Father's sunset

When I got back to town, it was nearly New Year's Eve. It was afternoon, and my father came up slowly from the dark stairs and asked, "Where's my uncle?"

"Uncle? Are you looking for your uncle? " Niece phoeny came running with a smile. "Uncle, grandpa has mistaken me again!" "

My dad is a little fat in old clothes that I eliminated a few years ago. My face is so thin, my hair and beard are all white, and my legs and feet are weak. "I get dizzy when I turn the stairs, so I have to walk slowly."

Mother cooked chicken soup, poured it into a bowl full of rice and served it to her father. "How to learn like this, cooked to the front, he will eat chopsticks. Otherwise he won't eat! " My father asked me when I would come back and how my trip was. His tongue is a little knotted and he doesn't speak very neatly. Chopsticks are shaking in their hands, so they can't directly put food on the plate. The sunshine on the balcony is very bright, and it shines on dad's face through the window. His face is like a rotten mushroom, and there is no bright color in the sun.

In a year's time, my father has completely changed. This makes me feel bad. I have been worried about him every day for more than half a year in Shanghai. On my way home from anxious to return, I am also looking forward to seeing him soon. It really is home. He sat in front of me, but he didn't know how to express my worries and worries. When I asked him anything, he just stared at me with a look of indifference, as if he didn't understand me. After sitting for a long time, watching the sunset outside the window, he said he would go back.

"My son only comes back a few days a year, so you can stay." Mom is a little angry.

"I'll come out early tomorrow." Father still insisted on leaving. Southeast Qili is an old house in the village, and he will never leave. Ten years ago, my brother bought a house in the town, my mother came out to take care of my grandson, and my father lived alone in the village.

My brother's house is facing the river field, and the late rice is harvested, and there are dry seedlings all over the ground. In the distance is the sliding paradise mountain range, which is layered and green and cold. The setting sun set on the mountains and turned golden, dazzling the houses and roads in the town. Father put the flashlight in his pocket, walked slowly to the east end of the market town and took the path to the village.

I went all the way back to my father. But what can it do? I can't change the miserable situation of the old man. His situation is a cruel torture to me. If anyone cares about the world, but even their closest relatives are unable to support it, it must be a poking joke. And my parents are not worried about me! Most of it is because of me.

two

In my memory, my father who walked on this road was not like this. I was four or five years old before I went to school. I killed Nianzhu on New Year's Eve, and my brother and I squatted by the stove and went to town with my father to sell pork. Father burned a kerosene bamboo tube and carried two baskets of pork on the road. We walked in front of him, and the red light of kerosene lit up the road little by little. I stumbled and ran, and I couldn't walk after only two miles. My father coated the pork with gummed paper, put my brother and I on a laundry list, and carried them all the way to town. The firelight made my father's figure wobbly. In the cold wind of winter night, I saw sweat rolling down his cheeks.

As long as I can remember, my father who has been farming all his life has never lacked strength. 1999 It was 16 years ago that I finished college and returned to town to be a civil servant. At that time, I made up my mind to take on this family and let my parents who were over 60 years old and raised seven children recuperate in their later years. My father was very happy when I became a cadre. Grassroots work is very hard. My salary is only 800 yuan, but compared with local farmers, it is already a high income. More importantly, changing from a farmer to a cadre means leaving one world and entering another. From then on, food and clothing are safe, life is guaranteed, and you don't have to work hard in the sun and rain. Moreover, in small towns, state cadres are highly valued. For his father who has been dealing with dirt all his life, this is almost the end of his dream.

However, my father didn't want to stop working and rest in his later years. After the Spring Festival, when the weather turned warmer, he put the seeds in sacks and soaked them in the creek bay. Goose-yellow grain buds sprouted, and my father said, "Shall we plant them for another year?" During the spring planting season, he worked as usual without any change. At first light, he went out, carrying a plow and a rake to drive the cattle to the fields, and plowed the rice fields soaked for a winter into sludge. The yellow seedlings in the rice fields turned green, and my father went up the mountain to plow the dry land and grow vegetables, beans and cassava. He is like a clock. According to years of inertia, every minute runs accurately. My mother followed the helper every day, saying, "I stopped working when I was so young, and the villagers gossiped."

When I was in primary school, every afternoon after school, the children were in groups of three or five, and even a dozen children were invited to climb the mountain from all directions to cut grass and collect firewood. The wooden hook hits the wooden stick, and the rhythm is one after another. On the whole hillside, the old grass was cut off and new grass grew out again. The children carry firewood back to every house, cooking, boiling water and cooking pork dishes. Also sold to kilns to burn red bricks and lime. Foreigners also buy firewood at the entrance of the village and transport it to other places with tractors.

1984, the second sister went to work in a flower factory in Shenzhen at dawn, and was the first batch of people in the village to work in the south. After 15, half of the population in the village-almost all the young and middle-aged people went to Guangdong to work, and farming in the village is no longer a grand occasion.

With the outflow of young and middle-aged people, brick kilns and lime kilns are no longer burned, livestock and poultry raising at home is greatly reduced, and fewer and fewer people go into the mountains to get firewood. Some old people no longer farm and rely on their children who go out to work for a living. Father doesn't like eyes, but he gossips about them behind their backs: "If you can still work, don't do it, and be a' carefree person'."

Early rice ripens in midsummer. In the early morning, the sun climbed up the hill and shone on the terraced fields in the ravine. Green rice leaves are covered with morning dew, like a long and narrow sword. The ears of rice in Huang Chengcheng are full and firm, with serious drooping. Father was filled with joy. He gets up early and is greedy for the dark, cutting rice, threshing and basking in the sun. The farm work was so busy that my sister and brother rushed back to cut rice. I didn't help for the first time in my life.

After the early rice harvest, the late rice seedlings have grown up. My father plowed the newly harvested rice fields to grow late rice.

"Early rice has already collected more than a dozen loads of millet," he said smugly.

"Can a dozen loads of millet sell for a thousand dollars?" I asked disdainfully.

"It's worthless to sell, but valuable to buy." Father replied with a wry smile.

"Don't plant late rice. You two have worked hard for half a year to get my salary for a month. " After I finish college, I expect them to spend their old age peacefully and not to do hard work at this age. But my father didn't listen to a word and said, "Do something if you have the ability. Don't sit around and eat idle food."

I don't like the land, but my father loves it. My formidable agricultural labor is the only lifestyle my father is used to.

three

To understand my father's feelings about land, we may start with my grandfather. In the long years, land has always been the dream of the poor.

More than 80 years ago, there were frequent famines in small towns. Because there is no land at home, in the year of famine, my grandfather's generation can only go out to flee, or even "go to Nanyang." An endless stream of hungry people crossed the mountains and came to the Jiang Xun Wharf in Wuzhou, went south to the Pearl River by wooden boat, and then transferred to large ships to go to Southeast Asia to plant rubber and dig stones on a desert island for a living. Overseas is not peaceful, menstruation's grandmother's family drifted from place to place and came to London, England. Grandfather couldn't make a living, so he went to war for two loads of rice. The war of liberation started and the Kuomintang army was defeated in Guangxi. My grandfather saved his life and fled back to his hometown, but he finally starved to death the night before liberation. Grandma saw that she couldn't live any longer, so she put the baby girl who left her stomach in a bamboo basket and hung it under the eaves, and remarried to a man who had some food in a foreign village.