Chapter 9 Chapter nine

(...At nine o'clock, I asked the direction of Shahezi, and I must find my uncle.) Seven miles from north to south, and tens of miles from east to west, in the rivers and rivers, on the frosty yellow sand, the yams have not yet sprouted, and the steps are soft.Looking around, the boundary ridges of the borders are full of sage grasses, and the sage grasses that have survived the winter are still withered and yellow, but the hard-rooted Achnatherum splendens, Artemisia splendens, and wild garlic are all green, so the green is yellow, yellow and green. Green in the middle, the breeze blows from the roots of the mountain, and the yellow dry stems make a lingering sound.There are piles of cobblestones piled up every three and four furrows. The stones are shiny white, and wild brambles grow in the crevices of the stones. There are no leaves, and the branches are intertwined, like iron.This used to be the tomb of the dead, but the mound was eroded by the plowmen and became smaller and smaller, and it became a place where stones and weeds were discarded when plowing the land.It was just after Qingming, and there were faintly white banners hanging on the thorns.I walked from the bottom of the mountain, and it seemed that pumpkins or watermelons were planted on a piece of land last autumn. The unplucked vines were rotting but not out of shape. I couldn’t lift them up with my hands, and they became criss-cross lines printed on the ground. .An hour later, the wind started to get stronger, and the empty soil on the ground was blown into a layer of water mist on the sea, and it hit the cliff rock at the root of the mountain, and the cliff rock hit it again, and a whirlwind rose there, and the grass nest could be seen The hare in the forest fled as quickly as lightning, and disappeared in the weeds again.Thirty men in hunting suits led thirty thin dogs, standing seven miles apart. I couldn't see the appearance of the fifteen men and dogs at the east end. Among the fifteen men at the west end, Uncle The one standing in the middle, Fugui was caught under his legs.Uncle squinted his eyes and looked at me with a look of pride on his face. The other fourteen people were all wearing green military rubber shoes, their hair was disheveled like grass, a vest with animal skins without buttons, and belts made of very rough canvas. Stretched on the body, their legs were not tied, but their trousers were tied with ropes, and the wind was blowing.All the thin dogs have their tails cut off. They look black and ugly, but they are not as rich as those with thin waists and long legs. These dogs are more excited than people, and they can hardly wait. Son, it has already been shot like an arrow.The man carried by the old-fashioned armchair was Uncle's teammate, the hunter who suffered from severe hypochondriac, and he was in charge of starting the gong.At first I thought they were going for dog racing. When the gong rang, fifteen dogs rushed out, and their masters followed closely behind. Each of them had a whistle in their mouths and called out long and short. With the high and low whistling whistle, the fine dogs ran straight, diagonally, roundabout, and crossed, and the formation changed endlessly.At the same time, on the other side of the river road seven miles away, fifteen people and dogs rushed towards this side, and the dust flew up like two rows of waves rushing towards the middle. In the dust mist, I saw a hare walking They ran away, and after every hare ran away, two or three small dogs were chasing after them. They circled the river, turning around, gathering and dispersing, appearing and disappearing from time to time.There are people chasing after them, and it is difficult for them to recognize their own objects, but their whistles are enough to make their lackeys understand. Their speed is no less than that of a small dog. When a small dog flies into the air from time to time, you It is impossible to distinguish between a human being a dog and a dog becoming a human being.

