Chen Erkou is my neighbor, I have forgotten what his original name was, and no one in the village will remember it except his parents, including his brothers and sisters. Some people also call him Chen Ergou, as for whether it is a second button or a second dog, I still can't tell the difference.

My father and he are cousins who are not far away, I once asked my father Chen Erkou's name, my father hesitated for a long time, and finally replied to me with a scolding: Why do you care so much? You can just call him Erkouye, they all call him that.

Yes, they all call it that, the whole village, young and old, whoever it is, the dolls in the east of the village, the old people in the west of the village, the women in the south of the village, and the men in the north of the village.

One

Erkouye's house stands on the west side of my family's old house, with two houses, one tiled house and the other earthen house.

The tiled house is located in the north and faces south as a hall, with mottled black and gray walls, and is divided into two rooms, the one in which is used as a bedroom. There were only two stools and a table in the outer room, old and ringing on the uneven floor. If it weren't for the bare red bricks on the walls, you wouldn't have seen that this was a brick-built tile house with cement.

No one has an impression of when this tiled house was built, and from the direction of my house, the entire wall is patched up, and the cracks in the distribution have not been repaired, but new wounds have been added, very deep and thick, like the bare and raised green tendons on the shriveled arms of the old man in the twilight.

The other mud house is used as a kitchen, the kitchen is a nice name, in fact, it is a pot stove made of mud, a chimney stretches from the house to the roof, and occasionally a few wisps of cooking smoke come out of it, to cope with the hour of cooking, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. There are some sundries and dilapidated scrap in the extra place.

Straw is hung on the exterior wall to keep out the rain and avoid being washed away by the rain. During the rainy season, after a long time, the rain sticks to the straw and it is difficult to dry, and it smells of rot, and when it rains again, the ground is full of urine yellow rain, and the feet are itchy for several days when they are wet.

Two

Erkou Ye has a total of six brothers and sisters in their family, three boys and three girls, and he is the second.

He was lame, his right leg was deformed, and if the normal orientation of the ball of the foot was called 90 degrees, then the ball of his foot was more than 180 degrees valgus. When walking, the right shoulder is leaned down, the back is slightly rickety, and the right hand is used to support the leg and step forward. In the process of stepping forward with the right leg, the body shape is back to the right or slightly to the left, and the leg is thrown forward by inertia, and the right leg cannot be forced, so the left foot must be stepped out again in a short time, and the sound of the footsteps landing is like two lines of monotonous syllables, "tom - pop".

From behind him, he looks like a penguin, clumsy but not cute. The pace is like a calligrapher writing extremely tedious characters, and it takes a lot of effort to hold back the strokes perfectly.

I have seen him wear two clothes all year round, wearing a padded jacket in winter and spring, and short-sleeved in summer and autumn. The cotton jacket was blue, the short sleeves were white, and the whitening fabric was either bloated or thin on him, and the patches on his clothes were like bullet holes left by a gun fired in time, and there were wounds on his shoulders, chest, and stomach. He still has something to admire about him, and the lines of each patch are well-behaved and methodical, which seems to him not to be a burden, but a skill worth showing off.

He had an incomplete bicycle and somewhere he got it. The rusty frame, the flat tires, and if it weren't for the fact that the two wheels were round, it would not have been obvious that this was once a bicycle.

For a long time afterward, I often saw him sitting on the threshold, rubbing the frame with sandpaper, or moving in front of and behind the house. Even when I greeted him, he refused to look up at me, and the phrase "something" came out of his mouth and ignored me.

The summer night always comes very late, like a white man guarding the door, leaving and right to prevent any impurities from mixing in, forcibly lengthening the day. The night never dared to come with brazen fanfare, and the night crept quietly to the corners, windowsills, tree roots, and finally blindfolded people, but they were all frightened away by the noisy chirping of cicadas, and they were not at all open. I was doing my homework in the yard when the evening breeze turned the pages of my book.

"Ahem~"

It was him who came, and this cough, which seemed to be choked with phlegm in his throat and about to die, was his characteristic signal. The figure of the second buckle man turned around me several times, and the soft harmony of the tires rolling on the cement floor was light and cheerful. I wonder why he's so agile today.

"Look, handsome or not?" A creaking bicycle is alive and well beneath his ass, exuding a metallic bluntness.

His way of riding a bicycle is very special, sitting on the back seat with his buttocks, holding the armrests with both hands, his lame leg on the pedal, and the other leg sitting on the support and pushing backwards, slowly moving forward, not so much riding as paddling, and it is a single "oar".

At that age, I was very disgusted with doing homework, and when I was anxious about my homework, I was especially disgusted with his triumphant face.

"Can you go somewhere else to show off? Don't bother him with his homework! ”

Before I could tease him, my mom roared, and he swung his uncoordinated body and ran away with his bike in his hands. Go back and throw me a sentence, do your homework well, and I'll take you for a ride.

I didn't dare to ride in his car, not only because I was worried about the quality of the car, but also about his legs. Relatively, I still envy him. After all, he was freer than me at that time, and he could fulfill his wishes faster than me.

Three

There is more leisure time in the countryside, except for the busy spring planting and autumn harvest for a while, the rest of the time is used for parents to visit the house. The basic plot of all their stories is different, but the protagonist has changed from today's Zhang family to tomorrow's Li family, and so on and so on, without discounting.

Of course, many times, for the story of the protagonist being the second buckle master, other people have become allies and discuss the crusade against him.

The second buckle master doesn't like to visit the door, so there are few opportunities to show up. Except for him as my neighbor, no one else should see him very often. He has an ancestral craft – shaving his head. This was passed down by his father, and several other sons and daughters sneered at this means of livelihood under the tide of the development of the times, and he was the only one who persevered.

