Jia Zhengshu in the east ravine finally died, died drunk and fell into the river, the corpse could no longer see the appearance of a person when it saw the light, if there was no clothes and hair to prove it, people would definitely treat him as a brute who had lost his footing, and let him rot in the ditch.

Jia Zhengshu died a miserable death, but this is still a good end for him, because many people have long prepared for his death, and his staying alive is the biggest headache for the villagers, and he is a scourge to everyone.

The second son, Jia Qingsong, was the first to rush back, but he didn't even see his father's body. The eldest daughter, Jia Qinglan, brought her husband and many young people from her in-laws to support the next day, cutting down trees and building sheds, and setting off cannons and drums to have the main force. According to the custom in the village, the governor's neighbors will take the initiative to come to help, because feng shui takes turns, and every family needs help from outsiders. Jia Zhengshu's great achievements made him an exception to the village customs, and the news of his death spread quickly, but no one took the initiative to help, and even if the cannon sounded, people were lazy and didn't want to get involved in this bad luck. Jia Qinglan hugged the child and asked for help from house to house, and Jia Qingsong also ran the whole village with red eyes, and the villagers gradually gathered in front of their father's mourning hall.

The funeral is a big ceremony, but someone's ceremony is called a ceremony, so Jia Zhengshu's funeral was only completed on the fourth night when he lay down in the coffin. The charcoal fire burned red, the cigarettes were stacked in a room, the branch clerk and the clerk had a fire and a good cigarette respectively, the cooks each had a pack of miscellaneous cards, and the other individual customers had to hang up the gift and pay the money to get one. Originally, these groups of people should have been around the mourning hall, intending to accumulate yang energy to send the last ride for the deceased, but it is obvious that tobacco and charcoal alone can not win people's hearts, and the people who come to participate in the condolences will gather in a clean and bright place to wait for the funeral feast, and no one will pay attention to the candle flame in front of the coffin.

When the time came, the branch secretary gave an order in the microphone, and everyone rushed into the funeral hall like reincarnation, and the scene of hundreds of men, women and children grabbing places was very spectacular. The first round of seats is the most popular, because no one knows whether the back dishes are leftovers from the front, not eating is a choice, but not eating is really sorry for their gift money, usually at home is not such a good hospitality, this meal is worth several ordinary people's tooth sacrifices. So you have to rob, the children who can't grab it will be scolded by adults for being incompetent, the adults who grab it and let it out will be remembered by the beneficiaries a lot of favors, and the people who grab the next few rounds can only sprinkle the bag on the wine, because the leftover wine can't be served on the table, this is an unspoken rule, and it is also a human sophistication. So after coming and going, the last ones left in the dining room are often a large number of old rivers and lakes, and they can just dry half a catty of wine in the wild history of ten miles and eight towns, and then spit out the truth after drinking, and it is effortless to listen to the secret at this time.

The first person to mention the stubble was Liu Shoubing, who was leaning against the corner, and he was too uncomfortable to say in his throat, so he knocked the cup on the table, looked up and said: "It is said that Jia Laosan was horizontal when he was alive, I think it was like that, I thought that when I beat him under the table, he only dared to curse me behind my back, and I had to take a detour when I saw me two years ago!" ”

"He didn't mess with you, why did you beat him?" A strong man asked with a sneer.

"Why didn't he mess with me, he poured half of the wine into the guest's cup at the wedding banquet I hosted, you said you should beat it or not!"

Everyone laughed and said that they should be beaten, and an old man interrupted with a shrill voice: "He is not cross?" Look at my shoulder, and then look at the back of my neck, this goddamn bastard beat me last year, and I haven't been completely well yet, if I hadn't called the police first, I'm afraid that the grass on my grave is enough to feed a few fat pigs now!"

Liu Shoubing looked at the old man's high shoulders, and then at the black scar on the back of his head, and said with a proud smile: "He is bullying you for being weak, you let him come to me to try?" See if I don't teach him to be a new person, besides, how did you provoke an old man in his sixties, dare to attack you, and you are not afraid of paying for your life if you make an accident? ”

"Where did I mess with him? We usually don't even say anything when we meet, how can we provoke him? He just sees me as a bully and wants to be majestic on me! The old man put down the wine glass that was brought to his lips and said excitedly.

I don't know who in the crowd shouted: "He said that your old man Zhou is not serious, and he wants to prostitute his mother, and he beat you when he is angry, and the police comrade recorded it himself." Laughter suddenly filled the dining room, and some leaned back and even burst into tears.

