Lin Dasuan looked at the son who'd rushed out of the house and froze.
What was wrong with this kid today? Red-rimmed eyes, like he'd just been crying—but he was too old for crying. Besides, what was there to cry about? Hungry? Stomachache? Didn't sleep well last night?
Lin Dasuan planted his hoe on the ground and reached out to feel his son's forehead.
"No fever?"
His hand was rough, hard, the fingertips thick with calluses, prickly against the skin. But the warmth was real, alive—not an illusion.
Lin Jianguo didn't speak. He just stared at his father's face.
He thought of that hospital room sixty-five years later, the medicine bottles on the bedside table, that black-and-white photograph, the contours he'd traced countless times with his fingers. But no matter how clear those contours, they were flat, dead—nothing but the cold of photographic paper when touched.
This face before him was alive.
The wrinkles moved. The crow's feet deepened when he frowned. The lips moved, opening and closing with speech. The Adam's apple moved, bobbing up and down as he swallowed.
Alive.
Suddenly Lin Jianguo reached out and grabbed his father's wrist.
Lin Dasuan started. "What are you doing?"
Lin Jianguo didn't let go. Just held on. He could feel a pulse beating beneath the skin—once, twice, again. Strong, pounding, like the pendulum of the old clock at home.
He thought of another hand.
His father's hand at sixty-five—no, his father had been dead for fifty years at sixty-five. He'd held that hand—at the fire scene, in the hospital morgue, at the funeral home. That hand was cold, stiff, the nails bluish—no matter how long you held it, it never warmed.
He held this hand, gripping tighter and tighter.
Lin Dasuan's wrist was starting to hurt, but he didn't pull away. He looked at his son's face, at those red-rimmed eyes, and felt a flicker of unease. What was wrong with the boy? Possessed by something?
"Jianguo?" he ventured. "Jianguo, what's wrong? Say something."
Lin Jianguo still didn't speak.
He just held his father's wrist, tears falling, drop by drop, landing on the back of his father's hand.
He remembered so many things.
He remembered walking home at night as a child, holding his father's hand on the way back from Grandma's. The moon was bright, the crops rustling on both sides of the road, and he was scared, gripping his father's hand tight. His father said, "What's there to be afraid of? Dad's here."
He remembered learning to ride a bike, his father holding the back of the seat while he wobbled forward. When he looked back, his father had long let go and stood in the distance, watching and laughing. He fell and scraped his knee. His father ran over, picked him up in one motion, brushed off the dirt, and said, "Don't cry. Be a man."
He remembered the last time he saw his father, at the edge of the fire. His father's face was covered in black soot, his eyes bloodshot from smoke, but he was still smiling. He waved and said, "Dad's fine. You go on." That was the last time he ever saw his father smile.
The back of Lin Dasuan's hand was covered with tears.
Those tears were warm, warmer than the forehead he'd just felt. Drop by drop, they landed on his skin, then trickled down his fingers.
He looked down at those tears, then up at his son's face. The expression on his own face grew complicated.
"What's wrong?" His voice softened, no longer carrying that slightly teasing tone from before, but taking on another tone—the tone he used when little Jianguo woke from nightmares in the middle of the night, and he'd get up to comfort him. "Had a bad dream?"
Lin Jianguo nodded, then shook his head.
He opened his mouth and finally managed a sound: "Dad."
Just that one word.
Lin Dasuan grunted in acknowledgment.
Lin Jianguo said it again: "Dad."
Lin Dasuan grunted again, waiting for him to continue.
But Lin Jianguo said nothing more. He just held his father's wrist, standing in the yard, beneath the half-denuded jujube tree, in the deep autumn sunlight, tears streaming endlessly.
Lin Dasuan asked no more questions.
He just stood there, letting his son hold his wrist. The hoe still rested on the ground; he forgot to pick it up again. The wind blew, making the work uniform under the jujube tree sway, the water dripping faster from its sleeves.
After a long time, Lin Jianguo finally let go.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, sniffled, and said, "Nothing. Just... had a dream."
"What dream?"
Lin Jianguo thought for a moment. "Dreamed... dreamed you were gone."
Lin Dasuan laughed, showing that canine tooth. "Gone? I'm right here, aren't I?"
He patted his son's shoulder—a pat neither light nor heavy, but full of strength.
"Alright, stop fussing. Go take down that laundry. We've got fieldwork later." He shouldered his hoe and turned to go, then looked back. "Breakfast's in the pot. Help yourself."
Then he walked out the gate and disappeared behind that earthen wall.
Lin Jianguo stood in the yard, staring at where his father had vanished, for a very long time.
The wind blew. The hanging work uniform swayed.
He walked over and took it down. Still damp, heavy; he draped it over his arm, lowered his head, and buried his face in the wet fabric.
It smelled of soap, of sweat, of sunshine—and of his father.
He stayed like that for a long time, until he could hardly breathe.
Then he raised his head, took a deep breath, and carrying that damp uniform, walked back inside.