Chapter 49 Chapter Forty-Five

The LORD said to Moses, "Go up to Mount Nebo, which is in the middle of Mount Abah, opposite Jericho in the land of Moab, and behold the land flowing with milk and honey, which I am giving to the people. You will die on the mountain on which you go. to your fathers, as Aaron your brother died to his fathers on Mount Hor...the land of Canaan, which I gave to the people, flowing with milk and honey, you may behold from afar, but not to go in." So Moses the servant of the LORD died in the land of Moab, just as the LORD had said.The LORD buried him in the land of Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but no one knows his tomb to this day.

A few days later it did rain. The rapeseeds fell on the field as expected. When the rapeseed seedlings grew to the height of chopsticks, every household in the village ran out of food again.Every family has no iron to exchange for food.The few pots hidden by the clever woman were left unused in the village and began to rust, and they no longer needed to use one pot in one alley as Sima Xiaoxiao arranged after the first exchange of food.There is only half a month before the wheat is ripe, maybe twenty days.Although the wheat is sparse and unusual, it is possible to lay down some grain after all.That is to say, with another half month and twenty days to endure, the days will continue with the summer grain.But at this moment, the food was eaten up quietly and completely.When I went to look for crows in the Xiliang ditch, the cliff was still dotted with darkness, but without bait, the crows never fell into the ditch at all, and the villagers started to go out from their homes to look for food again.They started picking wild vegetables and peeling tree bark again, and some people began to collapse on the bed due to edema and hunger, unable to move. I pressed my hands on his body, as if pressing on the mud, and the sunken pit would never rise again.Death started to walk on the street again, the footsteps were clearly discernible, it stopped at the door of this house, stood at the door of that house, and it would suddenly turn into the door of someone's door.Sitting in the courtyard, Sima Lan could always see a figure wandering outside the gate, coming and going like the wind.Someone in the village must be damned, he thought.Maybe the one who should be damned is Daddy.Since his father was carried back by the villagers who exchanged food two months ago, the first thought he had was that his father was going to die, and Lan Baisui was going to be the village head.At that time, when Dad was distributing rape seeds at the crossroads, he saw that the light on Dad's face was gray and black, like a piece of dirty gauze fluttering, while the light on Lan Baisui's face was fading red, and sometimes It was still a little dazzling, like the afterglow of lightning before the rain stayed on his face.In the past two months, my father was lying on the bed and couldn't get out of bed ten times in total. The villagers visited him three or two times, and Wei Lan Baisui came once a day.When he came, he was stuck in a dark room or by Sima Xiaoxiao's bed like a bunch of dry piles. He just sat there, smoking a cigarette, but he didn't say a word. Stepping into the house, Leng Dinger said: "Brother Xiaoxiao, if you want to grow rapeseed, I will turn over the soil in the field, dig down two or three feet, press down the old soil, and replace the new soil Flip up."

When Sima Lan said this, Sima Lan was serving a bowl of clear soup, vegetables and rice to his father, when he saw Sima smiled and sat up propped up from the bed at that moment, looking at Lan Baisui's face through the window light, like It's like getting to know Lan Baisui from the beginning.After seeing Lan Baisui's cigarette extinguished, seeing Lan Baisui's eyes flustered, seeing that Lan Baisui was not at all comfortable beside the bed, he lay down again as if he had collapsed. "It's not that I don't want to give up the village chief to you with the surname Lan. It's not that Du Yan is my brother-in-law and can read a few words. I'm really afraid that you will not be handsome enough to lead the affairs of the village."

From then on, Lan Baisui seldom came to Sima's house, and rarely went to Sima Xiaoxiao's bedside.However, his father Sima smiled, but he often mentioned Lan Baisui, and sometimes asked Sima Lan, why did you disappear for a few days?One day, Sima Lan saw a person passing by the door, vaguely like Lan Baisui, and also like a dead figure of a person, he quickly ran out of the courtyard, but saw that the outside of the door was clean without even a footprint , I tried my best to look far away, and saw that the men in the village had no choice but to gather at the entrance of the village to suck dry leaves, and they vomited into the sky, making the men seem to be sitting in the clouds.In the deep water-like grassland on the opposite slope, there is a woman picking vegetables, with her waist bent straight, floating on the water like a drowned sheep.In the barren grassland on the side of the slope, where they played the longevity game, there are still children from the village gathered there.Sima Lan saw his younger brothers Lu, Hu, Shishi, Zhucui, Du Zhuang, and Du Zhu all forming a circle in the big grass nest, with only Du Yan sitting in the middle.He didn't know what Du Yan was talking about, and the children listened intently and remained motionless.

