A bowl of hot noodles was handed to her hand, and she couldn't believe that the woman in front of her was Xiaoya back then, her eyes were covered under deep double eyelids, no longer watery, her eyes were lowered, and she was a little cold. The little girl following behind her was a bit like she was back then.

"Xiaoya, I haven't seen you for many years, how are you doing?"

She carried the girl from the sofa opposite and told the two guests about what had happened to them over the years.

She didn't go to school after finishing junior high school, nor did she keep up with the craze of going out to work, so she stayed at home to help and live a life of planting rice and herding cattle. Under the mother's arrangement, she married a man from the same village, her husband was honest, and she could make do with a tight life.

"Half a year ago, there was a frost, all the rape rotted in the ground, and the orange orchard was not very good, so my husband went out to work to help the family. "For the first two months, he would call home, but after that, he didn't hear from him. ”

In the current environment, there is no safe place, and there are not a few people who die in a foreign land.

"I don't expect him to live, but I always have to understand whether he is alive or dead, and I don't know if he will go hungry if he is alive, and whether there will be anyone to collect the body when he dies. ”

Halfway through this, the noodles in the bowl became heavy and could no longer be eaten. Except for a few words of comfort, it didn't bring her anything.

I was so tired, I rolled up a blanket that burned a few big holes, lay on the sofa, and when my eyelids were closed, Anqi kissed her on the face, and heard her and Xiaoya chatting for a while about interesting things when she was a child, and she consciously fell asleep.

"Brother Keming, I'm sorry. ”

"Xiaoya, what do you say?"

She lowered her head and hid her hands behind her back, "You were scolded that day, I was just watching, and I obviously had a share in stealing the fruit." ”

"Well, I still think it's a big deal? Fortunately, you didn't say anything, otherwise you would have to pay the village chief fifteen yuan more, and he would have died. ”

"You're not mad at me. She blinked wide.

"Where's the anger?"

"Hey, I've been worried for two days, and I've prepared it for you as an apology. She pulled out her hands from behind, and on the palm of her hand was a straw-woven grasshopper, all emerald green, with tentacles, six legs, and many wings.

Be careful to stick it over, and I'm afraid that it will fly away, "Why does it have legs?"

She scratched her little head and said, "Of course grasshoppers have feet. ”

"But yesterday I saw that the fat man from the neighboring class also brought a straw weaver back to school, and he had no feet in his hands. ”

"Well...... I don't know. She pinched her chin and thought about it, "Maybe the weaving method is different, the weaving of grasshoppers was taught to me by my grandmother, and she gave it to my father when she was young." ”

"Oh, it turns out that it will only be sent by a good friend, so you can also weave one for the stupid brother. ”

"Why?" she asked as she walked.

"If he sees it, he will make a noise

Take it. ”

"Wouldn't it be fine if you hid it? ”

"You're right, I've got to hide it, hide it tightly. ”

The sun sank between the mountain passes, the red clouds on the horizon were dense, the breeze blew, and the dandelions flew on the village road, densely packed. They floated in front of her eyes, or stuck to her braids and black cloth skirt.

After nightfall, the mountains echoed with strange gurgling sounds, and three small heads emerged from the grass, staring at the melon fields in the moonlight.

"Brother Kaiming, what are we doing here?" asked Xiaoya in a low voice.

"The village chief hated us for fishing a lot, we can't cheap him, we have to earn it back. ”

The stupid brother scratched his head on the other side, "So what the hell are you going to do?"

"Stealing melons. ”

As soon as the stupid brother heard this, he was the first to run out of the grass, and Xiaoya shrunk her neck to follow last. The stupid brother ran fast, didn't pay attention to his feet, stepped on a gutter, and fell in the field.

"Be careful. The two friends helped him up, and he ran to hug a large watermelon.

Xiaoya was not in a hurry, she walked in the field and knocked on this melon and that melon, and said that by listening to it like this, you can know which melon is ripe.

She learned it from adults, but no one knows which voice indicates that it is ripe, and it is estimated that the watermelon will not answer automatically.

So he found a stick and said, "Break them all and taste them to see which is the sweetest." ”

If there's no objection, let's do it.

First of all, the biggest one in the stupid brother's arms, put it on the ground, went down with a stick, split three halves, grabbed half of it in his hand, and took a bite of the flesh heart, which was light and tasteless, and he couldn't eat it.

Knock them one by one, and the fields are full of cracked red watermelons, and pick out the three most satisfying pieces.

On the old banyan tree at the entrance of the village, hang down three pairs of feet, the friends sit side by side on the fork and horizontal branches, holding melons in their hands, looking around while eating, the small mountain village under the moon, a row of flat tile houses on the mountainside, some are two- or three-story buildings, the light shines through the window, and the shadow of the tree in the yard is particularly long.

The stupid brother puffed out his cheeks, and the melon seeds in his mouth spat out far away, "Kaiming, what are we going to play tomorrow?" He would always think of this, and a child in a mountain village would have nothing else to do.

"The holidays are over, so I'm going to report to school tomorrow. "An eight-year-old child is also of primary school age.