Old man Zhou was so anxious that his face was flushed, and he yelled at the crowd: "Let go of his mother's fart, he is wronged and chews his tongue, this kind of bastard can tell what he can't make up!" Besides, my son is getting married, and I need to fuck the idea? I didn't hear that at the time, otherwise I would have slapped him in the face! The face talk didn't work, everyone laughed even harder, and Old Man Zhou hurriedly added: "No wonder I saw his mother setting up incense tables at the gate during that time, burning yellow paper and cursing him, but it didn't take long for her to die, most of them were angry with him!" ”

The matter of being angry with his mother was really weighty, and everyone stopped laughing in their hearts when they heard the words, and buried their heads in thinking about Jia Laosan and his mother. It's not hard to find someone who can do typical things, but it's always immoral to name and say bad things about people at people's funerals, they are all responsible people, and even if they have to do bad things, they need a leader. So, everyone's eyes returned to Liu Shoubing again.

Liu Shoubing was also very interesting, and when he lowered his head to sip wine, he secretly glanced at everyone, and then slammed the table and said: "Speaking of my own parents, this Jia Zhengshu is really not a person, do you remember?" How did he rob the fucking fat pig that year, that method can only be described as obscene!"

Everyone knew about it, but they didn't speak. Liu Shoubing leaned back slightly, crossed Erlang's legs under the table and said: "He drove his parents to sleep upstairs in the pigsty, locked up a little pig below, quietly opened the door of the pen in the middle of the night to let the little pig go, and got up in the morning to say that the second old man had lost the little pig, and he had to pay a pig to a pig, so he went to the second old man's house and took away the big fat pig they had worked hard to feed for a year." Do you say that this can be done by people, I feel embarrassed when I talk about it. ”

Everyone was angry when they heard this, beating their chests and sighing, and they couldn't end it.

The funeral banquet time has long passed, but the dining room is still full of people, and the climax is even more lively than the meal, Sun Xuemin sent the cook and the plate staff to clean up the scene, wave after wave or two, only to see the person who went but did not come, he felt that his authority was despised, so he rushed into the dining room with the microphone, and saw that Liu Shoubing was spitting and telling a story to everyone, so he coughed hard at the microphone, and everyone paid attention to him, and several cooks who were sent to deal with the leftovers also took the opportunity to wipe the table shiny, and ran out with a smoke.

Sun Xuemin walked slowly to Liu Shoubing's side and said: "Don't delay the business if you talk about anything, the singing and harmony are quite warm, people invite you to help, not to steal." Don't huddle around, it's time to work, it's time to go home! ”

"The vigil is long, it's not yet 12 o'clock, don't you have some fun, let everyone stand all night like this, we are not framed, he Jia Laosan has done a lot of bad things, if it weren't for the face of his son and daughter and son-in-law, who would want to take the initiative to stay up all night and suffer." Liu Shoubing said with a smile full of wine.

"But he's lying in the coffin over there now, and it's not ethical to count his crimes behind his back when everyone is dead." Sun Xuemin said.

"If Jia Zhengshu talks about human ethics, he will live for at least 20 more years, anyway, when people die, they are a pile of loess, and these things are not talked about in vain. Boss Sun, didn't he do anything ridiculous in front of you?" Old man Zhou's question drew everyone's attention to Sun Xuemin, Sun Xuemin was stared at by everyone uncomfortable, and immediately said: "Why not, does he still have people who dare not offend?" I have been the party secretary in this village for so many years, and he is the last person I want to deal with. In the first month of that year, only a few days after the word Dafu was posted on my door, he ran to my house and stabbed people. ”

When the outsider Wang Shangshan heard this, his eyes lit up, and he hurriedly squeezed in front of the people and said: "I testify about this, he is really a bull, unreasonable, that year I took Zhengxiang to his house to reunite the New Year, thinking that they were all sisters and brothers and had a little money in hand at the time, so I gave my father-in-law and mother-in-law a thousand red envelopes, and gave him five hundred, at that time it was still pleasant, but when we were having dinner at Sun Zhishu's house, he came up and stabbed with a knife, fortunately I was fast, but the palm of my hand was also pierced to block his dagger." While speaking, he showed everyone the scar on the back of his hand, everyone was surprised, and asked him why, he put his hand in his pocket and rolled his eyes and said: "The problem is the money, he said that I, who is a brother-in-law, looks down on him, because I gave my father-in-law and mother-in-law a thousand yuan, and only gave him five hundred, he was not happy at the time, but he didn't think about it so much, and then he figured it out and wanted to give me some blood, so he chased to Sun Zhishu's house and stabbed me in the hand. ”

Sun Xuemin instructed the runner to bring a pot of wine and a few plates of melon seeds and candies, and asked the person in charge of the fire to burn a big fire pit among the people, took out a cigarette from his arms, and hid aside to swallow the clouds and spit out the fog.

