At night by the big river at the head of the car, it is indeed confusing. The funeral atmosphere was eerie. In the second half of the night, the dwarf intermittently heard the "ball spectrum, ball spectrum" White Spotted Forest Owl calling. Seventeen calls came. On a rainy day in the summer after the 2008 earthquake, Jiang Hugging later said that he had a lucky attitude to call Apple Face again, and this time she answered his call. And Jiang Hugging spoke to her in a trembling voice. "Oh, thank goodness, how come you keep not answering my calls."
"I'm not trying to say no."
"Several times, I wanted to ask you."
"Then ask."
"Anyway, I don't need to think about it."
"I really can't find the time."
"Well, I can go to you." I don't want to go around the world anymore and plan to go back to my hometown. I want to take you to see my dad, you know no, he's almost seventy years old. ”
Oh, I guess we'll find another time to talk. At that time, Apple Face had to be busy at work, and also took time to listen to the literature lecture class, the teacher was Zhang Yinglin, a famous scholar and writer of the Haipai, who happened to put the Chilean poet Neruda, the American writer Welty and McCullers in the same class, about the paralyzed novelist, Jiang Hong stood up and nervously argued with Zhang Yinglin.
She was unclear about the motive.
The two quarreled.
"Hey, I don't agree with your comment."
"You can stop listening." The writer said, "You have the right to leave my classroom. ”
"I'm afraid you're going to mislead everyone."
"An abominable little girl."
(Literary criticism should not be subject to personal attacks, so the pattern seems small.) ）
The other person looked away, and she was like most people.
Only when the dwarf is young and crazy.
"I have no less experience in life than you. Teacher Zhang. ”
She screamed.
"I will wait!"
The second street singer she came into contact said calmly to the apple-faced "girl." Apple pressed the phone, thought about it, simply turned off, but still held the phone in her hand, at that time she was walking on the Bund in Shanghai, there was a brown-skinned foreigner who could change to at least four of her (regardless of weight or size) and wanted to shadow her in a friendly way, and the dwarf nodded and agreed. The layman was almost about to kneel on one leg and kiss her on the right cheek, and continue to trot in the direction of the Waibaidu Bridge. She didn't want to go any further, climbing on the guardrail of the cement embankment (just high enough), gazing at the gray and dark river surface, and listening to the sound of the snapping river water lapping at the embankment. There was a rotten warship directly opposite. She turned on her phone again in a long daze. For two consecutive days, the phone did not come again. The dwarf recalled leaving the place where she felt "home" alone, and perhaps now her "mother's house". Later, she went to the car door again. In 2010 she didn't drive to Tangzi Town, she actually drove, Ginger had an off-road vehicle, but her size, as if, made her lose the ability to drive on the highway or the national highway.
Either AppleFace would have to turn to her husband, Ginger, to drive.
She knew that the "hurdle" had not yet been fully overcome, and AppleFace thought that maybe after she returned from the big river this time. (We — me, Jiang Bao, including another singer — belong only to the future) She thinks along the way. For the time being, she didn't want them to be in the fog at the front of the car door at the same time, even in the sun, standing side by side (where could she get his shoulders) standing by the water's edge, or retaking the small road that she remembered. It is also Ke Longmei's family, Li Shuixiu was kicked out of the game, and normal people will be eliminated. Ke Longbin's mother, his daughter and brother's entire family had emigrated, and the place had become a large reservoir. The golden rays of the sun cover the lake, ripples and smoke. The dwarf did not tell her young husband, Jiang, where he was going this time. He probably could think of it. Naturally, she would not go to the house of Chen Houjing to inquire about the news. I guess his family probably lived in the old place. After Chen Houjing died in a car accident in 2000, the two no longer had any relationship. The dwarf heard a woman who opened a small grocery store on the side of the road say that the man who sold the song (of course, they were talking about Ke Longbin) gave birth to a pair of dragon and phoenix babies after his girl got married, but the boss lady could not remember where she married. It happened to be a fork in the road, and the dwarf bought a bottle of Sprite and stood to drink.
