Zhang Youkang had just returned from the county seat on the other side of the river. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

He was on crutches in one hand, a deep-bottomed vegetable basket in the other, and a cloth bag on his shoulder.

"Grandpa Zhang!" Qingling saw him, ran forward excitedly, took the vegetable basket in his hand, and asked with concern, "The road went smoothly, didn't you say that you went with Uncle Reagan? Why did you come back alone?"

Zhang Ligan is Zhang Youkang's distant cousin, and he is also near the mountain pass, and his family lives in the east of the dwarf dun bridge.

"I walked together, and when I came back, I passed by the commune, and was pulled in by several cadres of the brigade to talk about things. This little road can still tire me every day. Zhang Youkang explained happily.

"That's the same, you don't have to lift heavy objects to work. Qingling put the basket on her elbow and helped the uncle into the house. The man behind her was completely left behind by her.

Grandma Zhang, who still came out to greet her, found it and asked politely: "Yo, young man, who are you looking for?"

Xiang Gang didn't expect the girl to be introduced, unloaded the bamboo basket on his shoulder, put down the rattan basket and luggage in his hand, and politely saluted Grandma Zhang: "Grandma Zhang, I'm Xianggang, I'm Xianggang, I'm going to Yongliang's house in the west of the dwarf pier bridge, I'll come back to see you." ”

When they heard that it was Xiang Gang, who left the village seven years ago to go out to work, Zhang Youkang and his wife couldn't help but sigh.

Back then, Xiang Yongliang and his father were also well-known figures in ten miles and eight towns -- the two of them organized civilian guerrillas to fight devils and help the Red Army. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, a chieftain-level figure came up to personally award red belts and rewards to the father and son soldiers, and encouraged the men from all over the country to learn from them.

In this way, the people in the nearby villages all knew about the deeds of the two of them, either out of admiration, admiration, or really liking Xiang Yongliang, a strong young man, so nine out of ten of the daughters in the family targeted Xiang Yongliang, and the remaining one was also because he knew that he was not worthy of him, so he chose to give up silently.

If there is no daughter in the family, he is suffocated, and he can't wait to go back 16 years and give birth to ten or eight of his daughters, so that he can marry the Xiang family.

It's just that no one expected that Xiang Yongliang finally chose a woman from other places, or came to join his relatives to no avail, and was taken in by Xiang's family for a few days.

If you want to have a family background, you don't know the roots, and you want a dowry without a dowry. The crowd fell through the eyeballs.

can't help but like Xiang Yongliang, no matter how virtuous and capable the girl is, does he have his sweetheart who is beautiful, temperamental, and can dress up?

In this way, Xiang Yongliang married this woman.

The first three years were still lovely, and the couple gave birth to a big fat son and lived in a new house. But in the fifth year, disaster came: Xiang Yongliang carried a basket of freshly beaten grain to the county seat to change cloth, wanted to make new clothes for his son and daughter-in-law, and saw a middle-aged woman jumping into the river at the ferry terminal.

Xiang Yongliang's daughter-in-law, who was cared for in the palm of her hand, became a widow overnight, serving her injured father-in-law and taking care of her four-year-old son. When Xiang Yongliang was there, she didn't even have to wash the dishes and chopsticks, let alone hoe grass in the ground, pick up manure and apply fertilizer.

It can be said that in the four years since she married to the Xiang family, in addition to cooking a few meals and feeding chickens a few times before she became pregnant, she became the queen mother after she became pregnant, and Xiang Yongliang even revolved around her from time to time - busy with farm work and housework, and had to scrub and change underwear for her daughter-in-law after finishing housework.

After the child was born, he stopped working even more, and he walked around with his son in the east and west all day long, and the women in the village had never seen such idleness. I don't do any work, and I am especially favored by my husband. His hands were whiter and tenderer than when he first came to the countryside.

But as soon as Xiang Yongliang left, the house was in chaos.

Getting up early in the morning, touching the dark, endless housework, and farm work were all pressed on her alone.

The old man Xiang relapsed due to the old injuries that fell during the Anti-Japanese War, and he couldn't do his work; four-year-old Xiang Gang, after all, was still a child, and no matter how sensible he was, he would feed the chickens and choose vegetables.

In this way, the heavy work fell on the woman's head, and the woman could not bear this hardship, so in the spring of the following year, before the farming began, she left the old and the young at home, and ran away with a technician who went to the countryside to investigate in Jiangkoubu.

The father died, the mother ran away, and the grandfather and grandson were left to depend on each other.

It's just that the old man's health is getting worse and worse year by year, and the double blow brought to him by the matter of his son and daughter-in-law has caused him to lose his vitality especially badly. When Xiang Gang was seven years old, the old man Xiang was unwilling to open his eyes and return to the west.

Xiang Gang, who was orphaned, began to live a self-reliant life at a young age.

Fortunately, the kind-hearted neighbor uncle reached out and helped him from time to time, allowing him to survive the cold winter and heat year after year.

But the good times didn't last long, three years of natural disasters, no harvest in the village, the mountains and fields were bare, Yanqi River saw starvation for several days, and there were people who were poisoned by eating indiscriminately. In short, there was a panic outside the village, and from time to time I heard the wails of grief.

The neighbor's uncle didn't survive and died at the head of the bed in the last disaster year.

That year, Xiang Gang was eleven years old.

Due to the upheaval of the family from time to time, the teenager who should be lively and cheerful has become more and more silent and alienated.

I don't know who came out, saying that he must be the reincarnation of the broom star, and whoever suffered him was unlucky.

I didn't see the infinite scenery of Xiangjia, and it didn't look like it in less than ten years.

Out of kindness to help him grow up with his neighbor uncle, who was originally so strong and bone-like, after getting along with the broom star, he couldn't survive four years and went.

The so-called public mouth is gold, accumulating and destroying bones. According to word of mouth, most of the people in the village believed in the broom star, and when they saw him, they took a detour. It's hard to survive three years of famine, but don't be unlucky because of this.

In fact, in those years, there were no dead people in the village, and there were more deaths in the brigade next door, and the deaths of individual people were worse than those of the neighbors, but no one saw how to spread it. Speaking of which, who let it be close, there are many people who die to the family, and rural people are inevitably feudal superstition. The three aunts and six mothers-in-law touched up and down with a few mouths, which made everyone endanger themselves, and they all thought that Xiang Gang was a moldy star.

is also a few sensible old people, as well as the man who used to get along well with his father, can still help, and does not take this superstition seriously. Zhang Youkang and Shu Jianjun are one of them.

However, after Shu Jianjun and his wife passed away, there were still people with big mouths, saying that they must have gotten close to the kid from the Xiang family and died of bad luck.

Xu is Xiang Gang had already left the village at that time, and Mrs. Shu's family, who liked to rap, wanted to occupy the old family's house, and they couldn't wait to press the title "broom star" on Shu Yingfang's head so that she could be swept out of the house. So few people agreed. Gradually, no one mentioned Xiang Gang and his family's bad luck anymore.