Pulling Her Out

The September pond was an old mirror dusted over with grey.

When the wind passed, wrinkles spread across the surface, ring after ring, rippling until they reached the crooked willow at the pond’s edge, then slowly went flat again. Electric delivery carts from the logistics park rattled down the path beside the pond, one after another, kicking up dust that drifted back down. Not a single soul on that road ever spared this mirror a second glance.

Until the afternoon of September 6th, when Old Yang looked twice.

Just one look, and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up—a grey-white patch was floating in the middle of the pond, like a plastic bag. But plastic bags don’t bob up and down, and they certainly don’t stretch out a hand to slap at the water with tiny, frantic splashes.

“Somebody’s in the pond! There’s someone in the pond!”

Old Yang’s voice cracked on the spot. He shouted at the top of his lungs while fumbling for his phone, his hands shaking so badly he misdialed twice before punching out three digits.

“Police? The pond next to the logistics park! An old woman’s fallen in! Yes! She’s still moving! Hurry, please—”

Phone clamped between shoulder and ear, he was already running for the bank. Old Yang was in his early forties, and when he ran, his belly bounced up and down. He couldn’t swim. When his father was alive, he’d always said the Yang family were landlubbers by birthright—once in the water, they sank straight down like weights. But right now Old Yang had only one thought in his head: so what if I can’t swim? I’ve got a voice. I’ve got legs. I’ve got a phone. In the relay race of rescue, he’d run the first leg.

The shouts hit the logistics park like a stone.

At the loading dock, the tape gun slipped from Big Ma’s hand and clattered onto a cardboard box, and he was already sprinting, tearing at the buttons of his work jacket as he ran. On the sorting line, Xiao Ke tossed his scanner onto the table and yelled toward the wall: “Uncle Wei! Someone’s fallen in the pond!”

Uncle Wei, fifty-six, was squatting against the wall having a smoke. He stubbed out the cigarette on the ground, rose, and walked. Not fast, but with long strides.

A-Can was even more frantic—he couldn’t swim either, though Old Yang only learned that later. That day, A-Can grabbed a long bamboo unloading pole from beside the wall and took off after the others, hollering louder than anyone: “The pole! Grab the pole!”

Out in the middle of the pond, the slapping of that hand was growing weaker and weaker.

Big Ma flung his jacket onto the bank, didn’t even bother with his trouser legs, and plunged straight in. The September water was cold enough to bite. He held his breath, surged over, hooked an arm around a patch of grey clothing, and hauled.

“Don’t let her grab you! Grab her clothes, not her body!” Uncle Wei was already wading in, water up to his chest, bellowing loud enough to shake the sky. “Don’t let her lock her arms around your neck!”

Big Ma lifted from the front, Uncle Wei braced from behind, and the two of them stumbled toward shore, one foot sinking deep, the next finding shallow ground. The mud at the bottom of the pond gripped like hands, pulling, dragging, tugging them under.

A-Can leaned over the bank, extending the pole into the water: “Uncle Wei! Grab the pole!”

Old Yang seized the back of A-Can’s waist. Xiao Ke seized Old Yang. One bamboo pole—two men in the pond, three men on the bank—five deliverymen strung together in a single line. And behind that line, more hands had appeared without anyone noticing: villagers who’d come running at the shouts, drivers who’d parked their trucks. Everyone took hold.

“Heave!”

Old Yang felt his arms would pop out of their sockets. The old woman came free of the water, her hair all white now, plastered wet against her face, water gushing from her mouth, her chest rising and falling.

“She’s breathing! She’s breathing!” A-Can had shouted himself hoarse.

Xiao Ke took off his own jacket and draped it over the old woman. Big Ma collapsed in the mud, wiped his face, unable to tell whether it was pond water or sweat.

In the distance, a siren rose from far away and came closer.

While they waited for the ambulance, the old woman caught her breath. Her lips trembled for a long while before four words came out: “The pot… there’s something stewing…”

The whole circle of people froze—then burst out laughing. And as they laughed, Old Yang’s eyes went hot. His mother, when she was still alive, had been just like that. Every autumn she’d keep watch over the pot on the stove, and anyone who came home late would get scolded—but after the scolding, she’d pile their bowls high with meat, heaped till it overflowed.

By the time the old woman’s daughter arrived, she’d lost a shoe somewhere along the way. She clutched the five men’s hands, too choked up to form a full sentence, just bowing, straightening up, bowing again. At the end, she pulled a wad of money from her bag to press on them, but the five men hid their hands behind their backs and shook their heads like windshield wipers.

“Sister, we were there. We couldn’t just pretend we didn’t see.”

“It was just lending a hand.”

“If you really feel you owe us,” Uncle Wei drawled, “then from now on, don’t let your mother wander down by the pond alone.”

The daughter’s tears fell again. This time, they fell while she was smiling.

The old woman got out of the hospital half a month later. She had her daughter push her, taking a special detour to the logistics park gate, carrying a bag of fresh-shelled edamame from her own field—she’d get feisty with anyone who refused. Five grown men, whose hands unloaded thousands of packages a day, held that bag of edamame and stood in the autumn wind, clumsily and in unison, saying “Thank you.”

Uncle Wei talked a lot that day. He said that when he was twelve, his mother had taken a shortcut to the market and fallen into the river at the edge of the village, and a stranger—a boatman—had pulled her out. The man pushed her onto the bank, waved a hand, and poled his boat away without ever leaving his name. His mother talked about that man for the rest of her life.

“When I went into the water this time, all I could think about was my mother.” Uncle Wei hugged the bag of edamame to his chest, the way you’d hold a child.

Later, a warning sign with white letters on a blue background went up by the pond, and a guardrail around it, chest-high—arranged by the street office and the logistics park together.

These days, Old Yang’s cart still rattles past the pond every day. The September water is still that old mirror dusted with grey; when the wind passes, it still wrinkles, still ripples in ring after ring until they reach the crooked willow.

Only now, every time he passes, Old Yang always takes a second look.

One look, and his heart settles. There’s nothing else beneath that mirror—just water, quiet and gleaming, reflecting the sky, reflecting the willow, and once reflecting five men in work jackets bending down to pull an old woman up out of autumn.

This story is based on real events. All names are pseudonyms.