Novel Series: Related to Guns (II)

Author Ma Zhichang

4.

Speaking of my brother Xue Qiang, from the beginning of his birth to the later growth of fat and strong, he had to thank Director Jia PaJia. In the early 1980s, at the beginning of reform and opening up, the family planning policy was in full swing. Jia Dad led two officers of the Qizhen Family Planning Office in Xuejiazhai staring at the stomachs of the women who had not yet had ligature surgery, and went to the east and west houses to beat the people of Xue Jiazhai who wanted to have a son but could not get their wishes. At such a critical time, my father and my mother created my brother this guy very inappropriately. When my brother began to take shape in my mother's belly and my mother's belly was just showing dew, Jia Dad arrived at my house at the right time. Grandma was in her early sixties at the time, dressed in black and black pants, making her look much older than her actual age, but her spirit was particularly strong. Grandma Baozi Baozi even shouted Jia Dad's nickname, and Jia Dad grabbed Grandma's rough hand and aunt and aunt responded. Jia Xiucai's two descendants greeted each other as if they had not seen each other for many years. Jia Dad asked Grandma, what about my brother? Grandma replied that there was feces in the sheepfold in the backyard. Jia Dad asked again, what about the sister-in-law? Grandma replied again, and there was grass in the terrace. And asked, what about my aunt? Grandma replied and drove the sheep out. At that time, it was about the time of the Dragon Boat Festival in May, and the mountains were full of plump green, and the wheat seedlings were moistened by the rain. Jia Dad looked out the window, as if he saw my mother's slightly bulging abdomen crouching in the ground. In fact, through the window of my house, I can't see my mother's grass terrace at all, I can only see a wide zhuang wall on the opposite side of the road, the wall is painted with white paint, which looks mottled under the wash of the rain, and the slogan on the wall is written "I'd rather bleed into a river than give birth to one", which is also the handwriting of Director Jia DadJia. The big letters of red paint seemed to faintly smell of blood in the May air. Jia Dad said to my grandmother, Aunt, I am looking for my brother to talk about something. Grandma's face is displeased, what is still hiding from your aunt? At this time, Jia Dad let go of his grandmother's hand, stunned for a moment, said, but there is nothing to hide from you, that is, the people on the family planning have urged a group of women to be sterilized these days, I see that the sister-in-law is out of love, this matter is not easy to handle! Grandma suddenly raised her voice, Baozi, this matter has you, you have to find a way, you don't look at your brother's face, you have to look at my old face! Jia Dad stood up from the edge of the kang, and while pulling out of the door, he said to his grandmother, Aunt, don't worry, I will discuss with my brother first. He said and lifted the curtain and went out toward the sheepfold in the backyard. Grandma didn't shape her heart, and she followed her upside down.

The backyard was the cave dwelling, which had once housed the Red Army. Before that, in 1981, when I was just one year old, my father divided my yard into two, built five new bungalows in the front yard, left a few old cave holes in the backyard, circled sheep, held grass, and put utensils in the field. When Jia Dad arrived at the backyard, he shouted at the sheepfold, and my father heard it, put down the shovel in his hand and came out. At the door of the cave was a pile of sheep dung that Dad had just risen, emitting a foul smell, and a group of flies circled around the pile of dung tirelessly. When Jia Dad saw my father come over, he said straight to the point, "Brother, Director Zhang of the Family Planning Office has been urging me to hurry up these days, so that the unshackled women in our village have quickly tied up." Drag on not to get turkishated and they have to go to the door to pull things! Daddy glanced at Jia Dad and said angrily, Zamo. At this time, Grandma also followed, glancing at my father and glancing at Jia Dad. Jia Dad said that the za is a za, and according to the policy, the doll in the sister-in-law's belly must be knocked off first. After Jia Dad finished speaking, he looked down at the scattered sheep dung eggs at his feet. A few ants lingered between the eggs. Grandma sighed and said to Jia Dad, Baozi, heaven killed, you can't do it, your eyes are blue when you are an official, the six relatives don't recognize it, don't you? Jia Dad saw that Grandma scolded, busy said, Aunt you don't scold first, this is not to discuss with you? Besides, I can't bear this matter, whether the doll in the belly can stay, Director Zhang said. I'm just an errand runner. At this time, Dad said to Grandma, Mother, what are you doing? Thunderclap! Then he turned his face to Jia Dad and said, Go, the house said go.

Entering the house, my father asked Jia Dad, is this Director Zhang's words good to say? Jia Dad replied, easy to say, that is, you have to give people some expressions. My father did not make a sound, took half a piece of newspaper from the edge of the kang, cut two fingers wide, handed one to Jia Dad, held one in his hand, and put the paper box containing the cigarette residue on the table in front of him, and Wu Zi rolled up the cigarette. My dad took a puff of his cigarette: what's the representation? What's the point for someone to send? People are big cadres, what can they look at us? Dad's series of questions made the air show some signs of solidification. A chicken cackled and stepped through the door, and Grandma yelled, Scalded, get out! The chicken circled around the ground for a short time, did not find any food, and went out bored. Jia Dad said "yes" twice in a row, and the air solidified again, and only the choking dry smoke that Dad and Jia Dad spat out swirled around the house.

