Chapter 5: Firewood Knife and Copper Filings

Dawn had barely broken, and a gray-blue mist still clung to the ground. Lin Chen was pulled awake by the first crow of the rooster at the foot of the courtyard wall. He opened his eyes but didn’t move, first reaching out to the side. Xiao Man’s breathing was even, but the warmth under the quilt was low, like a stone that hadn’t yet been warmed. Lin Chen pulled his hand back, threw off the thin blanket, and slipped his feet into cloth shoes. From the main room came the soft scrape of rubber soles on cement, followed by the clatter of an iron wok. Lin Jianguo was already up.

Lin Chen walked to the kitchen, scooped half a ladle of cold water from the vat, and splashed it into a chipped iron basin. He soaked a towel, wrung it out, and laid it back on Xiao Man’s forehead. Water seeped from the towel’s edge, dripping onto the coarse cloth pillowcase and spreading into a dark patch. He turned to the corner, drew out the firewood knife. The handle was hardwood, wrapped with several turns of blackened electrical tape, heavy in the hand with a forward balance. He dampened a whetstone with a little water and drew the blade along it. Sha, sha. The sound was faint, but each pass brought a cold gleam back to the rolled edge. When finished, he tested the blade with his thumb pad, nicking the skin just enough to draw a bead of blood. He wiped his hand on his coarse cotton trousers and tucked the knife into his waistband.

The courtyard gate at the east end of the village, belonging to Old Man Li, stood slightly ajar. Lin Chen pushed it open, and a thick smell of aged firewood, dry tobacco, and damp earth hit him. In the corner of the yard was a pile of oak logs nearly as tall as a man, their bark rough and holding the mountain’s dampness, some already cracked with fine lines. Old Man Li sat on the threshold smoking a dry-pipe, the bowl glowing and fading. Seeing him, Li tapped out the ash, his voice like sandpaper rubbing together: “Here? Chop that pile. When you’re done, two mao.”

Lin Chen nodded, offering no haggling. Two mao could buy half a box of matches or three sheets of rough toilet paper at the supply and marketing cooperative. He stepped up to the woodpile and drew the knife. The first strike buried the blade in the grain, jarring the web of his thumb. He pulled it free, adjusted his angle, and split diagonally along the wood’s texture. The oak was hard; the blade sank half an inch and stopped. Gripping the handle with both hands, he leaned forward, pressing down with the weight of his shoulders. The wood split with a dull crack. Sweat soon beaded on his forehead, trickling into his eyes and stinging sharply. He didn’t stop. Chop, pull, chop again. The rhythm was slow, but every step was planted firm.

Blisters quickly formed on the web of his thumb, burst, and bled, mixing with sawdust and sweat to glue his grip to the handle. He wiped his hand on his trousers and kept going. By the seventh log, his arms began to ache, the bones in his shoulders feeling as if scraped by a dull blade. He paused, leaning against the woodpile to catch his breath. Old Man Li didn’t fuss over him, only occasionally handing over a bowl of cool boiled water. As Lin Chen drank, his gaze swept into the main room. On the eight-immortal table sat a Red Lantern brand radio, its lacquer peeling, its antenna bent from wire. Beneath it were pressed copies of the Sichuan Farmer newspaper, dated last year. The front page headlines read “Township Enterprises Recruiting” and “Literacy Class Graduation.” Lin Chen’s eyes fixed on the word “literacy.” Those who couldn’t read couldn’t even understand a job posting. He suddenly understood: physical strength had a ceiling. Ten loads a day, at most, would trade for one yuan. But literacy meant reading newspapers, reading signs, reading the grain station’s deduction rules. Strength would age; words would not.

He finished the water, set the bowl back on the table, and resumed chopping. The blade rose and fell, wood chips flying. Sunlight gradually climbed the courtyard wall, stretching the shadows long. In the corner coop, hens scratched at the dirt, clucking softly. On the distant mountain road, the putter of a tractor occasionally echoed, grinding over gravel and kicking up yellow dust. Lin Chen’s breathing grew heavier, but his hands never lost their rhythm. He learned to spot the knots and avoid the hardest spots; learned to brace the log with his foot to leverage the strike; learned to switch to his left hand on the handle and his right on the wood when his thumb went stiff. His seven-year-old body was like a drawn bowstring, every muscle straining against the weight, but the string did not snap.

By noon, the woodpile had shrunk by more than half. Lin Chen straightened up, his spine feeling as if the tendons had been pulled out, aching so badly he couldn’t stand fully upright. He counted: forty-seven logs. Old Man Li walked over, nudged the split wood with his foot, and nodded: “Good. Two mao.” He fished two crumpled one-mao notes from his trouser pocket and handed them over. The edges were frayed, warm from his body heat. Lin Chen took them without a word, folded them in half, and tucked them into his inner pocket. He packed up the knife, nodded to Old Man Li, and turned for home. His steps were heavier than in the morning, but another entry had been added to the ledger in his mind. In: 0.20. Out: 0. The deficit had narrowed.

