The Chinese Bandit

by Stephen Becker

  Handsome had remounted and circled back behind the hill.

  What Jake did then was, he offered a short prayer. There was doubtless some ancient Chinese bow-and-arrow grace to be said at such times. Lord of all under heaven. The camel-pullers had a friendly name for God, Lao Tien-yeh, old man God. So he shut his eyes and said, Old man God, I have sinned but forget that now. There is no man that sinneth not. I have made an effort from time to time and hope you will extend a little credit temporarily.

  He made himself comfortable, or at least stable, and pulled in a few deep breaths to soothe the system. His right eye burned but the vision was clear. He adjusted the sling, good and tight, snapped the safety off, spat out the scrap of paper, read carefully, and set the rear sight. About three hundred yards. Estimating the distance, and verifying that there was no wind, he grew calm. A man doing the work he was trained for. A little shaky before the bell but once in the ring okay.

  He sighted for the center of the bundle. His hands trembled; he waited. He clenched and unclenched his fists, and shut his eyes for a bit. The bandits were quiet. When he was ready he sighted again. He drew in another breath, let it half out, and lay like a rock. The front sight held steady. He squeezed off the shot.

  He heard the crack but never felt the recoil. He rolled over and slipped his arm out of the sling, and lay on his back with the rifle heavy on his chest and the barrel cool along his cheek. He heard Handsome’s hoofbeats, also his shouts, but could not make out what he was saying. The sky was huge, blue and neutral; the sun burned at his belly. He shivered, and went on shivering. He could not stop shivering.

  When Handsome rode in, Jake sat up and tossed the rifle to Momo. He bowed his head. He had done all a man could do. If they blew his brains out now, it would not be his fault. And anyway, he thought, a last joke, anyway, if they kill me I will die without wetting my pants. He heard them jabbering but did not dare look up.

  Then a hand wedged the target between his legs, and they all made rowdy laughter.

  It was Jim’s head, and Jake had made him a third eye, in the middle.

  III / TURKESTAN

  21

  Ugly was a huge brute with a fat, striped face, and his cotton shirt bulged: neck, biceps, belly, breasts shadowing like a woman’s. He blocked Jake’s horizon. Yet he was not fat; he was massive.

  His eyes were not cruel and not kind. Jake was merchandise, and Ugly appraised him.

  Jake was sucking in long breaths, and releasing airy grunts. Muscles leapt and quivered. His belly fluttered. He was sweating freely. He twisted to thank heaven, and the sun was a needle in the eye.

  “On your feet, American.”

  Jake rose warily to a crouch, and then stood. His knees wobbled like the rubber man’s in a sideshow; there was no stilling them.

  The bandits laughed. “It will pass,” Ugly said, and to Momo, “Give him his clothes.”

  “He’s so pretty,” Momo pouted.

  Jake scurried to the clothes and dressed quickly. The difference it made: a man again. He knotted the sash and slipped into his shoes. He knew that he ought to be counting horses and camels, spotting weapons and making shrewd plans for a heroic escape. His eyes teared. He was not weeping but his eyes were tearing noticeably. His heart boomed.

  “A big one,” Handsome said.

  “Taller than I am,” Ugly said.

  “A buggering giraffe,” Momo said.

  Jake could summon up no bright remarks so kept his gob shut. Kao. This striped animal had spoken Kao’s name.

  “Tie his hands,” Ugly ordered, and Momo obeyed.

  Jake cried out.

  “Momo,” Ugly reprimanded.

  Momo slacked off.

  “My hat,” Jake mumbled. He ducked; the flat of Momo’s hand fanned him. “And tell this Japanese dog to lay off me,” he howled.

  “Why should I tell him that?”

  The question could not be answered. There was no reason whatever why Momo should not beat him to death.

  “What about a fair fight?” Jake said. It sounded silly.

  “But we try not to fight,” Ugly humored him. He went on as if to a child: “You see, we are bandits and not soldiers.”

  It seemed very simple. Jake made painful efforts to understand this simple way of life. For some seconds he stood frowning. “Then there is no way,” he said at last.

  “There is no way.”

  “They will beat me when they want.”

  “They will beat you when they want.”

  “It does not seem manly,” Jake said.