"The greyhound racing is so good!" "It's not a dog race, it's a dog chasing a rabbit." The cartilaginous man on the armchair corrected my mistakes, surrounded by countless spectators, beating gongs and drums, setting off firecrackers, and even lighting firecrackers, shouting in unison.I am still a football fan in the state city. I dare say that the scene here is no less crazy than that on the field. I clearly saw a man with his child on his neck. The child yelled and patted his father's head with his hands. His face was so red as if he was drunk, but he still ignored it.A woman kept jumping and shouting, and the two big breasts were gurgling up and down, and a man said: "Rabbit, rabbit, the rabbit got into his arms!" Everyone laughed loudly, and a group of women surrounded them and beat them for a while. , I drove it into the wind and dust of chasing rabbits. I finally saw my uncle in the chaos. He and Fugui had been chasing a gray-haired rabbit. All of a sudden, it jumped up, and almost caught the rabbit's hind legs. The rabbit flashed suddenly, but was able to stop immediately. The next shoe was thrown away, and the shoe hit the rabbit. The rabbit jumped up, landed heavily, got up again and ran westward, and the dog chasing the rabbit came again, and the rabbit slanted towards us. The two small dogs were only two meters apart, but they still couldn’t catch up. We kept shouting, “Come on, come on, come on, come on.” Uncle was close to us, but he couldn’t catch the rabbit. He seemed a little annoyed. He sat down. When he got down, he had no shoes on his feet, so he picked up a stone from the ground, and with a flick, the rabbit turned over in response, its hooves danced in the air, turned over and ran again, but it didn't move after two steps. , the two thin dogs rushed over at the same time. The crowd cheered wildly, and the cheers were also because the two thin dogs were biting the rabbit's hind leg and the other was biting the rabbit's front leg and would not let go of each other. Finally, the rabbit It was torn into two pieces, and it was picked up by the cartilaginous man. I squatted down and stroked the little dog. The dog’s fur was as smooth as black satin. "Their only inch-long tailbone is moving and barking.

The dog chasing the rabbit lasted for six hours, and when there were no more hares among the wild grass and rocks in a radius of seven miles, the dust settled and the man and the dog rested.A total of five hares were harvested from the hunting, and the five hares were handed over to the uncle's teammate with hypochondrosis. He took the knife and chopped each rabbit three times, chopped three pieces, and threw them to the dogs to eat, and then screamed at everyone Victory back to the village. I followed my uncle, who looked like a native, with sweat all over his face, and his shoes could not be retrieved, so he was barefoot.He said how about it, is it enjoyable?I said: Just go back like this, is this the end?Uncle said: It's over if not.If you want, let's stay one more day and go to the Xiahechuan venue tomorrow.Of course I don't agree, but what I don't understand is that the scene of the dog chasing the rabbit is spectacular, but it's like a children's game. Do adults put in so much effort and sweat so much just for a meaningless game? ? "What a hunter!" The villagers were still admiring uncle and giving him a thumbs up.

Really hunter? !I looked at my uncle's proud expression in admiration, and the cartilaginous man who was being carried and was still talking and laughing in the armchair. I suddenly understood why my uncle came here to participate in the dog chasing the rabbit: the hunter has no wolf, so there is only Hunting rabbits, maybe they don't have any profit goals, just to go crazy once.Going crazy is what they're really about. At the cartilage man's house, I saw Murray again. I met him when I came to the entrance of the village to inquire about the situation in the morning. He said, "Didn't you give the sheep to the wolf!" He led me straight to the cartilage In a man's house, my uncle is sitting on the steps and tying his wraps.Of course my uncle was surprised by my arrival, so Murray yelled loudly: "You don't want us anymore, so you have sex with a literati?!" With his eloquence, I fell in love with this little man, but my uncle called him I asked him to pour me tea quickly, and he poured tea, and asked him to offer me the cigarette, and he took out the cigarette in his pocket. He was very courteous, but whispered to me: "I'm here. Uphold his dignity in front of you! Did you call him uncle? The pug is standing on the dung heap!" The uncle still heard it and said, "You rotten head, just rot your mouth!" I asked Mu Lei: "Didn't you say your name is Murray? Why do you call it a rotten head?" He said: "I have a headache." Only then did I know that he was another teammate of my uncle.

