Hunger for a hundred years

Chapter 30 (10)
When my mother was alive, we, together with people from Poshang, secretly laughed at He Jianshen's family, because his family was the worst at planning.Although He Bi learned cooking skills at the rich man's house when he was a child, he also spoiled his taste for delicious food. Any restaurant on the slope held wine and banquets, and He Bi was the representative of Jianshen's family; It is the most difficult sorghum to arrange, and she can make four or five tricks, but after a while, even hungry mice will not come to her family's granary.There are six people in her family, besides the old couple, there are two sons and two daughters, two sons, one named Caigen and the other named Caibang. Caigen has six fingers on his right hand. A finger is sent to the mouth to bite.Cai Gen was born in the same year as He Ji, and Cai Bang was one year younger than me. The two brothers eat a lot.In Hejiapo, He Jianshen's appetite is second only to He Kuiyuan's, while Caigen and Caibang's appetite is close to that of his father.At that time, whenever I went to feed the pigs with my mother and saw Jianshen’s family sitting downcast under the eaves of the street through the bamboo bushes, my mother would pull me into the alley of the pigsty and point to Jianshen’s family. Looking at the eaves of the street, I whispered: "Look, that's the result of not knowing how to save money." I nodded vaguely, with an unclear sense of superiority. Unexpectedly, my mother died only a few months ago, and our family is inferior to them.It's not that we don't know how to save money, but we really have no other way.

He Da went to relatives' homes several times, and what he brought back was either humiliation or despair.

We vowed never to go to a relative's house for support again.

Spring Festival is coming soon.In Hejiapo, even if they are poor, how to build Shen’s family is still busy killing pigs, pushing glutinous rice balls, grinding rice tofu, and busy cleaning gutters and gutters; they also pile up the dried pennies in the clean yard In the corner, when the fire was ignited, there was a crackling sound.This is the unique weather of the New Year, like a layer of fog, wrapped in lingering sorrow.Our family has no year pigs to kill, so we can barely push a little rice tofu. Unlike other families, you can eat three or five hot rice tofu when you push it out. Instead, you hide it in the warehouse like gold, so you are afraid of rats. Steal, but also afraid that we who are not sensible will steal.Since then, I have had a problem: the more I am in a happy environment, the more melancholy I feel.
Like the entire Qingxi River Basin, Hejiapo Tuannian is at noon on New Year's Eve.On the table of the Eight Immortals, He Da hugged He Qing who was always crying, fed her rice soup, finally stopped her crying, coaxed her to sleep, put her on the bed, and the family had dinner.After my mother died, this was the most sumptuous lunch, with potato shreds, fried cabbage, dried cowpea soup, and a small bowl of pork!This bit of pork was left by my mother when she was alive.Before dinner, we took wine, rice and a few slices of meat and went to hang the graves for our mother, grandma, grandpa and great-grandfather and great-grandmother.After returning from hanging the grave, He Da opened a bottle of bulk wine exchanged for birch turf, poured it into an earthen bowl, persuaded He Kou to drink, He Kou took a sip, and pushed the wine bowl to his father.As I looked at the bowl of meat, I stretched out my claws in my throat, took one piece, swallowed it without knowing the taste of the meat, and went to pick up the second piece. He took the meat bowl away and put it in the cupboard.And at this time, even He Da didn't taste the meat!

Isn't it Chinese New Year?Why is meat not allowed during Chinese New Year?Isn't there still in the bowl? Why take it away?
I hated my eldest brother, and even my father, He Da, because he didn't stop He Kou's behavior.

After I entered the city, I revisited that period of life, and finally understood He Kou's mood when he took the meat away.He has understood his position in this family, and he must help his father get out of the valley of death.Think about it, there is only a little meat in the family, but the year is so long, although no relatives are willing to come, but what if they come?
But at that time, I couldn't understand so much. My only desire was to eat meat, and I missed the taste of meat crazily.
Years later, He Da was really powerless, and sadly adopted his youngest daughter, He Qing, to a family in Dui Hema's village.

As soon as He Qing left, the family seemed to have lost many people and things suddenly.The days spin there empty-handed.

He Ben is already grown up, so we don't need someone to take care of him anymore, so we will do our own things and fulfill our responsibilities to the family.Besides going to school, I spend more time serving the white cow we raise.

No matter how many years have passed, that huge white cow (everyone on the slope calls it Bai'er) still lives in my heart.It does not live in the image of a beast, but like my elder brother or even my father.When Bai'er came into my house, I don't know, it seems to be a member of the family with me.Since Hejiapo is full of sloping land, I have no chance to pull it out and let it go. I mainly go up the mountain to mow grass for it. I carry a flower basket, walk out of the house, and climb up the mountain meanderingly along the big field ridges that my ancestors have walked through for generations. Look for a little blue in the mountain grass.When precocious whining and sentimental disposition try to overwhelm me, I always think of the cows working the slopes or waiting in the pens.

