Uncle Jike's mental journey prose essay

The Mustard River in June is so hot. If you go out with your head bare, the afternoon sun is sure to make your scalp ache.

Because I have an appointment with an old friend, I have to go out no matter how hot or sunny it is. In order to reduce the unbearable heat on the road, I took an umbrella and ran towards Zhitongzi Street.

The corn has grown to more than half a person’s height, and the dense, green fields crowd the left and right field ridges. Someone in front walked towards the drainage ditch for a while, got into the cornfield for a while, and returned to the road for a while. Going in and out like this, walking and stopping, made me wonder. What is he doing if he doesn't go home and take a break on such a hot day?

As I got closer, I saw clearly that it was Uncle Ji Ke. He carries a chicken skin bag and picks up people along the way. Pick up those plastic bottles, cans, and packaging boxes. "This bear man" I muttered in my heart and wanted to call him. Instead, he ran towards the nursery deep in the cornfield, where a few plastic bottles were clearly lying. I didn't want to disturb his business anymore, so I stopped talking and walked forward quietly.

When I inquired about Ji Ke’s life in the neighborhood where I had been away for many years, I heard that the villagers were quite disdainful and shabby towards his actions.

"He is a man of sperm. Now he recognizes nothing but one thing - money." Almost everyone agreed.

According to neighbors, Ji Ke is reluctant to eat or wear clothes. For the next meal, steamed bowls of millet rice and salted radish. Not to mention chicken, duck, fish, white flour and rice, we don’t even buy any fresh vegetables. Even eating a piece of tofu is half a day’s expense. It depends on whether it is worth it. If you don’t believe it, do you think he has a stick at home?

Naturally, if you want to save money, you shouldn’t think about delicious food and drink. But he couldn't resist the temptation of good things. Today I'll ask my aunt and sister-in-law for a cabbage, and tomorrow I'll borrow some eggs from my nephew's wife. Everyone knows that he is asking for it openly and secretly, and never gives it back. Everyone should still give what is due. The most shameless thing is that he likes to go to wine bars and dinner parties. He will join in the circle regardless of invitation, eat and drink heavily, and never return until he is drunk.

Someone said to him carelessly, "Ji Ke, come drink." He would answer confidently, "Just drink. If you don't drink, I'm afraid you'll be unhappy." People say, "It's your turn to pay for someone today." Upon hearing this, he quietly slipped away.

I sighed in my heart: Fate has played a trick on people, Ji Ke should not have been in such a miserable situation.

He is seven or eight years older than me. As a child, he was strong and cute. Because he is the youngest among many brothers and sisters, he is favored by his parents. It was only after his father died while digging in the sand that the family collapsed. The brothers and sisters who got married lived separately, so Ji Ke naturally lived with his widowed mother and depended on each other. The most unexpected thing is that Jike's mother later developed an eye disease and shed tears when exposed to the wind. The weather became even hotter, and she later became blind. The young Ji Ke had to stop studying and serve his mother while farming.

Time flies, Ji Ke has grown up in a torturous life, and has reached the age of marriage. Ji Ke's mother begged a neighbor to marry her and made great efforts to find a wife for Ji Ke. I was really worried, some people came through the door, but when they saw the pitiful situation and the blind old man sitting on the kang, they left without giving up their teeth. The less people came, the more anxious she became. I remember Ji Ke’s mother beating the kang and crying, begging for help, fearing that Ji Ke would be a bachelor and his life would be wasted.

Things did not go as the old man wished. Even when the blind mother died, Ji Ke failed to find a wife.

After that, Ji Ke lived alone. In addition to farming, climbing on the pot and cooking stove. I play with suona and flute every night.

One year I went back to my hometown in the countryside to stay for a while, and Ji Ke came to visit me. Putting down the sickle and a bundle of freshly cut elm sticks in his hand, he sat on the small stool I handed him. Since he rarely comes to my place, I hurriedly pass cigarettes and pour tea. When asked about family affairs, we started talking to each other.

