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behind.
    Fifty-six minutes later they arrived at the village, which consisted of about eighty households. Lin Kong's team was billeted in three farmhouses – the two larger ones were for the doctors and soldiers, the smaller one for the seven women nurses.
    In the pale moonlight, smoke and sparks were spouting out from two chimneys atop the production brigade's office house. The mess squad was busy cooking in there, burning cornstalks and brushwood. Two cleavers were chopping cabbages rhythmically while the cooks were making a soup and baking wheaten cakes. From time to time they larded the field cauldrons with two thick pieces of pork skin. In the yard the horses were drinking warm water and munching fodder, their backs and flanks still steaming with sweat. The mess officer had gone out to look for a stable for the horses, but he hadn't returned yet.
    After Lin's men had settled in, Lin went to the "kitchen" with an orderly to fetch dinner. In there he didn't see any of the nurses of his team. It occurred to him that they must have been too exhausted to come. So he let the baby-faced orderly take the wheaten cakes and the cabbage and pork soup back to the men, while he borrowed an aluminum pot from the cooks and carried some soup and a bag of cakes to the nurses.
    The wind was rising, and wisps of steam were blown up from the pot, swirling about Lin's chest. Dogs barked at the sentries, who were patrolling the village, toting flashlights and submachine guns. Stars glittered like brass nuggets above the pine woods that were swaying wave after wave in the south. On arrival at the farmhouse, Lin found Manna Wu and Haiyan Niu bathing their feet in a large wooden bowl. An old woman with a weather-beaten face was heating more water in an iron bucket for the other nurses. "Why don't you go fetch dinner?" he asked them.
    "We're still drenched in sweat," Nurse Shen answered.
    " I'm dog tired," said Manna, whose feet rubbed each other in the warm water with tiny squeaks.
    "No matter what, you have to eat," Lin said. "Otherwise how could you walk tomorrow?" He put the soup and the bag of wheaten cakes on a nail-studded chest of drawers. "All right, eat dinner and have a good sleep. We'll have a long way to go tomorrow. "
    "Doctor Kong, I – I can't walk anymore," Manna said almost in tears, pointing to her feet.
    "I can't walk either," the large-eyed Haiyan broke in. "I have blisters too."
    "Let me have a look," he said.
    The old woman moved an oil lamp closer. Lin squatted down to examine the two pairs of feet resting on the edge of the wooden bowl. Haiyan's feet had three small blisters, one on the ball of her right foot and two on her left heel; but Manna's soles were bloated with blisters that were shiny like tiny balloons. With his forefinger he pressed the red skin around the largest blister, and Manna let out a moan.
    "The blisters must be drained," he said to the nurses standing by. "Do you know how to do it?"
    "No." They all shook their heads.
    Lin sighed, but to their amazement, he rolled up his sleeves and said, "Manna, I need two or three hairs from you, long ones."
    "All right," she replied.
    He turned to the old woman. "Do you have a needle, Granny?"
    "Sure." She went out of the room and called to her daughter-in-law, who was at the other end of the house. "Hey, Rong, bring me some needles."
    "Here you are," said Manna, handing Lin a few hairs, each about a foot long. He picked one and put the rest on his knee.
    A thirtyish woman stepped in, carrying a large gourd ladle filled with scraps of cloth, balls of white, blue, and black threads, and a small silk pincushion. She said, "I've all the needles here, Mama. What kind you need?"
    "A small one will do," Lin put in.
    A two-inch needle was placed in his hand. He threaded it with a hair, then said to Manna, "Don't be scared. It won't hurt much."
    She nodded. Lin cleaned his hands and the needle with a few cotton balls soaked with alcohol. Then with another cotton ball held