The smoke from Old Cat’s unfiltered cigarette merged with the fog as he walked across the parking lot and away from the generator building. The whispering and snoring and soft lullabies he heard through the thin cloth of the makeshift tents intermingled with memories of the communal life on the collective farm of his youth.
He continued for a hundred yards beyond the last tent and the last guard, until there was only silence, except for his slow drag of air through the tobacco and his long exhale. The low mist separated and he could see stars against the blackness and high clouds side-lit by the moon. He shivered as the mist closed over him again.
His mind drifted back to nights listening to the elderly veterans of the Long March who’d fled the advance of the Nationalists, the long, circling retreat, and he wondered whether a long march of defeat awaited him, too, or whether it would be a short walk with his hands tied behind him that would end with a bullet in the back of his—
“Don’t move.”
The voice was low and harsh.
Old Cat grabbed for the semiautomatic in his coat pocket. Arms locked on to his.
Warm breath wafted toward him from faces inches away. Cold metal dug into his ear.
“Make a sound,” the voice said, “and I’ll shoot.”
Handcuffs snapped around his wrists. Tape slapped against his mouth. Hands clamped onto his elbows and turned him ninety degrees and forced him forward. He stumbled two steps, then his feet caught up with him. A car motor started. A door opened, but the inside light stayed dark.
From fifteen feet away, he recognized that it was a PLA Brave Warrior combat vehicle. He’d seen them on the roads around Chengdu and often wondered who was the enemy.
Now he knew. And it was him.
Soldiers bracketed him in the rear seat as the SUV crept across the parking lot and toward the road leading out of the special economic zone. As they drove toward the gate, Old Cat glanced back at the lamp-lit tents, imagining the comforting sounds he’d heard just minutes earlier, and the nostalgic moments that followed, and became aware that while he regretted dying, he wasn’t afraid.
The headlights came on and illuminated the near highway, but faded into a distant darkness—
And that was it. That was the source of his regret: a future he couldn’t imagine.
Perhaps if he’d gone to college, maybe even as far as high school, he might’ve been able to devise a destination for himself and for the rebellion.
Instead, all he knew, all any of them knew, was what they were fleeing from:
Confucianism had been death.
Nationalism had been death.
Communism had been death.
And now capitalism had become death.
They had all believed that a rebellion would come someday—all the starving farmers and the sick children and the slaves and the wage-slave workers and the landless laborers.
No, that wasn’t it.
They had all merely hoped. And since it had been mere hope, they hadn’t prepared, and not just with arms, but with ideas.
Old Cat watched the lights of the Chengdu Military Air Base rise up in the distance, a razor-edged jewel stark-lit in the surrounding dark countryside.
And he wondered how they would kill him.
Preparation. How does one prepare? Maybe that had been the Chinese problem all along, the legacy of Buddhism. One endures. One suffers. One burns incense for ancestors who suffered before. If life is suffering, then death is no more than a flame gone out and memory is no more than dissipating smoke, and the future can be no different than the past.
An image of the innocent face of the Christian kid came to him. What was his name? Jian-jun? Yes. Jian-jun. He had a good story to tell, but his religion had no answer either.
The man on the cross, would he build a car or dam a river or spray pesticides? If not, what work would he do?
Old Cat then remembered a cartoon he’d seen years earlier: a textile worker looking up from where he was sewing a “What Would Jesus Do?” baseball cap and saying, “I’m not sure what Jesus would do, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be doing this.”
Old Cat thought of the anthropologist sleeping in the storage room. She must have answers to these questions. She’d spent her life watching, listening, thinking. Maybe she had seen a society where people didn’t poison each other, where all was not suffering and exploitation.
The Brave Warrior came to a stop.
A gate slid open.
Soldiers saluted. Their arms sleeved in sharp-creased jackets. Their heads encased in matte-black helmets. Their machine gun barrels glinting in the headlights.
If only there’d been time to ask.