This story was told by my father on New Year's Eve, which was yesterday, and after listening to it, I decided to record it.

He speaks in the first person:

I ran out of a cinema in Shanghai, found a ride-hailing service, and rushed to the hotel in the rain, feeling a little anxious and hesitant. After getting out of the car, I walked briskly into the hotel lobby, where the fourth brother who had asked me to meet here had been waiting for an hour. He almost recognized me in a "hand-holding" manner, even though we hadn't seen each other for nearly thirty years.

The mysterious fourth brother

I was born in a village in the southernmost part of Linyi, Shandong Province, called Dabuzi. Four or five kilometers to the south, it is the boundary of Jiangsu.

The fourth brother added me as a WeChat friend about two years ago. He had called me two or three times before, and the main content was to introduce who he was and tell me about his childhood. He enthusiastically talked about me when he and his third uncle were drinking, and I responded enthusiastically, but I wondered in my heart: "Where did this fourth brother come from?" ”

The fourth brother is also surnamed Han, but he is not related to me by blood. Since I became an adult, I have had so many things in my head that many childhood memories have been overwritten. I forgot a lot of things, I forgot a lot of people, and naturally I don't remember the fourth brother in the same village very much. But as soon as he grabbed my shoulders and hands, a familiar and friendly smell came to my face—it was the smell of Dabuzi.

In this remote village, there are many things that cannot be explained by culture or tradition, and they are secretive, cold and untouchable.

The fourth brother brought the story of Dabuzi and resurrected the village that was gradually fading in my heart.

The shadow of death

The fourth brother was four or five years older than me, and when he was in elementary school, he was at the end of the famine years, and the rice tank at home was empty. One day, when the fourth brother came home from school, he found that the door of the house was locked, and the adults were doing farm work in the lake (in the cultivated land). Tortured by hunger, he lifted half of the door, squeezed open a crack, and got in.

I can't find anything ready to eat in any corner of the house, but this is not difficult for the fourth brother. His eyes lit up, and he found a pot of pickled cabbage gnocchi that his mother had pickled, and he ate them one by one until his whole stomach almost broke.

It is common knowledge that pickles contain nitrites, but few people believe that eating too many pickles can kill you. The fourth brother was young at that time, and most of the pots of pickles were in his stomach, and nitrite began to invade his internal organs. It wasn't until the adults came home after dark that they found the fourth brother fainting on the ground, unconscious.

According to the fourth brother, during the coma, he only had a faint breath left, and his heart almost stopped. The barefoot doctor in the village tried everything he could, but to no avail. Waiting for the fate of the fourth brother is to be abandoned.

Death has never been absent in Dabuzi. In this heyday of a village of more than 2,000 people, there are bizarre deaths from time to time, which test the fragile courage of the village's children.

After the fourth brother's father gave up the treatment after the barefoot doctor gave up the treatment, he invited a Chinese medicine doctor named Zhang Daozhong from a neighboring village. This person is well-known and is especially good at acupuncture. The fourth brother's body was densely pierced with a layer of silver needles. A week passed and there was no response; Ten days have passed, and there is still no sign of awakening. The famous Chinese medicine doctor had no choice but to stop coming to the door.

The father couldn't bear to let his son be so angry, and when there was no one to support him to continue treatment, he scrubbed the fourth brother's body with cotton wool dipped in water every day. He believes that this will allow those "pickles" to slowly drain away. In his free time, he knelt beside his bed and prayed. On the fifteenth day, the fourth brother showed some signs of improvement. On the sixteenth day, the fourth brother woke up.

The fourth brother said that his father gave him two lives. Because of this incident, he became his father's favorite child. However, this special father-son relationship also buried great pain in the future.

The world is hard

Perhaps because of the pickle poisoning incident, the fourth brother's intelligence was affected to a certain extent, and in his teenage years, the fourth brother's brain melon has not been very useful. But the fourth brother, who regained his life from the Ghost Gate, knew the heaviness of fate and began to learn to turn his life around. In those days, the best way to change your destiny was to go to college. But for a child from a poor family, going to college is a distant thing.

