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King of the Castle

Lam Pham

    When Chenglei stood up in the middle of history class to denounce our teacher for having bourgeois sympathies, I had my reservations. It was hard to imagine Shuy-lei, a quiet and bookish man who looked more like a turtle than a capitalist sympathizer of posing any threat to the Red Guard and Chairman Mao’s revolution. The entire class was silent as the elderly instructor did his best to placate Chenglei’s wild screams, and I felt like a coward for not saying anything in his defense. Both of my parents had been poor farmers, but our lack of wealth didn’t guarantee my safety any more than it did Shuy-Lei. Anyone could be publicly vilified by the Red Guard; I’ve seen children my age beaten and left bleeding on the streets in the name of cultural cleansing.
    So I watched Chenglei and three other boys in the class steadily make their way towards the man, like chess pieces being pushed by a force that were neither of Mao’s making or theirs. It was the spirit of the revolution that passed the coil of rope up the aisle, the demands of true freedom that stripped, shaved, and bound the old man to his desk. The written obscenities scrawled onto his body with charcoal, the shallow lacerations across his face and torso from split shafts of bamboo, they were evidence of a disquieting momentum that had taken hold of China; an impetus that was still reaching its crest. Shuy-Lei would have been strapped to the desk until morning if my friend Feng hadn’t slipped into the classroom later that evening to cut him free.
    “I told him to leave the village,” Feng was only eleven then, a full year older than me. A few years ago, during the Great Leap Forward, Feng and his father had broken into the closed communal mess-halls and stolen food for the starving village. It wasn’t long before one of our neighbors had given Feng’s father to the authorities for extra rations. Since then, he’d acquired an unspoken status among the few children who still remembered what it was like to starve, to watch their loved ones die while the pile of scavenged iron and scrapped metal they had tortured themselves for laid useless roadside. All in the name of Mao.
    “We can’t stay here much longer Bojing.”
    “There’s nothing we can do,” I told him as I lanced at a passing cicada with my wooden pole. The tip had been lathered with glue. Although there had been improvements in grain cultivation, food was still scarce, and cicadas made for an easy meal to stave off hunger. “It’s happening everywhere. Running won’t solve anything.”
    Feng sighed. “So all we can do is wait?”
    I didn’t reply. Adults had been the Red Guard’s primary targets when the Cultural Revolution first began, but once the parents had started abandoning their homes, we became our own victims. Shuy-Lei had been the last teacher to stay behind, a poor man who’d staunchly believed that education could stem the rising red tide that was threatening to swallow us all. He used to call Feng “Achilles,” due to his height, and I, his “Hector.” At eleven, Feng stood at a towering five-foot-eleven. It had protected him from the Red Guard so far, but we both knew it wouldn’t last.
    “Come on,” I handed him the wooden pole. “There’s a meeting tonight.”
    He looked away. “I can’t make it.”
    I sucked a lungful of air through my teeth. “Chenglei will notice.”
    “Then tell him I got sick from eating too many bugs,” Feng grinned, snapping my pole in the air with a flick of his wrist. A pinned cicada squirmed at its end. “Start using that quick mind of yours Hector.”
    “Fine, but just one thing Achilles,” I gave him a measured look. “Whatever you’re doing later, be extra careful. It won’t be hard for them to figure out you sprung Shuy-Lei.”
    “You sound like my whiny old mother,” he snorted, brusquely hugging me. He slipped something sharp in my hand. “I’ll see you later tonight.”
    The meeting took place in the school’s former faculty lounge. Chenglei was reciting one of Mao’s speeches, the campaign against “The Four Olds,” when I slunk in. The knife Feng had used to cut Shuy-Lei free was safely tucked underneath my shirt, behind the belt.
    “You’re late Bojing,” thirty pair of eyes turned to me, scrutinizing. Before the Red Guard, Chenglei had been a timid boy, always the last to participate in any group activity, terrified of public speaking. How proud he stood now, his back as stiff as a sword, his words cracking the air like whiplash. The meek mouse transformed, a vicious viper born. “We were worried an ox ghost had caught you.”
    “Ox ghost” meant traitor, the opposition. His implication was obvious enough. “Someone let Shuy-Lei out,” I reported, my hands sweating. “I lost track of time looking for him.”
    The entire room responded the way I knew they would. They broke into hysterics, giddy with the idea of a live manhunt. By the time they actually organized a search party, the old man would be long gone, or so I hoped.
    Chenglei didn’t react to the news like the others. He waited for the room to settle, before answering, “I know, I saw who sprung the old chicken free.”
    I saw the reason behind this telling admission immediately. Chenglei had set up Shuy-Lei’s public humiliation earlier in order to sniff out any defected Guards. He smiled at me, knowing full well that I knew. “Where’s Feng, Bojing?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He shrugged as if he’d anticipated it. “Doesn’t matter, he’ll turn up eventually. I have a more important question for you,” the room seemed to condense as the Red Guard drew tighter around me. “Whose side are you on?”

    When we were younger, we used to play a game called “King of the Castle.” The object of the game is to stay on top of a designated area, a hill or the top of the jungle gym, and retain that position from the other players. The memory came to mind as I stood on the campus rooftop, the stretch of the village bled in late evening dusk. It wasn’t very late when we saw Feng approach the entrance of north campus. Chenglei stood next to me, surveying his territory like Agamemnon. He’d laid out his plan with meticulous care, sparing no detail in obtaining his Achilles. There were Red Guards posted at every corridor, entrance, and exit, hidden from plain sight.
    At the start of the revolution, Red Guard’s weaponry consisted of mostly wooden swords fashioned out of discarded planks of dried out wood or trussed bamboo sticks. They’d since graduated to firearms and homemade grenades.
    “Here comes our wayward warrior,” I heard him gloat. The Guard behind me pressed the muzzle of his pistol at the small of my back. “No one can escape this revolution Bojing, we need to smash the old world if we are to rebuild it anew.”
    Down below, we watched Feng surrender to the five Guards that surrounded him, his arms arching towards us like flags. With guns trained on him, Chenglei’s cronies took a moment to tender the prey, pistol whipping and kicking him to the floor as the stars above watched helplessly. I felt the gun on my back relax, dipping slightly away.
    “Checkmate,” Chenglei whispered.
    My fingers crept closer to the handle of my hidden blade. I still had one move to make.

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