Sima Lan walked towards the weed nest on the hillside. There were footsteps and conversations behind him. Afraid of seeing that black figure again, he took a step back, but did not turn his head. ──Village Chief, are you mildly ill? ──I can't die.where did you go ──The baby girl died of starvation last night. I saw that you were sick, so I didn't disturb you, so I carried her to the grave and buried her. ──Didn’t build a pair of thin coffin villages? ──If you don’t feed the crows, you’ll be sorry for her by leaving her a whole body, so what’s the point of making a coffin?

The sound of footsteps drifted away like pale black flowers in the sunlight. Sima Lan turned around, and saw another black shadow, turned around an old tree and disappeared.He finally became surprised, thinking that his father was really going to die, the black shadow first lingered at the door of his house, and now that his father came out of the house, the black shadow followed him again.He walked towards his father and said, "Dad, who was talking to you just now?"Dad turned around and said I'm looking for your uncle, the one who spoke just now was an uncle of your Lan family.What did you say?The answer was that his daughter-in-law starved to death and was buried on the grave.

It turns out that all this is true. Sima Lan stood still. He watched his father walk over to his uncle Du Yan's house. I stood under the old tree for a long time, until I watched my father call my uncle back from the grassy slope, sat down among the men at the entrance of the village, talked for a while, and then went to my house with my uncle.At this moment, Niang came back from picking vegetables outside the village and told Sima Lan to go home immediately. Sima Lan returned home. He found that his father's complexion was very good at this moment.The rosy face that had not been seen for several months returned vividly to Dad's face.There were only father and uncle in the courtyard, they were sitting opposite each other, and uncle was stuffing a folded piece of square paper into his pocket.Mother was boiling medicine in the kitchen, and the bitter red smell of herbs filled the courtyard.Seeing Sima Lan walk in, Du Yan got up and stroked his disheveled hair, and said that it would be fine if you were three or five years older, and your father would not have to worry about who would preside over the affairs of the village.When Sima Lan really became the village chief ten years later, he recalled his uncle's stroking on his head, and just realized that his uncle's words had endless and profound meanings.But at this time he didn't understand, he saw his uncle walking out of the gate, and another black shadow flashed in front of his house.

Sima smiled and said, what do you think of Lan Wa? Sima Lan said, I always see a dark shadow at the gate. You are blinded by hunger, Sima smiled and said, the villagers are going to hunt crows today, you can take the deer and tigers to hunt them in Xilianggou before dark, and you will be sure that each family can hunt down a few crows today. Sima Lan asked, "Was that aunt buried in that ditch after her death?" Sima looked at Sima Lan with a smile, and went back to lie down without saying a word. Everything was as usual, when it was time to eat, the mother would call out at the village head, and the children would all go home.Then there was the sound of the door closing after entering, and the scolding of the children when they couldn't eat or drink soup, saying that your ancestors said that the wheat will be ripe in half a month and 20 days.The children said, look in this bowl, there is no food for one star of green water boiled vegetables, even if I starve to death, I won't eat it.However, during this quarrel, Sima Xiaoxiao called from the street, telling everyone to prepare the tools for hunting crows after eating, brooms and branches, and go to the ditch of Xishanliang before dark. Concentrate in the middle, hit more and hit less, it is the last food before Maiqian.

In another alley, there was no Sima Xiaoxiao's half-dumb, half-bright cry.But Sima Lan kept pushing open the gate of one family and another, informing them that my father asked you to hunt crows in Xilianggou at dusk.Or, go hunting crows at dusk, are you ready?In this way, he put his head into the door frame of this house, and then squeezed into the crack of the door of that house, and suddenly saw a man from the Du family wiping a musket in the courtyard.The rust dust rising up in the sunlight lay under his gun like a tiny rainbow. Sima Lan smelled the sweet and warm smell of iron again.

"You still have iron at home." "What iron is it? It's a cannon." "I can exchange it for a bowl of noodles." "Not even a liter. Can you hand over the ancestral one?" Coming out of other people's houses, Sima Lan was always thinking about one thing, there was a cannon hidden in the house, why didn't they use it to shoot the crows on the cliff earlier?He wanted to turn around and ask for clarification, but he didn't turn his feet.The streets of the village are quiet and quiet. In the past, they would carry rice bowls with their hands, but the scenes of chatting and laughing at the dining hall dispersed like clouds. There was no food, and no one would take the Qingshui rice bowls out of the door.Even if someone occasionally hides the smell of grain in the pot and bowl, it seems to be stolen, and they have to hide it deep at home.The village street was as neat and empty as a baggy trouser leg, and the sound of Sima Lan's footsteps seemed a bit distant and quiet.He turned the corner from the millstone and saw his father sitting on the millstone waiting for him.