He said, you don’t know. The Laiwang family has many children, known as the Seven Wolves and Eight Tigers. Poor mother worked hard all her life, and when she was old and seriously ill, she didn't have any children by her side to take care of her. Speaking of which, everyone is busy and can't get away from it. There are also some officials and businessmen among them. I really don’t know what they think. On the other hand, my wife always looked down on my nephew and made fun of him whenever I met him, and he was a beggar. I fed my wife the rice and meat slices I begged for every day. Until her death, my wife kept saying that the rice Lai Gouzi brought was delicious and extremely fragrant.

After finishing speaking, he sighed with emotion, many children have received such an unbearable end. As a frustrated bachelor like us, we still don’t know how to die. His face twitched with excitement, and it was obvious that this incident had touched him too deeply.

I comforted him with some words. When he left, I sorted out some clothes that I didn’t want to wear and gave them to him. It can be used for any work outside the home. He left gratefully.

That afternoon, I came back from a visit and saw a yellow plastic bag on the window sill of my house with a few sweet potatoes inside. I guessed that it was Ji Ke who left some food for me to eat while I was away.

After that, I went back to my hometown several times, and I often heard the sound of suona coming from Ji Ke’s house. In the quiet village night, it seemed melodious and sad. Those dissatisfied neighbors complained that it was not enough for someone with such a big brain, and it was annoying to death.

"Isn't he tired after working for a day?" I asked

"Tired? That bear man is very stubborn. He is almost 60 years old. He works for a living and does not work all day long. Wrong, I don’t know how much I have saved.” People said this about him.

Sleeping on a Tukang in the countryside, listening to Ji Ke’s suona, and thinking about people’s comments. I understand some things. For example, he works hard to make money, which is to prepare for his old age and disease prevention. Even if you play the annoying suona, it is still a way to express your feelings. Think about it, he goes out and comes home every day, alone, no one says a word to him or lets him brag, what else can he do.

After that, Jike’s little calculations became more and more precise, and his idea of ??working hard to earn money for retirement became more and more determined. In the eyes of the villagers, there were more and more comments about his sharp diamond and weirdness.

The most direct manifestation is his verbal calculation. If the price of one pound of meat is equivalent to the price of four pounds of tofu, he will no longer eat meat. Having said that, when the price of tofu was close to that of eggs, he ate eggs again. The accounts are settled and the money cannot be spent. Sometimes, in order to buy a pound of meat, the meat seller didn't want to deal with him. Because it would not work beyond a few taels, everyone thought he was troublesome.

At work. Once the weather was cold and there were no projects, and Murakami had some work to clear roads, shovel snow, or pull wires and plant poles, he would come and compete to do it, regardless of whether there were many people or not, whether it was needed or not. The village officials had nothing to do with him, so they had to take care of him every time.

I’ve heard this kind of talk a lot, and one time Ji Ke came home. I want him to pay attention to himself, do less work, and not be too frugal in life to the detriment of himself.

"That's it, why don't I take advantage of my youth to save more money so that I can use it when I'm old? Tell me, having more children doesn't necessarily mean you'll be blessed, let alone someone like me." As he spoke, he wiped his pants and scratched his calves. All he said was that there were a lot of mosquitoes.

"You are almost sixty years old, after all, you can't be younger," I emphasized.

"How much? Let's wait for the next life. I am already sixty-two this year. But I can still do it. I can handle ordinary heavy and tiring work. Work for another two years, and wait until the foreman dislikes us. Take it easy on yourself,” he said.

Seeing that it was useless to persuade him, I changed the subject and asked him if he had made more money in the past two years.

"Well, working is not a good life. You have to work hard to make money, but the salary is not bad. Earning a hundred and twenty-three a day is not a problem. The most difficult thing to deal with is eating. I don’t care about the food project, and I get up late. He couldn't get enough to eat, he came back late, and had to grab firewood to make a fire in the dark. After finishing the meal, he went to bed late at night. "This is how he described his difficulty.

