“Ai yah,” the old man murmur- ed to himself and rested on his hoe, straightening his old bent back. His face was burnt deep brown: wrinkles encircled his ‘zyes, running down in deep grooves past the compresse corners of his mouth. The upper part of his body, from the waist, was bare. Below, he wore a many patched pair of faded blue - gotton trousers. His feet were bare. Around his head was wrapped a towel, from below “the edges of which the white hair sprung, still strong and eae Gols ‘was bathed in sweat. Yt was very hot. Overhead, the “sun was a_ great shimmering brazen ball in a cobalt sky. Be- neath, the brown, brittle earth threw back the sun’s rays.like a reflection into his bent face. It was a morning in May, on the Hopei plain, outside the city of Pao Ting. Slender willow trees edged the _ little fields covered with the plushlike growth of the young green corn. The fields stretched away to the city’s wall, ising in the near distance. He could just make out with his - old eyes the Japanese sentry stand- ing, rifle in hand, at the city’s gate. Bluejays flashed their white striped wings in the sun, making, with their harsh cries, the heat ever more intense. “Ai yah,’ the old man breathed. “Life was very difficult. He had | to eat much bitterness. First there ‘was his cough. It never seemed to improve. Then his’ only son had left to fight and joined the Partisans, leaving no one at home to till the farm except him and his lame son-in-law. : Then the Japanese were hard people. They took half his crop and paid for nothing. They con- stantly bothered him with ques- tions—where was his son, did he write, what did he say? But the old man pretended to be stupid and would tell them nothing. "Phen there were the weeds. Weeds everywhere. How could one keep up with their growth? Cut them down and they seemed to spring back to life. again over- night. His life seemed to him to be just one great never-ending ‘struggle with his enemy—weeds. There must be a weed devil in the earth, with a hundred thousand heads, a million lives; persistent, ° deathless, mocking. _ _ For over 70 years the old man had fought his enemy and yet here they were ‘as strong, as impudent, as unconquerable as ever. It was very discouraging. Every trouble in the old man’s: life became for him a weed of some kind or another. His*cough _—that was a weed; his having to in the fields again—that was a weed; the absence of his son— indignation. CET ee Ee ee | The Dud Dr @ amamuaiay that was a weed; the Japanese— they were weeds, the biggest weeds of all. , And with the thoughts of weeds, there rose in the old man’s mind a picture of a great green field. It was China. country was for him just one vast farm — one big fertile acre of ‘earth. And he saw this great field overrun with the weeds of the enemy, choking out the life of the young green corn; bold.and ar- rogant. ‘ When he struck vicious- ly at a particularly big insolent weed with his hoe, he would mur- mur to himself, “Yeh Pen Kuei Tzu, Japanese devils, there, take that,” as he dug it up, flung it aside and ‘crushed out its life with the heel of his hoe. * The sun rose higher. The old man worked on. Coming to the end of a row, he stopped short in amazement. There, at the edge of the field, was a curious hole in the ground and sticking up in the | centre of it, something that look- ed like a big black turnip with its top cut off.. For a moment he could not think what it could be. Then ihe remembered. Yes, there could be no doubt about it! It was a shell! He had seen hundreds of shells in the city, stacked up in rows like wood. The Japanese brought them from Pei Ping by train. Once he had been forced to unload a whole carload. He had seen the enemy put them into guns as long as his, carrying pole and as big around as the black earthenware pot he had at home. These guns went off with a tremendous crash. They fired at men they couldn’t even see, hundreds of li away. ~ He and his neighbors had after talked about these guns; what ter- rible weapons they were: how many the enemy had; and what a pity that our troops had none. But to be sure, we did have one, just one. It had been captured in a raid the month before. He‘ re- membered his son, who had stolen home for a visit, telling him about this one gun of theirs; how proud the Partisans were of it; how much it must have cost; how few shells they had and how careful they had to be of them so that none were wasted. Was it one of theirs or was it one of the enemy’s. It lay point- ‘ed towards the city. It must have been fired at the city and fallen short. Then there was no doubt about it. It belonged to the Partisans. “Well, well,” muttered the old man. “Isn’t that just like those young fellows. Here they go simply throwing away one of their few precious shells. Why, it’s