Distant Summer (short story)

In the summer of his second year of high school, Qi Xiaojun owned an air gun. The gun was given to him by his brother-in-law, and although it was used in old condition, Qi Xiaojun was still very happy when he held the gun. Since he was in elementary school, Qi Xiaojun has longed to own a gun, and in the movies he has seen, the heroes are usually people who hold box guns or steel guns and can play with guns perfectly.

When he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, Qi Xiaojun owned a "pistol", but the pistol was cut by his brother-in-law from wood, painted black, and looked like a thing from afar, in fact, it was not even as good as a powder gun made of bicycle chains-although the gun made of chains was ugly in appearance, it could make a sound with a match head, and after the sound, there would be a trace of gunsmoke. The wooden gun could not make a sound, nor could it emit the smell of gunsmoke, so Qi Xiaojun played for a while, and he was less interested. Qi Xiaojun thought, if he got a gun that could fire bullets, it would be enjoyable.

An airsoft is a gun that fires bullets, although the bullet is only a small lead bullet. So when Qi Xiaojun held the real air gun and several boxes of buckshot in his hand, he suddenly felt that the joy of life stood in front of him like something that could be seen and touched, and he looked up into the depths of the yard, his eyes seemed to penetrate the row of old houses as far as his eyes could see, and arrived at the vast field behind the old houses. The field was densely littered with trees and clumps of bamboo, and he seemed to see birds dancing among the branches and bamboo bushes, and he heard birds chirping.

In the past, Qi Xiaojun's first activity after school was to go to the park with a group of classmates to practice martial arts. There are a few stout bitter trees on the north side of the park, and they first babble in the open space in the shade of the trees and imitate the movements from the movies, and then they shoot the neem trees with their hands and practice the iron sand. I patted my palms until I was red and painful, and then I took my bag and went home.

But from the day after getting the air gun, Qi Xiaojun no longer went to the park to practice martial arts after school, he went straight home, put down his school bag, picked up the air gun and went out to run into the field. The courtyard where Qi Xiaojun lived was on the edge of the county seat, out of the courtyard gate, walking along a winding path not far away for a few minutes, and arrived at the field full of vegetables and rice, Qi Xiaojun looked at the fallen fields, looked at the rolling trees on the edge of the fields and ditches, looked at the dense bamboo forest next to the farmhouse courtyard, and said to himself, now, this is his world.

He put the first lead bullet into the chamber of the gun and his eyes fell on a pepper plant in the distance.

Raising the gun, aiming, pulling the trigger, the air gun was extremely easy to use, which surprised Qi Xiaojun a little. Qi Xiaojun used to hit balloons with air guns on the stalls in the park, and in order to save money, the skinny boss tied red lines with small nails instead of lead bullets, and it was always soft and collapsed when shot, so that Qi Xiaojun spent his pitiful pocket money and did not find the feeling of shooting. But now the feeling of this gun in his hand is different, and at the moment when the lead bullet is fired, Qi Xiaojun can clearly feel its heart-pounding force, like a sword sealing the throat when the sword is out. This is shooting, Qi Xiaojun said to himself, he felt that he could also play this gun with magic.

Next, Qi Xiaojun used a few buckshot bullets to target a few red peppers in the distant chili pepper field, tried the front sight and effective range, and found that although the gun was old, the front sight was not biased at all, and the firing range was not weak at all. Armed with his gun, he walked toward a grove near an irrigation canal. He heard the chirping of birds there, and he felt that the chirping seemed to be a call, calling for him to approach, preparing to die for his buckshot.

When it was dark, Qi Xiaojun put away his airsoft and began to go home. In his hands he carried three birds, two sparrows, and a pig finch, strung on straw in turn. More than an hour, three birds, although this battle result is not brilliant, but birds are not balloons after all, and this is the first time, so Qi Xiaojun walked leisurely on the field path, without the slightest discouragement and disappointment in his heart.

In the next few days, Qi Xiaojun went home every day after school, put down his school bag and went out with an air gun, and only returned home with a bird at dusk. Birds are sometimes a little less, one. Sometimes it's a little more, four, five, or six. Always not empty-handed anyway.

The only time he returned empty-handed was on a Friday afternoon, when he tried to shoot down an eagle. The eagle hovered in the sky, and then rested on a high high-voltage power line, and Qi Xiaojun aimed the air gun at the eagle at that time. But the gun went out, two feathers fell from the eagle, and the eagle spread its wings and flew high again, showing no signs of injury at all.