Like many rural children, the fourth brother's college dream was exchanged for his hard work and sweat, the same dedication as cattle and horses, and even bitter begging again and again. He made the list in the first year of taking the college entrance examination, and his score was enough to go to the only local university, but because he couldn't pay the tuition, he wasted the admission letter. The fourth brother started his part-time job and wandered to Jiaozuo, Henan, where he wanted to save some tuition fees to repeat his studies and prepare to take the college entrance examination for the second time.

In the summer of 1992, the fourth brother's younger brother and classmates, a total of three people, decided to pick up the train from Linyi to visit the fourth brother who was working in Jiaozuo, Henan. When the car passed through Yanzhou, they were arrested by the joint defense team. At that time, it was at the peak of the fight against the "blind current". Those who leave their hometowns without permission and blindly enter the city to survive are often arrested and sheltered by local governments in this name, and there have even been many incidents of "blind streams" dying in shelters.

After the younger brother and his party were arrested, they were not immediately sent to the containment station. The members ordered them to take off their shirts and stand in the yard, and if they could hold out for four hours, they would let them go. Four hours in the sun can easily cost you your life. The younger brother asked if he could change the punishment. The joint defense team took a bucket of five liters of water and said that if one of them could drink the bucket in one go, they could leave.

The younger brother chooses to try this new punishment on his own. Before drinking water, he cried and begged, when drinking water, don't hit him in the stomach, if you drink so much water, your belly is likely to explode if you punch it. The joint defenders acquiesced. The younger brother drank the bucket with difficulty, and the punishment passed.

After arriving in Jiaozuo to meet the fourth brother, the younger brother told about the incident, and several people hugged their heads and cried. The fourth brother said that he couldn't understand how the world could be so difficult and how life could be so unbearable.

The fourth brother and his younger brother decided to return to their hometown, and they picked up the train together and embarked on the return journey, but coincidentally, they were caught again in Yanzhou. The joint defense team members still recognize their younger brother, no matter how the fourth brother says that he is a student preparing for the university entrance examination, and how he cries how difficult it is for the peasant children to go out, he still can't get the sympathy of the joint defense team members. In the end, between the two punishments of exposure to the sun and drinking water, the fourth brother stepped forward, drank the bucket of water, and endured the severe pain in his stomach and went on the road.

When I returned to Dabuzi to see my relatives and recount the experience of going back and forth, everyone hugged each other and cried again.

The fourth brother who became the boss

The fourth brother I met in Shanghai was already a boss. A few years ago, he opened a company in Chongqing, specializing in auto parts, and now he has a lot of money.

This time, the fourth brother came to Shanghai to discuss business, and by chance he knew that I was also in Shanghai, so he changed his itinerary and wanted to meet me and tell me his story. "I'm willing to tell you these things, but I don't want to tell anyone else." The fourth brother said.

The fourth brother, who became the boss, talked about some shady scenes in the industry and the price he paid for breaking out of nothing.

The fourth brother, who is less than 50 years old, said that his greatest wish is to earn a little more money and take his sister-in-law around the world.

The sister-in-law is almost ten years younger than the fourth brother. When he was in love, the fourth brother lied about his age, saying that he was seven or eight years old, and it was too late for his sister-in-law to find out.

But the fourth brother said that if he can deceive for a while, he can't deceive for a lifetime, and if his sister-in-law wants to divorce, he is willing to leave the house and leave all his assets to her. The sister-in-law rejected his suggestion. The reason is that he was poisoned by eating pickles when he was a child, and he had a problem with his brain, and he was worried that after she left, the fourth brother would not be able to bear it. I don't know if this counts as sweet talk.

The fourth brother is tall and has a loud voice, and after becoming the boss, walking on the street is not much different from other bosses. But few people know about the hardships experienced by his generation of rural children.

