The Straw Man Standing in the Field

It was deep into the night by then, the county road pitch-black, impossible to make anything out. This was probably what came after what people call “the small-town exam grinder returns to the village” — now you could call it “the small-town exam grinder heads to the city.” I was in the passenger seat. My brother and my cousin sister squeezed into the back. My cousin brother was driving. The two in the back had long since fallen asleep, their breathing drowned out by the hum of the engine, impossible to hear. This time it was for a death in the family. The summoning call had come in vague terms, but the wording left no room for excuses. As if drawn by an invisible string, we’d all come back. But now, everything was over. Now we were driving to Liuzhou Bailian Airport, heading back.

Truth is, I’ve always felt there might be something wrong with me, psychologically. For instance, this funeral — though the deceased was a relative, two generations removed, and someone I knew fairly well — I didn’t feel sad. When they cried, I stood among the relatives, mimicking their posture, mimicking the angle of their bowed necks, mimicking their silence. I had to put on a seasonable expression. I had to be sad too. At the very least, not laugh. But sometimes I really wanted to laugh, because it felt so absurd. At the funeral I stared at the paper effigy on the wreath for a long time. Its painted-on eyes weren’t looking at me, but its smile had the same curvature as the smiles of everyone around me. I stared at it, waiting for it to blink. It didn’t blink. Of course it didn’t blink.

This sense of absurdity is the same as never checking the insurance box when I buy a plane ticket. If I’m dead, what value does so-called insurance hold for me? But even with these kinds of thoughts, always liking to ask “why,” I firmly believe I can’t go seeking help, asking others “why do I always want to ask why,” because I know that once I do, I’ll probably lose the fallback option of taking the civil service exam. I often hear my cousin sister, a civil servant, complaining about her workplace, about who did what to whom, speaking in some dialect I can’t place. Now she’s asleep, and all those words have gone to sleep with her, curled up in some corner of the back seat, no longer bothering me.

I looked down at my hand. It rested on my knee, fingers slightly curved, holding a certain pose — as if gripping something. But there was nothing in my hand. Probably I’d been sitting in the car too long, my hand had gone numb. I straightened my fingers and flexed them. After a while, they curled back on their own.

Looking out the window at the pitch-black fields gave me a strange feeling. Everything felt deeply unreal. Maybe I wanted the dark fields to answer me, but they remained pitch-black. The fields were just black and would respond to nothing. This lack of response brought both disappointment and a strange sort of relief. And then — I don’t know if the angle of the headlights shifted or if my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness — I vaguely saw something standing in the field. At first I thought it was a tree, but it was too thin. Then I thought it was a person, but it was too straight. It stood there, both arms stretched out to the sides. Before I could make it out clearly, in the instant the headlights swept past, I saw two holes where its face should be, a split seam running from the corner of its eye down to its chin.

The car drove past. It disappeared.

I turned to look at my cousin brother. His hands rested on the steering wheel, unmoving. The breathing from the back seat was perfectly even. No one was awake. No one saw. Maybe there was nothing there at all. Maybe it was just an old piece of clothing draped over a bamboo pole, blown by the wind into a human shape. Maybe I was just too tired. I leaned back against my seat and didn’t look back again.

But after a while, I pressed my forehead against the car window. The glass was cold. My breath bloomed a patch of fog on the glass, blurring the view outside. As the fog slowly cleared, I saw my own reflection in the glass. Where the eyes should be, two indistinct dark blurs. My mouth, stretched by the condensation into a crooked arc. I blinked. It blinked too. Of course it blinked — it was my own reflection, after all. I looked away. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to look a second time.

I’m prone to conjuring terrifying things from this kind of fearful unknowing. Maybe the next second a zombie will burst out from there. Maybe the apocalypse is coming. But then I think — why burst out at all? Better to just stand in the field. One straw man. A row of straw men. Their faces sewn with my features, wearing the clothes I wore at different ages, standing in the field, just standing. They aren’t trying to scare me. They’re waiting for me to walk over, to stand among them, to fill the one empty spot. I suddenly felt that this idea didn’t frighten me. What frightened me was — I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. Maybe I really did see them. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe —

“We’re almost there,” my cousin brother said. His voice was very soft.

