If there is an afterlife (novella) Zhang Baotong

After the New Year, the sun suddenly brightened, smiling and showing a beautiful face, just like the baby's peaceful and lovely smile. As soon as the sun dawned, the whole heaven and the earth became clear.

At this point, the child is already smiling and crawling on the bed. Li Xiuying looked at the child as if she had seen the bright sunshine, her mood suddenly brightened, and she felt that everything had hope. She gets up before dawn every day, cleans the manure in the sheepfold, puts the damp place on the ground with plant ash, and then begins to feed the sheep, starts milking, and feeds the baby with hot milk. After breakfast, she put a mat beside her, spread the quilt, let the child crawl and play, and began to weave the mat herself.

Ever since she met the owner of the fried fritters, she no longer had to carry the mats to the market town and sell them, because the man told her that he would take them all she wanted, and the price was still fifteen yuan a piece. Although Li Xiuying felt that the price was too cheap, it could save her a lot of trouble and inconvenience. She no longer has to carry so many mats to walk that long way, and she doesn't have to worry about going out to affect the feeding of her baby. Because every once in a while, the man would come and take all the reeds away. It's just that it will make her earn less money. In order to make up for this loss, she can only put in more toil and time. In the past, she only found time in the evenings, but now she spends almost all of her free time on the table. In the past, it took her two or three days to make a table, but now she can make a table almost in a day.

After the beginning of spring, the spring cold is steep, warm and cold, and then, there is a spring rain, a spring breeze, the wheat seedlings began to turn green in a blink of an eye, and the vast fields rippled with deep greenery. However, with the warmer weather and the arrival of spring, the yellow, dry and thin reeds began to turn green, and the reeds could no longer be used to make reed mats. And the work in the field began to require her to be busy and busy, and she also planned to open a field in the open space in front of the door and plant some vegetables and potatoes. These tasks are very time-consuming and laborious. Moreover, the child is already a little old and can no longer be wrapped in a quilt, so she has to make some cotton clothes and pants for the child. Although she is not idle day and night, she is in a very happy mood.

When she saw that the sun was bright and the temperature was warm, she spread a mat on the grass in front of the door, and let the children crawl and play on the mat, and she waved a big pickaxe and began to dig a wasteland in front of the door. After digging all morning, I finally dug up a piece of land two or three points in size. She smashed large clods of soil, cleared the weeds from the field, began to sprinkle some vegetable seeds in the field, and poured some water on the ground. After a few days, the field was covered with green, and the green color was very pleasant to look at. She thought that in another ten days and half a month, she would be able to eat fragrant and tender little green vegetables.

After a few days, she bought a few chicks from the market, and the chicks chirped all day long in the grass in front of the door foraging for food, amusing the children to look and laugh curiously. Before you know it, the little chicks grow up very quickly, and become little roosters and hens, running and flying in groups in front of and behind the house, adding some life to this cold and desolate place of their house.

After that, the wheat seedlings have grown taller, they need to be fertilized and weeded, and patches of grass and wild vegetables have grown on the edge of the field. She carried the child on her back and led the goat to the edge of the field, tied the goat to the edge of the field, let it eat the grass and bask in the sun, and then began to weed and fertilize the wheat field. The sun shone brightly on the ground, surrounded by endless green wheat fields. However, she only has more than an acre of wheat land, and after hoeing the grass and fertilizing, she has nothing to do. So, she began to pick up the junk and pick up the waste. She bent a small rake with thick wire, tied to a small wooden stick, and carried a snakeskin bag to the garbage dump on the edge of the ditch, and used the wire rake to rake a large pile of garbage, picking up scrap metal, waste plastic, waste paper, waste bottles, waste glass, etc.

Every day, several large trucks with garbage come from the county side and dump the garbage on the edge of the ditch. However, for many years, no one has picked up scrap in these garbage heaps. She knew that no matter how poor and miserable the people in the village were, no one would pick up the scraps, they thought it was the dirtiest, smellier, most humiliating, and most despised. Li Xiuying also felt that this work was too dirty, smelly, cheap and embarrassing, but she couldn't make up the table anymore, if she didn't pick up the rags and scraps, what would she rely on to earn money?

After eating every morning, Li Xiuying carried the child on her back, picked up a small rake and snake leash, and came to the garbage dump to start raking and picking up waste. She rakes in the garbage heap very finely, and as long as there is something that can be used or sold for money, she will not let go. She puts the waste she finds into a snakeskin bag and sorts it back when she returns home. She even took waste wood and furniture home to use as firewood. The waste firewood piled up in front of her house so that she didn't have to worry about burning firewood anymore.

A few days later, she took half a bag of scrap metal to the scrap yard in the market town to sell. Because the scrap metal was heavier and difficult to carry, and she still had a child, she gritted her teeth for the first time and spent four yuan to take a ride on the side of the road at the head of the village. The car took only a few dozen minutes to deliver her to the door of the scrap yard in the market town. She carried a heavy snakeskin bag into the yard. When the boss saw her sending something, he asked her to pour the waste in the bag on the ground and sort the different metals, because the price of scrap iron is 4 dimes a catty, the price of scrap aluminum is 3 yuan a catty, and the price of copper is more expensive, 13 yuan a catty. So, she picked up the different metals, weighed it, scrap iron is 33 and a half catties, scrap aluminum is 4 catties and 7 taels, scrap copper is 5 catties and 3 taels, and there are some other metals, which are also very valuable. The boss finally settled the account and gave her 105 yuan.

This was the equivalent of the money she had worked so hard to weave seven mats! This was so unexpected that she thought that these garbage-like scraps could only be sold for twenty or thirty yuan at most, but she did not expect to sell them for so much money. When she took the money, her body and hands trembled with excitement for a while. The most gratifying thing for her is that she no longer has to worry about her livelihood in the future.

On that day, she walked through the village and saw many discarded drink bottles on the ground in front of the shop and on the garbage dump in the village, so she picked up these bottles, and on the first day, she picked up 32, the second day 51, and the third day another 48. She went to the market town that day to sell waste newspapers and cardboard boxes, and by the way, she also took these bottles with her to sell. As a result, the bottles alone sold for 20 yuan.

A few days later, she found a large pile of abandoned construction debris with a lot of steel bars, but in order to get them, she had to smash these cement blocks. So she went back to the house and took the axe to smash the cement block, but the cement block was so strong that it took half a day to smash a small piece. In order to get the waste steel bars from the pile of construction waste, she brought a small stool from home, sat next to the garbage pile, and kept swinging the axe and smashing the hard cement blocks. When she was tired of smashing, she replaced her arms, and both arms were sore, so she rested for a while and then continued to smash. When her hands were blistered, she picked the bubble open with a needle, let the water in the bubble flow out, and then wrapped the wooden handle of the axe with a piece of cloth, and continued to smash it. I got up early and smashed it for a week before I smashed the cement blocks. The scrap steel bars obtained were sold for a total of 153 yuan.

Gradually, the wheat tasseled, and the ears of wheat were like the braids of a beautiful girl, braided into a sea of dark green wheat, fluttering in the spring breeze. By this time, the child has already learned to walk. He tried to stand up, then began to move his steps, staggering along. Although his steps were unsteady and staggering, if there was no one to protect him in front of him, he would fall and lie on the ground. Li Xiuying led him in front and let him walk in front of her. When the child walked in front of her, she immediately picked up the child and hugged it, saying "my baby" while kissing the child's little face. The child is white and clean, and he is very good at laughing, so she named the child Xiaole, which means happy and happy. She has been abandoned and suffered all her life, and there is no joy in her life, but she hopes that her children can live happily ever after.