The imprint of tragedy

For many people, the countryside is a red-hot soldering iron, leaving a deep imprint on every fresh life. No matter how much time passes, the imprint still aches. Even if they later enter the city and have the so-called beautiful life, the tragic imprint on these people will not easily disappear or heal.

The biggest grief of the fourth brother's life is not that he almost died after eating pickles, not that he couldn't pay the tuition fees when he was admitted to college, or that he drank five liters of water under the scorching sun, but the death of his father.

After the death of the fourth brother's mother, the father's life was empty all of a sudden. He lives alone in a small courtyard on the edge of the village, accompanied by a thrush and a dog. Two years ago, the thrush flew away, leaving only the dog.

On the day of the death of the fourth brother's father, it snowed heavily in Dabuzi Village, which seemed to cover everything. Someone found that the courtyard where he lived was on fire, and when he tried to save it, he couldn't get close. When the fire went out, my father was found lying on the briquette stove, still sitting.

The day before, the fourth brother's father went to the eldest brother's house to ask for money, but he didn't ask for more, he asked for a hundred, which is the child support payable by each son. The sister-in-law didn't give the money, saying that the family was too poor to take it out.

The father turned around and went to the second brother's house. The second sister-in-law didn't say no, but said that even if she took out a loan, she had to give the 100 yuan, but she had to lend the money first.

The fourth brother's father left and did not go to the third brother's house again. According to the analysis of the villagers, after returning to the house, the father began to drink alcohol, and accidentally fell on the briquette stove after drinking too much. It is also said that the father deliberately poured on the briquette stove, because the mother once said that she hoped that after her death, she would not be cremated, keep a whole body, and be buried with her father in the future. The father felt that in this way, he would not have to go to the crematorium, so that he could keep the whole body and save his sons a cremation fee.

Father just didn't want to live anymore

In fact, the fourth brother's father is not short of money at all, and the fourth brother will remit enough living expenses from Chongqing every month, and he will also send money and things during the New Year's holidays. But the father felt that he had five sons, and he couldn't just let the fourth child take the money. After being rejected by his two daughters-in-law, his father's heart was cold. He finally found a suitable excuse for not wanting to live, and decided to disappear into this world on his own.

On the night of his father's death, the fourth brother was like a sieve of chaff in his own home, sweating like a pulp, like taking a bath. He thought he had a cold, so he hid under the covers, thinking that he would be fine with a good night's sleep. Later, I realized that my father had given him a piece of jade that he had worn for decades, and the jade that was still soaked in his father's body temperature gave him a connection that transcended time and space. In this way, the father announced to his beloved child that he would say goodbye to this world.

The next day, the fourth brother received a call from his hometown during a meeting. Putting down the phone, he insisted on finishing the meeting, but didn't listen to a word.

He did not return to Dabuzi as soon as possible, but dealt with the company's affairs and rushed home on the third day. He didn't return in time because he was afraid; back, because he knew that he couldn't escape everything he had to face after all. However, he also became a sinner in his family because of it.

A child who has suffered too much from an early age will not cry in adulthood because tears have dried up.

The fourth brother has deep and unspeakable remorse, but he also believes that everything has a destiny and fate is unstoppable.

The fourth brother said two things that shocked me, and I even thought it was fake and impossible to happen.

The first was the thrush that had been flying for two years, and it flew back on the day my father died. Some say it came to hold a wake for the father. Sure enough, the thrush hovered in front of his father's coffin for three nights, and on the day of his father's funeral, he flew away.

The second is the dog raised by my father, on the day of the funeral, as long as I see someone who wears filial piety, I wag my tail, and I bark when I see someone who does not wear filial piety. In the future, whenever the fourth brother returned to his hometown to go to his father's grave, the first action of the puppy when he saw the fourth brother was to make a move. Afraid that I wouldn't believe it, the fourth brother flipped out a photo in his phone. The earth-dog, which looked very ordinary, really stood up on its hind legs and used its two front legs to shake the fourth brother.

The fourth brother said that on the day of his father's funeral, it snowed heavily in Dabuzi.

Once again, the snow covered the entire village, and everything was as pure as ever.