(Continued from previous episode)
Five
Throwing seedlings is also popular in Guojiayuan. The people who planted the seedlings early have already thrown them into the field. Mrs. Guo plans to plant rice in Lao Liu's few fields. She bought the seedlings directly from other people's homes.
She wants to plant seedlings one by one.
The paddy fields in February were bitterly deserted, and it was difficult for her to pull her feet in her rubber shoes. Tian didn't have much, but she inserted it carefully. She believes that the seedlings she planted cannot be blown down by the strong wind, and the heavy rain cannot be washed away.
Until the twilight was filled, the air was gradually cold, and the body was covered with hot and humid sweat, and Mrs. Guo was still tending to this small piece of field.
Faintly hearing her wife calling, she walked through the damp and smelly grass and went home. With grass clippings in her hair and tiny blood marks on her knees from the edges of the thatch, she walked on the narrow ridges and swayed.
When I got home, it was dark, Mrs. Guo was cooking in the kitchen, and my wife helped her light the fire at the stove for the first time.
The wife stuffed the firewood into the stove, and the fire immediately hit his face. He looked at Mrs. Guo and said, "I took a nap in the afternoon and had a strange dream that I had gone into a hut.
After dinner, Mrs. Guo found a secluded place and called the fourth child and asked him to come back tomorrow.
The next day, she asked the fourth child to take her to the vegetable market on a motorcycle. She used the money from selling tea to buy two soft-shelled turtles and four large carps, and asked the fourth child to send her to the moat.
Mrs. Guo walked to the river, put the soft-shelled turtle and carp in the tree into the river, put one to watch it swim away, and then put the other. The fourth child understood: she was here to release her.
A carp was put in the river but did not swim away for a long time, Mrs. Guo found a stick, pounced and beaten, the fish swam for a while, but the belly turned upside down.
After watching for a few minutes, I thought the fish was dead, but I didn't expect the fish to turn over and swim forward neatly.
But after a while, the fish belly stopped moving towards the sky again, and was fished out by a woman who was washing clothes not far away.
The fourth child asked her why she wanted to release her, and Mrs. Guo said, your father dreamed that he got into the small house, the small house, it was a coffin.
The fourth child didn't believe it, and after two weeks, he went back to his hometown and saw his father chopping wood in the yard, so he left with confidence.
At eleven o'clock that night, he received a call from Mrs. Guo. Mrs. Guo choked up and told him that his father was gone.
The next day, the fourth brother returned to his hometown one after another, and Mrs. Guo told them that their father was fine when he watched TV at ten o'clock last night, but suddenly said that he was a little sad in his heart, and he died after lying on the bed for a while.
Sending his wife up the mountain, Mrs. Guo was even more lonely.
The children invited her to live with them, but Mrs. Guo still said the same as before: At my age, I have taken off today's shoes and socks, and I don't know if I will wear them tomorrow. I don't want to die outside.
Mrs. Guo sat in the courtyard of the house for a long time, as if she was talking to her wife. The grief is deep. The shadow of the sun moved almost fingernail to fingernail cover. She reached out and grabbed it, spreading her palm, full of sunlight. I grabbed it again, clenched it, and spread it out again, and it was a full palm again.
How can so much time be passed? The old lady sighed, hearing the cicadas on the trees, and knowing and screaming made people empty.
In the summer afternoon, the sound of cicadas became more and more noisy, red dragonflies flew in groups, Mrs. Guo took a sickle to cut early rice, and walked to the old osmanthus tree, where Lao Jiu was dangling with his hands behind his back. When Lao Jiu saw her, she said, "Madam, are you still going to cut the grain?" I am nine years younger than you, and I haven't done anything for many years. Mrs. Guo still walked in a hurry, and said casually that the emperor lived up to his hard work. You see you're already deaf, and I'm still deaf and clear-eyed, and my body is hard-boned. Mrs. Guo walked under the locust tree and ran into the fat man's family pushing a bicycle up.
The fat man said, "Lady, where are you going to cut the grain?"
The old lady said that Lao Liu asked her to plant a few fields.
The fat man's family smiled, don't you know yet? The fields below seven quintals have been transferred to Liu Jiayuan by the village.
The few points of Lao Liu's field she planted were also less than seven quintals. So, it was also transferred by the village?