When the rabbit was chased, Rotten was not there, but now he is sitting in the cartilaginous man's yard and let his wife pinch his head. His headache really happened again.His wife, a big woman, was sweating all over her head, and finally hit him hard on the forehead with her fist.The uncle asked: "Is the pain severe?" The rotten head said: "It's still bearable." The uncle said: "If you can bear it, don't take Fenbid. It's a three-point poison. I saw you take Fenbid several times a day. I'm sure I'm scared." The rotten head forced a smile, but said: "Captain, my daughter-in-law is a wolf!" We didn't understand for a while, and he said: "I beat wolves for the first half of my life, and I beat wolves for the rest of my life." Me!" The uncle's face darkened, he walked over to beat his teammates, and murmured: "Don't stay at home, you will get sick if you are not sick, you have a lot of rabbits here, hunting will slowly kill them." It will be fine." The rotten head said: "Put hard, yes, yes! I'm worried that there will be fewer and fewer rabbits." The uncle said: "When you catch the rabbits, don't give them to the dogs. Let them go before you chase them." The big woman had already sat down at the stove to boil water for cooking, and she said to her uncle: "You have to come here often. You see, their buddies are much more energetic when you come. Otherwise, you can take him away and go out to do something by the way." Don’t worry about it, so you don’t have a headache at home and disturb me like crazy!” The uncle said: “Didn’t I hear that he went to the south to work?” The woman said: “Don’t mention him going out to work, I’m so angry! "Lantou was busy threatening in the yard: "You talk too much!" The woman said: "I'm going to talk!" Then he said that he was so bored at home, and yelled that he would go to the south to work and earn money, but he could go For a month, I worked as a small worker on a construction site, but I couldn't get used to the environment in the city and ran back.He earned 400 yuan. He was afraid that the money would be robbed, so he hid it under the insole. He took off his shoes and fell asleep on the seat when he took the train. When he got off the train, he found that the shoes were missing. : Throw away the shoes, those worn-out shoes stink to death, so I picked them up and threw them out of the car window!He couldn't quarrel with others, and he couldn't beat them. His heart ached for his shoes, and even more for the four hundred yuan under the insoles. He cursed, "It's better than the turtle who picked up my shoes!" I took a migrant worker in this village and borrowed money to return.The rotten head said in the yard: "Listen to her nonsense, I'm going to get to that point, I'll hang myself!" The woman said: "Okay, okay, let me make up a lie for you." She lowered her head I went to light the fire again, and when the fire collapsed, it was full of smoke. When I saw her pouting and blowing, two tears glistened on her cheeks.

At the dinner table, they clamored to drink. The wine was homemade corn wine in a large urn, and the cartilaginous man's wife scooped it up with a gourd ladle.They took turns to respect me as a guest. I couldn't drink, so my uncle took the place.Later, they sang wine songs and punched them. I have never seen wine songs so complicated, and the words they sang soberly punched out the count.Everyone was flushed from drinking, and their shirts were peeled off. I thought that my uncle had scars on his body, but I didn't expect that each of them had scars on their bodies, and the scars were shiny and red after drinking.I caressed the scar on the rotten head: "These were all caught by wolves?" The rotten head said: "Any wolf that has caught me, it will not die!" The cartilage man said: "The scar on the left arm is also a wolf. Killed?" The rotten head said: "Guan Gong also went to Maicheng, damn it, I dreamed of that wolf last night, he said that the knife was under the Yingzui cliff in the eastern ditch of Erlang, and I would return it when I woke up. Your brother and sister said, did the wolf give me a dream? Captain, can you go to the Yingzui Cliff in the Erlang Donggou again to see if the knife is really there?" The uncle snorted without saying a word.The rotten head told me that once he was shitting in the woods, and he had to squat downwind to shit. He just turned around and felt something was wrong. Before he turned around, a wolf rushed over from behind the tree and grabbed him The sleeves are gone.The gun was put aside, and when it was too late to get it, he pulled out the knife from the leg wrap and stabbed it, and stabbed it in the wolf's ass hole impartially. Unexpectedly, he stabbed so deep that he couldn't pull it out for a while, so the wolf ran away with the knife. . "The knife is a good knife," he said, "damn it." He laughed to himself.So, they began to talk about the past hunts. Several people almost pointed to the scars on their bodies and told endless stories about fighting wolves one by one.When old ladies get together, they can't finish talking about their sons and grandchildren; at class reunions, what they can't talk about is their childhood.A few of them were dancing and dancing, and they said to me while talking: "Is it interesting?" Of course I was surprised when I heard it. Sorry to say more.I touched the scar on my uncle's back, like touching the light bulb on the iron door, and hoped that my uncle would talk about it, but my uncle just smiled and drank and said, "I don't remember anything." He lifted his unconscious legs up from the edge of the chair, like lifting two slings of meat, and stuffed them into the chair, but he felt a little sad and said: "You are still a hunter now, of course you can't remember, but once we sit down People always say that those who can swim will die in the water, and those who climb mountains will die on the mountain. We have beaten wolves all our lives, and if we don’t die on wolves, we will die paralyzed on the kang..." Uncle Stand up and say to the hostess: "Don't talk, don't talk, let's eat noodles!"

