Cai Xiaozhou ‖ the reeds, and the sun shining father

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Kari Ashishiba

The west wind is cool and the crab feet are itchy.

When the watery hairy crabs with golden claws and yellow hairs crawl out of the reeds on both sides of the ditch river when the moon is thin, it should be the last day of the year when the reeds sway. Farming, which is a ripe cotton and a ripe wheat field, begins repeatedly, and as soon as the reeds are dried up and turned into firewood, they should be cut.

(Note: Pictures and text are irrelevant)

Whenever this happened, my father always found the thick old scythe and sharpened it back and forth on a piece of parrot green stone that was bent and bent like him, until a black line was sharpened, don't underestimate this thin black line on the blade, they are a group of black-clad knife axemen that my father himself has densely packed. The thinner the black line, the more it represents the sharpness of the blade. As soon as the ritual grinding procedure was over, my father and I took off our cloth shoes and replaced them with old rubber boots with high-top rubber boots, as if to do a big job.

The reeds on the shoulders of the East River Beach, because they were covered with a layer of fertile mud last spring, grew extremely luxuriantly, and each one was as tall as a small bamboo, although it was thinner than bamboo, but it also had the toughness of a thousand hardships. This was the task my father had received last night when he and the rest of the team had cast lots. My father said that this year's forehead horn is high, saying that it is like winning the lottery, but it is actually self-deprecating.

Don't look at the reeds at this time, shrugging the heads of the dead leaves, but under the awakening and encouragement of the cold wind, they issued a kind of low-back cry of splitting, it seemed that thousands of troops and horses held aloft the knife of the rusty reed leaf in front of the battle. When I was eighteen, I was a hairy guy who had dropped out of high school and only learned to do farm work. For the sake of the father, this time we must not be lazy. I rolled up my pants legs and rolled up my sleeves, "Who's afraid of whom"!

Like the brave members of the Big Knife Team in the War of Resistance, the two grandfathers held a knife in one hand and held the Reed Chai like a Japanese devil's wild waist in the other, and each of them bowed their heads and clicked. After each shave, it must be stacked and spread on the river slope to dry.

At that time, the big knife team members cut the head of the devil, but what we two cut was the foot of the reed. Technically, beheading is easy to cut off. You know, reeds are most afraid of being cut, so they grow the most skinny parts of the cut, and often cut several knives to knock them down. And to cut the mud surface without leaving stubble, one is to lay the foundation for the spring reed buds to thrive, and the other is afraid of pricking other people's feet. In this way, the two grandfathers had only been working for an hour and were already sweating on the ground. After noon, the work on the river edge is completed. Then, the two men tried to clean up the ghosts lurking in the water while it was hot.

The surface of the quiet water, frowned by the mighty wind that was wrapped up. A few fish, seeing the uninvited guests, jumped out of the water nervously, trying to find out. When my father saw that there was a fish, his eyes immediately flashed with joy. If you can really catch a fish, it should be good, it will be a beautiful thing for a few days of excitement. Perhaps, he saw that I was skinny and developing. Perhaps, think of a family that has been salty for dozens of days and does not know the taste of meat. Thinking that I had not been angry for a long time at the dinner table, my father and I temporarily stopped the work in our hands and started a side business. The two men waded barefoot back behind the fish, pounded the water fiercely, and then carefully groped shoulder to shoulder in the knee-deep autumn water, hoping that there would be a big fish, and panicked to hide in their foot sockets and become turtles in an urn. Touching and touching, suddenly, a carp crutch weighing three pounds jumped up from under my armpits. But at the sight of a flash of red light, the polished scales and the flying fish with opened manes and fins drew a beautiful arc in the air unhurriedly, and finally plunged into the distant water and only raised a wave. I was secretly glad that I didn't get this loud fish slap.

As the saying goes, old fish are crammed into the feet of reeds. But I felt that this fish was not idle, and that it had already navigated the waters it controlled, or that it did not need to navigate at all, and could find the position of each reed with its eyes closed. In the "Three Qin Records" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it is said that it is difficult for big fish to jump the dragon gate, and the upper one is a dragon, and the lower one is a fish. This red carp that has just warmed up, with a different whisker, looks like a good fish that dares to sprint, if there is a larger water surface for it to exercise, maybe one day it will break through itself and become famous.

When my father was young, his family was poor and he only went to school. But having read the Bible and the Classic of Mountains and Seas, I seem to have read Gorky's "In the Human World", and I also like to hum two lyrics from the Suzhou commentary, and my thoughts may be more complicated than mine. In the face of the excited scene of the carp jumping the dragon gate, he was first stunned, and only after he eased up did he laugh shallowly, but he seemed to be saying: Jump well, there is a breath. As if to say it to me, but didn't say anything.

The French thinker Pascal said: Man is nothing but a reed, the most fragile thing in nature, but it is a reed that can think. If my father is also a reed of thought at this moment, then he has not only thought about the fate of this carp, but also my fate. But when you think about it, it is just an ordinary reed that represents the native growth of that era.

With the biting autumn water, I continued to cut a handful of reeds that had fallen into the water, while my father fished for the spoils on the surface of the water like cleaning the battlefield. Some old reed piles dormant under the water, wrapped in thick moss, were like wearing a cheap storm jacket, and my father had to slash a few times to solve it.

Finally, several reed poles, which his father called the commander of the light pole, seemed unconvinced, and they fled from the water like arrows by the wind. At this time, my father asked me to be his deputy, only to see him clinging to the surface of the water and clutching my clothes with one hand, using the scythe as a gun in the other hand, leaning forward to "escort" the yellow devils back without pulling.

The warm sunlight shone on the father, like the robes that the king had given to the triumphalists. Sitting on a wet reed wood is more comfortable than a sofa. Father felt out a cigarette, did not even light a few matches, he took another squint into the ear, gently twisted a few times, somehow wiped it, maybe the ear also wanted to treat him. The father took a sharp breath, spat out a circle of tired smoke, reached out and wiped the blunt edge of the sickle with his thumb, and said slyly: "Thirty-eight work points." He turned his head, looked at me with a gray face, got up and dressed, did not forget to drag up the tired old scythe in his hand, and said to himself: Go, fight wine!

Introduction: Cai Xiaozhou is a member of Jiangsu Writers Association. His works have appeared in "Youth Literature", "Poetry Journal", "Stars", "Yangtze River", "Rural Areas", "Jiangsu Writers", "Literature and Art World", "Young Literary Scholars", "Poetry Exploration", "Selected Literature in the New Century", etc., and he has written many poems and essays.

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◆ Zhongshan Daily Media Development Center

◆ Photo/Xinhua Net

◆ Editor: Xu Xiangdong

◆ Second Instance: Xiang Caizhi

◆ Third trial: Wei Lijun

◆ Material source: Zhongshan Daily