Qi Xiaojun did not die, chased after the eagle, ran around the field, ran through the wheat field, ran through the rape field, ran through the cabbage field, crossed the irrigation canal, and chased until he reached the dam of the dry hole ten miles away, still only harvesting the two feathers of the first shot. Finally, the eagle flew into the distance above the dam, and Qi Xiaojun looked at the smaller and smaller figure of the eagle in the distance, and a sense of powerlessness gushed out. For the first time since using a gun, he suffered a blow. But the blow dissipated the next day, and on Saturday afternoon, as if to compensate for the loss of the previous day, Qi Xiaojun went out to find a target, and he shot down six birds, one of which was a songbird.

Qi Xiaojun took the hit bird home, and when he encountered a larger one, he peeled off his hair and roasted it. When I found something that was too small, I took it home and looked at it for a while, and threw it into the garbage heap on the street in front of the courtyard.

Qi Xiaojun's grandmother was very dissatisfied with her little grandson's approach, and she did not let Qi Xiaojun go to shoot birds. You are making a crime, Qi Xiaojun's grandmother said, where did the birds provoke you? Do you have to do something strange to beat people to death?

But Qi Xiaojun didn't listen to his grandmother, still picked up the air gun and ran out with a cigarette. Qi Xiaojun's mother taught in the countryside and only returned home on weekends, not every weekend. As for his father, who works in the field, he usually has less time to come back, Qi Xiaojun does not listen to his grandmother, and his grandmother can't help him. Grandma also wanted to hide the gun for him, but the home was only so big, every time it was hidden, Qi Xiaojun could not find the gun when he went home, and he only had to sniff with his nose to turn the gun out, as if the gun had a smell that only he knew.

Qi Xiaojun's grandmother didn't know how to stop her little grandson from committing crimes, she could only say to Qi Xiaojun's back again and again, wait for your father and mother to come back and clean you up!

But Qi Xiaojun's busy mother and father who were far away did not come back on weekends, and Qi Xiaojun, who had no one to clean up, continued to play with his air gun.

June was about to pass, and after returning home from school on this day, Qi Xiaojun ran out again, and he came to a fish pond. There were a dozen tall willow trees and some low shrubs by the fish pond, and Qi Xiaojun waited, hoping to shoot down a pig. After waiting for a long time, there was no pig, but a royal blue shadow swept through his line of sight and stopped on a tree branch near the water on the opposite side. Qi Xiaojun recognized it as a kingfisher. He's never shot a kingfisher! Qi Xiaojun's heart shook, and almost at the same time, he raised his air gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The kingfisher shook and fell to the ground.

Qi Xiaojun ran around the fish pond and ran to the place where the kingfisher fell. The kingfisher lay motionless on the ground. The first time Qi Xiaojun stood so close to a kingfisher, he suddenly found that the kingfisher's long beak, vermilion chest and abdomen, the top of its head full of star-like blue dots and sapphire blue feathers were so beautiful, so beautiful, like a brilliant dream from the depths of the sky. But a fine piece of fluff on its abdomen had been stained dark sauce by the leaching blood.

Qi Xiaojun squatted down and stared at the kingfisher, suddenly feeling that it was himself who was hit by a lead projectile. How he wished that time would go back in time, the buckshot would retreat into the chamber, the kingfisher stand vividly again on the branch by the water, and the sunlight from the depths of the clouds would shine on the kingfisher through the clouds, making it shine like a red and blue jewel.

But the kingfisher lay on the ground and had begun to gradually stiffen. A feeling of powerlessness struck again, unlike the last time, this time the feeling of powerlessness seemed to hollow out him, making him feel an irrepressible collapse.

Qi Xiaojun silently watched the kingfisher until the twilight quadrangle, and a breath of burning grain grass drifted over with the wind, covering him faintly. He sniffed hard the burning smell of grain grass that filled the air, and then he plucked a wide taro leaf from the vegetable field by the fish pond, carefully wrapped the kingfisher, held it in his hand, and went home in dismay.

Qi Xiaojun wanted to make a specimen of the kingfisher, but he didn't know how, and crucially, there was no material for making a specimen at home. In the end, Qi Xiaojun had to bury the kingfisher under a peach tree in the yard, leaving only a few blue feathers and the kingfisher's hard, beautiful beak.

Qi Xiaojun counted the remaining lead bullets, and there were one hundred and twenty-three, and he put them back in the box, wrapped them in a piece of plastic sheeting, and stuffed them into the small wooden box under the bed where he collected his books. Also wrapped in plastic sheeting, there was also the air gun that he had already used. The small wooden box that collected the books could not hold the air gun, and Qi Xiaojun put the air gun between the back of the cabinet and the gap between the wall.

Time passed like water, more than twenty years have passed, Qi Xiaojun occasionally took out the air gun to play with, but the air gun has never shot a single lead bullet into the sky.

Author: Shi Ming