Chapter 8

Chapter 8

By the time we reached the lumber mill, night had fallen completely.

Wu Si sobbed the whole way, begging Uncle Cheng to go back out and look for his brother again.

We huddled around the stove, wrapped in blankets, and drank several kettles of hot water before our bodies finally warmed up.

Uncle Cheng was a kindhearted man. He couldn’t withstand Wu Si’s repeated tearful pleas. After feeding the dogs a little and melting the snow off himself, he decided to head out and take another look.

I was afraid something might happen so late at night, so I insisted on going with Uncle Cheng.

Seeing that I was tall, strong, and in the best shape out of all of us, Uncle Cheng agreed.

And so I followed him, charging once more into the wind and snow in the pitch-black night.

This time, we made our way down below the road, close to that stretch of Wild Ditch.

Uncle Cheng’s flashlight was a high-powered one meant for forest rangers, far more useful than mine.

In that ghastly white beam, I once again saw the mounds rising out of the snow, their shapes eerily like rows of graves piled up by human hands.

Shouting and gesturing, I asked Uncle Cheng, “Is there a graveyard in that ditch?”

Uncle Cheng shook his head at me. “No graveyard. When fallen snow forms graves, it means a great disaster is coming. This year is going to be bad.”

I was young then and didn’t really understand what he meant. Only later did I come to realize it.

The heavy snow we had stumbled into was a catastrophic blizzard unlike anything seen in the region for decades.

Uncle Cheng wouldn’t let me go into that ditch. He took the dogs in himself and circled around several times, but in the end, he still found nothing.

When we returned to the lumber mill, Wu Si broke down.

He and Wu Da had lost their parents very early on, and the two brothers between them had both died in accidents as well.

Though Wu Si was terrified of Wu Da, Wu Da had been the one who raised him.

Over the next few days, Wu Si kept clamoring to go out and search for his brother.

But deep down, we all knew that under those circumstances, if we hadn’t found him after an entire night, the chances of Wu Da still being alive were basically gone.

Even so, we accompanied Wu Si back to where the vehicle had been parked. Still, we didn’t find the slightest trace of Wu Da.

And that heavy snow went on falling for six straight days, barely stopping in between. By the end, the snow on the road was nearly waist-deep.

We remained trapped inside the lumber mill, unable to go anywhere.

Wu Da’s accident weighed heavily on every one of us.

Xu Song blamed himself too. If only he had listened to Grandpa Wang that day and waited two more days, things might have been fine.

Wu Si refused to believe that his brother had died. By the last few days, his mind had grown somewhat dazed.

Every so often, he would wake in the middle of the night screaming, insisting that Wu Da was calling for him outside, and he would fight desperately to go out.

Fortunately, Uncle Cheng was there. He kept soothing us and telling us not to worry too much.

Keeping warm at the lumber mill wasn’t difficult, but in the final few days, food began to run short.

None of us knew how much longer the snow would keep falling.

Uncle Cheng was afraid we wouldn’t be able to hold out mentally, so he kept hiding the fact that the food was nearly gone.

He left everything filling for us young men, while he himself survived on nothing but a little youcha flour for three days straight.

It wasn’t until the snow finally stopped, the road opened, and supplies were delivered that we learned Uncle Cheng had been starving all along.