Part 4 - Running Into the Great Wall by Ken Kesey (continued)  Part 3

In Lowell, Massachusetts, Bobby Hodge (P.R. 2:10:59) decided to pack his doggy copy of Kerouac's Dharma Bums, after all. He knew he wouldn't read it-except on the plane a little, perhaps-but he liked the idea of taking Jack to China, as a favor from one old Lowell athlete to another....

In their house outside Yi Sichuan, Yang was idly studying mathematics. He had less than a week before the trip to Beijing and his instructors at school had decided he could best prepare for his absence by staying home and studying on his own. From the other room came the whir of his uncle's motorcycle motor as he drilled away at the days collection of cavities. The motor blanketed the occasional groans his patients sometimes made in spite of the bristle of anesthetic needles in the neck and arms.

Yang was seated on a box at the table near the window. If the sun had been out it would have fallen across his high-boned face and bare shoulders, but it was overcast. It had been overcast for days. Weeks. Since before the floods.

His sister came in from the rear door carrying a fan of green leaves and dumped them in a large kettle of cold water, singing as she went elaborately from task to task. Yang recalled the stanza she was singing. It was from a skit all the girls in his sister's primary had learned and performed for National Day a year ago. The girls had learned the song from a play that was mailed out to all the primaries, a short musical dramatization emphasizing the value of early warning and treatment of stomach cancer, China's number one killer. His sister had stopped attending school after that year, speaking of plans to join the People's Liberation Army and journey with the service. Now she washed and dried cabbage leaves and stacked them beside her aunt's wok-delicately, with the extravagance of fantasy play, as though arranging expensive silks-while she sang:

How very fine, Yang agreed without raising his head from the New Math worktext; how commendable. But please explain if possible how one uses the principles of Prevention First when dealing with the diseases of the revolution itself? Wouldn't the very cure be dangerously counterrevolutionary?

He closed the big paperback on his finger and turned to watch his sister sing beneath the bird hanging caged above her. She was long turned 15 and rounding out rapidly. Soon, someone-one of the women, his mother or his aunt or the bus mistress who also served as the unit leader-would have to accompany the girl to their communal market for her first undergarment. This would be a heavy cotton binding, designed not so much for support as to forestall decadent fancies among the men of the village and, incidently, slow population growth. In five years the binding would' have been so permanent that Yang would not be able to pick her from a dozen her same age if they were lined up 30 steps away-the same white shirt, the same black pants, the same pigtails ... perhaps that was why she wanted to join the PLA; if the uniforms were always ill-fitting and baggy they at least were less uniform than what all the other girls her age would be wearing.

Now his sister sung and swayed in unfettered innocence, still flushing with the red glow of patriotism. Yang could recall the sensation, a vibrating, a thrill to be part of something vast and exciting. He could remember feeling that his blood was beating in cadence with everyone in the village and town, to a great shared rhythm. When he was nine, he remembered, there had come a dreadful plague of flies throughout all the land. To deal with the problem their mighty chairman had done a mighty and yet simple thing. Mao had launched an edict proclaiming that while it was not required it would be a very good thing if all the schoolchildren in all the schools in all the land should bring to their schoolteachers every morning 10 dead flies. Yang remembered how he had dedicated himself to the chore with all the fervor of a warrior of old serving his emperor. He spent hours each afternoon stalking the pestiferous foe with a rolled newspaper. slaying scores past 10. Hundreds-thousands!-poured each morning from his paper cone into the teacher's waiting tray. And everywhere other boys were turning in comparable kills, not out of competition or desire for recognition, but out of cooperation! In less than a month the flies were gone, everywhere, all across China. Each school room was sent an official red silk pennant to hang in the window and Yang had been filled with the sort of pride and wonder that made national songs rise to the throat.

Then he learned from the biology teacher in pre-middle that the year preceding the Great Fly Kill had been the year of the Great Sparrow Kill. Mao had learned from his advisors that there were such-and-so many wild birds in China and, during a year's life, each bird could be calculated to eat at least this-and-that much grain. Which came to a whole lot. So Mao had edicted that all the kids should go out beneath all the trees where all the birds roosted, and beat clappers all night every night until they roosted no more. After three nights the birds were all dead from exhaustion and irritation. All across China! How very impressive and commendable. Except that, in the seasons after the birdless year, there were all those flies ...

No, the slogan songs no longer brought the old beat of pride to Yang's blood. Though he still enjoyed hearing it ring in his sister's clear, high voice, he feared it was gone from him forever, that pride, cold and gone.