At this time, Grandma seemed to be inspired by some kind, and there was a flash of inspiration in her head, saying to my father, I have two white lumps in my box, I don't know if it can enter people's eyes? Jia Dad didn't wait for my dad to speak, busy taking over the conversation and said, miles and miles, this thing is also a rare commodity now, just take it out and try it, not necessarily really can point to a thing. Dad saw that Jia Dad said this, looked at Grandma timidly, there was no trace of joy in his eyes to solve a big problem, he looked a little wooden, and he used his hand to buckle on a hard piece of rice residue left on the table, and then said, then take it out and try it.

Grandma opened the red lacquer box of Kang tou, rummaged through it for a while, and took out two silver dollars to give to Jia Dad. Jia Dad picked up one of them, pinched it with his index finger and thumb, blew a breath with his mouth, and quickly put it to his ear, and there was a clear and cold buzzing sound.

When Jia Dad left that day with two silver dollars and my grandmother and my father's expectations, my mother took me a year and a half to the grass in the terrace of my house, and my brother gradually took shape in my mother's womb.

A few days later, a family planning team entered Xuejiazhai and set up a operating bed in an idle house in the courtyard of the village department. This task force is headed by Director Zhang of the Family Planning Office, and there are doctors from the Qizhen Health Center and several officers from the Town Family Planning Office.

The first person to walk onto the operating table was my mother. Because of Jia Pa's accommodative operation in advance, my mother only did ligature surgery and did not have an abortion, so my mother took the initiative to go voluntarily, ostensibly playing a leading role in the family planning work in our village, but in fact, where do others know the cat grease behind it. After my mother, several more women were forcibly taken into the temporary operating room. A few young officers with big waists and round waists were really good at doing this, and they caught the howling women one by one like pig babies and pressed them on the operating table. The courtyard of the village department seemed to be filled with the smell of gun smoke, and Director Zhang, sitting on a chair in his office, smoked comfortably, like a general with his soldiers in a beautiful ambush. The last person to be caught in the operating room was Chen Hai's father, a stout man who made the officers of the family planning office very hard. At that time, Chen Hai was almost five years old, and his mother just returned to her mother's house that day, and Chen Hainiang was also the target of Director Zhang's ambush that day. Under the planning of Director Zhang, the officers had to send Chen Hai's father to the operating room. Chen Hai saw that his father had been caught, and he was crying at the mouth of the alley with his tender throat, and the sticky yellow snot was hanging on his lips, and he wanted to fall. Since then, my brother has survived the blood and smoke, and Chen Hai's father has a new nickname in Xuejiazhai - "Old Donkey".

My grandfather, on a gloomy day after Xue Qiang's birth, stomped into the kiln in the backyard and dug out the gun that had been silent for decades with a pickaxe. The hard ground by the stove that had been trampled on for decades had exhausted Grandpa. The gun had not changed in the slightest, still wrapped in sackcloth, and when Grandpa opened the sackcloth, he was extra careful as if he had taken off his grandson's dirty clothes. In the light that squeezed in through the cracks in the broken door panels of the cave, the gun glowed with a cold and hard light. Back in the house, Grandpa asked Grandma to find a clean cloth, wrap it up and put it in her box.

5.

Let our thoughts travel through time and space, through the growth process of my brother Xue Qiang, to the tanning field of my family in the summer of 1998. The sun was basking on the bean sprouts spread out on the field, and the pods crackled in the fierce sun, and they also basked on my dad, Jia Dad and me on the field. Sweat soaked on Daddy's back, and the air-dried areas of his clothes were alkaline. Dad smoked Jia Dad's paper cigarette, Jia Dad stared at Dad's mouth and said, Brother, Gangwa's distribution news came down, I went to town to see the documents issued by the Education Bureau, and I was assigned to our Qizhen School District. There was a light in Daddy's eyes that flashed for a moment, and then went out. Jia Dad continued that there are so many schools in QiZhen, and which school has to be said in the town and the school district. Do you want to find a way to run around town? Daddy's words are a bit secluded and light, where is it, where is a teaching! Not far away, Jia Dad's red motorcycle was parked on the dirt road, like a ferocious bird and beast ready to attack. I glanced at My Dad, who was throwing a green bean into his mouth, and with a clatter, the bean became in half in his mouth.

The sun's rays are dazzling. In the distance, green and yellow crops undulate on the hillside.

