Chapter 8 Eight

The next morning when I got up together, the first thing that happened made me extremely depressed, and the joy turned into sadness—two barnyard buns were eaten up by the mice! It was eaten by mice, not stolen by people, and the face towel was bitten.I quietly rolled up the towel, which was rotten like a fishing net, and stuffed it into my pants pocket.I can't say anything yet, and the "director of the sales department" will laugh at me again when he finds out. Dinner wasn't until nine o'clock, and I leaned against the folded cotton netting, almost fainting.If these two barnyard noodle buns are not lost, even if I don't eat them, I don't feel anything.And this huge loss deepened my fear and made me feel very, very hungry.Hunger will become an entity with weight and volume, rushing in the stomach; it will also make a sound, shouting to every nerve in the body: eat!to eat!to eat! ... I didn't have the strength to move, and I didn't even have the mind to think. I just kept thinking: I must get back double the losses!

At this time, the mental fragments gathered last night were scattered in all directions again, and I became a wolf child whose whole purpose of life is to live! After returning from the kitchen, they all sat on their straw bunks and ate silently.The advantage of the cans is lost.The cook here seems to have no visual error, he absolutely trusts the spoon in his hand and doesn't give me more.But it doesn't matter, I have already thought out the way.After dinner, according to Captain Xie's arrangement, a gloomy farm worker led several other people to work with the brigade.The crippled custodian came again with a roll of old newspapers under his arm.He put down the newspaper, told me where the adobe was, where the bricks were, and where the cart was, and led me into the warehouse to get a shovel, a small bucket, a trowel, and some iron bars for a grate .Before leaving, he said that he had already made an agreement with the cook to go to the kitchen to fight.If you need anything else, you can go to the office to find him.Building a stove is at least the work of two people: a big worker and a small worker.But I'd rather not have Xiao Gong.The adobe and bricks are very close, piled on top of our house.As for the soil, just dig a little in the yard. This is alkaline soil, not frozen.As for water, it is better to use less, otherwise it will take a long time to dry the stove.As soon as the lame man left, I picked up a newspaper and ran to the kitchen first.

"Master, I'm here to make rice dumplings." I greeted him with a smile, as if I often eat very full. "Go and scoop it yourself." He sat at the door basking in the sun, he was really full, "Don't scoop too much." "Look," I waved the newspaper, "just wrap it in one bag. " There is a half-basin of off-white barnyard noodles on the chopping board, which seems to have been prepared for me in advance.I spread out the newspaper, poured out all the weed flour, pressed it firmly, and took it back.People who are full will never notice what "beating rice dumplings" is. The barnyard noodles are not sticky.Even if the newspaper is pasted with moisture, the moisture will fall off as soon as it dries.I will not paste the windows first, what is most urgently needed now is fire.I worked for a month on the Laogai farm with a top-notch heating engineer in China, building stoves for cadres—he is also a "rightist", he worked as a big worker, and I worked as a small worker.He once taught me the easiest way to build a smoke stove; he also said that as long as he is given a shovel and nothing else is needed, he can dig a stove on a slope that produces high fire and saves firewood: knowledge is nothing but knowledge. On air inlets, depths and flues.I went to the house for a while, dug the soil for a while, and was sweating. In less than two hours, I had built the most primitive and scientific heating stove.

Without resting for a minute, I pulled the cart to the door of the kitchen to load half a cart of bituminous coal—I couldn't move a cart.Along the way, I picked up some dry firewood from someone's firewood pile.I struck a match with trembling hands and lit the firewood in the hearth.Both flames and smoke rushed towards the flue.After a while, the smoke disappeared, and the reddish flames whistled in the flue.After a while, the flames flourished like magma ejected from a crater, forming a fan in the hearth, scrambling to run towards the narrow flue opening.At this time, I added a shovel of coal, and a puff of black smoke rose from the stove as if by magic, but was immediately sucked in by the flue.The flames are still stubbornly escaping from the cracks in the coals.In less than five minutes, the color of the flame gradually deepened, from light red to deep red, and then to a bluish fiery red. This is the real color of a coal fire.

The next step was to not let people see what I was doing in the house.I found the office, and the cripple happened to be sitting there like a clay figurine.I didn't have time to think about how ridiculous it is that someone is sweating while someone is doing nothing. I asked him for a handful of small nails, a few pieces of cardboard from a broken box, and a pair of scissors—as long as they don't He would generously give me whatever I got to eat, and then hurried back immediately.I cut the cardboard into long strips, pressed the newspaper on the window, and nailed it firmly to the window lattice.

It's like a dormitory.According to Captain Xie, this is "home"! The steps of my work are in line with the principles of operations research.At this time, the stove was burning red: the bituminous coal had burned out the smoke, and the firepower was very strong.I first put the cleaned shovel head on the stove mouth, pour some barnyard noodles into the can, add some water, stir it into a paste with a spoon, and pour a pinch of it into the boiling water with a squeak. on the shovel.The loess plateau uses a flat shovel, just like a frying pan, and the barnyard batter is evenly spread around, with fleeting bubbles on the edge, and a pancake is fried in less than a minute.

I've been working so hard all morning just for this beautiful moment! I fry one piece, eat one piece, fry one piece, eat one piece... I can't taste the first few pieces at all, and the more I eat it, the more delicious it becomes. While the barnyard batter was frying on the shovel, I also blocked up the mouse holes in my grass bed.There are mice here, didn't expect that!There are no rats in the labor camp - there is nothing for it to eat, and it is in danger of being eaten. The earthen house warmed up.My stomach warmed up.I also warmed up.I sat by the stove and fell asleep.But now is not the time to sleep.I took out a "Pisces" cigarette from the cotton net, pulled out one, squeezed it in a circle-fortunately, there was no stem-picked up the cinders that fell from the iron bar and lit it.I didn't let a trace of smoke escape from my mouth and nostrils, held my breath, and swallowed it all.In an instant, a particularly comfortable feeling of intoxication immediately spread throughout my body.However, for some reason, there was a heart-piercing pain in my heart... I can't think too much!I know that when my stomach swells, there is a pain in my heart that is deeper than hunger.Hungry is also bitter, and bloated is also bitter, but physical pain is better than spiritual pain.I snuff out the cigarette carefully, keeping the butt still in the case.I need to find something to do.After packing away the tools, I hung the leftover barnyard bread with several layers of newspaper and hung it on the wall.Filled the stove with enough coal, picked up the fingerless gloves I mended again and again, patted the dirt on my body, and walked out of our "home".