Chapter 99: Cold Snap and One-Legged Pedaling

The night wind scraped along the earthen walls, carrying the dry, scratchy smell of stacked firewood and straw. Lin Chen’s left foot had lost all feedback now, like a wooden stick tied to his leg, and he could only drag it forward by brute force from the muscles of his thigh. Each step landed with the sole grinding against gravel, the sound unnaturally clear on the empty village road. There was no emotion in his head, only a coordinate system resetting itself again and again. County South Freight Station. Reverse direction. Detour. K42 construction. The four terms kept rearranging themselves across the scrap of paper in his mind. He stopped under the moonlight and pulled from his canvas bag a half-length pencil and the timetable whose edges had gone fuzzy from sweat.

Original plan: leave school at 7:45, walk twenty-five minutes to the gas station in the northern outskirts, wait twenty minutes, two-hour ride, arrive at North Station at 11:30. New variable: the stop had moved five kilometers south. Walking time increased by forty minutes. Leave school at 7:45, arrive at the freight station at 8:25. The passing coach’s stop shifted back to 8:40. Boarding time unchanged. But K42 had been rerouted, adding twelve kilometers on provincial roads, with speed restrictions in place. Travel time extended to two hours and twenty minutes. Arrive at North Station at 12:20. Bus transfer: fifty minutes. Arrive at the Provincial Institute of Technology admissions office at 12:50. The verification window closed at 12:30. Twenty minutes late.

The original timeline of Plan B snapped once more in the face of a real road notice.

He leaned against an old scholar tree by the roadside, breathing evenly. He could not be late. Being late meant forfeiting the exam, meant the deferred exam would be void, meant his verification eligibility at Provincial Tech would be reset to zero. He had to claw back those fifty minutes. Where was the variable? He stared at the paper. The only segment left to compress was from “leave school” to “board the coach.” Five kilometers, forty minutes on foot. What if he rode a bicycle instead? There were not many households in the village with bikes, but the repair shop owner had one of those old twenty-eight-inch roadsters, its chain paint-worn but still rideable. Lin Chen had seen it yesterday when he went in to work as an apprentice. Borrowing it would require a reason, and collateral too. He had no deposit. But he could leave behind his copy of Fundamentals of Electronic Information Experiments as security. He had only just bought it and could not afford to lose it, but the verification only required photocopies checked against the originals. Leaving the book in the village would not affect the verification.

He kept walking home. By the time he pushed open the courtyard gate, the main room had already gone dark. The breathing from his parents and younger brother came slow and even. He slipped into the west side room, struck a match, and lit the kerosene lamp. Yellow light spread out in a dim halo. He laid the household ledger open on the kang table. Balance: 0.2 yuan. Debt: 1.2 yuan. Shortfall: 22.8 yuan. Wednesday afternoon’s apprentice work would pay eight yuan at day’s end. That still left 14.8. He opened the cabinet and dug out the old iron wok with the dented rim, and half a sack of dried chilies wrapped in newspaper. Scrap iron sold for eighty fen a jin. Dried chilies sold for two yuan a jin. He needed exact weights.

At first light the next morning, Lin Chen left the house with the wok and the chilies on his back. He went first to the town scrap collection station. The owner, wearing reading glasses, weighed them on a balance pole. “The bottom of the wok’s rusted through, so this counts as seven liang. The chilies are dry enough, but there’s too much broken stuff mixed in. Call it one and a half jin. Total, two yuan three.” Lin Chen nodded and took the money: three one-yuan notes and three ten-fen coins. Then he headed to the produce market in the south of town. The dried-goods stall owner, a middle-aged woman, pinched the chilies and checked the color. “One eighty. Can’t go any higher.” Lin Chen did not bargain. He took the cash. Total: 4.1 yuan. Together with the four-yuan advance from the repair shop, he now had 8.3 in hand. He was still short 16.5.