The old lady said, why didn't anyone tell me?
The fat man's family said, how can I tell you? That is the old Liu family's field.
The old lady said that Lao Liu agreed to transfer?
The fat man's family said, I think it should be, now farming is not cost-effective, I don't really want the field. When the village saw that there was a surplus of our fields, they transferred it to Liujiayuan.
The old lady cut the grain in her field. After threshing, it is customary to go to the edge of the field. After walking around, I saw that only a small half of Guo Jiayuan's field was left, and an inexplicable sadness rose in my heart.
The fields where the rice had been harvested were waiting for a long breath, and the silence seemed to be waiting for something uncertainly.
Mrs. Guo carried a load of dung through Qidan, and when she came to the three-point field she had cultivated, she saw the village chief and a white and pure person, standing on the road and pointing at Qidan.
A few days later, excavators and bulldozers drove over, and the fields outside the pond were all merged. The machine drove to seven quintals and then drove to her field.
Mrs. Guo raised her shoulder and said, what are you doing here?
The driver said the contract included the field.
The old lady said, "What is the contract?" I cultivated this field.
The driver said that the contract was written on the fat man's family, and the fat man agreed to transfer it to us.
The old lady said that the fat man's family gave me the two fields, and what was given to me was mine. I've been planting for a year.
The driver took out his mobile phone and dialed a string of numbers. After a while, the village chief and a white man ran over.
After asking about the situation, the village chief dialed another phone, turned back to the white and clean person and the driver, and said that the fat man's family promised to charge less money and give the two fields to Mrs. Guo.
A month later, a large fishpond took shape.
After another month, a group of neatly dressed people came and fished around the big fish pond.
Mrs. Guo asked the fat child's family: This good field is used for fishing?
The fat man smiled, old lady, you don't understand this. This is called readjusting the industrial structure. Fishing is to give money, with money, you can buy as much grain as you want, which is much more cost-effective than planting grain.
Mrs. Guo snorted with her nose and said: You haven't seen the age when money can't buy Gu!
In the spring of the following year, the village chief accompanied a young man with a straight face to see Guo Jiayuan's field.
A few days later, many more machines came, and those crescent-shaped small layers of terraced fields were bulldozed and merged together, and half a month later, it was converted into more than 30 acres of flat fields, all planted with strawberries. The commander of the A-word face set up a very imposing gate at the entrance of the village, and the door square was written with three gilt characters of "Strawberry Valley".
When Mrs. Guo spent two days figuring out what was going on with "strawberries", she said disdainfully, strawberries can be eaten as rice?
In this way, only Mrs. Guo's three-point field is still planted with rice.
(To be continued)
About author:Xu Songhua is a member of Hubei Writers Association. He is the author of the novella "Promotion Next Year", the biographical literature "Those Poets of the Tang Dynasty", the short stories "The Straw Hat in 1972" and "No Story Tonight", etc., and "The Twelve Months of the Staggered Years" won the second prize of the first Chinese Novel Competition. Many of his works have been selected into "Selected Small Novels", "Selected Micro Novels", "Selected Folk Tales", "Reader", etc.
Huainan Bagong Mountain has a rich history and humanities, and it is also the place where the book "Huainanzi" was written, and the place name brand is well-known, which has a great influence on the works of propaganda writers. "Bagongshan Literature" (yearbook) is an internal publication supervised by the Propaganda Department of the Bagongshan District Party Committee and the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, guided by the Huainan Writers Association, and sponsored by the Bagongshan Writers Association. The journal is committed to the development and prosperity of literature, and provides a platform for writers, poets and literature lovers in Bagongshan District, other counties and districts of Huainan City, as well as all over the country to exchange and display their works. As of this year, seven issues of Bagongshan Literature have been published (2016-2022 volumes). It has had a great impact on the literary world.
Today's headlines "Eight Public Angles" cooperated to select the outstanding works among them. Xu Songhua's novel released in this issue of "Bagong Angle" is selected from the 2022 volume of "Bagongshan Literature" "Langji Qingqing" novel column.
(Editorial Department of "Bagongshan Literature" of Huainan Bagongshan Writers Association)
On April 25, 2024, today's headlines "Hachiko Angle" was released