Rice grass fragrant
Li Xiao
After the autumn harvest, the earth is as quiet as a postpartum woman, emitting a charming fragrance. The sky at this time, less dazzlingly blue, faded after being washed away by a waterfall of summer sunshine, and a few white clouds lazily floated on it, taking the graceful steps of elephants in the wind, walking slowly.
Grains fluttered, new rice crystalline, pounced on the rice bowl that the world was waiting for. After threshing, it was stacked into a tall straw stack by farmers on the threshing ground, the smell was fresh and sweet, straight to the heart, and the bones were also full of grain fragrance.
From a distance on the earth, the phalanx of straw stacks looked like castles, and if you looked at them from a higher place, they were like clouds falling on the ground, but the clouds were pale yellow.
In the distant era when memories are like clouds, looking at the wealth of a village is whether the straw stacks are spectacular. The straw stacks are stacked strongly, and the rice produces a lot, so there is no food to eat. The straw stacks were short and cold, and when I saw my stomach, my stomach was flat.
The straw stack became a "matchmaker". My three aunts, after taking a fancy to the stacked straw stacks in our village, married from a village more than 60 kilometers away. The first time I came to our village for a blind date, it was after the autumn harvest, the father of the third aunt, with a straw rope tied at his waist, he stood on the mountain beam, put up a pergola in his hand, like a general inspecting the straw stacks stacked on the threshing ground in our village, like a small mountain peak, decisively patted his thigh and said, Girl, this is here, I can definitely eat enough. The three aunts on the side replied, I listen to you. My somewhat wooden third uncle was so excited that his legs trembled.
In the second year after the third aunt married in our village, she implemented the policy of guaranteeing production to households, that is, dividing the collective land into one family and one family for cultivation. The third uncle and the third aunt are all industrious people, and in the spring, they crawl in the rice field to plant seedlings, and they have been stepping backwards to plant a seedling field before getting up and straightening their waists. Sweat drops under the soil, a grain of rice, my third uncle and three aunts exchanged eight petals of sweat. In the rice fields in early summer, rice flowers protrude from the shell and sway with the wind, and the sharp rice leaves are clustered like small transparent wine glasses, and the fragrance of rice fills the whole village. I remember that when I went to middle school in the county town, one night during the autumn harvest, the third uncle and the third aunt were still harvesting rice in the moonlight, and such rice had the smell of sunshine and moonlight pouring out. In the middle of the night, they came back from the rice paddies, and I just woke up, the moonlight floating, and the side of the earthen wall penetrated my mother's tired snoring.
Stacked straw stacks, its round and sturdy body, still paying respectfully for a village.
Straw can be used as fuel. The straw burned in pieces in the wood stove, and the burned smoke slowly spat out from the old chimney and drifted into the clouds, steaming through the years, and now it is part of the nostalgia of the villagers who have left the village. After the autumn harvest last year, I accompanied the three aunts who had come to live in the city back to the village, and many old chimneys had melted like popsicles on the roof. Fortunately, there is still an old chimney in a village, and the 73-year-old third aunt insisted on building a staircase, and with the support of the villagers, she trembled and climbed to the roof with jagged tiles, leaned down in front of the old chimney mouth, opened her chest cavity, sniffed hard, and the third aunt suddenly fell from the old tears. The smell of the burning straw fell from the sky in the breath of the three aunts. I think of my third uncle, who, when he was 43 years old, fell under the rice field after the onset of illness.
Straw can be used as rations for cattle. The villager He Sigui's family raised a cow, and I once passed by the cattle pen and saw an old cattle kneeling on the ground swallowing sun-dried straw, and the cow rolled the straw into his tongue and swallowed it rapidly, and then regurgitated it in his stomach. I glanced at the cow, and a layer of wet light seemed to appear in the cute and gentle eyes of the cow. I felt compassion and suddenly felt a choking in my throat. When those barren years emerge, isn't my countryman who has been tumbling in the dirt all his life to get a bite of food similar to this cow that swallows straw?
Beds can be made with straw. In the cool autumn season of that year, a relative from my family came from the city and ate dinner made of new rice, and Grandma commanded, "Make the bed, make the bed quickly." The bed we made in our house was made under the bamboo mat, which was covered with straw from the straw stack of the courtyard dam. Sleeping on a straw bed, there is a straw-soaked valley fragrance leisurely, relatives in the city slept a sweet night. When I woke up in the morning, I seemed to be stained with the smell of rice.
Straw can be used as a roof. The year I left the village, there were still many thatched roofs in the village, some of which were made of straw tied tightly on the purlins. Under the straw roof in the sky, my villagers settled down and quietly lived a hard life. One year, in a stormy weather, the straw roof of my house was swept away by the strong wind, and I saw the large mass of straw roof, the cloak swirling in the air, and the rainstorm stopped, only to find that the roof was like a torn felt hat hanging on the cypress branches on the side of the hill.
Not long ago, I went to a village with watery trees and shadows, and stayed in a homestay. The homestay was actually built with a burst of wood fragrant pine and straw. At night, the sky is like a huge canvas washed in water, decorated with shining stars. In the city, I often tossed and turned and lost sleep, and under this straw roof, I slept as deep as a mountain.
In the early morning, when I woke up in the mountains and the chirping of birds, my friend saw that I was rosy and smiled and said, You didn't drink last night. ay! I think it was in this room under the straw that it became rice wine after being brewed by time, and after I drank quietly alone in this autumn night, I became one with the earth and became entangled with the past years.
Straw incense, which is the agarwood of the depths of time, floats on the vast earth, helping me resist my aging body and cloudy memories.
(Author Affilications:Wuqiao Subdistrict Office, Wanzhou District)
Layout appreciation