Chapter 3 3

I think back to the days we lived together, the two of us who lived together, and had many good times and some of the hard ones.Thinking of the patch on my trousers and the dinner casserole, a lot of kids can buy a hot lunch for twenty-five cents a week, and I always bring a peanut butter sandwich or a piece of overnight bread with sausage, like those rags to riches A silly boy in a silly story.She worked in countless restaurants and bars to support her family, and she took one day off each month to put on her best clothes and meet with the poor children's relief agency.The staff member was in a neat suit, sitting on a rocking chair in the kitchen, with a clipboard on his lap and a thick, shiny pen in his hand.She answered his insultingly embarrassing questions with a mechanical smile, but she didn't express her words well enough that even a nine-year-old like me could answer them better than she did, and she had to serve him coffee.Because only if he makes a correct investigation report, we can get the humiliating 50 yuan subsidy every month.After the staff left, she fell on the bed and cried, and when I walked into the room and sat next to her, she made a smiley face and said that HSA was a piece of shit between her legs.I laughed, and she laughed too.In this world, only me and my obese, smoking-addicted mother depend on each other for life. We can only laugh at the helplessness and humiliation of life.But it's not all.For those of us who live in humiliation, sometimes making fun of the ignorant staff is the only way we can get revenge.She did all the work in restaurants and bars for so long that her ankles swelled and when she got home she wrapped the bandages and put the tips she got in jars labeled "Alan's College Tuition" , this is as vivid as the story of going from poor to rich, and it keeps nagging me to study hard, that other people's children have money, play around, and do nothing, but I can't.Because her tips have been accumulated for a long time and are still not enough.Finally had to apply for student loans, if I go to college.I can only go to college, which is the only way out for me and her.Believe me, I really studied hard at that time, I am not blind, I know how heavy the burden of life she is carrying, and seeing her smoke a lot (this is her only happiness, the only shortcoming, only to be around I can only understand this when I'm in a situation), I hope our life will be better someday, and I'm the only relative who can take care of her.With a college degree and a good job, I can do it.I should, because I love her.那天我们等坐过山车，快轮到时我却退缩了，她大发雷霆，面带凶气，这不是唯一的一次，她呵斥我后又狠狠揍我，尽管如此，我还是爱她，甚至有部分原因That's why.Although she beats me as much as she hurts me, I still love her. It's hard to understand, and I don't understand it myself, but it doesn't matter. I don't think there is anything that can sum up the laws of life and explain the relationship between families.We, she and I, are a family, the smallest two-person family, small and tight, with a shared secret, I would do anything for her, and now I'm being asked to make a choice, to die for her, to replace her seat.But even if she lived another forty-eight years or more, my life had barely begun.

"Who is it, Alan?" asked George Stauber. "time is limited." "I can't decide something like that." My voice is hoarse. The moon is flying with us above the road, the moonlight is bright and bright. "It's not fair to ask me that," I added. "I know, trust me, it's settled," he then lowered his voice, "but I can tell you that if you haven't made up your mind by the time I get to the first lighted house, I'll have to Take the two of you." He frowned and stretched it, as if remembering some good news and bad news. "If I take you two away, you can sit in the back seat and talk about the past, that's all."

"Where are you taking it?" He didn't answer, maybe he didn't know. The woods became blurred and dark, the headlights raced in the dark, and the road rolled and rolled.I'm only twenty-one years old, and although I'm not a virgin, I only had sex once, and I drank too much that time, so I can't remember that much.There are many places I want to go: Los Angeles, Tahiti, and Luc Bank, Texas, there are many things I want to do.My mother was forty-eight, old, and Mrs. McCourty didn't say that because she was old herself.To be honest, she did her duty as a mother.She has worked hard for a long time and still needs to take care of me, but should I choose to let her live?And will she live for me after giving birth to me?She was forty-eight and I was only twenty-one, and as they say my life had not yet begun.But what can be used to decide, how to decide such a thing, how to decide?

The woods are flying by, and the moon looks at us like a shining eye. "Brother, better hurry up, we're almost out of this wilderness," he urged me.I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out, only a sigh. "It's right here that something happened." He raised his hand and stretched back, at this time his T-shirt was pulled up, and I saw a black stitch on his belly again (if something happened, I might not Yes), are the internal organs still inside?Or chemically treated filler?When his hands came, there was an extra pot of beer in his hand, probably bought at the little store off the state road on the last drive.

