With the robe recovered the party walked west again. About a month later they reached a large village, and the people who saw them did not look glad.
Please Take Him Away
The biggest house in the village belonged to the Gao family. The master let the two of them inside, then asked outright.
“Do either of you know how to catch a demon?” Wukong’s eyes lit up. “That is my line of work.”
The old man sighed. “Three years ago I took in a son-in-law. He was a decent young man at first.”
He plowed three fields on his own. By autumn the granary was overflowing, and he never passed the heavy work to anyone else.
“He did the work well.” There was no complaint in the way he said it. “Then one day his face began to change.”
The nose grew long and the ears grew wide, and people shut their doors in fear. The old man locked his daughter in the back house.
“Cuilan has been in there half a year. Please get him out of my house.” Wukong nodded.
Somebody Else in the Bride’s Room
That night Wukong went to the back house. He sent the daughter out, closed the door, and took her shape and sat down.
A great wind blew, the door opened, and a dark shape came in and sat. “Why was the door locked tonight?”
Wukong answered in her voice. “Father has brought in monks. They say one of them catches demons.”
The shape laughed. “I heard what he is called. As long as it is not that Sun Wukong.”
Wukong let his own face come back. “I am that Sun Wukong.” The shape broke the door and ran.
He Did the Work Well
Wukong chased him as far as the mountain. They fought in front of a cave, and the rake in his hands was no small thing.
In the middle of it the other man shouted. “What exactly have I done wrong? I worked in that house for three years.”
Wukong did not stop swinging. “You shut a person away.” “Her father shut her away, not me.”
Wukong paused at that. The other man went on. “I plowed the fields and brought in the grain. The only thing that changed was my face.”
Wukong asked him a question. “And where did the face come from?”
A Man with Three Names
He had been an officer of Heaven, Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, over the water forces. He got drunk at a banquet and committed a grave offense.
He was thrown out and fell. On the way down he entered the wrong womb and was born in the body of a pig.
“Some years ago I met the Bodhisattva Guanyin. She gave me the name Wuneng and told me to wait for the man going to fetch the scriptures.”
Wukong lowered the cudgel. “He is standing down there right now.” The two of them went back to the Gao house together.
He knelt in front of Sanzang. Sanzang gave him one more name, Bajie, for the eight things to abstain from.
This was a man who loved eating above all. He had just been handed the hardest possible name, and Bajie laughed and took it.
The Monk in the Tree
Before leaving, Bajie said goodbye to the old man. “Father-in-law, take good care of my wife.” The old man did not answer.
Days later on a mountain road they met a monk in a tree. He lived in a nest woven out of grass, and Sanzang asked him about the road west.
Instead of directions he taught him a short sutra. “Recite this when you are afraid.” It ran only about fifty characters.
Sanzang heard it once and had it by heart. From then on he says it whenever the road frightens him. Wukong recognized who the monk was and said nothing.
Today, the Seat Where Work and Person Are Weighed Apart
The old man never spoke badly of his son-in-law. He plowed, he brought in the harvest, he took the hard jobs. The old man granted all of it and still asked to have him removed.
The problem was not what he had done but what he was. And that was not something he had chosen.
Our workplaces have this seat too. On the numbers nobody beats him, and nobody wants to sit next to him.
So we talk about output and fit as separate things. Separating them makes the judgment easy, and the half that gets separated out is always the person.
Bajie leaves that house and takes the road. For fourteen years he carries the heaviest load, and of the four he says the most human things.