When I carry a large basket of flowers and grass, pass through a few pigsty alleys and then turn into a dark cattle pen alley, Bai'er will accurately recognize my footsteps, even if I just came back from the fields under the scorching sun, with Lying in the broken grass and cow dung covered in mud and tiredness, it would get up without hesitation; when I walked to the cow trough covered in sweat, it always looked at me with loving eyes: it didn't look at me at all. The grass in my flower basket looks at my face, even though its stomach is empty.I untie the bound grass, shake it loose, and put it in the cow trough. It is always reluctant to eat it immediately, but waits for me to touch its head; when I stretch out my hand, it always turns its head to one side. , Rubbing my palm with a short horn.In this way it expresses the guilt of enjoying my labor.No matter how young the grass I mow is, it will eat it cleanly. If it is not full, it will never be like other cows. When the parents of the children come to the pen, they will bark and even ram. Pens, encourage adults to beat the child mowing the grass; Bai'er will never do this, she just licks her lips, then lies down quietly, chewing the cud quietly.This kind animal communicated with me when I was still awake.

Such days are always lonely.Loneliness is the collective face of He Jiapo and the heart of the whole He Jiapo.

Apart from arranging production dutifully, He Zhongbao basically never showed his face.Like the people on the slope, he wore tattered clothes, squatted on the threshold to eat, and scolded the children for no reason.
At that time, the most active person was still He Kuiyuan, but when people talked about He Kuiyuan, they were no longer afraid of him, but curled their lips.Although he is younger than He, by the time we can understand the words, he should be in his 40s, right?But he is not married yet.It's not that he doesn't want to get married, but that no one wants to marry him.He Kuiyuan was at his best when he shot the yellow jue tree with a gun, and when he held night schools. Once these turmoil passed, he no longer had a good time, and became a marginalized person in Hejiapo, and also became a loathsome person. people.At first, the people on the slope were afraid that he would go to the Yin Dynasty to kill themselves, but gradually found that he couldn't kill anyone at all. Two months ago, he had a quarrel with Jianshen's family and publicly said that he would go to Yan within three days. My lord, check off the life and death books of Jian Shen and He Bi. As a result, the old couple of Jian Shen are still alive and well!Two weeks ago, He Kuiyuan took his master, Mr. Luo, several times to the Dagou Tomb in the ancient village, and circled around the strangely shaped and flattened mound. The master helped, but his master also had nothing to do with Jianshen and his wife. They still eat when they should eat, and fart when they should fart.This made the people of Hejiapo look down on Kui Yuan. He Zhongbao, who was going to let his son learn the craft from him, was really disappointed!
However, when He Kuiyuan was almost 50 years old, he still married his wife. She was a "remarried sister-in-law", surnamed Zhang, from Heyang Houshan.Zhang married Kui Yuan and divorced within a few days because Kui Yuan beat her.Zhang has a strong physique and is tall, but how could she beat the extremely powerful He Kuiyuan?One day, he and Mrs. Zhang had a conflict before going to bed. He hugged Mrs. Zhang and threw her lightly, and threw her out into another room.Later, when I went to university and came back from vacation, Kui Yuan told me about that incident triumphantly, "When I threw her out, she was still sitting on the bed!" He said.At that time, he had already suffered from severe lung disease, and it was very difficult for him to speak, and a thick stench came out of his mouth.
A few months later, He Kuiyuan got married again. The woman was married to Hejiapo 30 years ago. Her surname was Pu. , Pu Shi's man also died.That man's death was unbelievable. That day he went to Dahegou to dig a mountain on a stone wall tens of meters high, tied a thick hemp rope around his waist, tied it to an ancient pine tree at the top of the stone wall, and then grabbed the rock wall. Fold, slide to the middle, first chisel out a small hole, drive the iron wedge into it, then climb back to the top, take the sledgehammer down, shout alone, knock on the iron wedge swinging, After knocking for more than ten times, a large rock collapsed. When the rock flew down the cliff, a giant python suddenly appeared in front of his eyes!That giant python came out of the stone wall, and the giant python also fell down the mountain, but before it fell, it bit off the man's neck!It was clearly a whole stone wall, how could a python come out of it?But it was true. When the man threw the sledgehammer, several women in Hejiapo were washing quilts in Dahegou, and they all saw it with their own eyes.But later I went down the mountain to look for it, but there was no trace of the python.The people of Hejiapo said that it was not an ordinary python, but a mountain god here.That's how Pu's man died, with only a layer of skin left on his neck when he was pulled up to the top of the stone.After he died, Pu Shi still had to live. Women in the mountains could hardly live without marrying a man.

