A Night in the Melon Patch: The Night Watchman Won’t Leave Me Alone

On their wedding night, Su He’s husband from the city calls her “country bumpkin,” then leaves for the city without even lifting her bridal veil.

Overnight, she becomes the village’s favorite topic of gossip: a neglected wife, an ill omen, a worthless woman no one wants.

At the threshing ground east of the village, the night watchman corners her beside a haystack. His voice is as rough as sandpaper. “He, I liked you from the first moment I saw you. Come live with me.”

On a rainy night in the western ravine, his straw raincoat wraps around them both. He presses down on her, breathing hard. “I toss and turn all night, thinking about you. What am I supposed to do?”

When the handcart carrying vegetables tips into a shallow ditch, he pulls her from the water. Her wet clothes cling to her body. He turns his face away, unable to look, but holds her even tighter. “I can’t quit you... and I don’t want to.”

Everyone says Shen Weidong is as thick-headed as a block of elm wood. He came back from the army but won’t take a wife, spending every day tending those few plots of melons. They say there must be something wrong with him.

Yet this taciturn man, the first time he saw her stain her trousers during her period, said nothing. He took off his jacket and tied it around her waist, then went to the commune supply store, blushing as he bought her sanitary belts, brown sugar, and a hen.

The village women laugh at him. “Shen Weidong, what are you getting out of this?”

He keeps his head down as he tends the fire. “I want her to suffer a little less.”

Later, when someone points at her and calls her a loose woman, he shields her, his eyes frighteningly cold. “Let me hear you say that again, and I’ll report you to the commune for slander.”

Later still, a female doctor arrives at the commune clinic to promote family planning. He waits in line all morning, then walks out with a consent form for a vasectomy in his pocket.

The clinic director asks him, “You don’t have any children yet. Have you thought this through?”

He nods. “My wife”