Hainan Dao

Book II Chapter 06

HAINAN DAO BOOK II

CHAPTER 06

The conditions on the Island continued to worsen. Rumours of the horrors on the Mainland filtered their way into Hainan. The people grew fearful. Many stopped their farming and abandoned their crops. Others left. They left in search of safe haven, leaving everything else behind. Some traveled to places like Macao and Hong Kong, while others went even further than that. These journeyed across the oceans, and made land as far away as the United States of America, a country that had only been heard of in stories back then, where the people were ten feet tall and had eyes that shone in the dark.

In the wake of the mass migration, there remained only emptiness. Empty streets. Empty homesteads. Empty shops, long gone out of business, with their doors now swinging open and close, in the dust and dirt and the empty wind.

Into these ghost towns, the looters were the first to come. Scavenging every morsel, leaving only bones behind, they cleaned out all the abandoned places. The robbers came next. They attacked all the still open ones.

Grandfather had been in the store that day. He had been going over the books after the others had gone home. The bandits burst through the doors in a rage, screaming for blood and demanding cash.

Grandfather seethed. The old army officer in him welled up in anger, and he ranted and cursed the intruders for their cowardice.

They killed him.

His body, propped up against the wall, was bleeding still and warm, when the ragged band of men shuffled out of the shop again and into the cover of night.

***

The funeral had been scheduled for next week and Yixi was to lead in the procession. All the pallbearers were gathered beforehand and instructed in a sombre meeting. They were reminded that this was a ceremony of the highest importance and not to be taken lightly. These were the instructions. Once the casket was lifted off the altar, they were told, it was not to touch the ground again until it had officially arrived at the burial site. It was fifteen miles from the temple, where the service was going to be held, to the final resting place on the mountain. They were to march for this entire distance with the coffin hoisted upon their shoulders, and continuously, without pausing or slowing down. There will be no changing of hands. There will be no stumbles or falls. And even if, Heaven forbid, that that should happen, no one will be coming to their aid.

On the day of the burial, the sun arrived early in all its glory and majesty. With not a cloud in the sky for a spot of shade, the heat rained down on the land and simmered the morning into haziness. Inside the temple, Yixi, his mother and a few of his cousins knelt on straw mats that had been placed on the floor off to one side of the altar. Yingjing was there too. Somewhere. She had stuffed herself in the rear of the company close to the back wall. Though Yixi couldn’t see her at the moment, he wasn’t worried. He had told one of his cousins at the back to check on the altar every once in a while, and make sure that none of the fruit on it were missing.

The company bowed together whenever a mourner approached the altar. It was done to thank the visitor for his condolences.

Yixi didn’t look up at the people who came. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He held himself still and did not weep. The other villagers gawked at him openly. They shook their heads. Neither the noise from the wailing of women all around him, nor the smell of burning candles and death, appeared to move the young heir from his stolidness. He only tipped his head a degree or two, whenever new feet intruded into his field of vision, darkening the path to the front of the altar, but that was all.