Xinghua Village (then called the brigade) surrounds the tail of the Zengjiachong Reservoir. There are more than ten miles of road from the entrance of the village to the reservoir dam from the mouth www.biquge.info of the village. The construction of the reservoir started in 58 and was completed in 60, and in 61 it began to store water and stocked a large number of fish fry. It has not been more than 10 years now, and I have never released water to fish. In spring and summer, it is common to see large schools of fish chasing and playing in the water.

I don't know when some people began to use detonators to fry fish, and often the harvest was huge, and the largest fish weighed more than 30 catties.

The reservoir belongs to the state, and of course it is illegal to fry fish, it can only be done secretly. The reservoir headquarters has a special person to patrol it, and those who are caught will be sentenced to prison.

I remember that the second day of the fifth lunar month in the 76th lunar month was my grandmother's 60th birthday. My father took a leave of absence and came back to accompany my grandmother for her birthday.

On the third day of junior high school, my father went to the reservoir to fish and brought back a big silver carp in the evening, which was almost one meter long. It was said that someone was blowing up a fish on the other side of the big bay, and the fish was blown up, and somehow struggled to swim to the place where he was fishing. He caught it and hid it in a firewood canopy, and then he got it back.

The mother was a little scared, worried that someone would report her and be arrested by the reservoir inspectors. The father said disdainfully: "You say that you have long hair and short knowledge, and my fishing command is not Mo to see, when did you ask?" The gang of fish bombers were on the other side of the river, and when the people from the reservoir went to chase me, they asked me, what are you afraid of? “

The mother put her mind at ease, and happily weighed the fish, fifteen catties owed two taels, disemboweled, cleaned the belly, cut off the waist and dried the fish meat to make preserved fish, and boiled a big pot of fish head and tail with fish soaked internal organs, and the family ate happily. Unexpectedly, she was very happy and sad, and her sister Xiaoling was unfortunately stuck in her throat by a fish thorn, and she couldn't get down. She was anxious and in pain, tears washing her face. The mother was so anxious that she asked her father what to do, and the father said with a bitter face:

"What can I do? Uncle Nan is dead, I haven't heard of anyone in the village who can turn fish bones, so I will endure it tonight, and go out by boat tomorrow morning to go to the health center to have a look. The doctor should have a way to get it. ”

In fact, I wanted to speak a long time ago, but I hesitated a few times and held back, I don't know if Daddy Nan's magic will work in the end, I don't know the bottom of my heart. Since my father said so, let's go out and try it.

"Why don't you let me try!"

Before my parents could react, I continued:

"Daddy Nan taught me how to turn bones."

The parents were obviously stunned, and even the crying sister was full of surprise.

"Since it was taught by your Nan Daddy, then it must work, that year your father (note: Dad, pronouncing the tooth sound) was also stuck by fish bones, and your Nan Daddy melted down with a bowl of water, why didn't you say it earlier? Hurry up! Look at your sister's pain, hurry up and help your sister! The mother reacted and hurriedly urged.

At this time, it has been half a year since Meng Qingnan's death.

Inside that oiled paper bag that Daddy Nan passed to me was a yellowed booklet, smaller than a small-print homework book. Some are thick, thread-bound, flipped from back to front, and there are vertical columns of traditional Chinese characters inside. Handwritten brush letters, beautiful block letters, with some strange graphics. In those days, the village was holding a funeral for Meng Qingnan, and my parents were helping but no one paid attention to me. I skipped school for a day, hid behind the barn house at the brigade headquarters and faced the worn-out Xinhua dictionary, and roughly spelled out the characters I didn't know and the traditional characters, and finally knew the contents of this booklet.

Most of the books are filled with spells and talismans and how to use them. Among them, there are commonly used folk techniques such as bone water, hemostasis, pain relief, convulsion, and fetal capture. In the middle section are some secret recipes for curing diseases, and there are also several recipes for making rai. But these are only the first half of the booklet, and oddly enough the second half. There are some ancient characters written on it that I have never seen before, obliquely a bit like a seal book, but no, I flipped through the dictionary over and over again, all of them did not match, and I still didn't recognize any of them after a long time.

I'm not interested, I'm interested in the spells. I believe that Daddy Nan memorized the mantra as he instructed, memorized the mantra, and then practiced as required.

Now I am familiar with my chest, and I can't wait for a chance to show it, or I want to verify it to see if it works.

I immediately calmed down, took a clean rice bowl, scooped half a bowl of water, faced the east, eyes slightly closed, and tried to think about the appearance of Daddy Nan, holding the bowl in my left hand, stretching out the two fingers of the right hand to form a sword finger, drawing a "well" on the surface of the water plus three circles of curly tails and three points, and reciting the incantation while rowing:

"Look up at the blue sky, the master is by your side, look at the blue sky with your second eye, the master is in front of you...... I am as anxious as the law."

Then he handed it to his sister and asked her to drink it all in one go.