He walked to the entrance of the town credit cooperative. A red paper notice reading “fixed deposit” was pasted on the glass door. He pushed it open and went inside. Behind the counter, a clerk was flicking beads across an abacus. “Withdrawal,” Lin Chen said. “Lin Jianguo’s account.” The clerk looked up. “Password.” Lin Chen recited the string of numbers he had memorized long ago. The clerk checked the passbook, pulled out a ten-yuan bill, and handed it over. “Only two yuan left after this. You taking it all?” Lin Chen nodded. His father’s fertilizer deposit could not be touched, but those two yuan were emergency reserve money. This was an emergency. He took the cash and walked out of the credit cooperative. The gap was filled. 22.8 yuan. Exactly enough for two bus tickets and the photo debt.

That afternoon, he returned to the repair shop. The owner handed him a wrench and a heap of rusted bearings. “Take them apart, clean them, oil them. Finish the job and you get paid.” Lin Chen squatted in the oily dirt. His left foot could not bear weight, so he could only kneel on his right knee and hold his left foot suspended. The wrench turned; the rust-frozen nuts answered with a harsh screech. Grease worked its way under his fingernails. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the bearings. His hands repeated the motions mechanically, while in his head he was silently writing out biology inheritance charts and the answer templates for the science comprehensive exam. Time was cut into fragments, and every fragment was packed with specific parameters. At four in the afternoon, the work was done. The owner handed him four yuan. Lin Chen took it, wrapped it in old newspaper, and tucked it into the pocket closest to his body.

By dusk he was back in the village. He had borrowed the old roadster. The owner did not ask for collateral. He only said, “The chain’s loose, and the brake pads are worn smooth. Squeeze hard going downhill. Come get it Wednesday morning at seven.” Lin Chen thanked him. He wheeled the bike outside the courtyard and checked every joint carefully. Oiled it. Tightened the bolts. Tested the brakes. The wheels turned with a faint sandy whisper. He sat on the saddle, left foot hovering above the pedal, right leg pushing down. The bicycle swayed once, then steadied. He could ride it. His left foot could not pedal, but with his right leg doing single-sided strokes and momentum carrying the rest, it would be enough for five kilometers of flat road.

Late that night, under the kerosene lamp, Lin Chen sorted the materials again. Inside the transparent document sleeve, his one-inch photo, the photocopies, the deferred-exam application form, and the Provincial Tech notice were lined up in order. He sealed the opening of the sleeve with transparent tape to keep rain from soaking the papers. On the last page of the ledger, he wrote: Wednesday. 7:20. Leave school. 7:40. Ride to the freight station. 8:40. Board. 12:20. North Station. 12:50. Admissions office. Before the window closes. He shut the ledger and set the alarm clock for 5:40.

He took off his shoes and socks. The instep of his left foot had swollen until it looked glossy, the skin stretched tight, and the seeped tissue fluid had glued the gauze to the wound. He cleaned it bit by bit with cotton swabs dipped in iodine. A stabbing pain surfaced from deep inside the numbness, like fine needles being driven into the nerves. He bit down on a towel and made no sound. When he was finished, he replaced the gauze and wrapped it tight with a bandage. The swelling could not get any worse, or he would not even be able to press a pedal. He lay down and stared at the roof beam overhead. In the darkness there was nothing but breathing and the distant barking of dogs.

At three in the morning, a faint pattering woke him. Not wind. Rain tapping against the roof tiles. At first it was light, then gradually denser. He sat up and pushed open the wooden window. A damp, earthy smell rushed in. The dirt in the courtyard had already begun to glisten with water. Spring rain. A cold snap after spring had begun. He looked out the window without moving. Rain would soften the dirt road. Bicycle tires would slip. Braking distance would lengthen. Over five kilometers, that meant at least fifteen more minutes. He sat back down on the edge of the kang and took out his pencil. On the timetable, he crossed out “7:40” and changed it to “7:25.” Leave school fifteen minutes earlier. Which meant that after signing in for the mock exam, he would have to leave the room by 7:25. Would the invigilator stop him? The rules only said “sign in.” They did not say “remain seated the whole time.” But leaving early meant reporting it to the invigilator. Reporting it meant having a reason. What reason? “Physical discomfort.” He needed to turn the symptoms of his foot injury into a plausible excuse for leaving in advance.

He set the pencil down. The rain grew heavier. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Tomorrow, 7:25. Countdown: four hours.