Pushing open his own courtyard gate, the sweet scent of sweet potato porridge drifted from the main room. Lin Jianguo sat on a wooden stool, pressing a hot towel to his lower back. His old sweatshirt was rolled up to his chest, revealing purple bruises and the sharp ridges of his spine. Seeing Lin Chen return, he lowered the towel, his gaze dropping to the hands covered in sawdust and blisters. His brows knit. “How’d your hands get like that?” Lin Chen set the knife on the stove, his voice calm: “Chopping wood. Old Man Li paid.” Lin Jianguo said nothing, got up, and went to the kitchen to fetch the porridge. It was thin enough to see one’s reflection in it. Father and son sat opposite each other, eating in silence, broken only by the soft clink of spoons against bowls. Xiao Man sat on the kang, holding a chipped enamel bowl with both hands, taking small sips. The medicine was still in his system; he wasn’t coughing, but his eyes were slightly unfocused, fixed on the foam in his porridge.

After the meal, the village postman’s bicycle bell rang twice outside the gate. Lin Chen ran out and took a letter. The envelope was the cheapest thin paper, bearing an eight-fen Great Wall stamp. The postmark read “Guangdong · Shenzhen.” The handwriting was in ballpoint pen, slightly slanted, but unmistakably his mother Wang Guiying’s. He tore the seal, and a remittance slip and a sheet of letter paper fell out. Remittance slip: fifty yuan. The letter held only three lines: “Jianguo, Chen wa, Xiao Man. The factory is rushing orders, lots of overtime. Sending fifty. Don’t stop the medicine. Chen wa, study hard. Guiying.” Lin Chen smoothed the paper, recognizing each character one by one. The ballpoint ink had bled slightly, but the strokes were heavy. Fifty yuan. It equaled two hundred and fifty sessions of chopping wood. Suddenly, the blisters on his hands didn’t hurt so much.

He walked back to the main room, pulled his exercise book from under the pillow, and turned to a fresh page. The pencil tip scratched across the paper. In: Chopping wood 0.20. Mother’s remittance 50.00. He paused. Fifty yuan could buy half a month of medicine for Xiao Man. It could pay tuition. It could buy a few jin of meat. But his mother was in the south, standing for over ten hours a day, her fingers peeled raw by the assembly line. This money was sweat, it was life, it was youth boiled down. He couldn’t just rely on chopping wood, couldn’t just wait for remittances. He had to find a faster way.

In the afternoon, the village broadcast loudspeaker crackled to life. Static hissed, followed by the village secretary’s voice, thick with a local accent and layered with wind and interference: “…Notice, on the eighth of next month, there will be a county-wide primary school unified examination. Grades three and above will participate. Those who rank in the top ten will receive a county scholarship and have one semester’s tuition waived. Homeroom teachers, please step up review preparations…” The voice crackled in and out, but the words “unified exam,” “top ten,” “scholarship,” and “tuition waived” drove into his brain like nails. Chopping wood earned two mao a day. A fifty-yuan remittance took a month to arrive. But an exam required only a single test paper. As long as he could read, as long as he could solve the problems. He looked down at his calloused, blistered hands, then up at the mottled eight-immortal table in the main room. On it lay the Arithmetic Workbook.

He returned to his room, closed the exercise book, and dug his Chinese and math textbooks out of his schoolbag. The pages were dog-eared, the corners wrapped in old newspaper. He opened to the first page and wrote in the margin with his pencil: Days to unified exam: 26. Goal: Top ten. Reward: Tuition waiver + bonus. He wrote slowly, pressing down hard on every stroke. He knew this path was harder than chopping wood. It meant memorizing texts, solving problems, enduring passages he didn’t understand and complex arithmetic. But he knew better: strength would age, words would not. The horizontal line on his ledger had to be stretched much further.

Outside the window, the setting sun dyed the courtyard wall a deep crimson. In the distance came the putter of a tractor, grinding over the dirt road and kicking up a cloud of dust. Lin Chen sat on the wooden stool and opened his math textbook. The first problem: “A cage contains chickens and rabbits. There are 35 heads and 94 feet in total. How many chickens and how many rabbits are there?” He stared at the question, drawing lines on a scrap of paper. Chickens have two feet, rabbits four. Assume all are chickens: 35 times 2 equals 70. 94 minus 70 equals 24. 24 divided by 2 equals 12. Twelve rabbits, twenty-three chickens. He checked his work. Correct.

He closed the textbook. The kerosene lamp hadn’t been lit yet, but dusk had already spilled into the main room. Xiao Man had fallen asleep on the kang, his breathing steady. In the kitchen, Lin Jianguo was washing dishes, the water splashing rhythmically. Lin Chen stacked his exercise book and textbooks together and pressed them under his pillow. Tomorrow, he would go to school to borrow last year’s exam papers from the teacher. The day after, he would start memorizing the texts. The road was long, but the numbers in his ledger finally had a direction. He blew out the kerosene lamp and lay down. In the dark, his fingers unconsciously traced the ruled lines on the back cover of his notebook. In and out were no longer just about money. They were about time, about problems, about that single test paper that could trade for a scholarship. A night wind slipped through the crack in the door, stirring the textbooks on the table. The pages fluttered lightly, stopping on the chicken-and-rabbit problem. The dust settled. The stars had not yet appeared. But the first bead on the abacus had already clicked into place.