Translated by Zhang Bao when he went home

I heard this story from a girl a few years ago in Greenwich Village, New York. It's a story that is magically adapted and recited every few years, but I still like to think that it really happened sometime and somewhere.

Hungry for golden beaches, three boys and three girls drove from the grey cold of New York to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with sandwiches and wine in paper bags. As they were riding a coach to Guò New Jersey, a man named Wenger who was sitting in front of them caught their eye. The man sat there in an inconspicuous and ill-fitting garment, and sat motionless, for the dust made it impossible to see his true age. He kept biting his lower lip, as if in a deep dying.

In the middle of the night, the car stopped in front of Howard Johnson's restaurant outside Washington. All the occupants of the car got out of the car, but Arsene Wenger was the only one still sitting there. This aroused the curiosity of these young people about him. They speculated that he might be a captain who had run away from home after breaking up with his wife, or a returning veteran, and when they got back into the car, one of the girls sat in the seat next to Wenger and introduced herself.

She said cheerfully to him, "We're going to Florida, and I've heard it's beautiful." ”

He calmly said, "Yes." It's like thinking back to the past that you've tried to forget.

"Would you like some wine?" said the girl.

Wenger smiled, took a big sip, said thank you, and then fell silent again. The girl had no choice but to return to her friends. Arsene Wenger, on the other hand, took a nap.

By morning, when everyone woke up, the car was parked in front of another Howard Johnson restaurant. This time, Arsene Wenger entered the restaurant. The girl had just invited him to join them, but Wenger was a little shy. While the young men talked about how they would spend the night on the beachfront, he sat alone, sipping strong coffee and smoking a cigarette, looking a little nervous. When everyone got back into the car, the girl sat down next to him and started talking to him. After a long time, Wenger slowly and painfully recounted his experience. He said he spent four years in prison in New York and now he's going home.

"Are you married?" the girl asked him.

"I don't know. He replied.

"You don't know?" the girl wondered.

"I wrote to my wife in prison that I was going to be away for a long time. If she can't stand it, or if the child keeps asking, if it makes her very painful, she can forget about me, and I will understand. I wanted her to remarry, and I told her she was a very nice woman, really good. I told her to forget about me and not to write me back. She didn't reply to me, and it's been three and a half years since then. ”

"And you're going home blindly like that?"

"No," he said embarrassedly, "I wrote her a letter last week when I knew I was going to be cleared out of prison." We used to live in the small town of Brunswick, just one stop last in Jacksonville, with a tall oak tree on the way into town. I told her that if she would let me go home, hang a yellow handkerchief on the tree, and I would get out of the car and go home. If she didn't want me to go home, I wouldn't have to hang a yellow handkerchief, and if I couldn't see a yellow handkerchief, I wouldn't have gotten out of the car. ”

"Really?" the girl exclaimed, and told the other companions about it. Soon, the entire car found out about it. They were all looking forward to getting to Brunswick as soon as possible. At this time, Wenger showed everyone a photo of his wife and three children. The woman in the photo is dignified, and the age of the three children looks young.

Twenty miles from the small town of Brunswick, the young men occupied the window on the right, waiting for the big oak tree to appear. The carriage was dark and silent, filled with the solemn atmosphere of lost time. Wenger did not dare to look out, his face tensed like a prisoner, as if to prepare for another blow of disappointment that would come at him.

It's only ten miles from the small town of Brunswick, then five miles. Suddenly, the young men all jumped up from their seats, shouting and even dancing.

But only Arsene Wenger was still sitting there, completely dumbfounded. He saw the oak trees outside the window, covered with yellow handkerchiefs. 20, 30, maybe hundreds. The tree stood there, like a welcoming banner waving in the wind. Amid the cheers of these young men, the former prisoner stood up, walked to the front door of the car, got out of the car, and headed home.