When my grandmother died at the end of the Cultural Revolution, her coffin was not allowed to pass through the main street in West Plain.  Culture Year and his sisters carried her coffin to the graveyard by going outside of West Plain.  Some relatives and friends helped.  Lucky Year stayed home.  When people came back from the graveyard, they found that Lucky Year had dug a hole on the Kang where his mother had slept.  He was eating the dirt from the hole.  He invited his sisters to eat with him.  He told them that the dirt was from their mother, and smelled like their mother. 

       For the next year, Lucky Year had been eating half of the Kang during the night, and during the day, he went out to tell people that he had seen his mother at night.  His mother became a saint, and came to visit him.  Two years after his mother died, Lucky Year had eaten the whole Kang.  He slept inside of the Kang with some bricks left as its structure.  

       At the same time, he wondered from the campsite to neighboring villages, even neighboring counties.  Sometimes he would leave for a week, then showed up at Culture Year’s house with dried blood on his face, or a broken ankle or wrist.  As soon as Culture Year patched him up, Lucky Year would leave again. 

       His sisters took satisfaction in the fact that he always came back, but Culture Year wished him to leave forever.  When Lucky Year was around, he would do damage to the house and the yard.  Once he chopped down the pigsty with axe and let the pigs free.  He claimed that the pigs had talked to him and begged him to set them free.  Once he threw the cooking pot with the whole pot of the noodles in it.  He said that evil had poisoned the food. 

       His fourth sister had taken Lucky Year to her home for a while, but he didn’t get any better.  Once after midnight, the police knocked on the door to deliver Lucky Year home.  He had sneaked out of the house at night, and this time he said he wanted to dig the channels before everybody else got up.  This time Culture Year knew that he was stuck with Lucky Year forever.  He stopped looking for Lucky Year when Lucky Year was missing.  Only thing he did was to feed Lucky Year whenever Lucky Year was right in front of his face.   

        Almost everyone in West Plain came to Lucky Year’s funeral.  The sentimental women cried.  They had all liked Lucky Year, and everyone felt a little guilty for not taking better care of him when he was alive. 

The coffin was made of raw poplin wood with cheap black paint.  The food was abundant.  The fourth sister paid for the food.  The third sister cried the most and the loudest.  She wanted to show her love for her brother in front of the village people.  A lot of people went to comfort her, but Culture Year didn’t.  He remembered that once Lucky Year went to her house for lunch, she hid the pork from him, and only offered him a bowl of noodles.  He couldn’t forgive her for that. 

       He suddenly remembered when his mother was dying, she had held his hand, and said: “Have a bigger heart, Culture Year.”  

       In the late morning, the crowd started moving toward the graveyard, and from the sky, it might have looked like a group of ants moving to their nests.  Did God see it?  From that far, what was the difference between humans and ants?

       Culture Year didn’t cry, and couldn’t cry.  He didn’t know whether he felt happy or sad for his brother’s death.  He admired his sisters’ ability to cry, and their abilities to stop crying when it was time for the meal.  Their crying was like an instrument, and they were ready to play it whenever they needed to. 

Lucky Year never had any children, so Culture Year’s seven-year-old boy was acting as Lucky Year’s son walking in front of the funeral crowd.  He dressed in heavy white mourning rope with the Crying Stick in his left hand.  The eldest son of the deceased was supposed to hold the Crying Stick, a regular wood stick wrapped with white paper.  The little boy was scared by the situation, and turned his head to seek his father. 

When they arrived at the graveyard, they saw the huge hole in the ground, like an open mouth ready to swallow the coffin.  Spring Essence gave the order to a group of young men, and they started to lower Culture Year’s coffin into the hole.  When Culture Year saw the first shovel of dirt covering the coffin, his heart felt shrunk, and his body also started to shrink.  He would no longer be able to see his brother.  His sisters broke out crying louder than ever.  Did their hearts feel the same as Culture Year’s?

       That night after the funeral, his house was quiet.  The sisters had gone to his third sister’s home to sleep.  Now he started to miss their crying.  Those noises at least filled up part of his emptiness.  Facing the darkness and the quietness, he lay there with his eyes open, and his heart open.  His tears came out.  He had nobody to blame for his unfortunate life now.  The tears tasted salty.  It was worse than anger.  The anger was like hot air, and he felt it gradually released from his body.  Was this what his mother had meant?  Did he have anger instead of a bigger heart?

       Next morning, he woke to the noise of his pigs.  These past couple of days, he hadn’t had time to care for them.  He forced himself to get up, and his whole body ached.  He limped to the pigsty, carrying a broken porcelain pot of pig food. 

       His daughter started crying.  The children were hungry too.  He shouted to the room: “My lazy wife, get up to attend the children.”  Passing by his brother’s east room, the dead quietness made him uneasy.  In mornings when Lucky Year was home, he would call for his breakfast. 

Culture Year tilted back his head and stared into the sky.  It seemed to be clearer today.  His wife came out of the house, holding the piss pot.  

       “What are you doing?” she asked.

       “Looking for angels,” he told her.