"I understand your situation at this time, you are under a lot of pressure, making your mouth dry, here." He handed me the beer, I took it, pulled the tab, took a swig, the beer poured out of my mouth, cold and bitter, I've never had beer before, I don't know how to drink, and I don't like watching TV Advertising of beer. In the autumn night, an orange light flickered in front of us. "Hurry up, Alan, make up your mind quickly. That's the first house, on the top of this hill. If you want to say something to me, you'd better tell me now." The light flickered on and off, and now it was several lights.They shine through the windows, and inside the house are ordinary people doing ordinary things, watching TV, feeding the cat, maybe cleaning the bathroom.

I thought again of us mother and son, Jenny Parker and Alan Parker, a fat woman with sweat-soaked armpits and her toddler, waiting in line at Thriller Park to ride the roller coaster.Stauber was right, she didn't want to stand in line in the hot sun, but I kept pestering her to go on the roller coaster, and she beat me up, but she stayed in line with me, that Tober was also right.She has stood in many lines with me, including disputes about right and wrong, I can recall them one by one, but now I don't have time to think about them. "Take her away," I said at the top of my lungs as the lights of the first house passed by the Mustang, "Take her away, take my mother away, don't take me away." I threw the beer can On the floor of the car, covering your face with your hands.His hand reached out and touched my chest, fingers groping around.I suddenly had an epiphany, and understood that all this was a test, and I had failed, and now he was like those terrible demons in Arabic mythology, ready to tear my chest and tear out my beating heart.I screamed and his fingers ran across my chest, heading for the car door, as if he had changed his mind at the last moment.At this point my nose and lungs were filled with his carrion smell, making me feel really dead.The car door opened with a "click", and the cool air came in, washing away the smell of the carrion.

"Have a good dream, Alan." He whispered in my ear and pushed me away.I closed my eyes tightly, put my head in my hands, shrank my body, rolled out of the car, and fell into the high and windy autumn night.The fall would have shattered my body, and I may have screamed, but I must not remember. I wasn't crushed, it was a long time before I realized I was on the ground, felt the ground beneath me.I opened my eyes and closed them again, dazzled by the bright moonlight.There was a pain in my head, not from eye discomfort but from sudden bright light in the dark, that stretched down the back of my neck.My legs and hips were cold and wet, but I didn't care, all I cared about was that I was already on the ground.

I raised my arms and opened my eyes more cautiously.I regained consciousness and knew where I was, and a glance around me confirmed it: lying on my back in a small cemetery on top of a hill off Leach Road.The moon was hanging almost vertically overhead, unusually bright, but much smaller than the one ahead.The mist was also thicker, spreading like a blanket over a graveyard.Several taller tombstones protrude there like several stone islands.I tried to stand up, another pain in the back of my head, I reached out and felt a lump, slimy and wet.Under the moonlight, I saw black blood flowing down my palm.

The second time I finally stood up, staggering between the tombstones and knee-high mist.I looked around as hard as I could before I could see the gap in the stone wall, the Ridgeway beyond.Couldn't see my backpack because of the thick fog covering it.I can find it if I go out of the rut on the left towards Ridge Road.But I could be pretty darn tripping again. That's all I've been through, whole and clear: I stopped on this hilltop to rest, and I walked into the cemetery for a little look.As I turned back from one of the graves, George Stauber tripped over my heavy, heavy feet.I fell and hit my head on the tombstone.How long have you been unconscious?Although I don't yet have the ability to tell the time from the position of the moon, I estimate at least an hour, which is enough for a dream of riding with the dead.Who is that dead man?George Stauber, of course.I saw the name on a tombstone, just before entering the dream, my God, what a terrible dream I had.And when I got to Lewiston and found my mom dead, isn't that a typical ending?In fact, this is just a little hunch I had in the dark and put it into a dream.It would be the story to tell at the end of a party years later, with grim faces and thoughtful nods.Some professors who love to show off their knowledge will chant: The wonders between heaven and earth are beyond our comprehension⑦.Then……

"Then shit." I cursed hoarsely.The fog surface is flowing slowly, like flowing on a hazy mirror surface.I thought to myself I would never bring it up again, never in my life, not even on my deathbed. And only I know the ins and outs of what happened, so you can rest assured.George Stauber drove me alone, an old friend of Alterbird Clay's, with his head slit instead of under his arm.Facing the approaching first lit house, I had a choice to make, and I almost thoughtlessly traded my mother's life for mine.Perhaps that's understandable, but it doesn't take away the guilt one iota.Fortunately, no one knows.Her death seemed normal, a normal death as it should be.This is my excuse for trying to get rid of guilt.