Every day when the rooster crows, the sky is bright, and I still hear the sound of the bicycle turning when I am still in bed, and he hums a tuneless tune, and goes out with great interest, going to other villages to shave people's heads. When the night had covered every house, he would shout my name, throw me something to eat, sometimes a piece of candy, sometimes a bag of dried radish, and then go straight home without looking back.

Young people can stand the temptation of snacks, so I have also developed a special skill of listening to people, specializing in his footsteps and bicycle. Every evening, I sat on the threshold, quietly waiting for the familiar sound to reach my ears, and I ran to the gate of the courtyard as if I had been caught, waiting for his favorite surprise. Although they didn't say a word, they understood each other's thoughts, and it was like a grand trading ceremony.

I don't know how much he would earn in a day, but at that time, of course, I deserved to enjoy these surprises.

Four

When mahjong was not as popular as it is now, there was a gambling appliance called "small card", which was similar to mahjong, except that it was a long strip of printed matter, with "flowers", "strips", "tubes", "ten thousand", one to nine arrangement. Something like this also provides a great way for everyone to pass the time. and gambling for fun.

The gambler's mentality is always the root of human inferiority, and he wants to fight for everything, but the result of losing nine out of ten bets is all down to luck. Erkou Ye is no exception.

Since then, he has had more frequent opportunities to communicate with everyone, and he has fewer and fewer opportunities to hear the sound of bicycles in the morning. What started as a surprise a day turned into three days, five days, and finally disappeared.

Everyone is happy to play with him, because he always loses, and when he loses, he is not convinced, and he still loses by borrowing money. Once in a while, I won once, and the footsteps that passed by my door became brisk, and I walked with my head held high, and walked with the wind. If you lose, no matter who you see, you don't lift your eyelids, and your steps are heavy as if you are carrying a mountain, and you slowly move home.

The more you lose, the more you borrow, the more you lose, and everyone doesn't want to play with him, not because it's not fun, but because he can't afford it. Everyone laughed at him for this, and he always smiled flatteringly, "Don't tight, don't tight, there's still ...... here", patted the shriveled pocket of his jacket with his hand, and his voice slowly lowered.

Five

Later, the national government decentralized the poverty alleviation policy, and he was naturally listed as one of the poverty alleviation targets, with a monthly poverty relief fund of 400 yuan. Since then, his waist has risen again, but everyone is still reluctant to take him when they play cards, and no one tells him the reason. He had to stand outside the circle stupidly, pointing, and feeling sorry for the person who made the wrong card, "You pig brain, can you lose this card?" "Tut-tut, I know that this one should be released! ”…… Pounding his chest and stoning his feet, he looked like he regretted losing money.

This state has been going on for a long time.

As time went on, I was already in high school, and on a weekend off, a familiar voice came again, and everyone who was playing cards was attracted to him, and he led a woman to swagger past us. The woman's ragged clothes and disheveled hair, her eyes dodged, her mouth never stopped, and she muttered not knowing what she was saying. It's a crazy woman. There was a lot of discussion, some people said they picked it up, some said it was stolen, and some said it was bought.

Everyone has no evidence, but they don't know who said what, and everyone came to a unified conclusion: he took this crazy woman home to be his wife and spent 500 yuan.

The efficiency of reproduction was vividly demonstrated in the second buckle master, and soon the crazy woman became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. Since then, he's picked up his long-discarded craft again, going out early and returning late, but more often, but he never throws me snacks again.

I had waited for him at the gate of the courtyard, and when we looked at each other, he immediately turned his head when he came into contact with my gaze, and hurried home.

From birth, crawling, walking to growing up, his daughter is completely in accordance with the normal steps of a family development, and since then everyone has one more topic to ridicule him, "The second button is happy now, the family is happy, and when the girl grows up, I will buy you food and ......."

"The daughters are all married, and I have to give birth to a son." Every time he was so ridiculous, he replied so proudly, and he couldn't understand the meaning of everyone's ridicule.

When her daughter was six years old, I was in college, and it was hard to get home from home. It was only during the Spring Festival that I heard the rustic folk voice say a painless greeting.

It was only when I returned home that I learned that during the busy farming season that year, because no one took care of her, the daughter of the second master drowned.

Listening to my father, the second buckle did not shed a single tear that day, the old dog sat paralyzed next to the corpse, slapped the cold corpse vigorously, scolded the child for not being angry, disobedient, and scolded like a dumb firecracker. The crazy wife stood on the sidelines and laughed stupidly, muttering something that everyone still didn't understand.

When the child dies, no ceremony will be held, and everyone will disperse in twos and threes after a few words of comfort. That night, someone saw Erkouye carrying a small quilt on his back, moving crookedly towards the cemetery at the west end of the village. After a while, a small flame lit up faintly.

When I saw Er Buckle Ye again the next day, he was still humming a minor tune, still the tune that was out of tune, but the syllables were stretched, but his voice became hoarse and vicissitudes.

Six

Later in the Spring Festival, I and a childhood playmate helped him paste the Spring Festival couplets, the autumn wind swept away the leaves like all the places that could be pasted, the two of us also flew away quickly, he warmly invited us into the house to sit and drink a cup of tea, we looked at each other, considering his wife and environment in the house, politely declined. He seemed to perceive our thoughts, smiled wryly, and muttered: This is the New Year, and there will be no rest.

When I reached what we thought was a safe distance, I glanced back at him and his house, except for the little red that could be seen in the spring couplets, it was still the same black and gray wall, crumbling next to the earthen house with straw, and even more rickety backs.

I said to myself: Chen Ergou seems to be old.

Even I was ashamed to call him Chen Ergou in front of people in private.