When the footsteps of the peasants were far away, Lin Zhenhua squatted down and asked the thief who was still holding his head: "How is it, brother, can you get up?" ”

The thief let go of his head and sat up slowly. Through the light of Yang Chunshan's flashlight, Lin Zhenhua could see that the muscles on the thief's face were constantly twitching in the process of sitting up, obviously because the place where he was beaten was very painful. However, he gritted his teeth and did not let out a moan.

"Thank you, big brothers." After the thief took a breath, he arched his hand to Yang Chunshan and Lin Zhenhua. Of course, he knew that if these two people hadn't come out to intervene, he would have been beaten much harder.

Lin Zhenhua carefully lit up the thief, and saw that he was about seventeen or eighteen years old, and his face was still childish. His face was emaciated, his hair seemed to have been uncut for a long time, and his clothes were patched on top of each other, apparently from a poor family. However, from his face, Lin Zhenhua could not see a trace of shame or panic, nor did he have any resentment, it seemed that he felt that it was a matter of course for him to steal things, and it was also a matter of course for others to beat him. For the two life-savers in front of him, the thief only said lightly thanks, as if there were no human emotions and six desires in him at all.

"Why steal?" Lin Zhenhua asked again.

"I'm hungry." The thief replied with two words, and he groped around, and when he found the half of the turnip that the peasant had just thrown down, he picked it up, wiped it with his sleeve, and ate it eagerly.

"Xiaohua, let's go." Yang Chunshan said to Lin Zhenhua that for a thief, all he could do was save him from the peasants, and he couldn't control anything else. If Lin Zhenhua hadn't been present at the time, Yang Chunshan wouldn't even be happy to care about this.

"Okay." Lin Zhenhua nodded, and asked the thief with concern: "Brother, are you really okay?" Can you go home on your own? ”

"It's okay, big brother." The thief replied, and as soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly turned his face to the side and spat out a mouthful of water. He ate half of the radish on an empty stomach, and his stomach was like a river turning over at the moment.

Lin Zhenhua suddenly felt compassion, he remembered that he still had two rice cakes in his pocket that he had taken from the director of the Mao factory to take back to Xiaofang to eat, so he took them out and handed them to the thief: "Brother, when you are hungry, don't eat raw radish." Here's two pieces of rice cakes, give it to you. ”

The thief was stunned for a moment, stretched out his hand to take the rice cake, opened the paper packet, and a fragrance came to his nose. This kind of rice cake is pounded out by farmers in the countryside with green vegetables and glutinous rice, and fried in tea oil when eating, which is extremely fragrant. The thief was not polite, he picked up a rice cake, ate it in three bites, and his eyes began to rejuvenate, and he was no longer the indifferent look just now.

"Alas, you are young, you should do something, how can you steal something." Yang Chunshan also squatted down and said to the thief in the tone of an elder. He saw that Lin Zhenhua took something for the thief to eat, so he was not in a hurry to leave, and the surname Suo chatted with the thief for a few words.

"I'm a black guy and I don't have a job." The thief said.

"What about your account?" Yang Chunshan asked.

"I am an educated youth, my household registration is in Yunnan, and I ran back." Thief Road.

Lin Zhenhua knows a little about the affairs of Yunnan's educated youth. Since 1968, Yunnan's agricultural reclamation system has been accepting and rehousing more than 100,000 young intellectuals from all over the world, mainly from Yanjing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Yucheng, Kunming and other places. The educated youth of Jiangnan Province were not originally placed in Yunnan, but one year, a leader of Jiangnan Province somehow had a whimsical idea to send some of the educated youths in his province that year to Yunnan, and it seems that Lan Wufeng should be one of those unlucky experiments. In terms of time, when Lan Wufeng went, he should only be fourteen or fifteen years old, that is, he had just graduated from junior high school.

In later generations, Yunnan educated youth is a very famous group, the reason is that a large number of cultural celebrities such as Wang Xiaobo, A Cheng, Chen Kaige and so on were born among the Yunnan educated youth, and the second is because the vigorous return of the educated youth to the city originated in Yunnan. At the end of 1978, Yunnan educated youth because of the death of a female educated youth in medical affairs, lying on the rails to stop the train to Yanjing to file a complaint, until the blood of the central government, which contributed to the change of the policy of the educated youth, so that tens of millions of educated youths across the country can all return to the city.

The turmoil of educated youths returning to the city first occurred in Yunnan, and there is also a specific reason, that is, the living environment of Yunnan educated youths is very bad, which has exceeded the bottom line that young people can bear.

Of course, there is another legend about Yunnan educated youth, which we will talk about later.

"The central government has a policy, and the educated youth have begun to return to the city, in fact, you don't have to run away." Yang Chunshan said.

The thief said: "I ran back last year, at that time my mother was sick, no one took care of her, I wanted to ask for leave, I couldn't do it, I couldn't help it, so I ran back." Now I don't have my account and files, and I don't have anywhere to do things. ”

"Isn't there anyone else in your family?" Lin Zhenhua asked.

"My dad died early because of a work injury, and I was only three years old at the time."