But not the wonder, he was glad to say. Not that. For instance, what had all those school teachers in all those classrooms all across China done with all those dead flies?

He who is fearless in being bold will
   meet with his death;
He who is fearless in being timid will
   stay alive.
Of the two, one leads to good, the
   other to harm.
Heaven hates what it hates,
Who knows the reason why?

It would be his last workout. The special trainer assigned him by the academy had advised him to keep his customary fervor in check. But, as always, when he reached this feeble cotton field with its nine grassy pyramids, Yang veered off the packed red ruts and went hurdling through the ragged rows. He headed for the tallest of the mounds. He didn't know the name of the huge escarpment, only that it was a feng, one of a multitude of false tombs built across his province centuries ago by sly emperors hoping to thwart desecration by thieves, or excavation by the perfidious future.

It must have either been a successful ruse-Yang had never seen one of the ancient mounds disturbed-or a futile folly; leaks from the surviving royal court could have led grave robbers directly to the true tomb.

He did not look behind him. He knew the rest of the team was far back, out of sight past the turn at the canal, still jogging in and out of the swaying buses and honking taxis and 10-ton trucks filled with soldiers; and the horse and donkey carts carting bokchoi and corn from the fields to the town and fertilizer from the town's honey pools back to the fields; and the little trailers pulled by compact two-wheeled walking tractors that unhitched to become cultivators; and the 12 cylinder diesel tractors pulling the big trailers groaning under loads of the dark red earth assigned to relocation; and the bicycles.

The bicycles, bicycles, bicycles.

All left behind, with the rest of the team, back on the main road. The way Yang liked it. The only runner out ahead of him was his friend Zhoa Chengchun. Zhoa and Yang had pulled quickly away from the others back on the highway, but at the canal turn Yang had slackened his stride to allow Zhoa to run on: ahead.

"Chi oh!" he had urged his friend, pretending to pant with exhaustion. "Chi oh. " Pour on the gas.

To have kept up would not have been respectful. Zhoa was nearly four years his senior and already a member of the academy. Zhoa was the hometown hero and the provincial marathon champion. His time of 2:19 was second only to the 2:13 of Chinese record-holder, Xu Liang. Yang felt he could have matched Zhoa's pace for many more kilometers, but he did not wish to show a discourtesy. He let him run on.

Besides, Yang liked to have this part of his workout to himself.

His sprint took him past the gaggle of young girls working to salvage some of the season's rain-ravaged cotton, then along the dirt dike to the irrigation ditch. Without slowing he long-jumped across the shallow, coffee-brown stream, his feet churning the air. His landing startled a small hare from the brush along the bank. Yang called after the zigzagging animal "Chi oh you too, long ears," and he heard the girls laugh behind him.

He sprinted on to the steep path at the corner of the feng, then slowed cautiously. It had drizzled again that morning and the worn dirt would be slick. Shortening his stride, he sought out clumps of ribbonweed and purple daisies for traction. The last thing he wanted to do before tomorrow's trip was slip and fall on the red mud. Not that he was concerned about injury-he had never been hurt, in any of his sports-but to soil the brand new, light blue, French made warm-ups sent him by his sponsors in Beijing, that would have been more than discourteous. That would have been close to traitorous.

The climb made his heart quicken in his ears and brought a light beadwork of sweat to his lower lip. That was good. He did not perspire easily, even in this French suit of artificial fibers, and he needed a sweat to flush the poisons and rinse his head. He ran harder.

When he at last achieved the flattened 10 meter square at the peak of the dirt pyramid, he was sweating hard and his panting was no longer feigned. Still, he did not rest. To keep the juices steaming, he went immediately into his taijiquan routine. He did all the traditional maneuvers plus some his father had created-"Stand By to Kick Monkey Nuts" and "Feed the Dog That Bites You"-then moved on to the new national routine, the one that had been instituted since the fall of the Gang. Much like football warm-ups - jumping jacks, toe touches, neck twists. After these exercises he commenced scurrying around the little earth square in a hunching crouch, shadow-wrestling. He was a good wrestler. The summer before he had placed third in the Torch Festival in his age/weight, and for a time his instructors at middle school wished him to concentrate on that sport, leave distance running to those with longer legs. He demurred but kept in wrestling shape. When there was a wedding in the village he was the one called on by the bride's family for the traditional bout with the bridegroom's supporters. The families knew he could make a good showing against the surrogate suitors and, more important, when pitted against the groom himself, Yang could be counted on to lose.

