In fact, what I want to say is not the screw scars on the soles of Uncle Zheng's feet, nor his love history, these really have nothing to do with me. What I want to say is that the screw factory is linked to Uncle Zheng, and recently Uncle Zheng has been linked to Cao Li. So as soon as I step into the screw factory, I think of that farce and am curious about the foreshadowing of that farce, that is, what might happen next.

When I think about it, I don't want to write my homework, I can't write a word. As soon as I think of these, my heart will become a lonely bird overlooking the wet rain in the south of the Yangtze River, and the life in the compound is full of contradictions, just like the movie curtain unfolding in front of my eyes one by one.

My mother placed me in a small warehouse next to the workshop, and the next afternoon, my mother took the time to check on my homework. As a result, I was slapped twice on the buttocks, scolded me for being a muddy person who couldn't hold up the wall, and told me to go home and never care about my homework and studies again.

My mother scolded me for not being able to hold on to the wall more than once, saying that no matter how much I studied, I would not do it more than once. When I was a child, she had already labeled me as unproductive. But she was not willing to let her words come true, she still had to take care of my homework, and she still wanted to prop me up the wall.

The screw factory is in the southeast of the compound, and there are two roads back, one facing west and then north, and one going north and then west. The first one is a little farther away, but it is an easy road to walk; The second is near, but has to overcome a muddy field path. In normal times, I must have walked a long way, I have been to the screw factory many times, and I have always walked that way. But that day, as soon as he stepped out of the gate, his legs were uncontrollable, and he was pulled by a mysterious force and walked all the way north.

There was a light rain in Gangnam that day, but I was under the impression that as long as the rain was not heavy, the mud was usually easy to overcome. Straight to the fork in the road, the way home was to the west, but my feet didn't mean to turn, they were still going north, and kept going north.

It was only when I walked into the woods that they stopped, and they told me to look forward. I saw countless trees standing upright in the smoke and rain in the south of the Yangtze River, they have not moved for more than ten years, whether they are waist or legs must be tired enough, but they do not forget the original intention and mission of being a tree, and will continue to stand upright.

When they saw me coming, they became active, and the rustling sound seemed to speak to me. I know that these voices tell the story of the wet rain in Jiangnan, the thoughts of many people who want to say that they finally don't speak, and the traces they have seen with their own eyes after some people have stepped out of people's field of vision. If I want to understand, it will enrich my life, increase my knowledge, and I will be able to find many people and things that I have missed and actually liked very much.

I walked into the forest, the rustling sound surrounded me, the rain drops on my body, I saw the lake, the other side was swallowed up by the smoke and rain, and at the same time, Chen Jia, who I really missed, was swallowed up. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was really a new house built by Chen Jia in the woods, the material was neither wood nor brick, maybe it was the dream drawn from the bottom of Chen Jia's heart that built the wall and roof.

Maybe for so many days, Chen Jia has been living here, he likes the lake, and he will often walk along the lake in the wet mud. At this time, she may be on the other side, in the rain that adorns the river and makes it look boundless.

Time slipped away from the lakeside in the woods, and the farther and farther back reminded me that it was time to go back. I was reluctant to quit the forest, and my heart was empty by the memories of Chen Jia. I remember the moment I walked out of the woods, I felt so sad that I regretted taking that path, and if I had taken the other way, leisure would have replaced melancholy. I might be watching TV, or reading comics, or standing on the balcony looking at the scenery of Jiangnan looming in the wet rain.

The annoying thoughts lasted for a long time, and it wasn't until I entered the compound that I didn't think so, and I was in the mood to think about the better. The sad longing for Chen Jia occupied a lot of my energy, but at least it didn't occupy the whole afternoon, at least there was still a period of time before my mother got off work, and I could watch TV, read comics, or stand on the balcony and watch the smoke and rain in the south of the Yangtze River as I imagined.

I hurried up to the balcony on the third floor, just a few steps from the door of my house. Cao Li sat on the balcony and blocked the way. I'm used to her, both to sitting there like a doorman, and to walking away without saying a word, slipping past her cigarette as she retracts her legs. But this time, I had walked up to her, and she didn't mean to retract her legs.

I remember she was wearing an old, lace-up cotton shirt with a long hem that obscured her bucket-like waist and floral trouser pockets. The pants were old, old-fashioned, and they didn't match the shirt at all. This is not what I thought at the time, the people who lived in the compound at that time were terribly poor, and as long as they were not naked, they rarely cared about the style of old or not, whether they were old or not, and so on. I say this true to the feeling I felt when I remembered.

