After being thrown out of the truck, I slid down a cliff. Since there were no rescue tools, no one could go down to find me, and the truck was stuck in the mud, unable to move. It was almost dusk, and some people rushed to the battalion camp on foot to get the rescuers who arrived a few hours later.
Donna thought that her uncle's village was much closer to the Wildboar Ridge, so she went up the mountain alone. She needed a lot of courage and ran along the rough path in the dark jungle. She didn't tell me she had walked such a dangerous and arduous mountain road. I imagined that she had fallen and got up countless times, dark clouds blocking the moonlight, Donna groping for leverage in the dark, the beasts following her every step.
Her uncle took the boys from the village and rushed down the mountain with ropes and torches. They were valiant hunters – mountain climbing was their specialty. They soon found me several feet down the side of the cliff-hanging from a tree branch and slipping into a coma. Kerte told his men that the person Donna wanted to save must be a good boy, so he ordered them to bring me up quickly and safely. They clamped a few pieces of wood around me, tied ropes around a big tree sloping down the valley, pulled me up, and brought me to the ground with hooks. In less than half an hour, I was saved.
At that moment, a violent storm swept by without warning. It came and went suddenly. If it wasn't for Donna's wit and bravery to get me out of danger in time, I would have floated like a leaf to the bottom of the valley, riding on the wind of the storm.
They carried me to the tribe village. Kerte bandaged my wound and reattached my dislocated arm.
It was the next morning when Dr. Fang arrived in the village. She did a full body check on me and found that my arm was in the wrong place, so she had to tear it out of the socket and start over.
The thick fog that had filled the cottages earlier had receded at noon, and the fresh, warm mountain wind was passing through the bamboo buildings. Seeing that my condition had improved, Dr. Fang asked Dagui and Xiao Wang to carry me down the mountain on a stretcher.
When passing by the exit of the village, Dagui lost his balance and fell, and I rolled into a stone slab, leaving a bloodstain on my face. I saw a pool of mountain springs not far away, a group of young girls playing naked in the water. They didn't mind our curious and somewhat greedy eyes. I understood why Dagui fell, and I would have done it myself. The girls' seductive, jumping curves melted into a beautiful, colorful painting with the splashing water and tree shadows under the sun.
My eyes caught Donna and Ploy playing among them, which didn't surprise me. Maybe it's because I had a secret about Donna that I had never revealed to anyone.
One night in my childhood, during a full moon, I played hide-and-seek with a few friends in a haystack. One of them, Xiao Hai, wanted to take me to Donna's house to see something. We came to the side of Donna's kitchen and looked in through the bamboo rake wall. The lights were dim. Donna and her sisters were not seen. But we could see Donna's parents naked. Her dad sat at the dinner table smoking a hookah, the muscle on his chest flickering in the sparks of the pipe. Her mother squatted on the side, washing clothes with hair covering her face. She suddenly stood up to pick up something that startled us, and we ran away, knowing that it was not good for us to peep through the wall. At a glance, I didn't see too much, but I was surprised that Donna's mother appeared more attractive and younger than during the day.
Donna's father, my father, and many other men were unlisted soldiers. They settled in the deep mountains of the frontier, sticking to the mission entrusted by the motherland.
I wondered about Donna's family for many days, thinking that her family had too many children and was perhaps too poor to have clothes. I wanted my mother to give them some clothes, but I didn't dare say it for fear of being beaten.
Hai and I had been there two more times, but there were no lights, only the faint moonlight through the bamboo wall. I probably knew that Donna's father still smoked and accompanied her mother to wash clothes. They would not have been wearing clothes, as they were being washed, and Donna had not been seen.
The last time I went, I was by myself. I wanted to know if Donna was "in a bare ass," as the friends said. If so, I'd be sad for her. That evening was even stranger than what I had witnessed before. Donna's father had a large towel wrapped around his waist. I could hear them talking, so I listened harder to make out the words. To my surprise, her father was being scolded, and it was Donna who was doing it! I was shocked and wanted nothing more to do with Donna and her family.
***
I stayed at home for two months following the incident on the cliff, like an extended summer vacation. Aside from a few more scars and headaches every so often, I was ready to go into the frontier business. My father was the battalion commander, and my mother was an accountant. Despite their limited vision and ability, they still made some plans for my future. They thought that I was suitable for studying, so I should work hard, not be afraid of hardships, and strive to become an elite youth to earn a chance to be nominated for higher education within five years. Being selected as a worker-farmer-soldier student was the only way to enter a university for higher education over three years. I wouldn't know what the university would teach, but it was better than nothing.
One day, when I was still in bed, Donna came to my house to pick up her uncle's clothes and return my washed clothes. My mother didn't let her in, and I had no idea what my mother told her. After Donna left, my mother spoke to me about her. She urged me to leave her alone and said, "Donna was a good girl, but her behavior was scary. It was not the first time that people had seen her taking a shower in the kitchen without closing the window. "
I replied disapprovingly, "All the girls in the tribe bathe naked in the open air; it must be normal!" My mother looked at me and said that I must have damaged my head more than she realized.