When the beans are finished, the wheat is yellow again, and the mountain depression is filled with ripe color. This is the busiest season for the people in the mountains, and all that can be seen is yellow, and this endless yellow color requires farmers to pour them down one by one in the slopes, pull fields, fight fields, and finally turn them into clean wheat and put them into granaries, which takes more than a month. All summer long, my father and I and my mother have been squatting in the slope of my house to pluck wheat, my brother Xue Qiang and my grandmother run chickens, dogs, pigs at home, with the preparation of the family's dinner, breakfast and lunch we took cold water to swallow the dry food in the field. In this way, when it came to The autumn, seeing that the school was about to open, my family's wheat had not yet been pulled out in half, but the news of my second assignment came, or Director Jia Jia's father brought it back. I was assigned to Lion Rock Primary School, about forty miles away from Qizhen.

Lion Rock is the most remote place in Qizhen's jurisdiction. It is more than forty miles away from Qi Town, and even farther away from my home XueJiazhai, let alone more than forty kilometers. Forty miles and forty kilometers are definitely two concepts. Lion Rock sounds like a colony of squatters who have fallen grass for the Kota family, but it is actually a village with extremely simple folk customs in the folds of the mountain. Early in the morning of August 26, 1999, my father and his uncle Jia Debao rode a "happiness" motorcycle with me and my cover roll, starting from Xuejiazhai and flying all the way to the Lion Rock Primary School where I taught. The elementary school is located in a low-lying area next to a mountain path, surrounded by courtyards of different heights. There were only six teachers in the school, but I was the only public teacher, and the other five, including the principal and director, were all private teachers.

From this day on, I began my long teaching career. And my younger brother Xue Qiang, who was just sixteen years old, did not enter high school, and was sent by my father to an agricultural machinery repair shop in Qi Town as an apprentice.

It had been several days since Autumn had passed, but the sun was still poisonous.

6.

The streets of Qizhen are not very long, about 200 meters from east to west. The streets are lined with clothing stores, restaurants, and grocery stores. One stall next to the other in front of the shop, dough skin, cold noodles, rice soup and oil buns, vegetables, fruits, tobacco residue, each stall is surrounded by buyers in pairs. Qizhen people rarely shout in business, guarding their own unique goods and waiting for buyers to come, a bit of Jiang Taigong fishing taste. To the south of the town is a rolling hill, and further south is the Saga Mountains. Every day, when the morning light dissipates, Qizhen waits for people to creep from the folds of the mountain, carrying the hustle and bustle of the day, and when the twilight is getting thicker, the satisfaction is loaded into the bosom of the mountain people, with the pleasure of shopping, disappearing into the folds of the mountain, and the town is gradually quiet again. To the north of Qizhen is the vast expanse of the Pingchuan River. More than ten miles to the north is a vast desert, so every spring there will always be a few old hair yellow winds coming to Qi Town. On such days, the shops in Qi Town, which should have been fresh and beautiful, were all gray-headed, and the shopkeeper had to close the door and sit with hatred and wait for this annoying wind to end its raging soon. The street stalls are long gone. In particular, those who sell food will be prepared early in the morning to stop the dough, cold noodles, oil cake roll cake, at the lowest price to the neighbors. And the humble and simple countrymen are also happy.

At the westernmost end of the street is Qizhen Junior High School, which is the highest school in Qizhen and my alma mater before I went to normal school. My brother Xue Qiang's apprenticeship "Xinhong Agricultural Machinery Repair" is at the east end of the town street, opposite it is the Qizhen Rural Credit Union. The credit union's tall, bright façade contrasts sharply with the repair shop's slightly rough and greasy façade, like a toad staring at a beautiful swan with its eyes protruding.

In Xue Qiang's days as an apprentice, like all apprentices since ancient times, he lowered his eyebrows in front of his master and swallowed his breath, holding two greasy hands every day, picking tires, inflating, screws, changing oil... All the low-tech and dirty work was done by Xue Qiang independently. When there was a big job that needed to be done in the internal organs of the machine, Xue Qiang stood next to him with his eyes open, holding a wrench or screwdriver in his hand, waiting for the master's call at any time. At night, the master washed up and returned to his home in the town street, leaving Xue Qiang alone in the repair shop. An equally dilapidated futon piled up on a dilapidated iron bed, emitting a mix of diesel and sweat. On such days, Xue Qiang learned to smoke, and later learned to drink. Fortunately, such a tempering made his originally immature face a little more mature and resolute, and even had a little bit of quiet hostility.

The days slipped out of the sound of Xue Qiang's clanging and tapping on the agricultural machinery. At the same time, his agricultural machinery repair technology is also improving day by day, and he can completely stand alone when the master is not there. After the younger brother had enough self-confidence and mature technology, he was no longer satisfied with the master's free three meals a day, and he wanted to start another stove and build another mountain.

When my younger brother Xue Qiang jumped up and down to raise funds to open a shop, I had been teaching and educating people at Lion Rock Primary School for more than two years. And this year, I quietly fell in love.

(To be continued)