2024 Grand Prize Winner, College Category
On odd days of the month, the mainland bombards the islands with shells. On even days, we return the favor. The steel capsules come thick and fast, a distinctive whistle in the air. My teacher instructs us to take cover in the concrete-reinforced bomb shelter under the school’s track. I don’t learn very much on those days.
Half a million shells landed on Kinmen in forty days. If Kinmen is 150 square kilometers, calculate the number of shells per km.
On even days, I am permitted to run with the goats, chasing each other up and down the sandy slopes, ocean wind whipping our faces with the taste of brine and dynamite. Many years ago, a child stumbled upon an unexploded bomb and was torn into pieces by the blast. Mei-ying’s parents still don’t let her come with us. We see her sometimes sitting by the door of her house, playing tops with her younger brother and gazing wistfully at us in the distance.
On odd days, the soldiers marvel at our fortitude. They come from an island further east where the only things that drop from the sky are rain and pigeon poop. Young and knock-kneed, my father calls them. Brave and foolish. One soldier, Wei Ge-ge, distributes brown sugar candy amongst the town children. He has kind eyes and a face etched with hard lines of sorrow. He lost an ear, and his entire squad of soldiers, to a mainland “water ghost” commando. Sometimes, on even days, my father takes me with him. We go searching for shells in the turned earth amongst groves of new saplings. Instead we find cheery, Chinese-New-Year-red papers blanketing the ground like an explosion of my mother’s feather duvet. I stoop to pick one up, but Baba rips it out of my hand and shreds it. “Lies,” he tells me. “All lies, do you understand?” The paper is light and brittle enough that the pieces are carried away by the breeze.
We crest the hill. On the slope before us lies half of a gray metal cylinder tapered at one end, about the size of my schoolbag when it is stuffed to the brim. Baba exclaims and I start towardsvit, but he tells me to stand back. “Wait here,” he says, pointing back to the top of the hill.
I sit cross-legged in the grass, folding scraps of leaflet into airplanes. When I loft one into the air, the strong breeze brings it crashing to the ground. I squint at the characters scrawled across one wing, skipping the ones I can’t read. Resolute and unafraid of ______, we will surmount ____ to win _________. That’s odd. I get top grades in language and 甲 on my essays, but some of the characters look mangled and unfamiliar.
Baba takes the fragment back to the town blacksmith. Maestro Wu, people call him, in acknowledgement of his astonishing skill. His wife haggles with Baba over the price of the steel. I don’t listen, but I do hope I will get a snack for my contributions. Perhaps a slab of fresh fried sweet potato or three spiral-shaped hard crackers, an ear of roasted corn or a bag of boiled peanuts, whose shells I can use as boats in a puddle—my mouth waters just thinking about it.
I distract myself by watching Maestro Wu at work. A thousand sparks fly in every direction, including onto his bare skin, but he does not seem to notice. He is grinding a newly formed steel cleaver, the whirring and scraping almost loud enough to drown out Baba’s expert bargaining.
“Good afternoon, maestro!” I hear Wei Ge-ge’s voice behind me. He has a friendly smile for me, but no candy. I pout. “My service is up next month. I want to take one of your knives back for my mother. She’s from Shanghai, and in her last letter, she sent me a sketch.” Wei Ge-ge uncrumples a sheet of paper and holds it out to Maestro Wu.
Maestro Wu whips out a measuring tape and beckons to his wife, who hands him my father’s fragment. After a long moment, he nods. “What was your last offer? We’ll take it.
A-bing-ge, your knife will come from this piece of steel.” I beam with pride for my role in finding the shell; my father takes my hand, says good job and well done, and slips a half-dollar coin into my fist.
Even days follow odd days follow even days, becoming the pulsating rhythm of my childhood. Deafening explosions are followed by the pounding of the surf and the whistle of our returning shells, a blue-sky breather until the next day. Wei Ge-ge picks up his knife and disappears to the eastern island. He is replaced by a new platoon of fresh-faced young soldiers, not all of whom will make it back home. When I grow older and martial law is loosened, I dream of leaving Kinmen, of living somewhere where even and odd days are nothing more than a quirk of the calendar. But my home sings to me its siren song. If you leave, the ocean breeze asks, who will be left?
Deborah grew up across five cities in three countries but considers Taipei, Taiwan her home. She is a college senior studying computer science and English and an incoming software engineer. Her oddest Taiwanese food cravings include rou geng (肉羹), almond tofu (杏仁豆腐), and that one Family Mart rice ball wrapped in egg and filled with hamburger patties, cheese, and BBQ sauce.
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