Naked Earth Read Online Free Page A

there was in the air a touch of the golden haze of setting sun. The cicadas had just started singing, a bit wheezily. The long syrupy threads of sound ran on unbroken from tree to tree.
    A knot of people had gathered around the truck parked on the wayside. The rain had washed off the dust from the cab of the truck. Children were peering at their own reflections in the dark green metal doors, aglow with the last rays of the slanting sun. They doubled up, slapping their knees, helpless with laughter, as if they were the funniest-looking objects in the world. Men and women, both wearing odd little sleeveless blouses of white cloth, also bent down peering and giggling but barking prohibitive phrases at the children. Somehow it came as a shock to Liu that he could understand the few words that floated up to where he stood, halfway down the steps. Perhaps there had been a moment when he had felt, with a guilty twinge, that these people were as foreign to him as Malays or Ethiopians.
    A short girl with greasy shoulder-length hair and a broad savage face, not unattractive, had been squatting beside the truck holding up her baby, trying to make it look at its own mirrored image without much success. A beardless old man with a basket slung on one arm came up from the rear and stood staring, his brows arched high in surprise on his vacuously handsome, smiling face.
    The old man had been standing there for some moments before a man turned to ask him, “Your son back from the market yet?”
    The old man hemmed and hawed absentmindedly as he continued to gape at the truck.
    “Sold anything?” the other man asked.
    The old man looked away vaguely as if he had forgotten some important errand and at once started across the field. He treaded carefully on the narrow winding footpath, crossing his bare feet daintily with every step, his blue tatters flapping in the breeze. After he had gone some distance he glanced back over his shoulder at the truck. He was still smiling, with brows arched high in the same pleased and astonished expression. About twenty yards from there he looked back again with the same smile and raised brows.
    The crowd appeared to take no notice of his departure. But presently the man who had spoken to him sniggered. “Scared him off.”
    “Bet you they didn’t sell any of it,” a woman said. “Who buys pork this time of year? It’s neither the New Year nor a festival.”
    “Must be all spoiled, in this heat. Over twenty miles to the market and back,” said the man.
    “Spoiled! Must be cooked!” she said. “Crazy to kill pigs at this time of year.”
    Another man sighed. “Ai! He might as well kill them while the killing is good.”
    Liu instinctively drew behind a tree as if he did not want to risk being seen, so he could hear more of it. He must have pushed against the tree trunk, making it shake, because the cicadas stopped singing.
    The people down below stopped talking. They just stood looking at the truck.
    “Did these people come down from the District Headquarters or the hsien —the county?” a man finally said.
    Nobody answered. But another man said, “They’ll never be able to get up anything around here. Now, over there in Seven Mile Fort where there’s a big landlord they sure had fun,” he said giggling. “Before they even struggled against the landlord, his red silk, padded blankets were already piled on the beds of the kan-pu .”
    The crowd tittered. While nobody told him to stop babbling, some of the more prudent people started to move away.
    “Think I’ll go and see if they’ve sold any of the pork,” a man said. “I don’t know but that I’ll get some and have crescent dumplings for dinner. Might as well.”
    It looked as if soon everybody would be gone except perhaps the children. Liu came down the steps shouting from far off, “Hey, kinsmen! Anybody seen the drivers?”
    They turned startled faces towards this shape coming out of the dark.
    “I’m looking for the drivers.