I didn’t answer. The fields had already receded. Gradually, I saw the outline of the airport. The lights carved the terminal building’s framework out of the darkness, bone by bone, like the ribs of some enormous creature.

The first time I flew, I found it quite novel. The second time, I grew fond of that floating, drowsy feeling inside the pressurized cabin at altitude. But now, I’m a bit indifferent. The main reason is it costs too much; the second is the hassle — no one comes to pick me up when I land. In the high-altitude cabin, the hum of the engines was like wind sweeping across a vast field. I leaned against the window. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I looked down at my hand again. Fingers slightly curved, palm empty. As if all day it had been waiting to hold onto something. But what it was waiting for, I could no longer remember.

I recall how at first I had great expectations of the north, until one time I was walking through some northern city. Backpack on my shoulders. I reached an intersection and saw a bus coming. The driver must have seen me too — he slowed down. So I planned to cross quickly. But the driver didn’t stop. Instead, he honked the horn, startling me into crossing fast at my own risk. Only then did I realize this wasn’t home; buses here clearly do not yield to pedestrians. The bus drove off. The street was empty.

I felt a terrifying desolation, which reminded me of the desolation I felt on the way to high school. That road, too, was lined with fields on both sides. Winter mornings at six-thirty, the sky still dark, I’d walk alone. My schoolbag was heavy. Sometimes straw men stood in the fields, arms stretched out, faces indistinguishable.

I kept walking forward. After a while, I reached another intersection. Another bus came. I stopped and let it pass first. It rolled slowly in front of me. I looked in through the window — the bus was lit with pale, sickly light, most of the seats empty. In the back row, by the window, sat someone wearing a red school uniform. My school uniform. That high school road was sixteen hundred kilometers from here, three hours by plane, eight hours by high-speed train. But that person was wearing my school uniform. The bus drove past. Its taillights vanished at the intersection. I stood there, watching the direction it had gone. Then I kept walking. Didn’t look back.

I walked for I don’t know how long — maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour — before I realized I was going in circles. The same intersection. The same streetlamp. The same puddle on the ground. I stopped. I looked down at the map on my phone. The location cursor stayed fixed in place, motionless. As if it wasn’t even in this city. As if it had never left that field.

I kept walking forward. My walking posture was correct. My stride, too. No one looked at me twice. I blended into the crowd the way a single stalk of straw blends into a bundle of straw. Only my hands were still empty. I kept feeling I should be holding something. But I couldn’t remember what.

As I walked, the ground suddenly softened underfoot. Not from stepping on something — the texture of the asphalt itself had changed. I looked down. The gray of the asphalt was fading away, revealing the damp soil beneath. The streetlights dimmed a notch. When I looked up again, the buildings on both sides had vanished. No street. No bus stop. No northern city. I was standing in a field. The wind blew from behind me, carrying the mingled scent of ripened rice and earth. The sky was still dark, but the quality of the darkness was different — that deepest darkness just before dawn, the kind that would whiten if you waited just a little longer. A row of lights floated in the distance. Like ribs, like the outline of an airport. I knew this field.

I turned around. Behind me stood a row of straw men. Five of them. They wore clothes from different ages, arms stretched out to the sides. The one on the far left was very small, like a child. They grew larger toward the right. Their faces all had two holes, a seam line. I stared at them for a moment, then suddenly recognized the clothes — my elementary school uniform, my middle school athletic jacket, my red high school uniform, the casual clothes I wore in college, and then the dark gray jacket currently on my body. Exactly the same. Every piece matched the ones in my memory. Next to the straw man on the far right, the one in the dark gray jacket, there was an empty spot. A spot neither too big nor too small, just the right size for a person to step into.

I looked at the empty spot. Then I looked down at my hands again. There was dirt under my fingernails. There were a few fine scratches on my knuckles, as if I’d been grazed by dry straw blades. I couldn’t remember how the dirt got there. Couldn’t remember how the scratches got there. But I wasn’t surprised. I just looked at the dirt and the scratches and felt they had always belonged there.