"He didn't know the name of the huge
escarpment, only that it was a feng, one
  of a multitude of false tombs built
  across his province centuries ago."

He finished off his workout with 40 fast push-ups from his fingertips, the way his instructors had made him learn, then 40 fast sit-ups, hammering his stomach muscles as he finished.

He forced his mind to calm as he pounded the familiar knots from his abdomen. What was to worry? No one expected victory. No one threatened reprisal. Only continuity was required. Run from here to there and back. Who could not achieve, having been called?

His fists finally drove out the embolism and at last he fell back, the clean clothes forgotten, and sent his breathing up into the sky. It was all one color. There had been no sign of the sun all day. There would be no stars again all night. For- months now the sky had shut them out, the air itself pressing like a heavy pewter lid on a shallow pot. It gave him no pleasure, this sky.

He rolled over and sat up so he was looking out over the eastern face of the mound. He gazed past the other eight fengs, over the checkerboard grid of cotton and cabbage and corn, in the direction Zhoa had informed him that they would fly tomorrow to reach Beijing, thousands of miles away.

Yang could not conceive of such a distance. Neither could he imagine that there were vast stretches between, of towering mountains and terrible gorges, huge regions, Zhoa had claimed, where no one lived. No green fields crawling with work units like aphids on a rose leaf; no smoky jam of noisy huts; no roads, no bicycles, no people. Just lifeless space, the way it was on the rare winter evenings when the clouds were driven south by the cold and the long flank of the night between his bed window and the stars was laid naked.

Where no one lives, Yang marvelled; such a thought! Even here, seated in dim solitude at the top of the feng, Yang did not feel that he was truly alone. The noise of civilization reached him on the conducting damp air from every direction, near and distant. The far off hum and honk of the town, the nearby prattle of the girls in the cotton-it was all one to him. Evidence of human effort in every direction.

He heard the girls laugh again and stretched to see over the weeds. The other runners were approaching at last along the road, meeting Zhoa on his way back from the turn-around. The girls laughed at the way the puffing stragglers grabbed at Zhoa's belly to make him smile. Everyone like to tease Zhoa so they could see his smile. It was spectacular. He had been blessed with an extra tooth, diamond-shaped, right between his two regular front teeth. Healthy, too, his uncle had said of the phenomenon. Healthy and bright; it made his smile seem doubly wide. Yang could see it flash even from his distant seat.

The giggling suddenly ceased and Zhoa's smile fled. Looking back up the road, Yang saw the reason: three rough looking young men coming down the ruts behind the team, laughing. They were carrying shotguns and examining footprints, pretending that they were on the trail of the runners. A joke, certainly, but no one except the three with guns laughed. Zhoa ran past the three faces without looking at them.

These were not ordinary hunters. Their unkept hair and loud swagger revealed that they were what were called labor-toughs, a growing cadre of semidelinquents who had eschewed education for the fields or the factories, and the hidden fantan cellers. Red red-necks. Their attitude toward the pampered students was well known. Especially sport students. There had been skirmishes and the toughs had promised more. Pampered people loping nowhere was contrary to the spirit of the true Revolution, was their claim, as well as a thorn in the side of honest workers. Competitive track was just another sign of Western decadence creeping into Revolutionary China in the garb of physical education! Let comrades seeking exercise take up the shovel, and let the capitalist pigs have their pig races against each other. That is what the Chairman would have said, and that is what the Chairman would have done!

Only in the last few years had competition become acceptable enough to come out into the open. It was like the hidden pets. Bird owners could be seen again, walking their singing cages through the parks. And just this morning his sister had told Yang that she had seen a woman who worked at the Friendship Hotel carrying a cat. It was still unacceptable to purchase a pet, but his sister said the animal had been shipped as a gift to the hotel by a recent guest from London, so the unit leader had told the staff they could keep it.

"Can you imagine?" his sister had wondered, "A live cat from a foreign land, sent to you free?"

Only with difficulty, Yang thought, trying to reconcile in his mind such ironies as loud young reactionaries and free foreign cats and ancient false tombs. For example, it had always been an irony to him that these fengs, the forced effort of Thousands of slaves thousands of years ago afforded him the loftiest feelings of Freedom he had ever known.

Except for, of course, running. If you ran far enough you could get away. For a while. So, it almost seemed that freedom came as a result of forced effort, as though the brain needed the minions of the legs and lungs and heart to find the way of separation, of solitude. Yes, only with some amount of difficulty could one reconcile that way, so meandering and obtuse and contradictory, with the straight Party Line.

Continued in Part 5