The short silence led to the end of the topic, and seeing that everyone was about to break up, Liu Shoubing slapped the table again and shouted angrily: "Why are you all so soft, has no one cleaned him up except me?" ”

Old man Zhou said: "This kind of person doesn't need us to clean up, God will naturally take care of him, he followed after only half a year of his mother's left, isn't this retribution." I think it was when his mother was alive that he burned incense and burned paper to curse him for a few years, and then as soon as he died, he was dragged down to be buried with him, and there was no one to clean him up below! These ghostly words made everyone's backs flutter, and the cold wind blew through their brains and cleared up a little, and everyone remembered that they were at someone's funeral, so they sighed and discussed with each other whether it was necessary to go home and sleep.

"I probably shouldn't have said this, but the third uncle's personality is really not good, and even his relatives hate him. When he made trouble during the Spring Festival last year, he was punched in the eye by me and almost went blind, but I didn't feel guilty at all. Jia Qinggui, who finished writing the ceremony, squeezed to the table with a pen and paper and a stool and said: "Last year, our Jia family celebrated the New Year, and when it was his family's turn to hold a banquet, he locked the third aunt in the kitchen alone to cook, and the firewood stove was stuffy, who could stand it inside." When the third aunt was smoked to tears, he scolded her for crying and crying during the Spring Festival was unlucky, and she was going to hit the tongs, and our brothers took a lot of effort to pull him down, and he drank a few glasses of wine at the table and began to have a seizure, a pot of red soup was splashed on the third aunt's head, and the third aunt held her head and scolded him for being a madman, he lifted the bench and smashed it, and I also took a beating. Of course, the fight back was not intentional, I was also throwing my fists in pain, and by the time the scene calmed down, he was already lying in the snow and swinging. ”

Liu Shoubing looked at Jia Qinggui with praise and said: "Yes, this kind of bastard won't be honest if he doesn't clean him up, but your kid is also lucky, if he dies at that time, you will kill the leper and compensate the good guy." ”

Sun Xuemin interjected: "Are you private? Why didn't our village office hear anything about such a big thing? ”

Liu Shoubing smiled and asked Sun Zhishu for a good cigarette, took two puffs and said: "If you want me to say that this matter is private, it is better than the public, the ancient saying is that it is difficult for a clean official to decide family affairs, you can't manage this kind of internal family conflict, he didn't kill people and didn't set fire, why do you fix him?" Maybe you'll be bitten back, it's not worth it. ”

This strong man with a flushed face and shaking his head is very good at finding topics, Sun Xuemin really waved his hand and said: "I can't manage it, sometimes even if I know that he is doing something wrong, I can't oppose him, just like the year before last, he took his fucking household registration booklet, ID card and poverty certificate to my office to ask for a subsidy, saying that he was helping the old man to receive it, knowing that he was talking nonsense, but it was not okay not to give it to him, he had all the documents, I didn't make sense." ”

Old man Zhou stared at Sun Xuemin with wide eyes and asked, "Then did you give it to him?" That's thousands of dollars a year, what the do you give him a living? ”

Sun Xuemin said: "I can't help it, I really can't tell if he sues him when something happens, but just that once, as soon as the subsidy arrived, I asked people to send it to his mother's house, and as for whether he went to ask his mother for it, I can't care about it." ”

"This kind of person dies one by one, and even the person who has to rob his mother's money is not short-lived. Fortunately, my baby is filial, he goes to school and earns his own money to marry his daughter-in-law, and he also gives me money for tooth sacrifice during the New Year's holidays, although it is only a few hundred yuan per time, but compared to this Jia Laosan, he is simply filial to heaven. Old man Zhou said with a smile.

Sun Xuemin laughed, and everyone laughed too, although everyone laughed differently, but the atmosphere in the dining room was finally warm.

After the hour, the gongs and drums of the mourning choir sounded, and then the second round of artillery fireworks outside the house was ignited. The sound of gongs and iron drums is strong, the old musicians are skilled, because the song has been passed down from generation to generation, many ordinary people can hum a passage when it rises, in fact, the things played are not pleasant, and the yin and yang weird tunes linger in the mountains, and people are panicked to hear. But it doesn't matter, this was originally for ghosts, the old artists in the village rely on this to eat, and most of their descendants regard this as a fashion. Artillery fireworks are different, this kind of scene-grabbing thing is simple to operate and colorful, especially in the cold night, the smell of their explosion is particularly good, so except for the descendants of the deceased who wear filial piety must stay in the mourning hall to bow and bow, everyone else can run and run, and all hide in an open place to watch the fireworks.

