Chapter 48 Chapter Forty-Four

Forty years had passed since they left Egypt, and they arrived at Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey that the Lord had given them. The door knockers and gates of each house have been dug out. If you walk through the village, you can see black holes with open eyes and mouths on the doors.If the sun passes through the hole, a pair of round balls will fall, shining like gold coins on one side or the other of the door.The day before yesterday, the men went down the mountain to exchange food with their ironware, and when they left, they told their children, and then looked at the house to see where there was still broken iron.Sima Lan walked across the street carrying a thin iron rod used by her mother to light the fire and an ancestral iron basin for washing. The sound is like kicking the blue tiles on the side of the road.Sima Lu pulled a large bamboo basket behind Sima Hu, and walked over to leave scratches of dust.Whose house they passed by, the boys and girls of that family poked their heads out from behind the door, asking if the iron has been collected?Sima Hu hurriedly said, quickly bring your family's.The protruding head flickered, then retracted again.This is when the sun rises, and the mountains are as red as fire. From a distance, the fields seem to be burning with endless flames.There was a smell of scorching sunlight, dancing on the flames, and drifting into the streets and alleys of the village.Sima Lan said to put the basket here, and Sima Lu put the bamboo basket in the middle of the crossroads in the village. Sima Hu took the iron rod and iron basin from his brother, stood on the roadside roller, and beat it violently. Snowflakes hail,.The children all came out of the house, holding in their hands the iron objects they had dug through the earth to find.Lan Jiushi took a half-foot-long wire, and Lan Bashi took an old spatula.Forty and thirty-nine, two dug with a wood saw.They walked toward the crossroads, their faces glowing with harvest.Du Zhuang and Du Zhu on this side of the alley, one took his father's carpenter's plane, and the other took a carpenter's chisel that he hadn't used yet.Afterwards, Du Bo took an iron spoon, and Zhucui took the only foreign porcelain teapot in the village.When they came out of the house, Sima Taohua chased after them and said, "The spoon and porcelain jar need to be used." Du Bo said, "Isn't there a new wooden spoon?"The mother-in-law was behind her, as if she had been exposed, and stopped chasing and calling.When they came to the crossroads, they all threw the utensils into the baskets vigorously, to see who had the most valuable things, and whoever’s things made a loud and pleasant impact sound, and whose face would shine with extraordinary light.The sun has risen to the head of the village, and the leaves of the tung and elm trees, which seem to be withered and flourishing, keep falling prematurely in this season.Occasional cicada cries, like the voice of a tired old man, flowed slowly over the children's heads.No dogs, no chickens, and no other poultry.If the children are silent there, you will think that the world is dead, and there is nothing to prove that the world is still alive.The bamboo basket is full.For three days in a row, they were in this set of ironware.They are so touching that the Ragui Mountains are still panting loudly for their lives.You can hear the golden sound of the sun setting, and you can smell the creaking of the door hinges when the doors are opened and closed, and the smell of cracked willow and elm.They gathered around the basket of iron objects, Sima Lan said forty, your house is really gone?Forty glanced at Ninety, and said that you asked my sister, even the door knocker was handed over.Sima Lan asked Dugan again, doesn't your father still have a big saw?Dugan said that your father asked him to keep it, and he said that he would use it for felling trees in a few days.He asked Du Bo again, where is your kitchen knife?How do you cook with the knife handed over?Du Bo said, my mother won't let me take it.Sima Hu immediately stood up from the ground. I handed over all my knives. They were bought by my father selling skins last year. They are newer than your knives.Sima Lan said, Zhucui, you go home and bring the kitchen knife.Zhucui lost weight and left.After leaving, a dozen or so children all went home. In a blink of an eye, they all came back with a kitchen knife and threw them into the iron pile.Sima Lan told the barking woman that she would buy the leather after selling it.The woman stood at the door or on the street, thinking that this little child had a really serious tone, and she was really from the Sima family.The kitchen knives were brought, and Sima Lan said that when he went back, he brought all the pots and smashed them, and the children were all stunned, asking what to cook with?Sima Lan said that people outside the mountain have a canteen for each village, so we just need to keep the cauldron for cooking crow meat.Turning around and saying, Hu, you go back first and smash our pot.Sima Hu ran back without hesitation, and in a blink of an eye came out with a black pot on his head, and fell to the ground at the intersection, saying that as soon as my mother entered the toilet, I ran away with the pot.Looking at the pieces of broken pots on the ground, shining black and red with rusty light under the sun, Sima Lu picked them up one by one and threw them into the iron pile, making a black and bright clanking sound, which filled the children's ears with happy voice.They all went home again, and they all came out with a rice cooker on their backs, followed by their mother who was chasing after them, saying that you are crazy, are you crazy?Sima Lan said, if you want to learn from people from other villages, why do you need pots?A group of black pots were running in the alley, like a bunch of huge crows gliding in mid-air.Followed by bang bang bang bang, the black sound of smashing pots and pots filled the village like raindrops.The woman who was chasing her stopped chasing her and just sighed in place.The iron pile was getting bigger and bigger, not much less than the iron objects that the adults picked down the mountain three days ago.So the children were encouraged, and they were so excited that they wanted to jump up.Handed over the kitchen knife, smashed the iron pot, what iron utensils does each family have?After asking this question, they all looked at each other, and Sima Lan said: "Come on, follow me to each house." The children all flocked to go.Du Zhuang, Du Zhu and Sima Hu followed closely behind Sima Lan, and the other boys and girls, after hesitating, followed him, only Du Bo stood beside the pile of iron.Sima Lan turned her head and called out, come with me, Du Bo?Du Bo said that you are going to rob someone's house.Sima Lan said, looking at your worthless appearance, you are still someone who can recognize the medicine book.Then he entered the first family with the surname Lan at the head of the village.The hostess was washing the vegetable leaves brought back from begging in the kitchen. Seeing the autumn wind and autumn leaves, a group of children came in, and asked in surprise what they were going to do?Said to find iron and let others make steel to exchange food for us.The woman said that there was no iron smell in the house, and sharp-eyed people saw an iron lock and a bunch of keys hanging on the wall inside the door.Sima Lan said that the door handle and knocker were gone, so why do you need a door lock?Some children came forward and took off the lock and key.When I arrived at another house, I saw a plowshare hidden in the kiln behind the door, and asked why such a heavy iron was hidden?It is said that there is only this one plow in the whole village. Will they stop plowing in the future?Sima Lan said that he wanted to exchange food for food, and it would not be too late to buy it if he needed it.Where did the man say to buy it?Do you know how much a plowshare costs?Sima Lan said that if you go to the city to buy it, no matter how expensive it is, it will not be worth an inch of leather money.The man said, is it okay to sell your skin?Sima Lan patted her thigh and said yes, sooner or later it will be sold, and now it grows faster.So I went to another house, and there was no smell of iron inside or outside the house. When I was about to leave, I saw a few bricks on the window sill, and a cloth bag under the brick. When I opened it, I found that the cloth was wrapped in twelve long and Big iron nails, saying that your house still hides iron!Said it was the iron nails used to seal the coffin.Iron nails are not iron?Take it away decisively.One family goes in, one family comes out.It turned out that every family in the village still had iron objects. Some hid a pot under the bed, some hid an iron spoon or spatula in the crack of the bellows, and some houses had wooden box lids and table drawers. Iron rings, iron buckles and locks, a complete set.Tell me, is your family out of food?The family said that if you take it, you will lose your life, and what to do with a piece of iron, even a piece of gold is useless.The streets are filled with the quick and light steps of children.The black, purple, red, cold iron smell and the warm milky white wood smell carried by when it was buckled from the wooden board, drifted and flowed in the village like drizzle and wind.There are many iron lights in the sunlight.The brown rusty crash of throwing iron throwing objects was constantly passed across the field.When the pile of iron objects buried the bamboo baskets and became as big as a grave, the sun moved to the top of the village, and the adults came back from the mountain ridge.