We talked a lot that night, and I remember that he also praised the current society time and time again, saying that the Communist Party loves the poor. He said that from ancient times to the present, there is no society that does not want royal grain and national taxes. Nowadays, farmers do not receive food for farming, and the government still provides farmers with subsidies for farming, medical care, and subsistence allowances. He said that he also had subsistence allowance and pension, which was more than 200 yuan a month. When he talked about his happiness, he became excited and excited.

Last summer, it was rainy. At that time, I was living in my hometown. Because kilns collapsed and injured people in some places, the local government required each village to set up stoves, centralize resettlement, and have dedicated personnel responsible for the safety of the people.

This gave me the opportunity to experience the life of a disaster victim, and it also allowed my heart to witness that scene with warmth and emotion during the disaster. In order to be able to run the stove collectively without having to be arranged and controlled by the village leaders, the villagers scrambled to cook on the stove. There are also many people who continuously bring their own things to the stove. A few cucumbers, a basket of tomatoes, a handful of green onions or half a bag of potatoes.

Old man Jiuwang even handed over a thousand yuan from digging wild lentils and digging firewood to the village director.

Uncle Ji Ke stayed at home without work because of the heavy rain. I see him every time I eat. He had also heard and witnessed this scene happening in the countryside.

At the end of spring and summer solstice this year, I returned to my hometown again. The changes that took place before my eyes surprised me.

The main roads in the village have been cement-hardened. Moreover, large solar street light poles have been erected on rural avenues that have never had street lights.

I am grateful to this term of village officials from the bottom of my heart. They must have come to provide financial support and done such a great thing for the people.

When I asked the villagers what happened, what they said surprised me. The funds for doing all this were actually provided by one person, and it was Uncle Ji Ke who had always been greedy for money. This puzzles me.

"Is this true? Is Ji Ke willing to spend the money he has saved through so much hard work?" I asked the villager Erwa.

“The thing is true, many people were there when the money was counted, and I was also there. Ji Ke carried one of his earthen jars to the village chief’s house. The money inside was wrapped in plastic, and a A bunch of them, big or small, colorful, a total of 100,000 yuan," Erwa said.

"Isn't he afraid that he will have no one to rely on when he grows old and doesn't want to take care of himself in old age?" I asked again.

"At first, maybe Ji Ke told the village chief, but the village chief thought it was inappropriate and did not agree to accept his money." Erwa paused and said, "Uncle Ji Ke is always worried about burying his mother. The situation was that if it weren't for the help of one liter from the east family, one bowl from the west family, 5 cents from this family, and one yuan from that family, and a few pieces of willow wood to bury the person in a coffin, he wouldn't be able to do it himself. Besides, there is a lot of rain in northern Shaanxi this year. At the resettlement site, he saw families carrying umbrellas to pick up their children after school, walking on mud and dragging their children with them. The suffering was really unbearable. He felt that he had found an opportunity to repay the people in the village, so he came up with it. This matter".

According to Erwa’s statement, Uncle Jike is not afraid of having no future in retirement, mainly because he has a pension. Secondly, he feels that his health is not bad. He will work for a few more years and save some money to consider retirement. No need to involve others. He smiled and said to the village director: "Step back, even if it comes to the day when we can't eat, I believe that the people in the village will not watch me, Ji Ke, starve to death if they are not hungry."

Erwa’s words made me feel like I wanted to see him. What he said was so true and affectionate. But the second baby said that Ji Ke had recently bought two cows, one big and one small, and the mother was busy herding cows during the day, so it was difficult to see them.

On the day I was leaving the village, Ji Ke was grazing cattle in Laocaowan. The wind carries his song.

Thirty miles of clear sand and twenty miles of water

I looked at you once on the fifty-mile road

I ran fifteen times in half a month

My brother ran around in circles

I crossed the Yellow River without a sip of water

I made friends without a kiss

I bought Simmons I didn’t sleep with my sister

Look at this regret, don’t you regret it

…

The singing echoed in the bay, adding to the bitter silence of Laocao Wan. