Hold the winter melon to cool off
Li Xiao
Grandpa woke up from a thunderstorm in the afternoon, chilling, and he shouted softly: "Quilt, quilt." On the carved old bed, Grandpa was taking a nap in his arms with a large, round and fat winter melon.
It was a summer afternoon more than 30 years ago, my grandfather began a sleepy nap, and in the afternoon he had to go to the rice field of the production team to release water, and the rice was spitting out ears, one grain of rice after another, and the lives of the whole production team depended on it to feed them.
That year, Grandpa was 66 years old. When Grandpa was 60 years old, he gave himself a birthday coffin. In the yakou forest of Gubsensen, Grandpa personally chose a cypress tree as a shoumu.
The coffin was painted black and placed in Grandpa's bedroom, emitting a kind of poignant majesty, and it felt that the temperature in the room had dropped a lot. In the summer, when Grandpa was cool, he lay in the coffin and took a nap, and Shoumu brought a coolness of immersion.
In the summer, Grandpa also likes to sleep with a large winter melon. A person embraces a winter melon, and the cool melon skin melon body will penetrate the coolness through the body. Immersed in the heart, there is also the abundant joy of an old farmer.
Winter melon, in the melon fruit-laden crop field is like a hermit, its waist is thick, its belly can be tolerated, and its temperament is also like a person's warm and cool, easy and natural.
In the summer, in my family's own field, Grandpa brought back a series of pink winter melons, arranged in the middle of the hall house, guarding our old house like a samurai. On the surface of the winter melon, there is a layer of white ash-like powder, which is the face after experiencing the seasonal wind and frost.
The cousin in the county town came to my house as a guest in the summer, a picture of the city people Sven, walking on the field with small steps, and his body also trembled. When her cousin coughed, Lin Daiyu wore a small handkerchief on her chest. The cousin's face was also like a winter melon, sprinkled with a layer of white raw powder. One summer night, the family ate around a table under the sycamore tree in the courtyard dam, sweat flowing down my cousin's face, like the lime water that spread when grandpa pasted the wall. Grandpa smiled at his cousin and said, This is rural, you don't need makeup. My cousin's "lime water" face twitched a few times in embarrassment.
At dusk in the summer when I was 15 years old, an old crow flew through the air in front of the earthen walled courtyard, and Grandpa's soul went to the black clouds with the crow's cry. Just 3 days ago, on the night, Grandma brought a cool winter melon from the hall house, and let Grandpa hold it in her arms to cool down, and beads of sweat soaked out of his rugged old bones. The weak grandfather put the winter melon on his chest and rubbed it with his hand, and he had no strength to hold the winter melon tightly in his arms as usual. This is the winter melon planted by Grandpa himself, it has experienced the germination period, the seedling stage, the vine extraction period, the flowering and fruiting period, and the melon also carries the fingerprints and blood of the person who planted the melon. A person who has been crawling in the land all his life begging for food, and when he dies, he snuggles in his arms with a clumsy melon, this is not a kind of fate.
Grandpa's small earthen grave, in the years when the melon field was thriving, was full of grass. After Grandpa left, Grandma planted a lot of melons at the grave, winter melons, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes. Green, oil-soaked, yellow, crisp, heavy... In the steaming of the earth, these melons have vivid eyebrows, dust and the world, and the treasure is solemn.
In the summer, the skinny grandmother squatted down, slowly plucked a round winter melon from the vine, swirled the melon from the vine, and then held the melon in front of the grave, and the grandmother murmured in her mouth, old man, the melon is ripe, you take it to sleep, take it to stew soup to eat.
One summer I went back to my hometown to visit my 83-year-old grandmother, who was sitting in front of the grave and put a winter melon in front of my grandfather's grave. Grandma saw me, shook and stood up and pounced on me, her thin hands holding me, her body trembling, old tears.
When my grandmother was 84 years old, my father almost knelt down for her and begged her to come to live in the city.
Grandma came to live in town with a scythe. The sickle hung on the wall in front of Grandma's bed, which could not be used for a long time, and it had a layer of rust, and the teeth of the knife had long been blunt.
One day when my grandmother was 87 years old, she suddenly called my father "Yang Shaoming", and my father was stunned and did not understand. "Yang Shaoming" is the name of the production captain of his hometown. The grandmother suffered from dementia.
Grandma used to wave her hands like this, screaming, sickle, sickle, give me, give me, I'm going to cut the grass, pick the melon.
My dad took the scythe off and gave it to grandma. Grandma squatted down in the living room, looking for grass on the floor, looking for melons.
Grass, melon. Grandma's eyes, like blind people, fell into the hollow, and Grandma's body, like dead leaves, slumped down.
One day, my dad said, take your grandma back to her hometown to see.
Driving with my cousin to take my grandmother back to the village, the mountain wind was gusting. Grandma was lying in front of the car window, sucking her fingers, watching the grass swaying, looking at the trees shaking.
When we arrived at the old village, Grandma was helped out of the car by us, she suddenly threw us forward, she stood on the mountain beam, her cloudy eyes were illuminated by the lightning bolt of the memory, and her mouth cried out: "Luo Jia'ao, crooked ladder, Saddle Bridge, Thousand Mouth Mountain..." These are the place names of the hometown, and the place names are the flesh and blood of the hometown.
Grandma came to Grandpa's grave, and we gave her the scythe. Grandma squatted down and cut the weeds in front of the grave. Grandma pulled open the grass, she was disappointed, she did not see the melon.
I called "Yang Shaoming" and asked him to come with a winter melon. Yang Shaoming brought a winter melon and placed it in front of his grandfather's grave, and his grandmother pounced on it, and the little white head was crooked on the side of the winter melon. Grandma couldn't stop wiping her tears with her hands. Years pass through the sinking tunnels of memory, and Grandma catches the train back in time.
Grandma died when she was 90 years old and was buried with her grandfather. Returning to my hometown this summer, I saw a melon field restored in front of the grave, and in the depths of the green vines, several round winter melons silently flashed in between, just like the heavy gaze of the eyes of the years.
(Author Affilications:Wuqiao Subdistrict Office, Wanzhou District)
Layout appreciation