  Momo slugged him on the shoulder; Jake staggered sideways. His arm died. “Tomorrow,” Momo said. “Much buggering.” He drew a knife and thumbed its tip.

  “Now what is this about your hat?” Ugly asked.

  “The sun kills all alike,” Jake said, not looking up; humble; meeting no one’s eye.

  “Fetch it,” Ugly told Mouse.

  Mouse clapped it hard onto Jake’s blond head, saying, “Long life and prosperity.”

  “Now,” Ugly said, “where are the uniquely precious goods?”

  “The two geldings are mine,” Jake said. “All I own is on them.”

  Handsome slugged his other arm and sent him hopping toward Momo. The Japanese shoved him happily toward Mouse. Sun and sky spun. Mouse bulled him back to Handsome. They were not shouting and laughing like children in a playground; they were grim and sardonic like men who knew little amusement. Jake might have kicked out but thought better of it. He shut his eyes and hunched. The roof of his mouth tasted of vomit. Handsome set both hands on Jake’s chest and pushed. Someone had knelt behind Jake, the kids’ trick, and Jake went down hard, backward, crunching to earth on his bound arms. The breath whooshed out of him, and the sky rocked.

  He opened his eyes to see Ugly standing over him, upside down, looming. “You must answer the question,” Ugly said, “more accurately.”

  “You tell me about Kao,” Jake wheezed, “and I’ll tell you about the goods.”

  “You will tell us about the goods,” Ugly said pleasantly, “or we will remove the appendages of the right side of your body, namely the ear, the eye, the hand, the plum and the foot. Then, because we are not barbarians and fair is fair, we will release you.” Ugly shrugged. “We will then comb through your goods at leisure. I asked merely in good will. And to see if you returned our good will.”

  Handsome said, “Kill him now. What is this game?”

  “I told you,” Mouse said. “He is insignificant.”

  Ugly sighed. “And you were right.” Upside down he drew a pistol; upside down he sighted.

  Jake panicked, strangled, and could not speak; and then in a rush he said, “Major K’uang has it, Major K’uang has it, Major K’uang has it,” and he was still saying it, again and again, when Ugly holstered the pistol. Momo said, “Listen to that,” and Ugly said, “Stop your babbling, American, and tell us about it”; and Jake stopped his babbling, and lay like one dead thanking old man God. For his mercy endureth forever.

  “It was worth a fortune,” Ugly said in deep melancholy. They sat in a circle, all but Handsome who stood with a handful of reins while the ponies fidgeted and the camels lay snobbish and indifferent. Jake sat wrinkled and gray beneath the coolie hat. “It was worth two years of this riding and raiding for all of us. May the gods wither that bastard of a major.”

  “You know him,” Jake said nervously.

  “We know him.”

  “There was nothing I could do.”

  “Nothing. He would gut you like a fish. A man of no morals.”

  “Unlike us,” Jake said, and for one second, a flash of the eyes, he and Ugly were comfortable together.

  Ugly clapped hands. “To work.” He sprang up. “You come along. We’ll go through this garbage. Ho! What now?” His head back, he scanned the sky.

  “A breeze,” Momo said.

  Jake felt it too. Far to the south he saw a single ice-cream cloud. “I’m thirsty,” he said. Momo raised a han
d but did not strike.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Ugly said. “Momo, keep an eye on him. Listen, American. You have a name?”

  “Ta-tze,” Jake said.

  “Tartar?” Ugly mocked him. “Then you can ride a pony till he drops, and drink his blood for food, and spit babies on a sword.”

  “It’s only a nickname,” Jake said.

  “On your feet.”

  “My hands,” Jake said. “I can’t get away, I can’t fight you all.”

  “Not with your hands tied, you can’t.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Jake said.

  “It is necessary,” Ugly said. “You are too good a shot.”

  They watched Jake struggle to his feet. “I can’t even piss,” he said angrily.

  “Store it up,” Ugly said. “We use it to clean wounds. Now, what are these goods?”

  Jake ran down the list. His mouth was dry. The hat was tilted; he righted it with a shoulder. He stomach was still knotted but he had earned a day, maybe several days. Later he would kill them all: a promise. The resolve eased him.

  “Cameras,” Ugly said, disgusted. “What is this big one?”

