Seventh

On the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, the second brother went to the house of the landlord surnamed Wang, who was twenty miles away from home, to see the cattle, and when he left, his mother cried again. Grandma persuaded her mother that it was a good thing to beg for food outside instead of starving at home and waiting to die. In fact, my mother understands very well that in those years, those who can go out to find something to beg for food can reduce a mouth for food at home, and being able to live is the greatest luxury.

Since then, only the lilacs have been left in the family, but there is little hope in the days. Grandma bought 20 pounds of lambs, every day Lilac herd the sheep back to hug it, to see if it is a little heavier, Lilac understands, the family still points to it to give birth to lambs! The ducks at home go down from the waterwheel side path every day, look for small fish and shrimp to eat along the river pit, and put a little food in the evening, they come back to the nest by themselves, and rarely cause trouble, which is very worry-free. The chickens are different, in addition to going to the mountain side trees every day to find some insects to eat, sometimes they also run to other people's vegetable fields to spoil the crops, the owner of the field has complained several times, each time it is the grandmother who is shy to pay for it, and once pulled a few cabbages from the cloves and their vegetable fields to pay for the family.

Later, Grandma Lilac and the others surrounded a bamboo fence in front of and behind the house, and the fence was full of melons and vegetables. By June and July, the fence is full of pumpkins, squash, gourds, pods, sword beans and so on. At this time, the little chicken and duck also grew into a big chicken and duck, and when the chicken laid its first egg, Lilac happily carried it in her arms and trotted into the kitchen to tell her grandmother. That night, I made a snowflake egg soup, put a little green onion, and the whole house was fragrant! When you ate it, you pushed me to let it, and in the end, my grandmother divided it into three portions and ate it. When eating, the cloves secretly took a small piece of it to Mom, and Mom turned her head to wipe her tears.

It's the time of the Chinese New Year again, the eldest brother and the second brother didn't go home, and the father didn't show up at the intersection, and the mother went to the intersection outside the village with a little foot, and she didn't return until it was dark, and the nervous loss made Grandma Lilac dare not talk nonsense.

Sacrifice on the incense lit by the lilac at the age of resignation.

By March, the ewe had finally given birth to two lambs, and the lambs bleated, shrugged their ears and knelt down to feed, and the happy Lilac went to hug this one, and then to the other. Once my grandmother secretly squeezed a small bowl of goat's milk and asked my mother to drink it. After years of malnutrition and anxiety, the mother has become increasingly weakened and anxious. Mom insisted on giving it to Lilac, but Lilac ran away sensibly, leaving her mother to call in the cold spring breeze in March.

When the lamb was weaned, he sold a ram and paid off the money owed to the sheep on credit, and the eggs laid by the chickens and ducks were saved and sold at the market for some daily necessities such as grain and salt. At this time, Lilac has learned a lot of medical and herbal knowledge with her grandmother, and every time her grandmother sees a patient, she will bring cloves, in order to teach her skills to Lilac in the future.

Life is getting better day by day, but my mother's health is getting worse day by day. Grandma didn't know when she heard that the temple on a certain mountain was very spiritual, so she took Lilac and walked more than 20 miles to make a vow, and also offered the money saved from selling eggs to buy offerings. The statues of various gods in the temple are majestic and mighty, and the incense surrounds the temple. The solemnity of the temple made Lilac curious and excited. She bowed to all kinds of bodhisattvas under the leadership of her grandmother.

Some of the Bodhisattvas are angry-eyed, and some are smiling and stern with big bellies, but the one who makes Lilac feel the most kind is Guanyin Bodhisattva. She reverently knelt in front of the beautiful Guanyin Master, and made many wishes, hoping that the compassionate Guanyin Bodhisattva would bless her, including her father, eldest brother, second brother, mother, grandmother, and herself.

The abbot is a local monk who has been practicing for half a lifetime, and she chatted with her grandmother for a long time, and learned about what happened to Lilac's family, so she specially comforted her grandmother. Before leaving, the kind abbot also gave a foot-high ceramic white Buddha statue of Guanyin to Lilac, saying, little girl, as long as you are sincere to the Buddha in the future, the Bodhisattva will be by your side at any time.

Lilac doesn't know much about it, but it's a good thing to have Guanyin Bodhisattva who saves suffering and saves people by her side at all times. She was overjoyed when she heard this, and bowed deeply to the abbot.

A few days after returning home, my mother, who had been sick for many days, seemed to be improving. Two days later, when the market was rushed, Lilac used the money from selling eggs to pull two feet of red cloth, and when he went home, with the help of his grandmother, he used the red cloth to drape Guanyin Bodhisattva in red, put it next to the ancestral tablet, and prayed for peace when eating tea and eating!

Foreigners think that Chinese have too many gods and Buddhas and have no real religious beliefs. Lilac is a true devout Buddhist, worshipping every Buddha. But the real belief in a lifetime of worship is Guanyin Bodhisattva, since the mother to pray to God after making a wish, cloves all their lives rain or shine devoutly and faithfully worship Guanyin Bodhisattva.

