The Ladder of Love (Part II) Zhang Baotong 2017.10.10

Aunt Xu came back from the field, holding a handful of half-red and half-green chili peppers in her hand, and asked us, "What do you eat at night?" But Uncle Liu said, "Let's eat rice, other guests are not used to eating it." Aunt Xu said, "I'll just make fried bacon with chili?" Uncle Liu said, "Yes." Aunt Xu went into the kitchen, and then came out and said to the uncle, "Young man, carry water." Uncle Liu answered, went into the kitchen, picked up two buckets, and went down the slope.

I accompanied Uncle Liu to peel walnuts all afternoon, and my hands were so tired that I was a little numb, so I wanted to rest for a while and walked to the west side of the house to see the scenery. Autumn is always the case in the mountains, the sun stops in the west, the sky is clear, the peaks are like waves, and the quiet valley is only a faint mist floating at the foot of the mountain.

I went up to the cave at the top of the hill and looked into the cave. The cave was closed by a sturdy wooden door, but it was not locked. I opened the wooden door and went into the hole. The cave is not deep, only three or four meters deep, but the capacity inside the cave is large. The floor in the cave was dry, but not very flat, and there were some furniture and corn cobs stacked inside, as well as a stone nest and a stone mallet for scooping rice, and also for smashing corn and crushing wood pulp leaves. I picked up the mallet, and it was quite heavy, about five or six pounds. In one corner of the cave, there were also twenty or thirty steel drills and an axe. The steel drills have been ground very dull, and some have been ground very flat. Looking at them, it reminds me of Uncle Liu's axe and stone. That is, with these steel drills and axes, Uncle Liu spent nearly 50 years to build a road of love paved with more than 6,000 stone steps for Aunt Xu.

It is hard to imagine that one person would be willing to spend 50 years for another person to spend all day digging stone steps and paving roads with axes and brass drills. If I definitely can't do it, I remember when I was talking to someone, just because my girlfriend asked me to spend more time with her, I was a little unhappy, thinking that she was bothering me too much, so I blew the lamp with others. A colleague in one of my departments dumped his girlfriend because he spent some more money on him, thinking that his girlfriend would not be able to live. In contrast, love is nothing more than an exchange of benefits in our eyes. If there is a deviation or imbalance in this exchange, the love will soon come to an end. If there was a sinking fish and a wild goose in front of us, or a shy moon, and she told us that you must dig more than 6,000 stone stairs for me, how would we react? I think we would have turned around and walked away without any hesitation. Because no one wants to spend their whole life on this kind of toiling and boring hard work. It is precisely because this is something that ordinary people simply can't do, so it is really remarkable, even incredible, to be able to do this.

I picked up a steel drill and decided to make it a souvenir or a souvenir. came out of the hole, and at this time, Uncle Liu sat on the small stool in front of the door again, and continued to peel the walnut skin with a knife. I walked up to him, pointed the drill in front of him, and said, "Uncle, I want to take one of your drills as a souvenir." Uncle Liu smiled and said, "It's up to you." So, I went back to my house, wiped the drill with toilet paper, and put it in my travel bag.

After dinner in the evening, I took out a small bag of raisins and a small bag of sunflower seeds from my travel bag and put them on a small table for Uncle Liu and Aunt Xu to eat, telling me their stories. They have eaten sunflower seeds, but they have not eaten raisins, so you think they are very delicious. Because they thought it was so delicious that they were a little reluctant to eat it. I said, "Eat, eat, I've got it in my bag." Then they began to eat.

By this time, it was already a little dark, and we opened the door, ate raisins and sunflower seeds, drank tea, and began to work on home cooking again. Of course, I still asked Uncle Liu to tell me their past stories.

Uncle Liu said, "I came back from home, brought some corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes, and started planting them in the field. Within a few days, the planted seeds were seedling. These seedlings are like a kind of hope that allows us to see the harvest of the future. Once these seedlings bear fruit, we don't have to worry about eating all day. However, as the seedlings grow day by day, the hope is also increasing day by day, but the difficulties are also increasing day by day.

The millet brought from home was eaten in a few days, and at this time, it was already the cool autumn season. Seeing that the wind is about to blow and the leaves fall on the mountain, the mountain is withered and yellow, and there is no other edible thing except the wood pulp leaves. On those days, our whole family was scrambling to pick the pulp leaves, because in a few days, the leaves would be withered, and by then, we would not even have the leaves.

Once, on the way home, I saw a honeycomb. It reminds me of a beekeeper I knew in the past who asked me to help him make a beehive. I moved the honeycomb to a sheltered rock wall between the woods and meadows not far from the top of the mountain. Then, cut down a few trees, made a beehive, and placed it in the rain shelter on the cliff wall. In this way, the children can eat some honey and supplement some nutrients.

There is very little in the mountains that children love to eat, and there is nothing that children look forward to. I take some honey out of the hive every day and make a bowl of honey water for the children to drink at the end of the night. The children were very happy and began to look forward to drinking honey water in the evening. I think it's also fun to be happy for children for a while throughout the day. As soon as the children were happy, Xiugu was happy, and in this way, everyone was happy.

One night in late autumn, the moon hung so high that it seemed to be obscured by a layer of clouds, making it difficult to see clearly. In our mountains, we call this kind of cloud wind cloud, that is, when there is this kind of cloud, the wind will be very strong. At that time, because the wind and trees were calm on the top of the mountain, I didn't take it seriously. However, in the middle of the night, a strong wind suddenly blew. The wind was so strong that it shook the thatched huts, and it shook more and more. The children screamed in the next room. Aunt Xiu woke me up and said, 'What's wrong with the kid, let's go over and take a look.' So I hurriedly put on my cotton coat and went out.

As soon as I went out, I felt that the wind was so strong that I couldn't even go out. I went out against the wind, and I saw the straw curtains of the thatched hut next to me blowing off. I just wanted to put the straw curtain back up. However, it was dark outside, and it was raining, so I couldn't see where the grass curtain had blown. So I said to the kids, 'Get up. So saying, he picked up the youngest boy and ran to the next room. However, before I could go out, another strong wind blew from the side of the mountain, and at once the whole house was blown down. The children were crushed under the straw hut and screamed, 'Mother, help me, save me.' ’