"Have you already said that?" "Let's talk family by family." Sima Lan walked in front of his father, and he saw a layer of pink floating over his father's face, faint like a thin cloud.After the thin cloud passed, Dad's face was as red as before, and the water was as bright as a drop of paint falling into the water.He took his hand to his father's face and pressed it, his fingers seemed to be trampled on the ground, which made his heart skip a beat.He felt a loud rumble under his fingertips, and when he raised his hand suddenly, he saw a deep hole like a well on the left side of his father's face.He waited for the collapse to slowly rise up and fill up the pit, but he waited for a long time until the sun set and the moon rose, but the pit still collapsed. Dad smiled at him. "I can't get up. Is it a famine when I get up?" Sima Lan said: "Dad, your neck is swollen." Pa took his hand off his neck, "It seems that growing rapeseed really doesn't work." Said: "The water and soil should be changed." Then asked: "Lan, do you really want to be the village head when you grow up?" Sima Lan nodded and said, "Think about it." Ask: "Why?" Said: "I want to find two daughters-in-law, and let the villagers live forty, fifty, seventy and eighty." Dad said: "You are like Dad's baby." He also said: "I will let your uncle take charge of the affairs of the village after I die, but their Du family has been selfish for generations, and they don't want the Lan family to be the head of the village, but only Lan Baisui is thinking about how to let the villagers live through four years." Ten years old, I'm afraid he won't be able to stop him from becoming the village head... It's true that the Lan family has become the village head, and in three to five years, when you grow up and go to heaven and earth, you will also want this village head back to the Sima family." Said: "Lan baby, if you become the village head, you will lead the villagers to change the water and soil." When Dad said this, he put his hot eyes on Sima Lan's face, like burning grass on his face.He felt intense heat pain on his face, and his body shrank slightly, as if something empowered him and pressed down on him.The cicada on the opposite tree screamed lonely and dry, as if there were a handful of sand in his throat.He saw that Cicada was lying on the top of a very low tree, and he could grab Cicada in his hand as soon as he stretched out his hand.He moved in his heart, knowing that he shouldn't do such a thing at this moment.He was surrounded by a kind of solemnity, and he felt that his father regarded him as a grown-up.This was the first time he was born as an adult, and the blood in his body was pumped with a sense of the sacred.He felt that the blood was like a waterfall of red water falling from the cliff, and the blood vessels clanged and bounced back and forth, making the sound of village drums being beaten chaotically.He withdrew his eyes from Zhizhi, and when he stared into his father's eyes, he saw that his father's eyes were relaxed and happy, as if everything was settled and arranged, and there was nothing to worry about in his heart. At this time, my mother also called them to dinner at the door. He followed his father to go home. "Father, go hunting crows at dusk, will the crows fall like before?" Dad said: "How can I fight if I don't fall?" He asked again, "How can I let it fall?" Dad slowed down, then walked forward again. "Didn't your Yuanmen aunt starve to death?" At this point, Dad stopped talking for a while, and then continued, "The wheat will be ripe in half a month and twenty days, and this will be the last time for being cruel and wicked. " Sima Lan stood still behind her father, unable to leave.He looked at his father's bony back, like looking at a coffin board dug out of a grave, and felt a trace of cold fear in his heart, but there were beads of white sweat on his forehead.He wanted to ask Uncle Lan, who was far away, what to do when he found out that his wife had been dug out and fed to the old crows, but his father had already turned into the gate of the house. Lunch is still boiled wild vegetables, scooped in a bowl, green and green like the juice in the belly of a midsummer hangworm. Dad ate a lot during this meal. He drank two bowls of vegetable soup and another bowl of medicinal soup. He left his job and left.When he was about to leave, he looked at the house, then at the baby, sat down and rolled a leaf cigarette, and said that all three of you brothers would go for a shot, and one more shot would be just one, and then he went out alone. Sima Lan knew that he was going to carry the dead body of his uncle and daughter-in-law from a distant family, and that he wanted to use that aunt's body as crow bait.He froze the rice bowl that had reached his lips, but he still drank the half bowl of soup and rice. When they arrived at Rixi, the villagers went to the ditch under Xiliang Mountain.The sun was red as blood on the mountains.Compared with previous years, the smell of wheat is dozens of times weaker, but it is particularly pungent to the nostrils.On the prematurely dry wheat trees, there is a layer of white clouds and thin threads of sunlight hanging mistyly on the wheat awnings. Everyone who rakes knows that it is the smell of ripe wheat.The grass is still green, only the wheat stalks are dry, and the sparse wheat all over the mountain