Zhang Tiezhu pushed Widow Yuan's mother-in-law to the health team in a wheelbarrow. Before the medical staff came to check, the old woman opened her eyes.
The old woman saw Zhang Tiezhu beside her. She grabbed Widow Yuan's hand tightly and said with some slurred speech: "You can't remarry. My grandson... must always be named Fang. From now on, you can raise him well..." Get a wife for your grandson. , give birth to a child, and continue the bloodline of her old Fang family.
The old woman originally didn't know about Zhang Tiezhu and Widow Yuan, but last year when she was at the grain drying farm, she happened to overhear a few men saying that she was angry at the time and wanted to tear Yuan Chunhua apart, but there were only two women in her family. Four and a half boys.
A half-grown boy lived in poverty, but Widow Yuan often brought some food to her family from outside, so she turned a blind eye.
The old woman hates her daughter-in-law for her misbehavior, but the grandson at home needs to eat.
The old woman's voice was too soft, so Widow Yuan could only lean in and listen. Then she heard her talk about where the family property was, and she had a bad feeling in her heart. Was her mother-in-law giving her last words?
After the old woman finished speaking, she closed her eyes tiredly. Widow Yuan poked her nose, she still had breath, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
At home during the holidays, Jiang Xinyu was busy here and there, and the whole day passed.
In the afternoon, mother and daughter went to work on their private plot, cutting beans and setting up trellises, weeding, and carrying a lot of water to irrigate the plot.
Jiang Yuzhu also picked up a dozen large soft-bodied caterpillars, which made Jiang Xinyu get goosebumps all over her body.
Feeding big caterpillars to chickens is nutritious. Almost all the children in the team dug up earthworms and caught bugs to feed the chickens, and almost no one was willing to feed the chickens with grain.
In the evening, Chen Xiuyun used sugar to braise Li Yuezhen's meat for her. After the stew was done, she took out the pot. Chen Xiuyun fried wild vegetables and eggs, and the mother and daughter ate it with the steamed buns.
The two hens at home can lay at least three eggs in two days. I haven't made steamed cakes these days, but I have saved up a bunch of them, and I don't feel bad eating them.
The water was boiling in the pot, and Jiang Xinyu squatted in front of the stove to heat the pot. The firewood in the stove's eye was buzzing, and occasionally sparks would explode in it.
Jiang Yuzhu asked her if she wanted to go to the toilet together. Jiang Xinyu shook her head, and she walked out of the courtyard, with Xiao Hei following behind.
The pot was boiling with bath water. After the water was boiled, the tea bottle was filled first. When Jiang Xinyu was adding cold water to the deeper wooden basin, there was a sound of tinkling bells outside the courtyard.
Jiang Xinyu went out, and as expected, it was Chen Yi who was at the door of the hospital.
"Just coming back now?"
Chen Yi said "Hmm" and handed her the cloth bag hanging on the front of the handlebar, "In it are the mushrooms I collected at the Shijinggou brigade yesterday."
Jiang Xinyu didn't answer for a while, "Does your mother know?"
"I just came from home. She asked me to deliver it. Don't worry, keep it."
The road in Shijinggou brigade is not easy to walk. The village is surrounded by mountains and forests, and there are a lot of wild mushrooms and fungus. The people in the brigade are all poor, so they like to go to the mountains and forests to find food, not to mention hares and other things. They can tell which ones are poisonous and cannot be eaten, and which ones are non-toxic and can be eaten. They can pick them back, cut them and dry them, and then save them and eat them slowly.
Chen Yi spent one yuan and returned with half the bag.
After hearing what he said, Widow Wang also knew about it, Jiang Xinyu accepted the cloth bag, and then the two of them suddenly fell into silence.
"Why aren't you leaving yet?" Jiang Xinyu's face tightened as he stared at her, and she broke the silence and asked.
Chen Yi stretched out his hand, pinched the soft flesh on her cheek, and said as if weighing it: "There's still not much flesh."
Jiang Xinyu glared at him, stretched out her hand to pinch it back, and said deliberately: "Well, you can fry a bowl of fat meat."
The skin on his face was so tight that she didn't even pull it.
After the fuss was over, Jiang Xinyu suddenly felt so childish. Just as she was about to walk away, she heard him say again: "Do you want to read "How Steel Was Tempered"? I'll send it to you tomorrow?"
Chen Yi wanted to be nice to her, but besides trying to make her eat well, he didn't know what to give her. There was almost no entertainment in this era, and books were considered rare nowadays, but he was not sure what type of books she liked.
Thinking about it this way, he felt that he was an asshole in the past. He didn't know what she liked, and he never tried to understand it in the past.
"You can bring it over tomorrow."
She cleared her throat and said, "Thank you very much."
He put his hand casually on the handlebar, stared at her sideways, and said slowly: "I feel that with the relationship between you and me, you don't need to say thank you."
Jiang Xinyu snorted, "Our relationship? What relationship? Why didn't I know?"
Chen Yi didn't argue with her, just pretended not to hear her, and said, "I'm going home, you should go back quickly."
Jiang Xinyu entered the courtyard with a cloth bag, and saw Li Yuezhen holding her arms at the door of the kitchen, with her back to the light, the figure was dark, she was silent, and Jiang Xinyu couldn't tell who it was.
"Then who is your partner?"
Jiang Xinyu said "Hmm", "What are you doing standing here? It's so scary."
Li Yuezhen said: "I want to soak my feet in some hot water. I'm waiting for you to come back."
Jiang Xinyu put the cloth bag into the kitchen, added cold water to the deep wooden basin, mixed it with hot water, and left some for her, "If it's not enough, you can add more firewood and burn it again."
It's been quite warm these days. I used to scrub in the house, but now I bring the basin directly to the small room enclosed by wooden boards under the shed.
It's almost done.
Without the door to the yard, she couldn't wash herself in peace. Jiang Xinyu thought of Jiang Yuzhu who had been out for a while. She had been out for a long time.
She walked out of the courtyard gate toward the toilet. She called twice but no one answered. She went in and took a look, but no one was in the toilet.
There were only a handful of people in the brigade who had lights, and the mud houses were all built very thickly. There was no light at all in the toilet. Jiang Xinyu was a little frightened. She shouted a few more times, and Xiao Hei followed her.
He jumped out from behind and startled her.
"Xinyu?"
When Jiang Xinyu heard Jiang Yuzhu's voice, her tense heartstrings finally relaxed.
In this dark autumn night, there was no other house at the entrance of the village. Jiang Yuzhu had not been back for so long, so she could not help but think about all sorts of things.
"Where did you go when you went to the toilet? You didn't go back for a long time. I thought you fell in."
In the dark sky, Jiang Xinyu didn't see the unnatural look on Jiang Yuzhu's face.
"After I used the toilet, I went for a walk around the village."
She couldn't wash her hair at night, and even after washing it, it didn't dry. Jiang Xinyu went to bed after taking a shower.
At this time in Chen Yi's house, mother and son were talking.
Widow Wang laid the foundation for a lot of nonsense, without a complete sentence. Chen Yi didn't know what she was talking about or what she wanted to say. But seeing her looking like she was about to speak but didn't know how to speak, he
Just say directly: "Mom, if you have anything to say, just tell me. If you don't tell me, I'll go to bed."
Widow Wang was also feeling uncomfortable, and she was afraid that her son would blame her. If her son knew that his father was a capable man, but she allowed him to follow her through so many years of hardship, would he blame her?