As I walked out of the cemetery from the rut to the left of the gap in the wall, my foot touched my pack and I picked it up and threw it over my shoulder.At the bottom of the hill, the lights flashed, and the driver seemed to get a cue that someone on the top of the hill wanted a ride.I held out my hand and gave a thumbs up, guessing that the old man in the Dodge must have come back down the road to find me.Of course, if that were the case, the story would have a happy ending. But it wasn't the old man who came, it was a tobacco-chewing farmer driving a pick-up truck full of apple baskets, a very ordinary person: neither old nor dead. "Where to, lad?" he asked me.When I told him, he said, "We're on the way." In less than forty minutes, at 9:20, the car arrived in front of the Central Maine Medical Center. "Good luck and hope your mom is on the mend." "Thank you." I said and opened the car door. "I see you're nervous, but she's usually fine. But you should write anti-inflammatories on this." He pointed to my hand. I looked down and saw several crescent-shaped purple pinch marks deeply imprinted on the back of my hand.I remembered holding my hands together at that time, nails digging into the flesh, and I couldn't relax even though I felt pain.I also remembered that Staub's eyes were full of moonlight, like pools of bright water.Have you ever been on a roller coaster?He once asked me, I sat on that thing four times. "Boy," the driver asked, "are you all right?" "Ok?" "You haven't recovered from the panic yet." "I'm fine, thanks." I slam the door and stride across the grounds where the wheelchairs are parked, glinting in the moonlight. I walked over to the information desk, reminding myself that I was going to be surprised when they told me my mom was dead.If I don't, they'll probably be amused or think I'm freaking out, or think we're a bad mother and son, or... I've been thinking about this so much that when the woman behind the information desk asked me something, I didn't hear it and had to tell her to repeat it. "I said she was in Ward 487. But you can't go up now, the visiting hours end at nine. "But..." I suddenly felt dizzy, and quickly grabbed the edge of the information desk.The hall was lit with fluorescent lamps, and under the bright and uniform light, the pinch marks on the back of my hand were clearly visible.Eight tiny purple crescents have grinning mouths.Those truck drivers were right, I should have put some anti-inflammatories on. The woman behind the information desk watched me patiently.The work card in front of her has her name: Evan Edel. "But is she okay?" She looked at the computer and said: "I am S here, which means the situation is satisfactory. The fourth floor is the general ward. If your mother's condition deteriorates, she should be in the intensive care unit. It is on the third floor. If you come back tomorrow, you Mother will be much better, visiting hours from…” "But she's my mother," I said. "I hitchhiked all the way from the University of Maine to see her. Don't you think I shouldn't go up and see her? Just a few minutes." "Sometimes the immediate family members who come to visit always have such a request." She smiled at me and said, "Wait a minute, let me see." She picked up the phone and pressed two numbers.There is no doubt that the call was to the nursing room on the fourth floor.I can picture the process for the next two minutes as if I've been through it before.Ewan asked if it was possible for the son of Jenny Parker in room 487 to go up to see her for a minute or two, kiss her and say something heartwarming and encouraging, but the nurse said oops, Mrs. Parker just died, less than 15 minutes later, we I just sent her to the morgue downstairs, and I haven't had time to change the data in the computer, which is too bad. The woman at the information desk spoke up: "Muriel? I'm Evan, and I have a young man with my name..." She raised her eyebrows and looked at me, and I told her my name. "Alan Parker, her mother is Jenny Parker, room 487? He just wanted to see if he could..." She stopped and listened to the other party.I think the other nurse must have told her that Jenny Parker was dead. "Okay," Yi Wan said, "Yes, I understand." She sat down silently, looking ahead.After a while she said to me with the receiver over her shoulder, "She's asking Anne Corrigan to come into her room, just a minute." "It's never going to end," I said. "Please say it again." Yi Wan asked with a frown. "Nothing," I said, "I mean it's been a long night and I..." "You're still worried about your mother. Of course, I know you're a good son. Pull everything down and come to see her." I think her impression of me would have plummeted if she had heard my conversation with the young man in the Mustang.But of course she won't hear it, it's a little secret between me and George. Standing under the bright fluorescent lights waiting for the fourth-floor nurse to call down felt like years.There were some papers in front of Yiwan, she took a pen to look up names along the list and put neat checkmarks on some names.I wonder if there really is a Grim Reaper, like her, an employee with a bit too much workload, a desk, a computer, and a lot of documents to be