Later, my sister told me that she didn't believe it at the time. Unexpectedly, it was really spiritual, and the fish bones went down less than two minutes after drinking the water. My sister asked me when I learned from Daddy Nan, and if I had learned any other spells? I gave her a roll of the eyes and taught her a lesson:

"Eat salty rice and be careful, is this what one of your sisters' family asked?"

My sister was so angry that she chased me half a mile.

It's just that my parents are as indifferent as they are, maybe they think that Daddy Nan is so good to me, and it is expected that he will teach me these things.

On the Sunday after the Dragon Boat Festival, Hu Hansan and I Huang Shiren, Zhou Papi, and Zashan Diao made an appointment to go to the back mountain to cut firewood.

When I was younger, the most I did was chopping wood. Pulling pigweed is generally a matter for older sisters and younger sisters.

The "four-genus household" family is more special. My father, who was the main laborer, worked in the mine to get paid, and my mother took my three sisters and brothers to the countryside, which was actually extremely inconvenient. Every year, my father had to give money to the team, so that a few of us could get the rations. But my mother is very strong, she has to fight inside and out, she works on the team to earn work, and the chores of feeding chickens and dogs at home are all done by my sister.

As long as it is not a rainy or snowy day, when I come back from school in the afternoon, I have to go up to the mountain to chop firewood, and I will chop firewood all day long during the winter and summer vacations. I don't know how the house can be burned so much at that time, cooking rice, boiling water, boiling pigs, a little lazy, and then catching up with the rain for ten days and half a month, the family has to cut and burn one by one wet firewood, wet firewood smoke is heavy, the kiln-like green smoke is billowing, and the stove is so bad that people can't stand next to the stove. My mother would scold me for being lazy, and I had to eat bamboo shoots (spanking with bamboo sticks).

Chopping firewood has our own fun, and we don't feel bitter when we get used to it, and all kinds of competitions are better than singing and telling jokes, comparing who pees the highest and farthest, who cuts the most firewood, and who climbs the tallest and bolder trees, and digging out the bird's nest and poking the honeycomb. Especially in the mountains in spring and autumn, wild fruits and wild vegetables are even more surprising, feasting and blooming.

In fact, a few of us often mingle, and there is also a secret, that is, we can hide in the mountains and play poker, or play "running beard". But these things are only available to me, I have a deck of playing cards, a deck of honor cards, all of which I got back from my father's mine, old goods given to me by my uncle who played cards with my father. In addition to the cards, I also had a set of military chess and a game of chess, which I asked my father for money when I was in the mine.

The big guy loves to walk with me and play with me, and in addition to listening to me tell stories in the vernacular, it actually has a lot to do with these things of mine. You know, at that time, I was the only one in the whole village with so many entertainment tools at the same time.

That day we decided to go to the pine forest in the back mountain to cut pine branches. The pine branches are dry and resistant to fire, and are the best firewood.

When I arrived at the destination, I first came to spray a "water gun". Huang Shiren held back a big bubble of "cow urine", sprinkled the highest, farthest and longest time, and laughed at us for not being like men. A few people were playing and laughing. Sitting and taking a breath, the mountain eagle proposed to play a few games of poker first, and I said that I didn't bring playing cards, and several people were a little disappointed. Hu Hansan said punish me for telling a vernacular (storytelling). I said I hadn't read a new book lately, I didn't have a new story to tell, I proposed to sing, and then I just sang. Sing the song "Little Bamboo Pai River Midstream" from the movie "Shining Red Star". The five of us sang in unison:

"The middle reaches of the small bamboo row river,

Walking on both sides of the towering green mountains,

The eagle spreads its wings,

Even if the wind and rain are sudden,

On the shoulders of the burden of revolution,

Go forward and follow the party.......

Smash the old world of all evil,

Thousands of miles of rivers and mountains are covered with splendid ......"

In addition to reading books and telling vernacular (storytelling), I also love to sing. There is nothing to do and I am yelling, and from time to time my singing voice floats outside the village, I don't know if I sing well or not, anyway, everyone is quite happy to listen to me. There was no music teacher in the school, and I was usually asked to lead the singing during music lessons. It even affected a few of them, and they yelled with me when they had nothing to do.

Hu Hansan, like me, also likes to sing, and sings quite well, while Huang Shiren has the loudest voice, and as soon as several people open their voices, the mountains echo and ghosts cry wolves.

At this moment, a large group of chickadees flew out of the woods behind them, chirping and hiding in the bamboo forest on the side. A few crows, crowning "wow, wow" above our heads, circled.

Huang Shiren picked up a small pebble and threw it upward. His strength was great, the stones were thrown far away, the crows did not fly very high, as if they had hit one, their wings fluttered, and a few black feathers were dropped, and then several crows flew together to the big camphor tree on the mountainside, and the terrible cry was uncomfortable.

The crow is an ominous bird. Maybe it's the old "Wow Wow Wow" tweet, which we call here "Old Wow". The old people said, "Wow wow, woe comes."