The mourning hall was full of mud, Jia Zhengshu's coffin was erected on three rows of benches, the top was covered with thick cloth, incense and candles were burned in front, and a group of juniors knelt in front of the incense candles. I am not sure if there is any feeling of mourning and mourning, and the pain must have been felt. The young juniors are not sensible and don't care about the dirty clothes, so after kneeling, they run to grab the candy with a smile. The older ones are much more uncomfortable, their knees hurt and their pants are wet, and they can't get angry openly, so they have to find a dark corner where no one is behind and scold: Phew, if you die, you have to pull people to suffer!

The night wind blew, and a lot of the paper on the wreath on the roadside was blown off, and the pieces inside also whined, and they looked like they were about to fall apart at any time. Someone proposed to Sun Xuemin to move these things into the mourning hall and put them next to the coffin, because the wreath was originally equipped with a coffin, but Sun Xuemin flatly refused, on the grounds that there was too much mud in the mourning hall, which stained the wreath and did not look good when it came out of the funeral. The wreath is not moved, and the person who takes care of the wreath also saves trouble. So, after some excitement, only his lonely coffin and corpse were left in Jia Zhengshu's mourning hall, the voices of people were getting farther away, the incense candles were burned out, and an incandescent lamp hanging in the corner was hanging in the corner, which could be regarded as guiding his soul.

Jia Qinglan was very angry when she saw this desolate scene, and asked Jia Qingsong, who was gambling happily with her friends around the fire, to guard their father's funeral hall. Jia Qingsong was also very angry, his dead father had already made him unpopular, and now Paixing was disturbed, and because this dead father was reprimanded in public by his sister who had already married, he was so angry that he quarreled with his sister. The brother-in-law came to persuade him, but he almost helped his sister scold him, so both his brother-in-law and sister were scolded by him.

The quarrel became bigger and bigger, and when it was about to develop into a fight, it was finally heard by the old Jianghu who were nesting in the dining room to roast the fire, and several people rushed over to preside over the scene, and heard Jia Qingsong roar: "Why do you want me to go!" Why don't you go, isn't the daughter you married out of your own life! Everyone is playing their own business, why should I guard that broken coffin! If my mother hadn't persuaded me, I wouldn't have come back this time! ”

Jia Qinglan choked up and shouted: "I'm afraid that you will be caught by Dad's bad temper again, what kind of trick are you playing in front of me!" Isn't it your son's job to keep a vigil for him? How much effort can it cost you to go to the mourning hall to change an incense wax paper candle! After speaking, he simply howled and cried in the crowd: "It's all this kind of person, everyone bullies me, what did I do in my last life to be reincarnated in the Jia family to suffer, I found people, I bought the coffin, I did the funeral, what else should I do as a woman!" ”

Crying worked, and Jia Qingsong didn't talk back.

Sun Xuemin stepped forward and said: "Don't make noise, don't disturb the purity of the deceased, my sister and brother should talk about everything, calm down, and go together." ”

Jia Qinggui said: "Yes, the third uncle hasn't gone up the mountain yet, you are arguing again, and the third aunt will be even more sad when she sees it." ”

Liu Shoubing also said: "No matter how he is, he is also your father, even if he doesn't like him, he should send him up the mountain with all his heart." ”

Jia Qingsong muttered in the air: "He didn't treat me as a son for a long time, and I didn't treat him as a father for a long time, he personally kicked me out of the house last year!" ”

Although the voice is small, the weight is heavy, and a few short sentences will definitely lead to a past that is enough for everyone to talk about after dinner, but no one asked at the scene at this time, Old Man Zhou's throat moved, and when he was about to make a bird, Liu Shoubing slapped him back.

The east is white, and the time for the funeral has come. Gongs, drums and firecrackers rang out, and the juniors knelt down for the second time, and the wreath finally came to the coffin. The gong stopped, the coffin finally moved, and the two ends of the four big poles fell on the shoulders of the eight young people led by Liu Shoubing.

Mr. Feng Shui chose the cemetery in the most sunny place on the southern slope, the terrain is very good, but the road is difficult to walk, the mountain is steep and muddy, the coffin is heavy, and three waves of young and middle-aged people take turns to carry it. When it came to Shangdakan, dozens of township neighbors worked hard together, pulling in front, lifting in the middle, pushing back, people squeezing forward, the sound of the horn shook the sky, and before reaching the destination, the coffin was not allowed to touch the ground.

When he was buried, water slowly flowed out of the coffin, I don't know if it was the unfinished water in the corpse, or Jia Zhengshu's tears of repentance and gratitude.