So much so that later the grandchildren read and disdained the gods and Buddhas. Lilac always said to her grandchildren reverently: "You don't know the goodness of Guanyin Bodhisattva, as the old saying goes, 'If you don't learn the law, you can see the snake law, and if you don't believe in God, you believe in the god of thunder!'" You don't know that some of the people who have done bad things have been struck by thunder! Immediately after speaking, he knelt in front of the white and blackened Guanyin Bodhisattva in red cloth and prayed for forgiveness.

Many years later, the grandchildren still feel sorry for their grandmother when they think of it.

At the end of the year, the ewe gave birth to two more lambs, and the firstborn ewes found other people with rams to adapt, and they were pregnant and ready to give birth, and they also took ten eggs to the ram owner when they were adapted. Grandma later thought about replacing the ram at home with two lambs, one male and one female, and the lambs born by their own rams and their own ewes were unhealthy and not conducive to reproduction. So there were two ewes and four lambs in the house. Lilac drives the sheep like a commander every day to go out to graze, and then goes home in the evening to put them into the pen. Because there are more sheep, a new sheep house has been built along the riverside, sheep feces is a rare fertilizer, and the vegetables grown with sheep feces are fragrant and sweet!

On the twenty-eighth day of the Lunar New Year, the eldest brother and the second brother came back one after another, and the eldest brother brought something home - his master was really good to him, many years later, Brother Lilac still remembers the master's goodness, when the old man died in the seventies, the eldest brother took Lilac to mourn and worship, and the eldest brother and a big man cried so sadly, which caused the filial piety family to sigh and cry again.

The second brother came back to the dark every day, dressed dirty and shabby like a beggar, his eyes were empty and uneasy and fearful, and he hung his head and didn't speak, which made everyone anxious! In a hurry, the eldest brother asked for a while before he realized that the second brother had run back alone in a big disaster.

The second brother's main family is a rural property, relying on the hard work of the ancestors for several generations to save more than 30 acres of paddy fields and several mountain woodlands, usually the second brother in addition to watching the cattle also has to do a lot of farm work with the main family. Since the fire in the old house, the second brother who has fallen Chi Chunmu's autism is incompetent in the eyes of the owner, and he is inevitably scolded, and he is angry and slapped twice. The food is not necessarily good, a year later, the second brother is still as tall as when he went, the cloves are half a piece of tofu taller than him, and his face is thin and yellow worse than when he was at home! It's okay to live like this, but an incident happened yesterday that made the second brother unable to hold on and ran back!

The terrain of central and western Hunan is dense with mountains and forests, and famine occurs from time to time, so bandits are derived from this. Last night, near midnight, a group of bandits broke into the village of the second brother's owner, and the second brother who slept in the miscellaneous house next to the cowshed was awakened, and the noise and ferocity of the bandits made the second brother so frightened that he cow in the house and did not dare to squeak, and let the bandits take away the cow. When the owner found out, many villagers chased after them and recovered some of the cattle and goods, but one cow was still plundered by the bandits.

During the whole incident, the second brother was tired and did not dare to move, and the owner who came back from chasing the bull was angry with the second brother, and beat the second brother firmly that night, and the second brother did not cry as always, gritted his teeth and endured. It was almost noon the next day, and the owner didn't let the second brother eat something, and the second brother was so frightened that he was so hungry that he climbed the mountains and sneaked back in the afternoon with his memory!

The whole family spent the night in anxiety.

At noon the next day, the angry owner came with a distant relative who introduced the second brother, and the second brother, who saw him from afar, was so frightened that he hid in the haystack of the sheepfold. In the face of the menacing owner, the eldest brother, who has grown into a young man, shows his courage and responsibility as a pillar of the family when he needs it most.

He first appeased and did not lose courtesy reception, calming the anger and emotions of the second brother's owner. When the proprietor proposed that the second brother sat back and watched the proprietor's cattle being robbed and failed to tell the proprietor in time, and ran away afterwards, the second brother should compensate for the loss of the cattle, and how to give up. After listening patiently, the eldest brother said: "Uncle, it is true that my brother did not make a sound when your cattle were robbed, it is not right, it should not be!" But you should also think for my brother, how can an eleven or twelve-year-old man stop a group of bandits who are fighting in open flames, and shout that if the bandits get angry and kill my brother—it's not like trampling a chicken to death! ”

The eldest brother paused, and Yanqing swept over the faces of the owner and distant relatives, and saw that they didn't squeak, and said: "Our family is now orphaned and widowed, and my father has no whereabouts!" Now my brother is involved in this matter, if the bandits were killed at that time, uncle, I am afraid that it will not be a cow to bury me at that time, you are not angry, my junior is a metaphor! ”

After the eldest brother's words, the owner and distant relatives were so shocked that they couldn't stand up. In this way, it is much easier to do things in the back of the second year, and everyone reached a consensus after discussion, and the second brother still went to the owner's house to see the cow, but he only took care of food and no salary for the first three years.

