Tomb Keeper

Chapter 7 Colleagues in the Cemetery (2)

After dinner, Yang Huzi said to me, later in the afternoon, when the sun is not so poisonous, let Ye Zi take you to the cemetery, and you should be familiar with the things here.No one will come to do business in the future, so you have to visit the cemetery often.

I am very unwilling to accept Yang Huzi's arrangement.But I can only nod foolishly.I have to make myself a puppet, so I might be safer.

When the sun was westward that day, Ye Zi and I were already walking listlessly in the cemetery.After traveling through endless graves for a long time, the fear in people's hearts has become more and more numb.I could even sit on the ground with my back against a tombstone and smoke a cigarette.Leaf is also sitting on the ground, holding a branch and drawing on the sand, like writing or drawing.

I said, Poet Feng’s accent sounds like it’s from Shanxi, and it’s thousands of miles away from our southwest region. How could he come here to guard the tomb?
Ye Zi wrote the word "Shanxi" on the ground with a branch, and then raised his head and said, yes, he is from the countryside of Shanxi. When he was in his 20s, he went to work in a factory in Shenzhen, and later became a technician.He fell in love with a working girl in the factory, and this girl was from the nearby mountains.They were about to get married, but the girl was in a car accident on a rainy day and was killed by a big truck.People in her family brought her ashes back and buried them here, and poet Feng also followed, sitting in the grave all day long in a daze.One night, he committed suicide by taking sleeping pills in front of the grave, but maybe the dose was not enough, and he came back to life in the morning.After Yang Huzi found him in the cemetery, he persuaded him to give up the idea of ​​death and became a grave keeper here.

This reasonable narrative surprised me a little.I asked again, can he really write poetry?
Ye Zi mechanically wrote a "poem" on the ground with a branch, and then said, yes, he used to write poems while working, and published them in a literary journal and "Southern Metropolis Daily". He was called a migrant poet. .Now, he sometimes writes poems. I have read one, which was written for his fiancée in his grave.

Speaking of this, Ye Zi glanced at me and said, he is an infatuated man just like you.

My heart moved, and I felt Ye Zi's eyes and voice showing goodwill and approval for me.It's just that I immediately realized that I was doing reconnaissance work at the moment, at least for the time being, I couldn't be disturbed by the affection of my children.

So, I pretended to be casual and asked, where did that dumb man come from?Yang Huzi really knows how to use child labor.

Ye Zi wrote the word "dumb" on the ground again, and then said that the mute was 16 years old, not counting the use of child labor.The child's life experience is unknown, he begged and wandered to Xihe Town.Yang Huzi took pity on him and accepted him to work here.You don't see that the kid has grown up, he was as thin as a monkey before.

Ye Zi's narration dispelled the ghostly puzzle here, including herself, who also claimed to be a girl who came out of the mountains to work.This ending makes me very dissatisfied, even though I am not someone who deliberately came out to find ghosts.I couldn't help blurting out, but everything here always makes me feel strange and a little scary.

Ye Zi suddenly seemed a little nervous, and the branch in his hand no longer calmly wrote on the ground.She said, you mean Yang Huzi and Zhou Ma.Yes, it's kind of weird and scary.Let’s just talk about the cemetery in the back mountain. Poet Feng and the dumb go to inspect it, but Yang Huzi never goes there.The reason is that there are several children's graves in the back mountain. Yang Huzi said that the fortune teller told him that if he was going to suffer in this life, he would be killed by a little ghost.You say he is afraid of little ghosts, he is usually afraid when he sees children, innocent and lively children, what is there to be afraid of.There is a folk saying that children have the most yang energy and can see ghosts and exorcise ghosts. What do you think he is afraid of?Yang Huzi is 62 years old. It is said that he has guarded the tomb for more than 20 years. During this period, several old tomb guards have passed away one after another. Who can be sure that he is not one of the dead?

Ye Zi's words made my hair stand on end, and the tombstone behind me seemed to be shaking a little.However, when she talked about these things, she was very natural, and there was always a slight smile on the corner of her mouth.She also said that Mama Zhou is also very strange. Although she is from the nearby village, she must have chosen to make a living after her husband died and worked here.But she is cheerful all day long, how can there be such a carefree person in the world.What's even more strange is that once she went to Xihe Town to buy vegetables, and came back with a lot of vegetables in less than half an hour.It takes me two hours to go back and forth to Xihe Town, why do you think she bought vegetables in half an hour.That time I saw her go out and met her back at the gate of the courtyard. I found that she seemed very unnatural when she saw me in the next few days.

Ye Zi's narration confuses me. From this point of view, only Poet Feng, Dumb and herself have a clear background, while Yang Huzi and Zhou Ma are very strange.This is exactly the opposite of my judgment here.I looked up at Ye Zi, her eyes were bright, and she had the vivid breath of life of a woman in the world. If I hadn't seen the other side of her in the attic in the middle of the night, I would have believed what she said at this moment.I suddenly understood a truth, everything in the world is positive and negative, up and down, left and right, people and ghosts, how to judge depends on where you stand.

I suddenly wanted to do an experiment, a fire reconnaissance on the forward position, so I asked Ye Zidao, what do you think of me, is it normal?
Ye Zi hesitated for a while, then shook his head and said, it's not normal.If it was normal, you wouldn't stay here to guard the tomb.

This is the answer I want to hear.Because if she says I'm normal, then I'm just like her, and that's a terrible thing.

However, I couldn't make her doubt my choice, so I said that it is abnormal for ordinary people that I am a grave keeper, but I miss my dead girlfriend in this way, which is the necessity of keeping love.

Those words made Ye Zi's eyes wet.I'm relieved, whether it's normal or not, she won't guard me anymore.

It was dusk, and Ye Zi and I were walking back in the graves, Ye Zi suddenly tripped over something, and almost fell down.I took her hand.This hand is warm and makes me feel like an electric shock.After that, she didn't take her hand back, and we just walked in the boundless cemetery holding hands like this.I felt that the setting sun had risen again, and I was walking hand in hand with Ye Zi in this unbelievable place.I thought that if we led her back to the provincial capital like this, the whole newspaper and even the whole city would be stunned.I, Da Xu, am an amazing person, and my girlfriend is even more charming than ordinary people.

When I was having dinner, my eyes kept turning around Zhou Ma and Yang Huzi, trying to find something abnormal.Although rationally I think that Ye Zi’s words can only be listened to in reverse, but human beings are actually easily dominated animals, and the so-called independence of consciousness is not as strong as people think.

That night, there was no movement on the roof of my building. Ye Zi seemed to have fallen asleep and did not comb her hair or eyebrows.In the middle of the night, there was a night rain, and I couldn't help but want to go to the attic to have a look.I walked out of the room lightly, and a gust of cold wind made me shiver.Suddenly, the phone downstairs rang.The only phone here is in the main room downstairs, who will call in the middle of the night?The sound of the phone ringing in the dark silence was startling.At this time, the door in front of me opened, Yang Huzi came out, saw me and said, oh, you are already up, then go downstairs to answer the phone.After finishing speaking, he didn't express any doubts about the phone call in the middle of the night, so he went back and closed the door.

I had to go downstairs to answer the phone, and every step of the way the phone rang like it was going to snap my nerves.

(End of this chapter)