  “Aerial photography.”

  “And where is the airplane?”

  The bandits guffawed and swatted thigh. Jake had not seen an airplane the whole time. Only the couple of burned-out hulls.

  “The cigarettes will do,” Ugly said. “The wire is merely silly. These kegs, these accursed kegs: what else is in them?”

  “Nails,” Jake said. “Double-headed nails for construction.”

  “Let us check that.”

  “K’uang checked it.”

  Ugly nodded. “Of course. And we keep the tea. Coil those ropes. What are these boxes?”

  “Tool kits.”

  Ugly spat. “For repairing ponies.”

  Jake shrugged. An eddy of sand rose spinning, and sprayed in the breeze.

  “Dump it all,” Ugly said, and the other three ripped into the goods.

  “Aha!” Momo said. “A touch of home! A Model Ninety-nine. And in good shape. And ammunition.”

  “Binoculars.” Ugly adjusted a pair and glassed the horizon. “We keep these. And those are compasses. Keep them also.”

  Handsome staved in the four kegs; nails spilled. He sifted through them; dumped them; a mound of nails rose. “Nothing but nails.” He spat; he gathered handfuls of nails; they rained down, and another mound grew.

  “Check all four kegs,” Ugly said.

  Mouse was tossing cameras to the dunes. “These goods are worth money,” Jake said.

  “Not to us,” Ugly said. “We are not merchants. We are gentlemen and archers and travel light. We keep gold. Silver. Precious gems.”

  “Thousands of buggering nails,” Handsome said. “Tens of thousands.”

  Jake saw his world thrown away on the desert. The breeze stirred; already a film of reddish sand had bronzed the nails. Soon they would be four tawny mounds marking the grave of Jake’s hopes, just four more humps in the desert.

  When the goods were scattered or packed, Ugly said, “Hao-k’an. One camel.”

  Hao-k’an. It meant good-looking. Handsome drew a long-bladed knife and cut Sweetwater’s throat. While she bled he gutted and skinned her. Bad Smell chewed her cud and observed calmly. “The liver is good,” Momo announced.

  “My camel,” Jake said sadly.

  “We’ll wrap you in the hide if you want,” Ugly said.

  Jake shut up.

  Handsome hacked at the quarters. He was smeared with blood.

  “No flies, anyway,” he said. “I wonder how long before they would come.”

  “And maggots,” Ugly said. “Take the shoulders too. Wrap it all in that brocade.”

  “Do not rush me,” Hao-k’an said.

  “No meat on the ribs,” Momo said. “They drove them hard.”

  “No grass,” Jake said. “Dried peas.” In spite of himself he was absorbing this. Thus it is done, and so, leaving a head and many ribs and a pile of guts, a tail and a bloody hide.

  When Sweetwater was butchered and wrapped, Hao-k’an stripped. He rolled in a patch of sand. Mouse went to him and rubbed him down; then Mouse and Momo polished him with a long sheet of cloth. He came away clean, abraded red in patches. He stepped to his pony and guzzled a long swig of water from a canvas-covered canteen. British army, Jake thought. His throat was like sandpaper. “You don’t even stand guard,” he said. “Suppose they came back shooting?”

  “Never,” Ugly said. “They cut their losses, always. It is the way. And we will not hit them again. The House of Wu has paid its toll for this trip.”

  They lashed the wrapped meat to their ponies.

  “If we left him,” Momo suggested, “we could cut up the other one and load the meat on Bayan’s pony.”

  Jake panted in the noonday heat; they all stood in yellow glare. The remains of Sweetwater seemed to simmer. Ponies shifted, edgy.

  “I think not,” Ugly said.

  “What’s he good for?”

  “Bugger,” Mouse said, and they laughed.

  Ugly said slowly, “An instinct tells me to keep him.”

  “Ransom?”

  “Ransom,” Ugly said. “Hostage. Reward. He says he has stolen and killed.”

  “Mostly Japanese,” Momo said, and smiled sweetly. “Tomorrow,” he promised.

  “He may be unusual,” Mouse said. “He wears green underpants.”

  “All Americans wear green underpants,” Hao-k’an said positively. “That is a fact.”

  Ugly stood pensive.