"Oh." Yang Chunshan replied softly, and couldn't help but turn his head to look at Lin Zhenhua, Lin Zhenhua's parents also died of work-related injuries, but Lin Zhenhua's fate was better than that of this thief, mainly because the factory where his parents worked was a big family, and the pension for his family was relatively generous.

"Isn't it true that an only son doesn't have to be an educated youth?" Yang Chunshan asked suspiciously.

Lan Wufeng smiled faintly: "This is just a policy, whether to go or not, isn't it a sentence from an official?" ”

Lin Zhenhua felt some sympathy for this thief for a while, and he continued to ask: "Then what do you and your mother usually live on?" ”

"My father's unit paid my mother a pension of 10 yuan a month, and it turned out that my mother could still work as a temporary worker, so she raised me. Last year, she got sick and couldn't do a temporary job, and now my mom and I live on the 10 yuan a month. ”

"Just 10 bucks to live?" Lin Zhenhua was shocked.

The thief showed a self-deprecating smile: "Of course I can't survive with these 10 yuan alone, so I have to tell my mother that I can go out and do small jobs to earn some money." ”

"What do you do?"

The thief smiled silently, and his smile was full of mockery of himself. Lin Zhenhua understood that the small worker he was talking about was actually stealing.

"I asked the police station to arrest me more than a dozen times, and each time I went in, locked up for two hours, and then released again. The police also knew about my family's situation, and if I were locked up, my mother would starve to death, if not from illness. Sometimes, stealing something is caught by the family, just like this, and there are times when you get beaten and hit harder than that. "The thief was talking about someone else's business, plainly.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Lan Wufeng, and when I cut in line, everyone called me Fengzi."

"Crazy?" Lin Zhenhua didn't react, "What do you mean?" ”

Lan Wufeng corrected: "It's the peak in my name, the peak of the mountain. However, after calling for a long time, I can't tell which peak it is, and it's okay to say that it's crazy of a madman. ”

"Why?"

"I fight hard and dare to fight hard, so my friends call me crazy. Actually, if I really wanted to fight, those fellows just now wouldn't be able to stop me at all. However, I stole their stuff and they hit me as I should, and I can't fight back. ”

"There is a way to steal." Lin Zhenhua somehow remembered such a sentence.

"There is a way to steal." Lan Wufeng asked.

That is, even a thief has a moral standard for a thief, what to do and what not to do. It's not a shame to be a thief, it's shameful to not follow the rules of a thief. The fact that you should be beaten up for stealing something shows that you are a strict thief. ”

Lin Zhenhua's words were a bit shocking at the time. In those days, everyone only evaluated a person as good and bad, either/or. In later generations, people's understanding of the world became more diverse, and there were new standards for evaluating various things. Lin Zhenhua remembered that there was such a joke circulating on the Internet, a woman who sold prostitution said to a corrupt official: Although I came out to sell, I sold my body, and I am cleaner than you.

"There is also a way to ......" Lan Wufeng muttered the word, and couldn't help but ponder. For more than a year, he has been accustomed to hearing insults from everyone, and he has long been self-defeating about his fate. If it weren't for his sick mother, maybe he would have chosen an even more ridiculous path of no return. However, the young man in front of him, who was not more than a year or two older than himself, kept calling him a brother, and he also said that there is a way to steal. Yes, what Lin Zhenhua said about morality refers to morality, but in Lan Wufeng's heart, another word came to mind, that is, morality.

"Well, you should go home early after eating, and don't let your mother worry about it." Lin Zhenhua said, he took it out of his pocket again, took out the two yuan he had just earned, and stuffed it into Lan Wufeng's hand, "Take it, buy some nutritional products for your mother." My name is Lin Zhenhua, I am from Hanhua Machinery Factory, when you are really difficult, you can come to the factory to find me. ”

Lan Wufeng took the money, did not refuse, and did not say thank you. His cultural level is not high, and he doesn't know that there is such a literary saying in the world as "great grace does not say thank you", but he also knows that it is too light to say thank you at this time.

"Brother Lin, my family lives at No. 16 Lujia Lane, if the eldest brother has something to do with the younger brother, despite the command, the younger brother is willing to stick a knife in both ribs." Lan Wufeng promised emphatically. He doesn't have anything now, only his own rotten life, and if he wants to repay Lin Zhenhua, he has to stick a knife in his ribs.

Lin Zhenhua looked at Lan Wufeng's childish face, listening to this promise full of vicissitudes, he didn't feel a little emotional, he patted Lan Wufeng's shoulder and said, "I don't have anything to do for you now, but I hope you don't do this kind of thing in the future, and do something serious." ”

"It's so easy to do serious things." Lan Wufeng sighed, "Actually, my mother also knew that I was stealing outside, she beat me at first, and then she could only hug me and cry." I wanted to promise her that I would never do this again, but I couldn't, and if I didn't do this, my family would starve to death. I was reluctant to let my mother starve to death, and my mother was reluctant to let me starve to death. ”

Lin Zhenhua said: "Fengzi, you go home first." I'll come to you in a few days when I'm free, and we'll talk about it and see if there's a way to make some clean money. ”

"Thank you, big brother." Lan Wufeng hugged his fists to Lin Zhenhua and thanked him with Jianghu etiquette.