scandalous! Young men are al- ways wasteful.” _ He stared at it with increasing A plan grew slowly in his old mind. Raising his head, The whole of his ; SMM he called, in a voice shaking with excitement and anger, to his: son- in-law working in the next field. “Kuai Lai, Kuai Lai, come here quickly.” The young man _ hobbled over. “Look,” said the old one, pointing , ‘at the shell, ‘just look at that. That’s the way those young fel- lows of ours expect to win this ° war . Why, they have so many shells they can waste as many as they please, it makes no differ- ence,” he exclaimed, sarcastically. “That’s the work of my son Chu. Undoubtedly, he is responsible. He was ‘always extravagant. you remember the time he spent a dollar, a whole dollar, for a book? Yes, it’s that same careless one. If I had him here I would tell hiny what I think.” His voice rose in indignation as he regarded the buried shell. But the young man was paying him but little attention. With a cry of wonder and delight, he was down on his knees, scooping away the earth from the shell. In a moment he had it free. ““Look, father, it’s iron. This pointed end | We will now be able to Why, What a is brass. have a new ploughshare. it’s worth $10 at least. find. What luck.” He lifted it carefully, cradling it in his arms like a baby, regard- ing it with pleasure and pride, stroking its shining brass nose and smooth black sides with a living, rough brown hand, seeing already ‘the new ploughshare and the brass lamp to be made from it. “Why, we're right!” he exclaimed in ex- citement. r The great green chequered plain stretched ahead to the distant pale horizon. Bluebells and pink phlox flowers sprang up in the grass along the road. The brown water — in the criss-cross irrigation ditches barely stirred. Poplar and willow trees stood tall and shining, each lifting its umbrella of green, mo- tionless, into the still, blue sky. The old donkey plodded, the old man following in the cloud of dust stirred up by the feet of both. They were soon covered with a pale brown layer which clung to | their skins and filled: ears, nostrils and eyes, with its fine particles. Perspiration ran off the.old man’s face, making little rivulets down’ his cheeks. He wiped it off im- “patiently with his towel. It was very hot: The. whole air visibly vibrated. The dust partic- les danced in the waves of heat. The sun seémed like a heavy cop- per cap on his head. The distant line of the horizon moved up and down with a fine unsteady motion before his eyes. It was noon. Other farmers were stretched out beneath the trees for their noon- day sleep, but still the old man plodded on, driven by determina- tion and anger. He collected burning words for his son like a man selecting jewels. Only the sharpest, the most bitter, would do, “Tl tell that young man what I think of him.” He had a mission to perform, he had a work to do. proud and arrogant. _ Ji after li he urged the donkey on. Neither one of them had ever ~ been so far away. from home in their lives. come 50 li,” the old man muttered. They passed through village after village, which to him had been only names before, which he had never seen in all his 70 years. To ‘all questions from whence he came, he replied, “T come from Don’t - “Why, I must have_ | He felt strong, the east,” and to those enquiries where he was going, the noncom- mittal “I go to thie west,” was his answer. * : Now, he didn’t know exactly where he would find his son. Chu woull never tell him where the Partisans were. “‘You see, father,” he would say, “we Partisans never stay in the same place for long. One day we are here, the next, a hundred li away. We are like birds in the sky or like fish in a deep pool. Like a hawk, we swoop, and strike and fly as fast away. Like a fish we dart to the surface from beneath the shadow ~ of a rock and as quickly swim away.” So the old man’s task to fin his son was likely to be a difficult one. And so it proved to be. To his questions where the Partisans were to be found, none knew, or if they did, would not tell. It was only by chance that late in’ the afternoon he happened to recog- nize a young neighbor of his stahding in a village street. He knew that this neighbor and _ his son were in the same detachment, so his son could not be far away. They greeted each the warmth of old friends. The young man expressed his surprise at the old~man being so far away from home. “Why, Lao Pai, white-haired one, what are you do-— ing here? Have you come to join the Partisans?” he asked jokingly. But the old man was serious. This was no time for jokes. : “Where’s that son of mine?” he asked. “I’ve got something to tell that careless one. I’ve got some- thing to give him, too,” he added mysteriously. “He’s not far away,” said the neighbor. “Come, let