Without a woman's home, the air seems to be all still.

Kang Tiansheng died at the age of thirty and died. Sending the hard-working man who had been in and out of his small mansion for five years and had been integrated with the simple and dilapidated crop yard into the loess, Kang Tiansheng felt that he could not stay in this poor but extremely warm courtyard for a day. He picked up his only two-year-old son, Qinwa, who had been left to him by his dear deceased wife, wiped the fur hair on the top of his head with his rough palm, and went out the door, walking up the path on the slope behind the village. He walked into the courtyard of his father-in-law's house, stuffed Qinwa into his cousin's arms, and encouraged him to break the hard and astringent barrier that was tied in his throat:

"Be your ......"

Qinwa cried and made a fuss, kicked her arms and legs, and wanted to break free from her aunt's arms. He quickly turned around and went out the door, straining his neck without looking back, and if he looked again, he might not be able to leave.

Walking out of the waist ridge village where his father-in-law's family lived, he went down a ridge, and he supported the black trunk of a thick apricot tree with both hands, and cried with a "woo".

After only crying, Kang Tiansheng bit his lip, and the thick voice of a heart-rending middle-aged man suddenly came to an abrupt end. He didn't cry any longer, but quickly left the big apricot tree, wiped the tears from his eyes, coughed hard, and walked down the path from the upper ridge.

Thirty years of life experience taught him patience and stubbornness, but it did not teach him to cry. When he was a child, he cried when he was hungry, and his father slapped him to stop his hunger. When he was annoyed with other people's dolls, he took advantage of them, and his father slapped him; He won't cry anymore, he won't cry the strong emotional action that exists in both human sexes. Even though the willow sticks of the Kuomintang Hekou Joint Insurance Center broke two, his pants and flesh were glued together, and his teeth bit his lips so that blood flowed into his neck, but not a single tear was still seeping from his eye sockets.

At the west end of Kangjia Village in Xiahewan, in the middle of the crowded crop yards of large and small, high and low, there are two dilapidated small houses of Kang Tiansheng, with high back walls and low eaves walls, and sparsely mixed tiles on the roof like a steep slope, which often leak in the rainy season. He and his wife, who depended on each other, were naked at night, and moved Qinwa from one end of the kang to the other to avoid dampness...... Now, his wife is lying in the loess under the southern slope, and Qinwa has been sent to her cousin's sister-in-law's house, and the air in the small courtyard in the dilapidated low earthen fence seems to have condensed and stopped, and the sound of his footsteps stepping into the yard actually echoes on the backyard wall. The stove is cold, the pot is ice, and the rolling pin is still resting on the wooden peg above the cutting board...... The wife wore a cotton cloth towel she had woven on her head (to prevent the ashes from the pot from falling into her black hair), and she pulled the bellows, and white water vapor came out of the edge of the lid. He put his arms around his son and squatted in front of the stove, filling a pot of dry tobacco. When his wife lit a firewood branch from the stove door and handed it to him with a smile, Qinwa took it away, and recklessly pressed the smoking firewood to his father's smoking pot, he smoked it, and the bitter and spicy smell of raw tobacco leaves choked Qinwa coughed, and she cried and was annoyed. He sprayed a puff of cigarette on his wife's face, which was brightly lit by the firelight, choking his wife and crying, which made Qinwa laugh again...... A bench, a square table, resting against the wall, two patched quilts of coarse cloth, stacked on the reed mat on the kang, all the furniture and things that he and his wife had used together, reflected her melancholy and warm eyes at this moment.

After smoking two bags of dry tobacco in a row, Kang Tiansheng stood up, tightened the blue cloth belt in his waist, pinned the tobacco pouch to his waist, lifted the adobe wooden handle from the corner of the wall, carried it on his shoulders, and then hung the wooden mold on the rammer handle, walked out of the house, locked the door, walked through the small courtyard, fastened the wire button on the wooden fence-style courtyard wall door, and walked out of Kangjia Village without looking back.

In the early morning of the next day, when the faint morning light illuminated the slopes and rivers, Kang Tiansheng was already in the moat next to a strange village, carrying a bluestone rammer, and smashing it into a light and rhythmic sound.

Thirty years old, what age is this a farmer! Kang Tiansheng peeled off his long shirt and wore only a sweat coat, his shoulders were broad and his waist was thick, and the maroon muscles on his arms were shining. He picked up a page of smooth and smooth adobe, twisted his strong body like a bullock, put the adobe together, turned back, sprayed saliva on his palm, lifted the stone rammer again, and hammered it up......

He will remarry. How can the sun and the moon go down in the courtyard without women! He is only thirty years old. A thirty-year-old farmer, are you afraid of any hardship?

Fourteen or fifteen years have passed, and Kang Tiansheng finally did not continue to wind.

He had contracted the work of beating adobe on both sides of the river and in all the villages of Nanyuan and Beiling, and from the hands of the male or female head of this and that peasant family, he received copper yuan or hemp coins one by one, and sent them to the officials of the joint insurance office in a whole string.

He left early and returned late, still busy digging adobe to earn money, and was forced to pay the joint insurance office, and the fourteen or fifteen years passed in a daze. Although people are not too old, their backs are not too strong. And the biggest change is that Qinwa has grown as tall as him, but not as thick and strong as him. He was already impatient to use a small bowl to scoop rice in the pot frequently, and replaced it with a large porcelain bowl commonly used by adults;

Kang Tiansheng looked at the Qinwa who was side by side with him, and suddenly realized: It's time to order a daughter-in-law for his son!