I stood where I was. I didn’t walk toward it. But I didn’t step back either. When the wind came, the five straw men swayed slightly. Not the kind of swaying caused by the wind — it was them adjusting their stance. The straw man on the far right, the one in the dark gray jacket, tilted its head a little toward me. The two holes in its face had no eyes, but I knew it was looking at me. And then I blinked.

Passenger seat. The county road was still dark. The engine was running. My cousin brother’s hands rested on the steering wheel. I stared at the road surface beyond the windshield for a long time — asphalt was asphalt, road markings were road markings. It should all be normal. Then I looked down at my hands. Empty. Clean. Nothing under my fingernails. I leaned back into the seat. I must have fallen asleep. Had a dream. A strange dream, but just a dream. I told myself this. My heartbeat was slowing down.

Then I glanced at the GPS. The screen was lit. The number hadn’t changed. I counted silently for twenty seconds. Still unchanged. My cousin brother was clearly not driving slowly. I turned to look outside the window, trying to find a reference point — a roadside tree, a utility pole, anything — to confirm that the car was actually moving forward. Outside the window was nothing but pitch-black darkness. Then the headlights swept past a dead tree. Its branches stretched toward the sky like a person with arms outstretched. The car drove past. After about half a minute, another dead tree appeared outside the window. The exact same angle of the branches. The exact same curve of the trunk. The same dead tree. Or one exactly like it. Another half minute. There it was again. I stared out the window. It appeared again. Again. Again.

I didn’t say anything. My cousin brother didn’t say anything either. The breathing from the back seat was still there — it should still be there. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. I tilted my head, trying to listen. The engine was too loud. Or maybe it wasn’t the engine — I didn’t know what that sound was. Like wind sweeping across a vast field. I wasn’t sure if there was anyone in the back seat. Maybe there was. Maybe there never had been. I couldn’t remember. Who had been standing beside me at the funeral. Whether the paper effigy on the wreath was still there. How long I had stared at it, waiting. Whether it had blinked. I couldn’t remember. The GPS still showed the same number. That dead tree was still outside the window.

Maybe this road just keeps circling the same field. Maybe I’ve never left this passenger seat. Maybe the funeral isn’t over; I’m still in front of the wreath, staring at the paper effigy’s face. Maybe I am the paper effigy. Eyes are two holes. The smile is sewn on. Standing in the right spot, waiting for someone who will never come. Maybe it’s better not to know. I closed my eyes. The engine sounded like wind sweeping across a vast field. No sound from the back seat. Maybe there was never any sound from the back seat.

The car kept going. Quiet. Just quiet. A quiet where no one is speaking. A quiet where no one is awake. A quiet where you don’t know who is driving.

My hand rested on my knee. Fingers slightly curved. Keeping that gripping pose. I wanted to straighten my fingers. But my fingers didn’t move. Not that they couldn’t — I didn’t let them. Maybe I’d never let them. Maybe the thing that let them move, and the thing that let me walk, and the thing that let me stand among the relatives and mimic their posture — all the same thing.

I opened my eyes. Ahead was still dark. My cousin brother’s hands rested on the steering wheel. The GPS still showed the same number. I opened my mouth, wanting to ask him how much longer. No sound came out. Not a problem with my throat — I didn’t push the sound out. Maybe I did. Maybe my cousin brother heard me. But he didn’t speak. His hands rested on the steering wheel. The car kept going.

Maybe he’s waiting for me to ask. Maybe he’s waiting for me to shut up. Maybe he’s not my cousin brother. This thought was absurd. I didn’t go on thinking it. The car kept going. Quiet. That too-neat kind of quiet. The kind of quiet where four people’s breathing turns into one person’s breathing. Or where one person’s breathing has always been one person’s breathing. I’m not sure. I don’t intend to find out.

I just sat there. Hand resting on my knee. That dead tree outside the window went past again. Again. Again.