If there is an afterlife (novella) Zhang Baotong

After another three years, Li Xiaole is already in high school. He attended high school in Whitewater County No. 1 Middle School. This is the highest school in the entire Baishui County, and naturally it is also the key middle school in Baishui County. According to the regulations, if students enter this school, not only must they meet the score of the high school entrance examination, but also pay a considerable amount of sponsorship fees. However, because Li Xiaole's score in the high school entrance examination was more than 30 points higher than the admission line of key schools, he was admitted to the school early without paying a penny. He is the only student in Lingquan Village who has been admitted to Baishui County No. 1 Middle School.

Li Xiuying is very proud and happy for her son, but Baishui County is more than 40 miles away from Lingquan Village, and it takes an hour to take a minibus, and the fare is 8 yuan, and a round trip is 16 yuan. Therefore, Li Xiaole usually goes home half a month, sometimes only once a month.

Baishui County No. 1 Middle School has a dormitory building, and the students live in the school and eat in the school, so the cost is obviously much larger than that of Baishan Township Middle School. The school accommodation fee is 50 yuan per month, and the food cost will cost more than 200 yuan per month. This naturally adds a lot of burden to motherhood. In addition, the freshmen had to buy school uniforms, participate in military training, and buy books when they first entered the school, so not long after the start of school, Li Xiaole spent four or five hundred yuan. There was no way, so my mother had to sell the pigs that had been raised for more than half a year.

In order to provide for her son's schooling, Li Xiuying not only raised pigs, but also began to raise sheep. In the past, she had raised two sheep, one of which she exchanged with Jia Yougen's family with that piece of land, but the sheep was lost. The other was that she bought it from Jia Yougen's house for 250 yuan, and the sheep later fell ill and was killed. At that time, she raised sheep to feed her children. Now she raises sheep to save money for her son. The state began to purchase a large amount of goat milk, and the amount of each catty increased from 7 dimes to 9 dimes. If you raise it well, you can milk two or three catties of goat milk every day, and you can earn two or three yuan. The two sheep can earn almost 200 yuan a month, which is the food expenses of the son for a month. And a pig can raise nearly 200 catties in half a year, and it can be sold for seven or eight hundred yuan. With these seven or eight hundred yuan, the school will have to pay this fee and that fee, and it will no longer be worrying.

Li Xiuying is still busy working in the fields when the farm is busy, and continues to pick up the rags when the farm is not working. When she was picking up the rubbish, she led the two sheep to the meadow by the river, and in order to prevent the sheep from being lost as in the past, she stuck an iron hammer into the ground with a hard hammer, tied the sheep, and then picked up the rubbish by the garbage heap next to it. When the harvest is almost complete, it's time to go home and cook, take the two sheep with you, go back to the house, and lock the sheep in the hut. In that hut, there were not only two sheep, but also a pig and more than a dozen chickens.

The days go by day by day. When I miss my son, I feel that the days are passing slowly, but when I look at the growth of the crops in the field, I feel that the days are passing quickly. It has been a few years since my son went to middle school. Her son was no longer the little boy who followed her all day, but a big boy, and his voice and tone were different. She misses the time when her child was around her all day long, and she could see him, take care of him, and talk to him at any time. Of course, she also likes the way her son looks now, tall and big, like a big man, but she can't see him often now.

On this day, she picked up a mirror in the garbage. She wiped the mirror clean and saw what she looked like. At this time, she realized that she was much older, her face was full of wrinkles, and her hair was too gray to look good. In fact, she didn't just find out that she was old now, over the years, she obviously felt that her waist was bent, her back was hunched, her strength was insufficient, she was not as energetic as she used to be, and after a day's work, her body and back hurt when she slept at night. However, she didn't expect that she would age so quickly. However, thinking about it again, the children are seventeen or eighteen years old this year, and they are also sixty-five or sixteen years old, how can they not be old?

That winter, a strong wind blew in the night, and the wind whistled around the wilderness, roaring like a devil. Li Xiuying was so frightened that she hid her head in the quilt, for fear that the strong wind would knock the house down. In the second half of the night, I heard a rattling sound on the roof, as if the tiles had been smashed by something. However, in the middle of the night, she was too frightened to go out.

When she came out of the house early the next morning, she saw that some of the roof tiles had been smashed by hail, and that the small roofs of Guan Yang and Guan Zhu had been covered with rain, and there was a lot of water on the ground. She cleared the hut of water and covered the floor with dry ash from the stove. Then I went to the village to find the village director and asked him to help me find a way to fix the roof.

Originally, she was not a villager in her village, and the village director could ignore her completely, but the village director was a middle-aged man in his thirties who called Laishun. After listening to her words, he said to her, "I can find someone for you, but you will have to discuss the specific matters yourself." With that, he called a contractor. After making the call, Lai Shun said to her, "You go back first, and Boss Wu will go to your house in a while." ”

Sure enough, after a while, Lai Shun took Boss Wu to her house, and when he saw the house, Boss Wu said, "You have been in this house for thirty or forty years, right?" Li Xiuying thought about it, this house was built by her adoptive father when he was alive, and she was only twelve or thirteen years old at that time, so that the house was almost fifty years old. When Boss Wu heard that this house was more than 50 years old, he said in surprise, "Other people's houses have lived in for more than twenty or thirty years, but you have lived in this house for 50 years, and it is already a dangerous house. ”

Li Xiuying asked Boss Wu, "How much does it cost to build a new house?" Boss Wu said, "At least 35,000 yuan." Li Xiuying shook her head and said, "Our family can't afford it." "Don't say it's 35,000, she can't take out 35000. She said, "You'd better help me fix the roof of this pigsty and sheepfold." Boss Wu looked at the roof of the hut for a while and said, "Okay, you give five hundred yuan." ”

When Li Xiuying heard this, she frowned and said, "This little work costs 500 yuan, which is too much." Boss Wu said, "If you have too much, then forget it, we are still busy with our work." We can't even take care of this kind of small work. However, Lai Shun said to Boss Wu, "Boss Wu, you are also a big boss, this money is nothing to you, but Aunt Li is a lonely old man, who lives by picking up rags all day long, and also supports a son who is in high school in the county." She doesn't have that much money. Otherwise, you should just do a good deed for the poor and help them repair this hut. ”

Boss Wu thought about it, and said to Li Xiuying, "I also heard about you, you have raised a child you picked up to become a high school student, and you may be able to go to college in the future." For that, I should do a good deed for you. Well, I'll send two men over in the afternoon to fix your hut. Li Xiuying sent Boss Wu and Lai Shun away with great gratitude.

In the afternoon, two migrant workers came and went up to the roof of the hut with ladders and some tiles, repaired the roof, and laid the tiles. Li Xiuying wanted to thank Boss Wu and went to the county seat to buy some things, and then went to see her son by the way. Because my son hasn't been back for almost a month.