Author: Liu Huangtian
Forty-eight years ago, I was a homeroom teacher at a rural primary school. The school is not far from home, as long as you walk for more than ten minutes on a road commonly known as "oxcart road", lined with fields. In the evening, after finishing my homework at the teaching office, I walked home, and there was the sound of frogs and crickets chirping along the way. In early spring, the wind carries the faint fragrance of purple clouds. In late autumn, after the rice harvest, farmers pile up mud with grain manuscripts in the field to burn, and use it as fertilizer in the next year, and the air is full of intimate scorching smell, just like the aroma of the pot on the stove that has been burned by the rapid fire.
One night, on a cloudy day, the stars were hidden in the clouds, and the bamboo forest was black and pressed into the black gray canopy. The medical station built next to the main road always reflects a rectangular yellow halo in the window on weekdays, but tonight there is no power outage. Black without foreign doping is pure enough. Fortunately, the road is used to walking, where to turn, where to approach the creek, I know in my heart. Not long ago, on a dark night, I walked out of school, supposed to turn left, but busy talking to my colleagues, took two more steps, and went into the pond, because it was a new road.
Suddenly, a star of cobalt blue light floated in the distance, small and bright. Guessing the direction, it should be on the arch bridge, I paused. A mile down the slope from the arch bridge, there are two servants living, and behind the servants' doors are many used coffins. People say ghost fires will float from there, but I've never seen it. Blue light swam toward me, trailing a small tail. It is fast and slow, and it becomes an arc of light, just like the light rod in the audience's hand at the later singer concert.
Cobalt blue light accompanied by human voices, I was surprised and happy, and I quickly stepped forward to meet, and two giggling boys and I met. From my voice, it was my students, Asong and Ahan, a pair of people in the class. They held up the blue light, shone on me, and shouted "teacher" together. I stared at the blue light and asked, "What is this?" ”
"Just caught." Asson handed me an ink bottle. I took a look at it, and there were hundreds of insects with glowing tails crawling inside, the light was crystal clear, almost snow white, gathered, but it was a bright blue. "Where was it caught?" My interest came.
They said that in the forest behind liantang village, they asked me if I wanted to go and see it. I said yes.
They led me off the main road, around the pond on the edge of the village, and stood by the forest. Here, fireflies fly around like Mars splashing out of a furnace of molten steel. It's so cute! The little lantern bearer was blind and flew over. I sat on the grass with them and chatted for a while gossiping. Dew dripped on my forehead, and I said, it's time for you to go home. They said yes. Asson handed me the ink bottle, and I said, you stay, adults don't play. "Make a flashlight on the road!" Ahan said. I hesitated and asked, "Can't you always be locked up in it?" It's going to die. "It's a question that bothers them. I thought of a way: let them fly away when I got home.
Break up with your two children and go back to the main road. Holding the cobalt blue light source in his hand, he thought of the two children. They were the naughtiest in the class, and just last week, in front of the toilet built on the fish pond outside the school gate, I bumped into Ah Khan, who nervously intercepted every classmate who wanted to go in, shouting: "Full of seats." "I knew there must be something wrong, so I walked in and looked, and there was a line hanging down from the toilet. I pushed open the door and pulled out the lead Asson. Two tricksters, one stealing fish and one looking at the wind. The principal warned them. However, just now their faces were illuminated by the cobalt blue light, and there was only innocence.
Asson, who gave me the fireflies, had been seen at a party four years ago, almost sixty years old, and had become a heavy-handed mason. I asked about that year, and he forgot all about it. But I have never forgotten the two children who walked toward me in the dark with the cobalt blue light, and the pure poetry that filled my heart when I walked with a firefly for the first time in my life. I remember walking to the door of my house, emptying the ink bottle on the grass, and in an instant, the top of my head was covered with stars.
Guangming Daily (October 15, 2021, 14th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily