The old people in the countryside usually teach their grandchildren that if they hear someone shouting their name when they walk at night, they should not say yes, and pretend that they didn't hear it, because there are dead ghosts looking for the dead ghosts. If you say yes, you may be chosen, and I have experienced this firsthand.

In the summer when I was nine years old, my parents would often take me to visit friends' houses, and during that time, my father loved mahjong, and at that time, their mahjong play partner was relatively fixed, and usually such family gatherings, we children would also go to join in the fun. Women will choose to sit together and chat and enjoy the coolness, because their parents are living their own world, so they don't bother to care about these more monkey-like children, and most of them will give a few cents to pass away. The children, on the other hand, take the pocket money given by the adults and buy all kinds of snacks or gadgets, so the whole family is usually happy at such times, and I am no exception.

A few children as old as me went to the river one night to fish for thorn fish, which we called Huang Lading locally, and at that time they used their mother's embroidery needle to bend earthworms and a bamboo pole with a thread. The fishing spot is at the junction of two rivers seven or eight hundred meters down the road of my father's friend's house, where there is a bridge, and my friends who often fish know that this kind of fish likes to live on the edge of the old river the most, and the longer the years, the more there are.

There are many bridges in Hongcun, some of which are older than grandparents, and the one we went to is a stone arch bridge, which has now been demolished and rebuilt into a cement bridge. It turned out that there was a very big and deep pool under the bridge, and the water flow was in a whirlwind shape, and I heard that a woman jumped from here because of emotional problems in the early years, and was swept into the rubble pile below, and it took two whole days to build a dam upstream to stop the water before the person was fished up.

Our children have only heard about this matter, and it seems that it is a matter of my father's generation, and the death is not from my own village. In addition, after so much time, gradually, people began to forget about it. The bridge is particularly two, in the summer people often go to enjoy the cool, at night there is not even a mosquito, a little poor health has to wear a long sleeve.

We don't have a float when fishing, a single line and a single hook, throw it down, it all depends on the feel. Huang Lading is strong and greedy, once he bites it, he swallows it and then runs into the hole, and the bamboo pole can be bent. That night, the luck was still good, and there was a small bucket of water when I fished, all of which had to be the length of chopsticks, and the whole body was very beautiful. One of them was very strange, it was actually white, I had never seen a fish of that color, and it was bigger than the average yellow pepper, and I remember very well, it was the last one.

Because there are three friends, when it comes to dividing the fish, everyone especially wants the white one. Some people say that I caught this fish, and some people say that I dug the earthworm, and I brought the pole! The dispute continued, so I used the most primitive method, rock-paper-scissors, and the person who won in the end was not me.

Kiko is the winner, he is three months older than me, and he was supposed to study in the same class as me, but then he stayed in school twice.

Kiko got the white fish from the bucket and threaded it through its gills with thatch, and we all had to go back to our parents, for it was almost time for them to leave. It was on this 800-meter-long road, when there were rice fields on both sides and a dirt road, and Xizi was happy that her luck was good, and I and another little friend were full of envy but helpless.

Not long after walking out, Kiko suddenly let out a "hey", then turned her head and said, "Who, who called me?" ”

We didn't care about Xizi's behavior at all, we just continued to walk forward, and Xizi stopped in place for a while and then chased after him and asked, "Didn't my mother call me just now, that voice doesn't sound like it, it's a woman anyway." ”

I didn't hear any woman shouting Kiko's name, so I didn't answer, and after walking a few steps further, Kiko stopped again and said, "You're calling me again!" Then he spun around again and said, "Who, who called me?" "I remember very clearly, Xizi repeated the question several times, and we were a little inexplicable when we asked, anyway, we didn't see the person who called Xizi, and we didn't even hear the voice, only Xizi alone emphasized that someone was indeed calling his name.

This little episode quickly faded away with the end of the parents' reunion, and we were taken home by our respective parents, but since then, Kiko has never been well.

Kiko's fish was kept as a treasure that night in a water tank outside, which his mother used to pickle vegetables in the winter, and took it out to wash it in the summer to remove the taste. The next morning, we were going to study together, the second grade morning class was going to school at half past seven, we were the farthest from the three families, and Xizi's family was the closest, and when I arrived at the door of Xizi's house that morning with a tea jar with lunch, his mother told us that Xizi was sick and asked the teacher to take a vacation.