The second brother hasn't even passed the year, and the owner's business is still waiting for him to do! When the sun went west, my mother's eyes were swollen from crying, and she stuffed a few hard-boiled eggs for the second brother, and sent her little feet for half a mile, and her thin body trembled in the cold wind near twilight - Mom's body was getting worse day by day. Under the winter sun, the long figures of the second brother and the three relatives of the owner gradually disappeared at the end of the intersection outside the village, until they disappeared completely.

On the night of the thirtieth day, the weather suddenly changed, and it was gray from the morning, and then the north wind blew, and the people who went home from outside the village to collect their accounts or rushed home from other places for the New Year walked past the lilac thatched hut one by one, holding their hands and bending their necks. In the cold wind, my mother stood by the bamboo fence and searched for people coming and going, and met neighbors who had returned from afar to ask her father's whereabouts one by one. The neighbors either shook their heads or were silent, and some of the unbearable neighbors comforted a few words of relief, what jade master is happy outside, and he will return when the time is better. When my mother heard this, there was some light in her lost eyes, and in an instant her eyes fell into dead silence, standing in the cold wind and stretching her neck to look at the end of the avenue outside the village, completely forgetting the biting cold wind, and the scattered withered yellow hair fluttering in the wind.

Nearly noon, the sand and snow in the sky had been overwhelming, rustling against my mother's miserable white face, neck, and gradually a thin layer of sand and snow had accumulated on the cotton collar. Grandma was very heartbroken when she saw it, and hurriedly shouted: "Sister Man, Xu Zong! You two hurry up and call your mom back, it's freezing, how about a cold?! ”

When Lilac and the eldest brother heard the call, they hurriedly put down the work at hand and ran out, and the two sisters who were splitting their faces head-on couldn't open their eyes! Mom's little feet that didn't move were all drowning in sand and snow. The two sisters didn't say a word, one left and one right, and pulled the depressed mother back to the kitchen, and the flames in the stove were on the mother's distracted face, and the miserable white and yellow face was a little red.

Lilac was busy patting and cleaning the snow on her mother's neck, and tears were already pouring out a little uncontrollably, sliding to the corners of her mouth, salty! But her mother didn't know it, and stood still, as if the world had been cut off from her.

During the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, my mother was lying in bed early, and Lilac carefully approached her mother and whispered: "Mom, it's time to eat, and you have to sacrifice to your ancestors!" It took a long time for my mother to reply leisurely: "Sister, you tell grandma, mom is tired and rests, don't think about it—you guys first, be obedient."

Grandma was very anxious when she heard this, walked to the bed and probed her mother's forehead, and asked a little eagerly: "Jiaxiu, are you uncomfortable, my mother will show you!" Mom didn't squeak, her empty eyes looked at the fir bark on the roof, and she rarely blinked.

Grandma sighed after being busy, turned around and looked down to find some herbs for treating wind and cold that she had dug in the past, and went to the kitchen to make herbs for Mom.

When worshipping the ancestors, it was the incense on the eldest brother, and Grandma Lilac also kowtowed, and when she finished kowtowing, her grandmother asked her eldest brother Lilac to kowtow for her mother.

The mother did not get up to eat the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and the lilac and their grandchildren ate the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in a dull state. After the meal, my grandmother personally sent the boiled herbs to my mother's bedside, and said to my mother: "Jiaxiu, hurry up and drink it while it's hot, it's good tomorrow morning!" - I've suffered you all these years, and our Cao family can't help it! ”

At this point, Grandma turned her head, and her voice was a little choked. Seeing that it made my grandmother sad and uneasy, my mother hurriedly stood up and replied: "Mother, take it, we have relied on you as an old man all these years, and if you want to say it, it is also our juniors who are incapable of making your old man miserable."

After speaking, he drank the herbs in one go, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and slowly lay down again. When Grandma turned around to pick up the medicine bowl and was about to go out, Mom suddenly took Grandma's hand and murmured, "Mother, I want to talk to you!" Mother, it's been a few years, why hasn't there been any news from his father? ……”

Grandma was stunned, Dad's topic was a taboo for Lilac's whole family, especially not to mention it to Mom - Mom's thoughts about Dad for many years had destroyed her already weak body.

After a while, grandma sat down again, at this moment the emotions that had been pent up for many years had completely crushed this strong old man all her life, she trembled and held her mother's hand with both hands, buried her head in the quilt, and cried bitterly! Lilac has never seen her grandmother cry so bitterly since she can remember, even when her uncle was beaten to death, she didn't cry so much!

The crying alarmed Lilac and the eldest brother, and when they saw the scene of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, they all cried loudly. On that Chinese New Year's Eve, firecrackers rang out in the distant mountainside village, happy families lit a fire and sat around to drink and have fun, and the Lilac family also lit a fire, but there was no joy of the New Year, and they spent it in sadness.

Many years later, Lilac told her grandchildren about it and said: "It was so snowy that year, and everyone was happy with the whole family drinking wine and eating, and we were crying in the house!"

In the middle of the night, my mother, who was already a little dazed, talked nonsense in her dreams. Nervous, my grandmother got up several times, looked at it, and got some prescriptions for headaches and fevers. In the second half of the night, Mom finally fell asleep quietly, and Lilac and Grandma fell asleep with peace of mind.

End of the seventh round