Go Home (short story) Zhang Baotong

Boss Luo is the owner of a factory in Xiangbei, and he is usually seen busy day and night, rarely has time to go out for leisure, and has never heard of him driving to other places. Recently, however, he and a few friends from the police and the procuratorate have been planning a trip to a distant place.

The day before departure, Boss Luo told Sù Xiaoyong to follow them on a trip. Xiao Yong didn't know why they took him, he thought that they must have taken him out for a walk because they pity him for not having a home.

Xiao Yong was so excited that he didn't sleep well all night. This is not because he likes sightseeing and tourism, but because he wants to use this outing to find his home. Going home is what seventeen-year-old Xiao Yong is all about life. But where is home? He didn't know that he had been looking for a home since he was trafficked.

I remember when he was four years old, he was taken away while he was sleeping at home. When he woke up, he found himself being held by a strange man on a shuttle. Later, he was sold to someone else by that man. That's all he had when he was away from home.

The car departed from Yueyang, Hunan Province, and headed north and west, and the destination seemed to be somewhere in Sichuan. Xiao Yong sat in the back of the car by the window. This allows him to see the beautiful scenery along the way through the Guò window. However, Xiao Yong is not interested in the scenery, he is just looking for something in his memory.

In his memory, home was in a small town. The town is quaint and quiet, with a narrow bluestone street connected to the bus station at one end and the wharf by the river at the other. On either side are two-storey attics, half brick and half wood. There is a very wide and clear river behind the street. Once he fell into the river, and his sister pulled him up from the river with a stick. He still remembers that his mother doted on him very much, and always bought him grilled fish to eat at street stalls.

In order to return home, from the age of eleven or twelve, he escaped from his adoptive mother's house, picked up the train, and began to embark on the road of finding his home. He didn't know where his home was, only that it was in a place where there were rivers and rivers. Therefore, wherever there is a river, he will look for it. He was empty-handed, and there was nothing but the dirty, shabby clothes on his body. When they were hungry, they begged from others, or they went to the garbage heap to pick up food, and when they were sleepy, they found a place with an eaves and lay down on the ground and fell asleep. In the past four or five years, he has walked many streets and seen many rivers, but none of them are the one he remembers.

In this way, he sometimes worked, sometimes begged, and came to Hunan from Fujian, that is, by the river, he met Boss Luo. At that time, he was faint from hunger, and it was Boss Luo who rescued him. Boss Luo wants to send him home. He said he had been trafficked and could not find a home. Boss Luo saw that he was pitiful, so he took him to the factory.

The trolley travels along the way, passing through many rivers along the way. Whenever he went to a place where there was a river, Xiao Yong opened his eyes wide, trying to find the impression in his memory. Once, he saw a street seller selling grilled fish, so he asked the driver to stop, got out of the car and bought a skewer. Although this grilled fish is also spicy, as soon as you eat it, you don't feel like it's the kind of taste you remember. He couldn't say the taste, but he could feel it.

He looked intently at the scenery along the way, for fear that if he was not careful, he would miss the place he should be looking for. So, in the afternoon, he was a little sleepy and fell asleep in the car. I don't know when, he dreamed that his adoptive mother asked him to hold his little brother, but he was already very tired after planting seedlings in the field for a day, so he didn't hold his little brother well and fell to the ground. The adoptive mother picked up the bamboo stick and beat him so hard that he was dead and bruised, and he cried out loudly.

Uncle Peng, who was sitting next to him, saw him crying in fright, so he hugged him tightly and asked him what was wrong. He woke up from his dream and cried, "I dreamed that my adoptive mother was beating me with a bamboo stick. Uncle Peng comforted him and said, "Child, don't be afraid, with us, no one will dare to beat you again." Xiao Yong nodded reassuringly.

Uncle Peng is a good friend of Boss Luo, works in the procuratorate, once took him to the police station to collect DNA, and often gave Xiao Yong some gifts, so Xiao Yong regarded him and Boss Luo as his benefactors.

In the afternoon of the next day, the car drove to a riverside. As the car drove slowly along Riverside Boulevard, he opened the window and looked out. Looking at it, he felt that the scenery by the river gave him an indescribable sense of intimacy, as if it was awakening something in his dream, déjà vu, but vague. So, he said to the driver, "I'm going to get out of the car." Boss Luo and Uncle Peng also got out of the car and followed him.

They made their way into a small town by the river. In the middle of the town is a road paved with bluestone slabs, and the buildings on both sides are familiar, but I don't know where I have seen them. Because over the years, he has had too many dreams.

When he came to an intersection, he suddenly saw a four-story building made of blue bricks, although the building was very old, but the overall structure and style had not changed at all. This building used to be a shop, and his mother used to take him here to buy things. And his house is in the alley behind this store. He sleepwalked from the intersection to the back of the shop and into an alley. Not far from the entrance of the alley, he saw a large number of people gathered here, as well as two police cars and some policemen. Xiao Yong thought that the police were arresting someone.

However, he found that all the people were looking at him with such stern and strange expressions, and frowning so tightly as if he were from another planet.

When they saw them coming, they immediately made way for them. Through the guò passage, he saw a house at a glance. The house is a small two-storey building made of gray reinforced concrete. On the roof of the building hangs a wooden cage for pigeons. He remembered that his father had bought him a cage with a pigeon named Ash Ash. He immediately cried, pointed to the house and said to Boss Luo, Uncle Luo, this is my home.

At this moment, a middle-aged woman with white hair and a young woman in her twenties ran towards him like crazy. The white-haired woman shouted loudly as she ran, "Son, my son!" But what surprised Xiao Yong the most was that he saw Manager Luo in the factory and several police uncles who had entered his DNA database for him following behind the two women. He didn't know why they were here.

The two women cried and threw themselves at him like crazy, and he was startled, for he did not know them. The white-haired woman pounced on him at once, hugged him tightly, and wailed. The young woman also put her arms around his neck, crying and calling him by his nickname. Because his name when he was a child was Li Pengfei. He didn't react for a while, because he had the impression that his mother was very young and beautiful, with black hair. And my sister is just a seven or eight-year-old elementary school student.

At this time, Manager Luo came over and said to him, Xiaoyong, this is your mother and your sister. Xiao Yong woke up at this time, and it turned out that this was the family he had been thinking about day and night for thirteen years. He finally found his home, and he came home!

Thinking of the beatings and grievances he had received over the years, he called out to his mother, and then hugged his mother and cried loudly. Crying and crying, he asked his father. Mom's crying was even louder, saying that Dad had been out for more than ten years to find you, and there had been no news until now. My sister said that my mother was about to cry blind for you. Hearing this, the mother and son hugged each other and cried loudly. Looking at this scene, the onlookers were wiping tears from their eyes.

At this time, relatives began to set off firecrackers in front of the door. The sound of firecrackers was deafening, drowning out all the qiē. Immediately afterwards, firecrackers were also set off in front of the neighbor's house. Firecrackers rang out throughout the alley. The sound of firecrackers is more and more loud and louder.

This is the people in the alley celebrating their home again.