July days, a little hot. The bamboo forest next to my house is full of green bamboo shoots, and in my memory, at this time, my mother can always make different patterns of bamboo shoots, so that we don't get tired of eating, so I go home more urgently.

The moment I walked into the courtyard, I saw my father sitting shirtless on a wooden chair, and my mother was rubbing medicine on my father. When my mother saw me coming back, she snatched my schoolbag from my back.

"Mom will give you hot food." My mother smiled at me.

My father pointed to a nearby stool, motioned for me to sit down, and asked me something about school.

I looked at the broken sore on my father's shoulder, overlapping on top of each other.

"It's okay, just a few days." My father often captures my heart.

Within a cigarette, my mother called me to dinner.

My mother didn't care about how I was studying, and the questions I asked were whether I was hungry at school, whether my classmates bullied me, and whether the teachers were enthusiastic about me.

That night, my brother said to me, "Dad went to the mountains to pick bamboo shoots for your tuition, but everyone in the nearby village went to pick bamboo shoots, so most of the bamboo shoots were harvested, and Dad just went to the mountains to pick them." ”

"I've heard my mother say that hunting mountains isn't it dangerous?" I said.

"That's right, it's not dangerous, where there is only one road, and it's rugged and steep, not to mention carrying bamboo shoots, it's extremely dangerous to go naked, so few people will go anywhere, this father is carrying bamboo shoots, and he didn't dare to put it down to rest, so he has been holding on, and his shoulders are broken."

No wonder when I came back I saw my mother rubbing my father with medicine, it turned out to be like this.

"How do you know?" I asked my brother.

"The third uncle next door told his wife that I went to his house to play and heard it." The elder brother replied.

"Oooh," I replied.

"I also heard the third uncle say that my father and he were carrying bamboo shoots in the dark night, and they couldn't see their fingers, and the third uncle even bumped into someone's grave," the brother continued.

The July sky was indeed pitch black, with no moonlight, no stars, and a white fog so thick that it was difficult to see the road even under a flashlight. I remember once my father told my mother that in such a dark night, people seemed to have fallen into an ink bottle, and even if they opened their eyes wide, it would be useless, so they had to squat and stand half-squatting, and use their hands to distinguish little by little.

"The grave is so scary," said the elder brother.

"I also heard from the third uncle that my father was very greedy and often picked twice as many bamboo shoots as he did, but my father was very strong, and only three or two people of the same age in the village combined beat my father," the brother continued.

No wonder his father has scars all over his body, and his mother laughs at him at any time for being mindless, only reckless.

"Brother, what is a good boy?" I asked.

The elder brother scratched his head and said, "It's probably what my parents say, let's listen to what we say." ”

"Oooh," I said.

The elder brother said: "Brother, you have to study hard, it's not easy for your parents, there hasn't been a college student in our village yet, you must be the first college student in our village, whether it's good or bad, you have to persevere." ”

"Uh-huh," I replied.

In fact, I don't know the bottom of my heart, no one in the village can afford to get into high school, and every time I reach junior high school, I go home to farm.

My brother was three years older than me, and he followed seventeen cows all day long. Because my family was poor, my brother contracted the neighbor's cattle to graze, and the annual remuneration was 50 catties of corn. My brother not only herds cattle every day, such as pigweed, but also manages dinner by himself, because my parents are very busy and can't come back until late every day.

My brother loves cows very much, and whenever the cow mother gives birth, he always guards it without sleeping well, looking for cow grass everywhere. My family has eight cows, which are the lifeblood of the whole family, and the crops are brought back by the cows every year. In order to lighten the burden on the family, the elder brother took over the neighbor's cow.

This is true not only of my brother, but of most of the children in the village.

My brother said a lot to me that night, and then he fell asleep.