(That was a misunderstanding.) ）
Don't treat me like you once had. Far away, the dwarf car head stared at a hill behind chen Houjing's déjà vu house. Of course, she felt that Chen Houjing's ashes would be buried on that mysterious hillside. The roads are rough and grassy. She thought for a while, thinking that in this life, Ke Longbin would be the same as before, and in the early years (autumn of 1995), Ke Longbin sent the dwarf to take a car back to Guiyang Road through a large row of maple trees at the front of the car door, and they stood in the middle of the tractor road. Ke Longbin wears a light gray waist jacket. On the phone, it seemed that his strange voice in the other world would suddenly come over, so the dwarf gradually developed the habit of always holding the mobile phone on it. Everything that was not expected in advance appeared in front of the dwarf's eyes, happened to those who had something to do with her, and sometimes hit her directly. It's already the spring when everything is waking up. She walked on the gravel road, looking east and west, deliberately slowing down. "I'll be as careful as I can," AppleFace thought to himself, "so as not to arouse the suspicion of the living people on the road." In fact, she was even more afraid of provoking the goblins in the graves of the wild grass. Thinking of her half a life, scarred, Apple's face suddenly acheed. I also inexplicably remembered which boy I met had bad breath, which was definitely bad breath, not some wine. Anyone who had ever loved a dwarf, or who liked each other, had never been as sloppy as he was. Not even the bomb shelter boys. She was very surprised that during the days when she and Chen Houjing, an intermittent mental patient, her requirements for desire were so different. "It's not a small thing." Apple Face said, "Crucial and far-reaching. For me, there is a possibility that it will have a lifetime of adverse effects. And her unscrupulousness, boldness, and obsession with Chen Houjing's various skills from beginning to end made the dwarfs angry with him for a long time, but they were strangely wronged by this person. It was as if she saw the acne on The head of Ke Longbin's nose was dangling around. In this half of my life, I have spent a lot of time in the car. If the dwarf retracts his head, his appearance becomes even more ridiculous. Despite the fact that everyone was praising her for being beautiful.
Suddenly, she had a sense of discouragement.
"That's because you never knew my real age."
She wondered, not even she knew too well.
I think back to 2008, when the "this one" wandering singer was almost twenty-nine years old.
His whole body was like a spring, like that, bouncing around the room with excitement, making her laugh. He was sitting in a chair with his head tilted, changing the fifth string of the Yamaha guitar. Pondering his reaction at this moment, her gaze was direct, completely devoid of the timidity that had been thought of beforehand. She felt dazed. Or, it will take some real exposure. I also thought of the people around Jiang Hug. Let's say they really plan to return to the hinterland of the Umeng Mountains on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in southwest China and live in his hometown (in a sense, it is also the hometown of Apple Face). Or go back to the countryside with him, or you may stay in the original ShanJiaqiao garage that he said.
To this day, the factory is still dead, there is no hope of developing, and it is quite difficult to simply collapse. Ginger hugged her loudly on the phone and danced loudly to her—my little girl with an apple face, weird, God, which is the rotten name—and said that bankruptcy is certainly impossible, and that his father is well-connected and has his old patron. They have moved their nests twice in fifteen years. A high-speed rail line was built at the shanjiaqiao area, and the second was expanded into a four-story overpass.
This time, the dwarf could see clearly enough. Jiang Huo's many arrangements for life may no longer make her suspicious.
Jiang Hugging said, "Oh, I never thought you would actually come to find me." ”
"I came directly by high-speed train. You have an address on your phone," she said, "and I'm now living at the May Day Labor Hostel." ”
How can I still go to the sleeping hostel? Of course it should be! This time, she said, she had to ask in person beforehand.
"Actually, I think exactly the same as you."
"So Apple Face, don't you sit for a while?"
In the rental house just overexcited, and more or less with a little disappointment of the young singer said.
As a wandering singer, Jiang Bao is actually not young. At this time, night quietly falls, the lights are on, outside the glass window, the streets are colorful, and the window lights, especially more dreamlike. Her figure became more and more small and delicate, and it looked like a transparent object.
"It's really late."
Apple's face looked up at Ginger and said:
"I can't go back to the hostel."
Jiang Bao naturally planned to send her back.
"Or shall I help you carry your luggage?" He said tentatively, "Let's take a cab and go." ”
"Don't be busy for now!" She smiled and replied ginger hug.
"I'm certainly not in a hurry."
He said, "Well, I'll send you back to your accommodation." ”
The next morning, Jiang Hu stood in the hallway and shouted her apple face, her "new name."
thirty-eight
For Jiang Bao, the friends of the old times (accurately defined as his boyhood) in the auto repair factory era have drifted away, and more people have actually disappeared into the grass of time, including not even dreaming of them. Luo Sha had also left the garage many years ago. In 1996, his father told Jiang Hu on the phone that Luo Sha's relatives had helped him mention his protégés, and he was going home to get married. His father didn't seem to say where he would go after he got married, and Jiang Thought that he wouldn't be able to return to Master's garage in Shanjiaqiao after he got married anyway. That would be when Ginger hugged into the guitar factory. Luo Sha was out of the school. He is likely to make money for food by setting up a roadside stall in a small town in the countryside that only helps people repair their tires. His family could not afford to help him open a regular repair shop.
