故事梗概：

   湘鬍子的兩個兒子趁他不在家時，參加了紅軍鬧革命。不久他們所在的部隊便遭到了國民黨軍隊的圍剿。紅軍殘部不得不往湘贛邊界撤退，途中卻遭到國民黨的伏擊，而幾近全軍覆沒。湘鬍子的小兒子當場犧牲，大兒子失蹤。湘鬍子接電報後回到家鄉，這時傳來消息大兒子被俘關在長沙的一所監獄。長沙方面來人詢問關於他兒子的處理意見，湘鬍子明里表態公事公辦，暗地裡則立即差人送信到長沙的老戰友處營救大兒子。但是這封信卻陰差陽錯地被錯送到了他兒子的仇人手中，信被扣押並銷毀。大兒子在獄中死於酷刑。

  Big Mom fell in silence sipping the tea. Yiner placed a  small brazier under Big Mom's feet and sat  beside it on the low bench waiting patiently. She took a pair of tongs from the shelf beside the brazier and gently shifted the burning charcoals. The half-burned pinewood-charcoal had produced grey-white ashes on their surfaces, fluffy and light like a thin layer of down. As Yiner turning them over, they faintly crackled and spat promptly clusters of red spark into the air like firing  tiny fireworks. Yiner buried the pieces which begun to flame into the ashes lying on the bottom of the brazier because they would burn Big Mom’s shoes. A  familiar odour of pinewood  lingered in the air, sweet and spicy, warm and cool, all that seemed to bring Yiner’s heart to fly. Yiner knew Big Mom never need to search in her memory, everything was just well kept in her heart and now she was  picking on where to begin with.

At length Big Mom cleared her throat and said calmly in a dry  and dull voice, “Well, you must have heard  the stories about your uncles and  their deaths?”

 Yiner’s hand stopped shifting the charcoals, she raised her head looking at Big Mom. “Y…yes,” admitted she hesitantly. She had expected Big Mom to talk about her father, even her mother. She knew Big Mom was at hall door watching and listening  that day when her father returned to tell her about her mother in the yard. As long as Yiner could remember, openly talking about her uncles’ deaths was forbidden in this family, especially before Big Mom. It was a wound  cut to the roots, too deep to be truly healed by time. And now Big Mom brought it up herself. Yiner lost for words and could only  hold her breath to listen.

“No, you mustn’t,” said Big Mom shaking her head  as if spoke to herself.  “It was the morning,   lunar calendar July 28, 1930, clearly I remember that.   The whole family got up at dawn because your two uncles would take departure home with the Red Army. Yesterday, the Red Army had been defeated at the town Long Pond when the Kuomintang Army came to lay siege to it for three days, and lost hundreds men.  So the Red Army had to retreat. They decided  to enter the great mountains to the East, on the boarder of Province Jiangxi and Hunan, as ten times more enemies were coming. I prayed to Buddha  for blessing my sons and the Red Army a safe journey. Then I drew divinatory sticks and they were  the worst ones … I asked your uncles not to go and find some places nearby to hide. I told them it wouldn’t be a good luck awaited in their journey  from what showed on the sticks I just drew.  But they wouldn’t listen. The Communists never believe in fortune, Yiner, they trust only themselves; they think there are no gods in the world and a man is his own god. Of course  I couldn’t stop them, they were mighty Red Army soldiers, how could they be deserters on account of superstition. ‘Ma,” they both fell on the knees in front of me,   kowtowing. ‘Time to leave, take care of yourself, we will be back soon,’ your elder uncle said.  So they left home, left me and never came back again. 'Victory belongs to the Communism,' was the last word they left to me.

“Fifteen days later, I got the grave tidings of my sons’ deaths. A survivor from the Red Army host   came to our house, brought me a full account of their tragedy journey: on the seventh day of their marching, the Red Army had come to the entrance of Valley Huanping. Huanping is actual a ravine, the juncture of Hunan and Jiangxi, 150 miles away from here, the mountains on both sides  are steep and cliffs, the path went up into the mountains lying on the bottom along a rapid stream is too narrow that people can only walk in a single file,  ‘the Goat Bowel Path’ is what it’s called. If the Red Army could pass through it, they would have survived, because as soon as they entered those deep and dense  forests of Jiangxi, the enemy could not do anything. Unfortunately, the Red Army didn’t make it through.  A troop heavy cavalry of the Kuomintang had lay in ambush with cannons awaiting. Hundreds of the soldiers were slaughtered  there, only a few escaped. The stream had turned bloody red, broken bodies and limbs lay everywhere on the Goat Bowel Path and the stream. Your younger uncle was hit dead by a cannonball, but the elder  was missing. No one had seen their bodies when people cleaned up the battlefield. Later we could have only collected a few pieces of armour and items home which were assumed to belong to your younger uncle’s and buried them in our family cemetery. Meanwhile we were  still searching the missing one, your elder uncle, wished he was not killed and had had escaped into the forests. I prayed to Buddha  day and night…

“Not long after we buried the younger, another tidings arrived, of your another uncle was wound and captured in that battle and now imprisoned in a jail in Changsha City. Your father had had come back to River Pond from the Huangpu Military Officer School after received our wire, for your younger uncle’s funeral and looking for the other through his friends. It was a gaoler who came to our home to discuss  our elder’s case with your father after the captors learnt that the prisoner was Lan Xiang’s son. Your father told the gaoler that everything should be done under the  law, no one could be above or break it. So they tortured him to death because he wouldn’t abandon his Communism and betray his comrades. He was only twenty-three years old.  Oh, your younger uncle was  twenty.”

Yiner shocked, no one would tell her  about her two uncles deaths in details before. “My father … my father … was he … he really so cruel and cold-blooded, didn’t want to rescue his son? And, and wouldn’t you hate him?” after a while she squeezed the word reluctantly.

“I am  to tell you that, refill my tea  please,” Big Mom said calmly handing her cup to Yiner.  She did as Big Mom bade.

“Your father definitely wouldn’t want to watch his own son die like that without doing anything.  As soon as the gaoler walked out the gate, your father wrote a letter to his closed friend who was the commander of the Kuomintang Military garrisoned in Changsha, pleading with him for rescue your uncle. He wanted his servant to send this letter to one of our far relatives who lived in Long Pond and ask him riding a horse galloping to Changsha at once, to deliver his message to the commander. It would work something out if everything going smooth, at least your uncle wouldn’t die. But It went not well as planned unfortunately. The letter was sent to a wrong person by the servant who could merely read few words . The young boy made a rush to Long Pond but he misheard the relative’s name and sent the letter to a different person with a similar name. The wrong person  was a foe of your uncles, because the Red Army had taken his possession in ‘the Xiangjiang Revolt’ time.  He hated the Red Army, hated the Communists and your uncles of course. When the servant told him what your father asked ‘him’ to do, he thought his revenge had come. He promised and  accepted the letter. After the boy left, he burned the letter to ashes… After your uncle dead,  we had just learnt what happened at very first step. Xiang the Beard was too mad, too sad, and fell ill …” Big Mom choked, turbid water welling up  from her cloudy eyes, 'my boy... my boy... was tortured to death."

Dead silence was filling the room again, only the faint crackling of the charcoals sang a song of sorrow.  Yiner felt wanting to weep her eyes out.