Pei Jianguo's Resettlement

Pei Jianguo is fifty-eight. A sliver of shrapnel still sits in his left leg, a cold-weather wound from his border patrol days. He served eight years and earned a third-class merit citation; when he left the army the red flower on his chest was broader than a bowl.

The county civil affairs bureau had clapped his shoulder. "Jianguo, go home and wait for the notice. Once the resettlement card comes, you are a regular at the county machinery plant." He believed them. He carried his duffel back to Houhe Village and slept every night with the Veterans' Resettlement Certificate pinned under his pillow.

A year passed; no notice. He asked. Civil affairs said the plant had been restructured, the posts gone; he should find his own living and was handed a one-time grant of eight thousand yuan to send him away. He went to the plant. The sign at the gate now read Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. The old man in the guardhouse said, "Son, this plant folded three years back."

Pei would not let it go. He went to the human resources bureau; they said resettlement belonged to civil affairs. He went to civil affairs; they said policy was two-way choice and who was to blame for a dead plant. Ask again and they told him to file a petition. Behind the petitions window a young woman never looked up. "Your case is already self-employed under policy. You do not qualify for resettlement."

He did not know what two-way choice meant. He only knew the job he had waited eight years for was gone.

He began riding to the provincial capital. The first time, a county car met him at the veterans' affairs hall and drove him home. The second time he never reached the car; at the train station they persuaded him to turn back. After that, every festival, every two-sessions period, every sensitive date, the village security chief dropped by to sit a while — care for a veteran, they called it, though really it was to watch he did not leave. One National Day he was invited to a township study class for nine days. Two other petitioners shared the room; by day they watched television, by night each turned to his own thoughts. On leaving, the stability officer Old Liu offered a cigarette. "Jianguo, sign a promise not to go to Beijing. Go home and live well." He asked what signing would do. Old Liu smiled. "Sign, and everyone rests easy."

He signed.

His wife Chunxing had left him years before. He earned under two hundred a month then; she said, "No proper job, no food but the north wind — am I to live on that?" She took their daughter and went. The daughter later married in the south, mails a card each New Year, and never says she is coming back.

Pei survived on odd jobs — hauling bricks at a kiln, minding a gate at a site, sitting with the dead at wakes. His veterans' pension is three hundred twenty yuan a month, not enough for medicine. The shrapnel in his leg aches in damp weather; at the clinic they said he needed an operation, five thousand yuan. He felt his pockets and went home, holding a hot-water bottle to the pain.

Last year the county launched a veterans' grievances campaign with a dedicated team. The new cadre, Young Zhou in spectacles, came with a ledger. "Uncle Pei, your unresolved resettlement — we are studying it. We will see it settled."

Light flickered in Pei's long-dry eyes.

Zhou left a word at the door. "Uncle Pei, stop petitioning; it reflects badly. We have arranged a public-welfare post for you — sweeping the martyrs' cemetery, on the books, eight hundred a month. Start there."

He went. The cemetery sits on a barren slope at the city's edge; few visitors come. Each dawn he sweeps the path, piles the fallen leaves, and burns them. His old uniform is washed white; the merit medal rides his chest. The cemetery guard knows him and nods now and then.

At year's end the county named Pei a Model Veteran — self-reliant, rooted at the grassroots. He did not collect the prize, but his name reached the glory board in the veterans' affairs hall.

He stood before the board, touched the shrapnel in his leg, then the medal on his chest. The characters were red and bright, and he squinted against them.

Wind came off the barren slope and lifted a few leaves he had not swept. Pei turned and limped back to the rented room where he lives. The lamp inside burns dimmer than the cemetery's.