with mud and dirt. The open mouth was filled with purplish mucus. A tiny lizard skipped, sliding away into the grass.
    “Oh!” Bare Hips began vomiting. Sorghum gruel mixed with bits of string beans splashed on a yellowish boulder. “Leave it alone, White Cat.”
    We lingered at the station, listening to different versions of the accident. Some people said Meng had gotten drunk and dropped asleep on the track. Some said he hadn’t slept at all but laughed hysterically walking in the