  “I told you the truth,” Jake said finally, “and that was a good shot.” He tried to speak proudly and without pleading. Better a dead sergeant than a live beggar, he had always thought.

  “It was indeed a good shot,” Ugly said. “But I have other reasons. I have other plans. I have decided. Tie him to the pony.” He beamed upon Jake; the ridges of his face stretched and bent. “You owe your life to my old friend Tu.”

  “Who?” Jake asked.

  Ugly made big teeth: “He is also your old friend.”

  They ran a rope from one ankle to another beneath the pony’s belly, and another from Jake’s left ankle to his left wrist, a short one so that he rode doubled over, his right hand tight on the reins. Ugly and Momo rode before, and Mouse and Handsome behind. As they left the swale among the dunes Jake had time to turn his head once; he saw the bloody heap of Sweetwater, and the pile of guts, lightly sanded over by the gentle breeze; his goods too, lightly sanded over for all eternity; here lies Jake’s new life.

  And he saw Bad Smell watching after them, stripped of his burdens, only the nose peg to mark him as tame, and the reins lying useless. Then the riders crossed a low ridge and Jake lay forward, aching and thirsting, only the coolie hat between his sad, hard, empty head and the merciless sun; and he never saw Bad Smell again, and that night he ate a slice of Sweetwater’s off-quarter, and was allowed one small cup of his own tea.

  22

  “They eat with forks,” Hao-k’an told the others some days later, “and they eat raw onion for breakfast. That is a fact.”

  Jake thought that he should talk with these four, that when they conceded him human they would ease up on him. But when he spoke they walloped him. “I too have killed,” Hao-k’an said, puffing out his chest. “Many many. And a myriad of women have loved me.”

  The bandits rode in a diamond around Jake and he was learning what he could about their equipment:

  The slung rifles and the bandoleers.

  The knives longer than his hunting knife, longer even than bowie knives, and the blades curved slightly.

  The khaki pants and cotton shirts stolen from some army.

  The hats—Ugly’s and Momo’s campaign hats, Hao-k’an’s cotton brimless, like a convict’s hat, and Mouse’s wide-brimmed felt, floppy now like some society woman’s at a tea party.

  The saddles, saddlebags, saddlecloths.

  The felt boots, one layer,
summer boots.

  The old, tough leather—girths and stirrup-leathers and hackamores. The stirrups were of iron and well-wrought, and Jake was studying all this not only to learn but also to stay sane, when they rounded a bend in the road and Ugly said, “Ah.”

  Jake sat straight as he could and held his breath. He was approaching a village. It was four houses and a well, and beyond it he thought he could make out a true meadow.

  He heard a sheep bleat. His throat was woolly dry, but his mouth watered.

  Ugly urged his pony to a trot; the others too, smacking Jake’s on the rump. Jake thought they were attacking.

  The villagers—a dozen of them, including children—were shapeless and sullen. Jake thought they had a right to be. Their village was barren and hot, their houses were dug out of the dense yellow earth and roofed over with whatever came to hand: adobe, withes, several hides.

  Ugly dismounted. “We need food and water. We mean no harm, and will pay.”

  “Pay.” An elder’s dull eye lightened in greed. “Women too you need perhaps.”

  “And why not,” Ugly said.

  “Ai-ya!” Hao-k’an said. “How many have you?”

  The men were baked and scoured: hard, dry, skinny. The women were shapeless in cotton shifts—stringy women and unwashed, one pimpled and an old one toothless, with a plume of hair; they were hungry. They were all hungry. The elder said, “The army took everything.”

  “Not everything,” Ugly said. “I see grass, and I see sheep.”

  “They are all we have. We have no grain and no oil for the lamps. We have no tea and nothing to smoke.” The villagers shifted and muttered.

  Ugly said, “We have tea.”

  The elder said, “We have water.”

  The others dismounted. Momo freed Jake, who slid off the pony but hung around his neck, stretching and wincing.

  “Take the horses to grass,” Ugly ordered. “Offload, and tether them. When they have cooled down, water them.”

  Mouse prodded Jake. Together they gathered up the reins, and shuffled toward the sparse meadow. “We want a sheep,” Ugly was saying. “Are you rich in water, or poor?”

  Jake could not hear the answer. “Why do you buy here and not take?” he asked Mouse.