It was a July day in 1991.

On this day, the sky was overcast, and by one o'clock in the afternoon it was even more cloudy, thunder rolling, and rain falling like water poured into a sieve.

Chen Yan said goodbye to Xie Zhaojun, editor-in-chief of the city newspaper, and hurried to the train station.

Because it was Sunday, Chen Yan didn't ask the driver to take him to the newspaper, he wanted to come out to breathe, and stayed in the company's office for a week, not to mention the office, even if he didn't do anything a day and just sat for eight hours, he would sit stupidly and paralyzed, and if he didn't come out for a walk, Chen Yan felt that his whole person was going to be mechanical.

Chen Yan bought the ticket and got on the bus early before the departure time arrived.

This train is a slow train from Chenzhou in Hunan to Hengyang, and every township station stops along the way, which is used to facilitate the commuting of railway workers.

There are two types of work on the railway, one is the electric section and the other is the public works section, these two types of work are responsible for cable inspection and maintenance and the safety inspection and maintenance of the track, the staff of these two types of work start from the morning to walk a few kilometers, more than ten kilometers, sometimes all day outside, they must take this slow train when they go home from work, because the express only stops at the city station, and the distance between a city and a city is fifty or sixty kilometers, no one can go so far, and it is even more impossible to return on the same day.

It just so happened that the train stopped at a small station in the township and passed by the freight station of Chen Yan's company. The fare of two yuan, the train only stopped at a small station in Xujiadong on the way, and when it arrived at the Jiedong station where Chen Yan was going, it took about 40 minutes to go up and down.

This train is the starting station at Chenzhou Station, and there is a special station-side track in the station, and it takes two hours to wait for passengers from the departure train.

The attendants on the train are still these staff who go out to work in the morning, and the slow train is not as fast as the fast train, especially the express train, for example, Guangzhou to Beijing, at least 20 hours, that is still on the premise of not being late, if it is delayed, it is more than that, so the crew and train driver have to change shifts halfway. Who can go to class for more than 20 hours? The body of the iron is almost the same, and the rules for safe driving of the railway do not allow such operations.

This slow train is different, it will take four or five hours to the terminal of Hengyang, the crew and the driver do not need to be replaced, from Hengyang to Chenzhou, and then Chenzhou to Hengyang are these staff, as long as they wait for the passengers at noon for these two hours to let them take a nap.

Chen Yan got into the car early and waited.

If it is not the Spring Festival and holidays, this train can be from the entrance and exit of the staff commuting at both ends of the platform, here there is generally no one to stick to the post, and there is no post, it is useless to set up a post, take the express to the distant provincial capital, if you want to evade the ticket from this entrance platform to get on the train, on the car several times the ticket inspection is no matter how can not escape the pass of the ticket, it is better to simply honestly buy a ticket from the waiting room to cut the ticket on the train, but also free of the handling fee for the ticket.

And like Chen Yan to take such a close car, the fare is only two yuan, in fact, you can buy a ticket or not, this train is almost all the staff of this line, check the ticket to have a railway work permit, railway workers take the train is not money, no matter where you go, as long as it is in the country, in addition to the long-distance certificate of the unit, a short-distance work permit can sit until the sky is dark and no one cares about you.

This trip is more free.

Within an hour of the start of the car, the ticket inspectors generally do not check the tickets, because there are no people, and most of the attendants sit in the dining car and blow the air conditioner, telling jokes to drive away the monotony and boredom of the work.

When the train traveled for more than an hour, there were two stops along the way to some passengers, at this time the attendant began to check the ticket one carriage by one, and the passengers who evaded the fare also changed from a fish that slipped through the net to a dead fish, and it was at this time that Chen Yan had already arrived at the station and got off the train, he could successfully evade the ticket and then save two yuan.

And Chen Yan didn't want to do this, even if the ticket inspection didn't start, he had already gotten off the bus, and then invalidated the two-yuan ticket and threw it away.

This is a matter of people's quality, this is not a matter of two dollars, Chen Yan is the secretary of the party committee of a company, not to mention, after all, he has read so many books, written a lot of articles, and published two books.

Although the money for publishing the book was thrown into the water, it didn't even bubble a single one, and it was like visiting relatives and friends to give gifts to people I knew during the New Year's holidays, but it was Chen Yan's hobby, since the day he joined the work and entered the political department of the unit as a propaganda officer, and now he is the secretary of the party committee of the company, Chen Yan's pen has never stopped writing.

Today, Chen Yan went to the newspaper's editor-in-chief Xie Zhaojun's house to deliver the manuscript, which was the newspaper he rushed out overnight to solicit essays.

Chen Yan knows that his works are at the bottom, but he still wants to give it a go, not all of them are right to practice writing, and he is not hired, Chen Yan still cares, he wants to be famous, he wants to be famous, this is his lofty ambition since the day he began to love literature, he wants to achieve, and he is also striving towards this goal.

At this moment, Chen Yan sat in the carriage of the train, and he did not forget to read a book in his hand.

The train has not started, the pantograph on the roof has not touched the high-voltage cables on the roof, and each carriage has not yet been powered.

The electric fan on the ceiling of the carriage hung motionlessly, although it was raining in the sky outside the carriage, the temperature of the universe still did not decrease, and the rain hit the ground and soon lowered the temperature of the concrete floor, and this temperature evaporated into hot gas and spread in the air, and drilled into the carriage, the carriage was dull and hot, and even the breath had a smell of dust.

Chen Yan used the straw hat he brought to go out in the morning to fan the wind to dispel the smell while looking at the book intently, only to read for a while before he saw a shadow cast on the page of the book he was reading, and the words on the page were immediately blurry and unclear, Chen Yan couldn't help but raise his head to take a look.

At this glance, Chen Yan's heart seemed to be struck by the thunder and lightning in the sky outside the car window.