No one in the world could help him. Being able to have relatives come forward to help him arrange a portrait would have been somewhat unexpected by Jiang Hug. From the depths of his heart, he originally thought that Luo Sha would be particularly difficult to please a wife. He had absolutely no other way out. But the peach blossom luck comes and you really can't stop it. For several days in a row, Jiang Hu was a little distracted, always wondering, what will Master Luo Sha's new daughter-in-law look like?
About Luo Sha's family situation, Jiang Bao has long heard of it. Of course, he is likely to take his new wife to work in a private factory along the coast. He would go to that sweatshop. In today's society, this arrangement is already very popular, so it is very likely that the craft he learned in master's garage for several years will be lost, or even completely abandoned. Two years later, his hands were also loose. Just think, why did he have to spend effort to learn, it was equivalent to taking off his pants and farting, this is an old saying. Jiang Bao remembered that his brother Luo Sha would become a father in a short time, and he always had to work hard to earn money to be able to raise his wife and children.
Luo Sha's father died at a very young age.
"He's knocking his bones right."
Probably all covered with moss.
It was said that he was killed by a stone weighing dozens of pounds that had been fired on the construction site of his hometown building a highway (the kind of work-for-charity), and the incident occurred suddenly (many years later, when Ke Longbin's father died in the same accident, Jiang Bao sat by the fire and snoozed, and he saw Luo Sha's father's face in a trance; he concluded that it was him, although Jiang Bao had never actually seen this person. Luo Sha said that his father and son were almost cast in a mold.) Or maybe his dad was killed by digging a roast coal in the winter.
Anyway, he couldn't say it clearly, and after many years, he couldn't remember it. Luo Sha had once told Jiang Hu. Half a year later, Luo Sha's mother got up and remarried and lost her son. Four-year-old Luo Sha was abandoned by his parents only seven months apart. Luo Sha was an uncle of his parents who was older than fifteen years old. He herded cattle for his uncle's family and learned to plow and rake when he was only twelve. He once told Jiang Hu about it, until he was seven years old, he had been herding cattle at his uncle's house, it was cold, the earth was covered with endless white frost, the weather was sleet, and his uncle and uncle never thought of officially buying him a pair of shoes. Just playing barefoot like that, I've long been used to it. He never hated them, and said that it wasn't that they were eccentric, and even if it were, it seemed to be the same for their own son!
The uncle's family originally had a lot of children, even if they gave birth to another pair of hands, they couldn't take care of it. At that time, the staff of the Family Planning Office ran to his house to chase and intercept the two people, and the tug-of-war between the uncle's whole family and the family planning cadres became the only story that Luo Sha loved to tell people at the Shan JiaQiao Garage, and was able to dance loudly to tell others (extremely excitedly, pretending to be very happy). Haha, they're really that scrappy. In the end, they finally grabbed the uncle and fell into the gutter by the side of the road. She really had no place to hide at that time, so she left a deep ditch, and others blocked both ends. She was experienced and couldn't escape.
"It's hard to escape the clutches of the devil."
Zhang Jie, a middle-aged woman who hated the family planning cadres to the bone, temporarily cooked a meal in the car repair factory, and interjected in a strange way.
"Well deserved!" I remember that at that time, Feng Ji spat viciously on the ground, and Jiang Hu put the guitar (not the Yamaha later) on his knees, and saw the saliva wrapped into a small round ball on the ashed ground. He was elated and said loudly in a tone close to a curse: "Drag that mother-in-law to the family planning office and get gotten away, run, I see that she dares to run again!" Luo Sha turned his head and stared at Xiao Fat fiercely. Ah, I'm sorry! He said, "I forgot that that person is your uncle after all." But it's a bit vicious. Luo Sha said calmly, "It was he who raised me, and I will never forget this love alone." "That's when everyone repaired the silence that wasn't commensurate with their age. (It really stabbed Luo Sha in the sore spot!) ）
Feng Ji couldn't help but get excited. He said that only Luo Sha you would be so stupid, they themselves only take you as a small worker, do not spend money on the labor, thanks to you still think of always thanking him twice. He exhaled and said loudly, "Don't they always hide from the family planning office, if it is me, wherever they hide, I will immediately run to inform, grab those two people, and castrate them with a knife before they can relieve their hatred." I see how they pull the law. Luo Sha's eyes were covered with a lot of blood every day, and he was angry and warned Xiao Fat: Feng Ji, don't nonsense! His eyes were like that, and he often burst into tears. Boys have indeed been wronged since childhood. Perhaps Jiang Bao also linked his mother's early death. He remembered that Luo Sha was young like a little old man, full of sad looks, and he was rarely willing to show a smile.
(He has a strong smell of clamped limbs and sockets.) Luo Sha does not like to take a bath.
![Feng Jicai's short story: Beard[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)