The crow is just as annoying as the "crying bird".

After singing the song, everyone lost interest, and it was still "the work of labor". Go back early, and during the lunch break, you can go to my house to play chess and poker for a while.

After "study", it was decided that the five people were separated, and each person was allowed to climb only one tree, cut off the bottom two circles of branches, (keep the top one, let the tree grow bigger and taller, which is equivalent to pruning the tree), and then pull over the nearby branches and move them to another tree like an ape, cut down the branches, and then vacate to another tree. In this way, in short, you can't get down the tree in the middle, and in the end, you can see who vacates the tree at least and loses. Those who lose have to steal food from their homes for a treat.

When Huang Shiren turned to the fourth tree, he was getting carried away and roaring on the tree, when he suddenly called "ouch". Then there was the sound of branches breaking, and then a series of "blah, blah". He fell from a tree more than two feet tall with a broken pine branch, and then he could be heard crying.

A couple of us freaked out. Throwing away the firewood knife in his hand, he slipped down from the tree with a "squeak" and "squeak", and rushed to his side to check if he had fallen seriously and where he was injured?

I was a little far away, and when I rushed over, I couldn't help but be surprised, and my face was as pale as Liu Deyong, Zeng Sanhong, and Zhou Xiaojun.

Huang Shiren's cheeks were a little swollen, his left eyelid was also red and swollen, and his eyes were narrowed to only one line. A few lines of blood lay on his face like an earthworm, and there was a lot of blood on the fallen leaves and grass under his feet, and there was also blood on the ground.

We scrambled to lift him up from the overpowered vines. Under the vine is a large raised stone, covered with a layer of moss, sitting on the stone, Huang Shiren is still crying. Crying and screaming

"Woo, my foot, woo, my foot is broken...... Whining. ”

I didn't care about his pain, and cut his torn trouser leg with a firewood knife, only to see the wound on the outside of the left calf turned out and opened, like a baby's mouth, bubbling out with blood. The bleeding must be stopped first, otherwise the blood will run out and people will die, I understand this truth.

It doesn't matter so much. Let a few of them help Huang Shiren. I closed my eyes slightly, thinking about the appearance of Daddy Nan, squatted down with my left hand stuck in the flesh above his wound, pointed at the void with my right hand and pointed at the wound, quickly drew the word "seal" plus three circles and then took the tail three small circles to the right to close the pen, and recited the incantation in my mouth at the same time:

"Holding a golden knife and riding a bull, cutting off the Yellow River water does not flow, the left foot pulls sand to plug the sea, the right foot pulls the sand to plug the sea gate, plugs the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, plugs the red door and does not bleed, the snow mountain boy comes, the snow mountain boy arrives, the snow mountain boy stops, I am in a hurry like a law."

Then I stood up, struck hard with my right foot, plucked a young leaf from the little camphor tree beside me, and put it on his wound, and said to him:

"That's it! Don't cry. ”

The bleeding stopped. Except for a small amount of blood oozing from the leaves, no blood flowed down. My friend was dumbfounded and looked at me with a look of surprise on his face. Huang Shiren forgot to even cry, and then I asked him what was going on? Why did you fall off so well?

Huang Shi? Ren muttered and scolded: "I am a damn old wow, I threw a honeycomb on my head, and the bee stung me in a panic, and somehow the tree skill broke and fell." Fortunately, this yellow vine below, otherwise it would have died......"

"What's the matter? Wow throwing honeycomb at you? Hu Hansan and Liu Deyong's eyes were about to pop out.

"I saw Lao Wow fly over my head, and then something fell on my head, and I reached out and touched it, and it was a small honeycomb, and a few yellow-footed wasps stung my head and face...... Ouch it hurts me......"

We were so angry and funny. Zhou Papi said: "Lao Wow, is it a sperm? You just hit it, and it came to take revenge? This, this must be a refinement. ”

As he spoke, he looked up in horror, and sure enough, three crows were still hovering overhead, making a whoow cry.

Although it was broad daylight, the sun hanging obliquely in the eastern sky was slowly climbing up the middle of the sky, but the forest on the mountain was dense and dense, the leaves of the trees and the tangled vines blocked the sunlight, and only a few mottled points of light leaked into the ground, coupled with the terrible cry of the crows, which made us feel very gloomy.

Several people hurriedly checked other places on Huang Shiren's body, there were two wounds on the left side of his head that had stopped bleeding, and the others were just some scratched skin wounds, and they were immediately relieved. I really have to thank the yellow vines that are so leafy and desperately entwined around the surrounding trees that they are entangled with each other like a big net, covering the big stone underneath, otherwise it is really hard to imagine.

There is no need to chop firewood, we helped Huang Shiren to the back of Zeng Sanhong, a mountain carving, and hurried down the mountain to send him home.

At the moment, I am full of confidence in myself, and what Daddy Nan has taught me is the real skill.