The following year, 1937, Father grew utterly exhausted by the exploitation of the Japanese and their puppet regime and resolved to quit carpentry for good. He rented two *xiang* of land in the village, toiling from dawn till dusk to tend the crops. The seedlings grew remarkably well, ranking easily first or second in the entire village. But just as the corn was silking and tasseling, a sudden, fierce hailstorm battered the fields, leaving the stalks broken and stripped bare. Father sat at the edge of the field, hugging his knees, staring blankly ahead, and letting out long, heavy sighs as he muttered to himself, "Good heavens! Heavens!" He sat there until dusk, refusing to budge, until Mother finally came and managed to coax him back home. The moment he crossed the threshold, he collapsed onto the *kang* and could not get up again. It took over a month of illness for him to recover.
For peasants struck by such a natural disaster, time slipped by relentlessly, and before they knew it, autumn had arrived. The puppet village office kept pressing them relentlessly for "military grain" and various taxes, while the landlord arrived at their door again and again with his accountant to collect the land rent, driving the common people to a dead end with no way up to heaven and no door down into the earth...
Worrying over how he could possibly manage the "military grain," Father racked his brain without finding the slightest glimmer of hope. Finally, he slumped back against the head…
Chapter 210