But no matter what, you shouldn't marry He Kuiyuan, right?
Pu Shi is going to marry him!It can be said that she had no choice but to marry him.Pu and the mason had a son named He Tuanjie. He Tuanjie was a few years older than He Kou and had a violent temperament. thing.He made it clear that he only worships three people on this mountain. The first one is Luo Siju, who was an admiral, and the other two are He Donger and He Min, the sons of my third great-grandfather He Xingxiao.Brother He Donger took two paths, one became a general of the Communist Party, and the other became a general of the Kuomintang, but He United ignored this, and he admired their heroic spirit.Hejiapo is nowhere to be seen on the county map, only Laojun Mountain is like a rock eagle lying across the northeast corner of the map. Hejiapo is just a piece of feces left by the rock eagle. From the mountain, it is only as big as a sparrow's face.In such a small place, it was not the years when wars raged back then. He had nowhere to show his unity. He also went to Dongbachang, Qingxichang and even Yongle County if he had nothing to do, just like He Donger brothers did in the early years. He didn't come across any of the good things about Brother Dong'er: no casino, no brothel, no general who occupied the top of the hill, but was often questioned and tracked down by the workers' propaganda team.

He had to go back to Hejiapo to vent his pride on his neighbors.He dares to fight anyone.When he went to work, he walked slowly, but if the clerk dared to miss half a cent in his work score book, he would throw the guy and rush over to punch him.In terms of deadly strength, He Tuanjie is not as good as He Kuiyuan, but he is dexterous and his fists are surprisingly hard.He hits not only men, but also women.Once, he pressed He Zhongbao's woman, Wen Shi, on the ground, held it with a big flower basket, and punched the bottom of the flower basket with his fist, piercing through the flower basket with several fists, and the woman curled up inside began to speak stiffly. The voice shouted: "Kill me to death---" He Tuanyi punched her on the face, and her face immediately swelled into a ball like a poisonous bee sting, and her narrowed eyes were like two knife wounds on the ball; He kept tearing Wen's clothes and trousers into strips.At that time, many adults and children in Hejiapo saw Wen's pubic hair that was so thick that even the wind could not penetrate it.He severely killed He Zhongbao's prestige, so that he no longer dared to do whatever he wanted as before; He Zhongbao was even a little afraid of He Tuanhe, and spoke to him in a flattering tone. He took out the dog-beating stick and stared at the dog's blood that had turned into black spots for a long time.He Tuanjie not only hit outsiders, but also his mother! ——The reason why Pu agreed to marry He Kuiyuan when her husband's bones were not cold was because he wanted to use He Kuiyuan's brute force to punish his son.

On this issue, He Zhongbao put a lot of effort into it, and he was afraid that the two would not be able to make a pair.He Zhongbao believes that after Pu's marriage with He Kuiyuan, He Tuanjie will often find Kuiyuan to find a fight. When two tigers fight, one will be injured, or even both will be injured.Unexpectedly, as soon as Kui Yuan and Pu Shi got married, He Tuanjie moved out on his own initiative and lived in a new house built by his father before his death; There are those who laugh, and they are very congenial.In terms of seniority, He Kuiyuan and He Tuanjie are equals, and they will not change their words now. He Tuanjie calls Kui Yuan brother. The two are like brothers, stealing other people's claws, killing other people's chickens, and shadows overlap in everything they do , It's just that He Tuanjie didn't "go to the Yin Dynasty" with Kui Yuan.

This made He Zhongbao and Po Shangren very annoyed, and there was nothing they could do.

Of course, the most distressing thing is Pu Shi. She wanted to find a refuge, but she didn't expect to introduce a wolf.
He Kuiyuan is a rascal, there is no doubt about it.But at that time, He Jiapo was a child as old as me, and he liked to be with him.He inherited his father He Xiandong's talent of "bad mouth", and his storytelling is particularly moving.

Most of his stories were horror stories, "that's what" he always started.He said that one year, a certain family in Hongyantou had an enemy and asked him to go to the Yin Dynasty. When he came back at night, the moon was dark and the wind was high. As he was walking, he suddenly saw a sweetgum hanging on a sweetgum tree in the old forest in front of him. A lantern.The lantern was so bright that he could see his feet protruding from the rotten shoes tens of meters away.He thought, did he meet a ghost today?He is not afraid!People who go to the Yin Dynasty are those who deal with the high-level leaders of ghosts. How can they be afraid of ghosts?He strode over and reached for the lantern.But suddenly the lantern disappeared.In the blink of an eye, it hung on an alder tree more than ten meters away.Knowing that the ghost was afraid of him, he became more courageous and rushed to fetch it again.The situation is the same as before.After seven or eight rounds of fighting like this, they reached a flat ground.

(End of this chapter)