processed.Ewan still held the phone between her hunched shoulders and her ears.The hospital's radio was saying Doctor Hua, Doctor Hua, please come to the radiotherapy room. Anne Corrigan, the nurse on the fourth floor, may now be at my mother's bedside and see her dead in her hospital bed, her eyes open, her mouth slack from her pain. The answer from the fourth floor came over the phone, Yi Wan straightened her body and listened, and then said: "Okay, yes, I know, I will, of course I will. Thank you, Muriel." She hung up the phone, serious Looking at me intently, she said, "Muriel said you could go up, but only for five minutes. Your mother took her medicine tonight and is groggy." I stood there staring at her stupidly. Her smile faded away immediately, and she asked, "Mr. Parker, are you sure you're fine?" "It's ok," I said, "I guess I was just wondering..." The smile returned to her face, this time tinged with sympathy. "A lot of people think that, and that's understandable. You get a call and you rush in. Anyone thinks the situation is terrible. But if she's not well enough, Muriel won't let you go up there. .Believe me." "Thank you," I said. "Thank you very much." As I was turning to leave, she asked me, "Mr. Parker, are you from the University of Maine up here? Can I ask why you're wearing that badge. Thriller Park isn't in New Hampshire." ?" I looked down, the badge was pinned to the breast pocket of my shirt, I rode the roller coaster in Thrillerland, Reconia.I remember him trying to take my heart out, and now I know: He pinned the badge to my shirt moments before he pushed me out of the car.That's how he marked it, marking me, marking our encounter that had to be believed.The pinches on the back of my hands tell it, as does the badge on my shirt.He asked me to choose, and I made a choice. But how is my mother still alive? "This?" I touched it with the belly of my thumb to polish it. "This is my lucky thing." This big lie can be told a bit wonderfully. "I got it when my mother and I went there a long time ago, and she took me to ride the roller coaster." Ewan smiled. This seemed to be the most heartwarming story she had ever heard.She said, "Hold her, kiss her, it will put her to sleep better than anything the doctor can prescribe, and the elevator is there." She pointed to the elevator. Since visiting hours were over, I was left alone to wait for the elevator.There's a trash can to the left of the door, and beyond that is the newsstand.It was closed and pitch black.I tore the badge off my shirt and threw it in the trash, then put my hand on my pants and wiped it until the elevator doors opened.I walked in and pressed "4" and the elevator started to go up.A notice was pasted above the floor buttons stating the blood collection plan for the next week.I saw this, and a thought came to me... that my mother is dead, right now, as I ride this slow freight elevator to the fourth floor, even though it feels like it can't be true.Now that I have made my choice, she goes and I stay, I should come and see her.It makes perfect sense. The elevator opened, and there was another poster, a caricature, with a finger on a pair of lips, and the words "please be quiet, the patient thank you" underneath.The corridors on the left and right go out from the elevator, and the odd-numbered wards are on the left.I walked down the hallway: my rubber boots got heavier as I approached, and when I got to room number 470, I slowed down and stopped between rooms 481 and 483.I couldn't go in, the sweat was oozing from the pores like semi-frozen syrup, icy and sticky, and my stomach was clenched like hands in slippery boxing gloves.No, I can't go in, I'd better turn around and run like a coward.I could hitchhike to Harrow and call Mrs McCourty tomorrow morning, when things would be easier to deal with. As I turned around, a nurse poked her head through a door in front of my mother's room. "Mr. Parker?" she asked in a low voice. After staying for a while, I almost wanted to deny it, but finally I nodded. "Come in, come on, she's...?" I expected her to say this, but still I was so startled that my knees buckled and I almost fell to my knees. When the nurse saw me running over in such a hurry, her skirt rustled and she looked panic-stricken, and the small tag pinned to her chest read "Anne Corrigan".She held me up and explained, "No, no, I was talking about sedatives...she was going to sleep. Oh God, I'm so stupid, Mr. Parker, she's all right. I gave her 'Amber' and she Just falling asleep, that's what I mean. You're not going to pass out, are you?" "No." But I don't know if I will faint, I just feel dizzy, my ears are buzzing, I think of the road coming towards the car, dancing in the silvery white moonlight, you have been on that roller coaster ?Dude, I've sat in that thing four times. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ ⑦ The wonders between heaven and earth are beyond our comprehension: a sentence in the fifth chapter of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". ⑧ Albert Clay: He is a character in the American folk tale "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", a headless knight.He often comes out at night with his head tucked under his arm.