To the Hills

Mr. Li had boasted many times about the comforts of his van. He assured me that today it would be particularly pleasurable as I had the whole back seat to myself. Through no design of the manufacturer, the back seat did offer some comfort. The metal core of the seats was broken in several places, and the surrounding foam had grown soft, giving the passenger the sensation of riding on a rocking waterbed. "The whole back seat"—technically speaking—offered three seats, but gaping holes in the floorboard rendered the side seats defunct. It was lucky too, since only on the remaining center seat could the passenger hope to slide forward between the front seats (instead of into them) in the highly-likely event of a sudden stop.

Mr. Huang—the driver—had drifted into the left lane. As an oncoming car approached us, it moved gradually toward the center and then toward our far right. Both vehicles passed each other on the left side of the road. Turning my head into the muddy back window, I did not see the car return to the proper side of the road. Nor did we.

We could not be far from Dayao, but I did not recognize these roads at all. Mr. Huang and Mr. Li did not seem to recognize them either, and I tried to overhear their conversation as they argued in rapid dialect about directions. Mr. Huang (seemingly in defiance of Mr. Li's directions) veered to the right and onto a dirt road. It rose quickly as we approached the hills, and its width shrunk with altitude. Soon it seemed the van would not fit at all. Mr. Huang seemed to realize this, and lifted the emergency brake halfway up the hill. Turning off the engine, he let the van roll backwards. Slamming the other brake to the floor, we veered off onto the grass, and accelerated upward.

This section of road—perhaps because there was no road at all—was far steeper. The engine and Mr. Li both screamed as the van threatened to die. Unbothered, Mr. Huang gradually downshifted until we were climbing in first gear. The road flattened suddenly, and the van lumbered forward, splashing mud in all directions, the last remaining puddles of the night's rain.

Several miles and close calls later, we seemed no nearer to our destination. We were nowhere I had ever been—or anywhere that Mr. Li or Mr. Huang intended to be. We had passed a few fallen scarecrows and abandoned homes a while back. We had seen people too, though they had been scare, mostly farmers trudging through the mud as they pushed their oxen through the wet fields. The road—if that was indeed what it was--had not been driven on for a long time.

Homes had grown scare too. There were a few graineries, and other buildings that had fallen into utter desuetude. Then for the better part of an hour there were no buildings at all, until we espied a small farm house on a hill off to our right. Mr. Huang drove toward it. I did not have to ask to know he was looking for directions.

A man sat on a chair along the dusty path before the house. He held a baby as young as he was old, and both bore the signs of having been recently asleep. The afternoon sun was hotter today than it had been for months, and man and baby had meant to drift away on the hazy thoughts the sun engenders.

Mr. Li stepped out of the car. Through the window shield, I could hear the murmur of Mr. Li's voice, but when the old man spoke I heard nothing at all. Sensing the man was deaf, Mr. Li's voice grew louder with each word, yet the old man's voice remained soft, his sentences brief.

Mr. Li returned to the car. "What did he say?" I asked.

"Nothing I could understand," said Mr. Li tartly.

We began to pull away, but the old man stood up. Still holding the child, he motioned to a metal pot—blotched and peeling—on an adjacent table. We had been asked to tea.

The tea had been heated long ago, but the heat of the afternoon sun had kept it warm enough. The baby and the old man were both silent as we drank. I was unsure if it was the man's age or the few hours of aimless driving that had made him indecipherable to us. Perhaps it was some of both; we were a long way from Dayao, up in the hills where a dialect from a distant town would have been of little use.

The three of us talked for a while together, mostly about the temple we had been looking for, and that Mr. Li and Mr. Huang wished to look no longer. The temple was for another day, they said. They had driven long enough, and could scarecly remember the way back to Dayao let alone to a temple they had not visited since their youth. The man and baby were silent throughout the conversation; yet their eyes rested on us, the ears of the baby resting on our every word.