is like thorns growing on the green carpet.The villagers walked by the edge of the wheat field, and the sun was hanging on the wheat.Sima Lan, Sima Lu, Sima Hu and Forty, Zhucui, Du Bo, Du Zhuang, Village Zhu, Yang Gen, Liu Gen, etc. walked in the front, and the branches and bamboo brooms on their shoulders hung the sun in tatters .The men walked in the middle, talking about the autumn planting after the wheat harvest, and kept yelling at the children not to walk too close to the wheat, saying that it was the time when the grains were full, and breaking an ear was equivalent to throwing away a good bowl of rice .A few other women also came along, Juhua, Meimei, Sima Taohua, three or five, and the juniors of Lan Jiushi and Lan Bashi mingled together.The men said what are you going to do, and the women said to have a look, maybe you can find a piece of good food.So it came, and the team was almost the same as when we went out to beg for food. They first went down a hillside, then turned over the west beam, and when they got to the mouth of the ditch under the beam, they vaguely heard groups of crows, and the people who followed were all excited.The men walked in front, and the children and women followed. Everyone tiptoed, as if they were afraid of frightening the crows.Sima Lan was among the crowd, and he saw everyone's footsteps floating in the air like leaves in the wind.The bigger and bigger black crows croaked, and the flickering light echoed and flew on the cliff wall of the ditch.There were grains of sand falling from mid-air like raindrops.On the thin neck of the ditch, I saw a few crows flying from the bottom of the ditch, but hundreds of them fell from the air, their wings bumped against each other, and they flew back and forth like stones with a fluttering sound.The man in front stood down at the neck of the ditch, and the villagers crowded in front of the neck of the ditch. They all saw that the spacious place where the crows were hunted was not a black piece of crows as in the past, but a pile of black crows. group.Needless to say, there is only one corpse, they can only be stepped on by you on my head, and I will step on your wings, desperately pecking my head at the flesh of that corpse.He couldn't see the dead body, but he could see the blood from the crow's mouth like red beads flying and falling in the sunlight.The sharp black and bright crows rang out of the ditch from the dead body, and the dark red smell of blood overflowed loudly and loudly toward the ditch.Crow's claws, crow's back, and crow's head scrambled against each other, making black and white noises all over the floor.The men and the children were only slightly startled there, but the women opened their mouths in fear endlessly, screaming and flying blue tiles smashed on the black crows. Sima Lan is looking for where his father Sima Xiaoxiao is hiding. Half held branches and brooms above their heads. Lan Baisui asked, "Shall we fight?" Du Yan said, "Let them eat and calm down." At this moment, there was a sudden bang of a red gun, and on the cliff soil at the neck of the ditch, there was a gun barrel protruding there at some time, and thick white smoke swirled around the muzzle of the gun. .With the humming and roaring sound of the ditch, more than a dozen shot crows were seen struggling on the ground, and the rest flew to the sky like splashing water. The villagers ran towards the dead body and the wounded crow on the ground. All eyes rang, and they all stopped their steps in a shocking manner. They all saw that the dead body was the village chief Sima's mouth full of mouths when he smiled. There was a moment of silence, followed by the fluttering of the Scarred Crow and the strange cry of lightning and thunder. The village head, Sima Xiaoxiao, was lying on his back on a slope, his clothes were thrown behind him, his naked body, the blood holes left by shotguns and crows were like mud puddles left on the dust by a shower.Blood was still gurgling out.There is a piece of intestines hanging on his stomach like a strip of cloth.His face was on one side, bloody and bloody, and his facial features were unclear, hanging there like a few bulbs of garlic hanging in front of the door in winter.The only thing that could be seen was half of his lips, moving there like half a bean clip.Fingers and toes, the red and white bones are like jujubes that have just been picked from the tree, and the blood is dripping out from the fingertips like jujube juice drop by drop. All the villagers were stunned. Sima Lan, Sima Hu, and Sima Lu stood in the crowd, their faces were pale and their lips were trembling. No one moves, no one speaks. Time condenses into a black ball, circling in the ditch, refusing to disperse. The daring crow tried to fly to Sima Xiaoxiao at the bottom of the ditch again. At this moment, a man's voice finally rang out: Said: "I thought it was my daughter-in-law's body, but after a long time it was the village chief himself." Lan Baisui asked: "The village head has a throat disease, dare you eat this crow meat?" Du Yan said: "It's nothing. Throat disease is hereditary, but it won't be transmitted to the old crow." Lan Baisui said: "Everyone dispersed, and the crows began to fall again." The world clicked and fell silent again.The daylight was as loud as a stream of water, and the sky was covered like a cloud of falling crows...