Xiaoya nodded, "Well, my mother said the same thing." ”

The stupid brother didn't speak, he was nine years old, but no one told him about going to school, maybe his family treated him as a nerd, and going to school was in vain.

"Let's go together tomorrow. ”

"Can I go too?" asked the silly brother with a wink.

"Of course, it's just a matter of adding a table and a chair, there are a lot of stacks in the back of the classroom, and I'll move a good one for you when the time comes. ”

The friends agreed, threw the melon peel into the grass on the side of the road, and went home separately.

At six o'clock in the morning, Xiaoya was already waiting at the entrance of the village with her schoolbag and Silly Brother, the primary school was in the town, ten kilometers away from the village, there were several buses every morning, noon and evening, and the children were free to ride.

There are a lot of old desks and chairs behind the classroom, find a sturdy one, move the table with the silly brother, and Xiaoya will move the chair.

The classmates pointed and pointed, "Isn't that a fool in your village?"

"That's right. ”

"How did he get into our class?"

"I don't know. ”

"He looks very fierce, will he bite?"

"Ha, I was intimidated by the way he looked, in the village, even a three-year-old child could bully him. ”

These gossips were still the moment the head teacher stepped into the classroom, and her eyes looked around through the round-framed lenses, but she didn't even notice that the stupid brother who sat alone at the end was perhaps sitting upright and didn't attract her attention.

During recess, the dead fat man in the neighboring class took the grasshopper to fiddle on the balcony again, and when he saw the strawhopper sent by Xiaoya, he instantly compared.

"Kaiming, how do you have feet?" he asked, the same question.

"Well, of course I have feet. ”

He pointed to the legged grasshopper and said, "I mean it." ”

"Want to know?"

He nodded.

"I won't tell you. "The last time I played football on the playground, he refused to join the team, and he said that he didn't play football with children in the mountains, and he was very angry.

"I'm willing to pay ten dollars for it. As soon as he turned to leave, he said in a hurry. The proposal was very exciting, and ten dollars would be worth thirty sticks of candy at that time.

"Fifteen pieces. "The anger of rejection is still on the head, and thirty small sticks of candy are a fart.

He gritted his teeth, took out fifteen pieces in his pocket, and saw that there were at least ten more pieces in the corner of his eye, his family was mining, and he didn't know what was so great about mining in that era, but the pocket money in his pocket was not ordinary, and he immediately understood that there was a clear difference between mining and digging.

At the end of school, I used 10 of the 15 pieces to buy small sticks of candy at the commissary, gave one to Silly Brother and Little Jacob, and took the rest back and sold it to the children in the village. As a result, it was still fifteen yuan that returned to his hand, and then he had a bold idea in his heart.

"Xiaoya, how many grasshoppers can you weave at night?"

She replied with sugar in her mouth, "Two." ”

It is estimated that except for the dead fat, no one will be willing to spend fifteen yuan to sell grasshoppers, but if it is five yuan, the children in the town will definitely be excited, and everyone wants to embrace one person, which is the psychology of the children.

"I'm going to take the grasshoppers to school and sell them, and then I buy candy and sell them back to the village, so that my pockets will bulge and repeat it every day. ”

Although Xiaoya didn't understand, she said, "If you call my mother, she can weave four." ”

"Wow, in a few days, I will be the child with the most pocket money in the whole school. He cheered at the entrance of the village, but the two friends didn't react, "Don't you have your own ideas?"

Turning his gaze to the silly brother, he licked the candy and said, "I want to be able to eat candy every day." ”

"No ambition. ”

Turning to Xiaoya again, she said, "Mom said, I want to marry the boy with the most pocket money." ”

"Oh, that's a better idea than anyone else. ”

The next day between classes, three friends on the balcony of the classroom to sell grasshoppers, began to see a lot of people, willing to pay for nothing, and then a male classmate of the dead fat class bought one for five yuan, he was quite satisfied, because the fat man spent fifteen yuan, he only spent five yuan, a while of effort, their class came to two people, it is estimated that soon everyone in the school will have this gadget in their hands, follow the trend.

Until the head of the class stood behind the three of them with a black face, not only did they confiscate all the grasshoppers, but they also invited them into the office to educate them. Now that I think about it, it was the first time in my life that I experienced the deprivation of "private property" by "public power".

The class bell rang for a while before the director refused to let go, and the children ran back to the classroom, and the head teacher was already standing on the podium with his hands crossed.

"Classmate, you went to the wrong place, which class are you from?" she pointed to the strange boy behind the two.

The stupid brother pointed to the last table of the team and said, "I, where ...... Kaiming. ”

The head teacher was stunned, and the three children were called to the office again, standing by the wall in a daze, listening to the head teacher and the grade director discussing how to deal with this matter, and then even the man from the academic affairs office joined in, the man's eyebrows were very thick, his eyes were hidden in his sockets, and he had been holding a long ruler in his hand for many years, and he didn't dare to look at him directly when he met him in the corridor.

"The circumstances are serious, and it is not enough to educate them in one or two sentences, but they must invite their parents to come. "The appearance of a man did not bear any good fruit.