I remember she took out a handful of candy from her pocket, my favorite White Rabbit toffee, I don't know if there were four or five, and they were displayed in the palm of her hand. Her intention was clear, to give them to me, and she asked, "Do you want to eat sugar?" ”

I froze and shook my head.

She asked, "Don't you like to eat?" ”

Still not coming to my senses, nodding and shaking my head, she smiled dryly, and tried to stuff the candy back in her pocket, but she couldn't find the opening of the bag and gave up. I thought I had misheard, but a sentence did come out of her mouth: "Can we be friends?" ”

"What?"

"Can we be friends?"

I didn't seem to hear her say, I said something else entirely: "I'm going home." ”

Although Cao Li was reluctant, according to my performance at the time, she could only retract her legs and let me pass. I started running home and slammed the door shut as soon as I entered the house.

I have thousands of thoughts in my head, and the first thing that comes to mind is Chen Jia, which is unreasonable, but this is the truth. I remember at the beginning of last semester, Chen Jia was almost sitting in that place and said to me, "Can we be friends?" ”

The same words make me feel, and I behave differently in the face of the same words. In addition to these, I was still thinking about why Cao Li wanted to be friends with me, she was nearly forty years older than me, and I had never heard that she could be friends at such an age.

I made a connection between her purpose and my purpose of being friends with that farce, and there was a basis for that. In the past few days, all the tenants in the compound have received Uncle Zheng, of course he does not have the leisure to be a door-to-door guest, he has the perseverance to lobby door-to-door. He reminded everyone that he can't be friends with Cao Li, he can deny what he has said, can he be friends with people who don't talk much?

Maybe Uncle Zheng's lobbying was successful, but Cao Li couldn't make a single friend, in order to prove that he could make friends in a short period of time, even people like me, who were forty years apart.

That night, Cao Li came to our house. At that time, our family of three was having dinner, and the dishes were very simple, there is a word called home-cooked meals, and simple dishes are our home-cooked meals. It doesn't rain outside, but it's raining inside our house, the water on the roof is not dry, the house is leaking more and more, as long as it doesn't rain, even if the roof is a little waterlogged, there will be no problem.

We opened the back window and the front door, hoping that the wind on the opposite side would blow away the damp smell of the house. This was the scene at that time, I was eating, listening to the wind outside and the rain inside, and we focused on that sound, ignoring the footsteps of Cao Li coming to my house.

My parents weren't hospitable, they were at least polite. No one in the compound who comes to my house will be treated so coldly. I remember that Cao Li stood at my house for a long time, and everyone present was embarrassed, and my mother had always been good at talking, and it would be nice if she could come in handy on that occasion, but he had nothing to say.

My father served the meal halfway, the rice cooker was by the door, and I almost faced Cao Li when the meal was served, and I paid attention to him with my spare eyes, feeling that he might want to talk to Cao Li. Maybe she really said it, maybe I just didn't hear it, but later, I saw my father sitting back at the table, and Cao Li was still standing.

When we were about to eat dinner, Cao Li asked with a smile, "Can you come in and sit for a while?" ”

Out of courtesy, they did not refuse, and the mother said, "Come in, it's wet and cold outside." ”

Cao Li stepped into the room, looking reserved. A wooden stool by the door that was full of Jiangnan moisture, and Cao Li sat on it. After washing the dishes, my father turned on the TV and she watched it with us. She seemed absent-minded, in fact, everyone was absent-minded.

War movies were playing on TV, and guns were ringing. I know that my father originally intended to turn down the volume, and our family's TV set was old and had internal wiring. You tune in the stereo, and it changes the program for you; You have to tune the program, but it only works on the sound. After changing the program, I couldn't switch it back, and my father slapped the TV with the palm of the brick during the day, and it was useless to shoot it for asthma. We can only watch sleepy literary propaganda films, the narrator's soft and long contralto, and the picture is magnificent and charming. Although it is not as exciting as war movies, there is nothing annoying about it except for making people sleepy.

At that time, I felt uncomfortable because Cao Li's gaze formed a net in my house. Even though she wasn't always staring at me, sometimes at my father or mother, sometimes at TV, I couldn't suppress the hallucinations of being covered in a net, and I was depressed.