When an adult came forward, the children naturally didn't expect how serious the matter would be, thinking that it was just a common cold or something, which was very common. In the evening, when I got out of school, I saw Kiko sitting on his father's bicycle newspaper rack with a black silk scarf wrapped around her head, saying that she had just finished hanging up a drip from the health center. His father said that he would have to take a leave of absence tomorrow, so let's continue to carry the message.

Kiko didn't come to class that week, and on Friday night, her father and mother went to Kiko's house, holding fruit and biscuits in a mesh bag. I was envious because it was something I wanted to eat but didn't have to, so why didn't they buy it for me but gave it to my classmates? A sense of grievance made me reluctant to go along, and I was even jealous that Kiko could eat good food because she was sick, so I also pretended to be sick at home.

When my parents returned, their faces were full of sadness, and when they saw me who claimed to have a stomachache in the quilt, they rushed to the hospital overnight. The barefoot doctor prescribed me medicine, and I took it anyway, and there I heard the adults talking about it, saying that Kiko was afraid that he had some strange disease, and that he had been suffering from a fever, and that the doctor said that he had injected the best penicillin here with the maximum dose, and that he had been practicing medicine for many years, and he had never seen such a seriously ill child.

There was an old lady on the side, also from our village, who usually loved Shinto, and interjected: "Isn't that kid messing with something unclean?" Would you like to find a gentleman to take a look? ”

Kiko's father is a party member, and he is also a member of our village committee, and he is considered an official. At that time, the village cadres were fighting each other very much, and whoever had a little bit of a handle was easily caught, and they were also divided into various factions, Xizi's father did not think about this layer, but because of his status and identity, he had to give up this idea.

Going to the county seat to see a doctor was a very big deal at that time, and rural people would not easily take a four-hour bus ride all the way to the county until that step. In the village, you are a big and small person, but when you enter the city, your eyes are black, and you are nothing. Xizi was sent to the county seat, and after a few days, he asked someone to come back to borrow money, and he heard the news that the child was talking nonsense at night, and always said that there was a woman calling him, and he often cried inexplicably in the middle of the night, crying so that the people in the same ward in the hospital were panicked.

During the day, he was fine, as soon as it was night, the high fever came, and the doctors were helpless, anyway, thinking that it would not work, they arranged for a car to be sent to the provincial capital, and asked him to prepare money at home.

My father has a good relationship with Xizi's father, so naturally he has to make up a copy, and the letter is a relative of Xiko's family, and when he talks about it, he also thinks that Xizi has encountered something unclean. Then the man asked my father, "Do you know a Taoist priest, the gentleman surnamed Cha in Wulipu, can you show the Taoist family a look?" ”

The gentleman he was talking about was Cha Wenbin, at that time Cha Wenbin was a real disarming and returning to the field and did not ask about the world, his father remembered that Xizi's father was a friend, and Xizi and I were classmates, so he went to Wulipu out of love. It was the second year after my aunt's accident, Cha Wenbin came again, he was always very happy every time he saw me, I never thought he was a Taoist priest at that time, judging from the way he dressed, how could this person be a peasant, at that time he was very thin, I would always pay attention to his cheeks, because the contours there were too obvious.

Cha Wenbin was invited by his father, and then went to Xizi's house, there was no one in his house, and he was accompanied by his father. He came to my house in the evening, and as soon as he entered the door, he called me over and asked directly: "Xiaoyi, where did you go to play that night, and if anything strange happened, tell me about it." ”

Then I saw my father standing in the doorway with a bucket on his face, and I was afraid of my father, because he was very strict, and nothing good would happen if his face was dark. There was something shaking in the bucket, and I glanced at it, and it was the white fish inside, and it turned out to be alive.

I went through the rough picture of what had happened, including how the fish was caught, because I thought it was a remarkable achievement at that point. But the fish was not left by his father, but taken away by Cha Wenbin.

I heard a conversation between him and his father in the yard, and he said he was a little late, and then he left. My father was with me that night, and my mother cooked a lot of meals at home, all of which were half-baked, and I don't know why she was still busy in the kitchen so late at night, with a bamboo basket full of pots, and a lot of incense and paper money......