On the fourth day of September 1983, my father was buried.
Six gentlemen in the village hammered the coffin with one nail each. At the last one, my second uncle's hand was empty. I took out a copper nail from the crack in my father's ginseng pocket and handed it over. Hit the hammer three times, the third hit to the bottom. At that moment, there was a sound inside the coffin. The old branch secretary said that the wood was damp and everyone heard it.
That night I found a notebook in the crack. Kraft paper shell, forty-one lines, one line at a time. In the winter of the 37th year of the Republic of China, I owed a trip to Xiliang in Sandaogou but I still haven't paid it back. Write what has not been paid back, eight strokes.
The last line is from this year: August 19, 1983, Xiliang, owe a trip. The back is empty.
I held the notebook up to the lamp. The words that smeared out on that blank space were not written on them, but seeped out from within the paper. Jiang Shoulin, do you want to answer it?
Someone was talking outside the courtyard gate, and every word seemed to be close to my ear. He said, Jiang Wanshan owes me a trip. If he can't leave, you can pick him up.
I said no.
It was quiet outside for a while. He said, let me come in.
The next morning there was a red-tipped rope tied to the doorpost, new and dry. Seventeen bare footprints on the dirt walked step by step from the gap in the yard to the threshold, with their toes touching the door panel. Only in, no out.
The rules in the mountains are dead. You are not allowed to answer your real name, you are not allowed to look back, and you are not allowed to have your own shadow taken. The journey is endless, and the account is transferred to blood relatives.
I'm nineteen and have never been to the old forest. My father stopped me for twelve years until he sat down and died under the red pine tree in Xiliang.