They brought back a load of food. There were eleven loads of iron when I went there, and one load of grain when I returned. A load of food is in front, and the men file behind one by one.At the end was a simple stretcher carried by two people, one or two locust tree rafters, and a hemp rope. Sima Xiaoxiao, who had a serious throat problem, was lying on the stretcher, his face pale and yellow by the sunlight.In the middle of the village, he sat up on the stretcher, took a long breath, looked at the pile of iron objects, smiled and said: This is another load of food. Needless to say, the Sima brothers were the first to run to the stretcher.Sima Lan said, Dad, have you sold your skin?Sima smiled and touched Sima Lan's head with his hand, saying that it would be considered a profit if he could sell the skin at this time, and said that your father and I had a sore throat for a while.It may be a good omen to say that this pain is about to rain for life-saving.Then he got off the stretcher, rang a few bells, and called Shanglan Baisui to the warehouse on the wheat field outside the village.

Grain distribution began. Every time a family got food, Sima Xiaoxiao dug half a bowl of dark red rapeseed seeds from another bag and handed it over with the food. ──The famine is almost over, and the seeds will be sown after the rain. ──Will it rain?village head. ──If it doesn't rain, I just got a sore throat, will it hurt like hell? ──As long as it rains, rapeseed will be planted. ──Understood, village chief. The food distribution is over. The villagers erected a piece of rapeseed at the crossroads. Sima smiled and said, let’s all go home. I would rather starve to death than eat a rapeseed. Who doesn’t plant rapeseed after it rains? Open, the bones are hanging by the roadside.