"I" went to visit my father in a mental hospital, who was skinny and bone-thin, and his eyes were straight, like waking up from a dream. I took Dad's hand into the restaurant, thinking about my first day of school Dad took my hand. A stout man stood in the doorway, freshly shaved head and a goatee. He stared at us, whistled as he passed, and sneered, "Gay." ”
A wave of heat welled up in "I"'s body, and I let go of my father's hand and jumped to Mr. Goatee...
——Quoted from The Strangers of The Exodus
Walden, a nurse in the nursing home, talked about the "three monkeys", and the corresponding references were sharp, and after reading, it was like sitting on a needle felt. Given his aunt's profession as a judge, Waden's indignation is all the more intriguing.
Jesse has a crush on the beautiful Angela. In order to gain the favor of the goddess, quit the hobby of ice skating, eat without forgetting to silently recite the "Odyssey", rehearse operas with classmates, participate in poetry recitation performances, and receive warm applause from teachers and students. However, the improvement of his grades did not help him out of "Egypt". Jesse was always far away from the goddess, even in the same class, and had not sat at the same table for lunch. The circle of friends of the two is clear, and occasionally the eyes meet, but they also quickly separate. With her aunt's encouragement, Jesse plucked up enough courage to ask Angela to learn her homework, and was teased by Angela's female companion, who shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without a positive response. Ex-girlfriend's god patch knife: "Just look for it among your kind." Leaving Jesse so angry that he forgot to return the plate to his aunt, he rushed to the baseball field to vent his depression and curse "this whole stinky baking world."
Children have no mother, it is a long story. Since the death of his eldest brother Lee Overseas, Jesse's family has collapsed little by little. First, the mother left Jesse's father and son, ran away with the lover, and the letter was rare at the end of the world. Frustrated, dad lingered in bars, drunk day and night, until he walked home shakily when he closed. One snowy night, he was unable to rush home as usual, and was found lying on the side of the road in the early morning by the sanitation worker, with bloodstained and unconscious on the back of his head. After waking up, his consciousness sank into the time and space before the change, he could not accept reality, and had to live in a mental hospital. Jesse loses his parents' shelter and is a Humvee in the community during the day, and is repeatedly haunted by scarlet nightmares at night. Lost in indulgence and trepidation, he caused trouble for himself and his uncle.
Under the tutelage of Mr. Iban, the prodigal son Jesse turned back and immersed himself in his studies. But when he saw that rafe's eyes were red and swollen every time he went to a date, he couldn't help but stand up for Rafe, and the "dumb bully" in the hard bar block was beaten half to death by the thugs sent by his father. During the retreat, the students came to visit the house, and there was a room full of people, even the mosquitoes and the wood chickens arrived, but Angela was missing. When Jesse returned to campus and went to class with bruises and red scabs, everyone silently turned a blind eye. There was even a fat boy in the game hall who looked at Jesse's injuries and blocked him in the hallway to give him some color to see. And all that makes him unhappy is a paradise where Carlos and Ricardo tiptoe...
Jesse built the roof with the two of them. One morning, Jesse was suffering from back pain, and they "worked like machines." By lunchtime, they had asked for fast-food beef, paper cakes, and thin biscuits with canned meat and potato chips, and Jesse was amazed that they ate worse than pigs and did more work than cattle, just to make a good living for their wives and children back home in Mexico. This allowed him to "restore faith in the whole of bad humanity." ”
The wind is cold, the night is deep, and the neighbors are joyfully decorating the Christmas tree. Jesse held flowers in his hand and walked to the cemetery, looking up at the mountains dark and yellow. He placed the flowers in front of his brother's tombstone and felt deeply. The tears of the poor, the leaves of the wind, all need to be quickly erased.