The dough had already been kneaded, and the dough was already there, and the fat woman fluttered and pulled the bellows to light the fire, and the uncle hugged the dough and shouted for him to cut it, put a wet cloth on the bald head, put the dough on, and then With both hands, the willow-leaf long knife was slashed off the dough. For a while, the knife swung like flying, and pieces of dough floated into the boiling water in the pot like fallen leaves.Everyone shut up and stared at him, but they didn't applaud his superb skills, but were so serious that they didn't even make a sound.Uncle's double knives cut faster and faster, as if he wanted to cut off his head one by one, until only a thin layer of dough remained. in the north wall.A wolf skin hung on the north wall, and a knife was stuck in the wolf skin.

Uncle's sudden weirdness made everyone stop talking about the wolf, and when the noodles were brought to the table, they just scrambled.I was really worried that these hunters would come up with something by taking advantage of the alcohol, and I didn't want the atmosphere at the dinner table to be cold, so the fat woman beckoned me to the yard, and whispered: "Their brothers and brothers often drink together, A few days ago, he drank 80%, one wanted to chop his head with a knife, and the other beat his limp legs with a cane, and then cried. The big man cried like his father and mother were dead.You don't drink alcohol, you have to give us some assurance.I went back to the table, deliberately looking for a light topic, and asked how the bacon was made, it was so delicious!Of course they told me that after killing a pig, the meat was cut into pieces, kneaded with salt and mixed noodles, covered in an urn for three days, and then hung on the roof beams and smoked with cypress seeds, or simply Hang it on the stove to let the fireworks of three meals a day smoke and roast.I said, oh, so it is like this, why is there a big thin stone slab on the string of bacon hanging under the roof beam?They said it was to prevent the rats from coming down the rope to eat bacon. No matter how clever the rats were, they couldn't fall off the stone slab and crawl on the back of the slate.I said, will mice jump directly from the roof beams to the stone slabs?The fat woman applauded and said that you are so smart, a mouse would do this, but did you not see that the stone slab is hung at a slant, it will slide off the slate when it jumps off the floor, when I woke up this morning, a mouse was Dead on the ground.While talking, I fell into the old habit of touching my chin and plucking my beard with my nails. My uncle first kicked my leg under the table, but I ignored it. Then he hit my hand, and I suddenly realized that they were all I have a big beard, although I shaved my face, the lower part of my face is black and black, and they also found that I hardly have a beard, so they started to tease me, saying that I am a eunuch, a second son, and I stretched out my hands to touch my rotten hair Touch my chin, as smooth as a baby's ass.For their unreasonableness, I naturally did not blame them, because their straightforwardness did not have any malice, besides, my wife does not think that I have no beard, she likes fair and clean men.But in Shangzhou, at the home of the former wolf hunters in Shahezi, I was ashamed for the first time of my cream complexion and lack of beard.