us go and find him.” - * Close at hand they found the Partisans. They gathered around the old man and his donkey, in a. great circle in the village street. Nearly a hundred of them. He knew most of them by sight and many by name, and they knew him. ‘They were farmers like him- self. : ey They greeted him with shouts “of welcome. Yet for all that they were old neighbors of his, some- how they, seemed strange to him. They seemed to have changed. Perhaps it was the faded green uniform of the Chin Cah-Chi mili- tary district they wore, instead of the blue trousers and jacket of the farmer. Their faces seemed to have changed, too. Burnt by a thousand suns, winds and rains to the color of the earth itself, they expressed determination and pur- pose. ‘They. carried themselves more erect. They seemed at the one and the same time to be more serious and yet more gay. They moved more quickly, spoke with more decision. zling. Perhaps it was the new Japan- ese rifles that each man carried; perhaps the yellow hand grenades on their belts, but the old man * suddenly felt he knew them only as strangers. “Even his own son seemed to have changed. Some of the anger- and most of his assur- ance oozed out of his finger tips. He felt their superiority. They had become, instead of just old friends, that rather mysterious, separate, rather awe-inspiring: Col- lective Thing—the’ Army. And he was just a lao pai hsing, a civilian, an individual. : So the old man suddenly forgot most of the bitter scornful words it was. other with — It was very puz- short story by © Norman Bethune CEES PEM ME AOMORI RIOR ENO IC MOEN DIC GRICE TC IL EL fis 4 he had carefully been collecting all day long. He looked at their strong courageous faces and the arrogance. melted out of him. When he spoke, the very sound of his voice surprised him, so gentle — Only his parental auth- ority which they all would recog- nize as his right, supported him. He addressed his boy. “My son, I have brought you something.” : ote “Fine,” they all shouted, “What is it? Cigarettes? We need those.” They crowded around the old man and lifted up the leaves in the basket. ‘‘No, it’s something that belongs to you.” Bending over, he raised the shell in his arms. “Here, that’s yours, isn’t it? Now, comrades,” he spoke gently and almost apologetically, “I found this in my field, It didn’t — go off, so. you must have fired ‘is wrong. I’ve brought it back to you, so you can use it again.” For a moment there was silence in the crowd. Then gales’ of laughter burst from their open mouths. The street rocked with their shouts. The old man looked at them in speechless amazement; — waves of non-understanding pass- — ed across his face as clouds across the sky. He turned his head this way, then that. It was inexplic- — able. His brow wrinkled in per- plexity. He,shook his old white. head. He could make nothing of it. It was beyond him. They were mad; He suddenly felt just @ very tired old man. _ : Automatically, he placed the shell back in the donkey’s basket. ‘There was nothing to do but g0 home. His day had been wasted. He looked at the soldiers, his own son, with sorrowful reproach. But noné could speak; all were over- come with laughter. They thump- ed each other on the back, or col- lapsed into each other’s arms overcome with mirth. The old man picked up the donkey’s reins and started to lead him out of the encircling laughing crowd. ‘i His son was the first to recover — and. to understand. He laid his hand on the old man’s sleeve. “NOs father, you mustn’t go.” , “Comrades,” he said, turning to the others and indicating to them, with his back to his father, that they must supoprt him, “comrades; we are all greatly obliged to mY father. He has done us a great ' service,” scowling as he spoke, at— one or two who threatened to burst into laughter again at this remark. : “Yes, yes,” they shouted, under- — ; standing at last the old man’s mis-__ take and eager that he should be deceived. “Yes, you have been @ true soldier. We are grateful te you.” Now they crowded about the old man and praised him. “We will use it again,” they lied grace fully. a Gradually his old lined face broke into smiles. Gradually he began to feel important again. He felt he was one of them. He felt strong and authoritative. His a" surance returned like a tide. They ‘had made a mistake, but now they — knew he was right. “My boy, you must never do that again.’ “No, no,” they all shouted earl estly. “We apologize. It was certainly wrorg of us. In the future we will be more careful: We won't let that happen agails we tell you.” Bag ge j So the old qman_ was happy — again. He had rooted up 4 big weed that day. He had done some thing to clear the field of China. _ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 28, 1952 — PAGE.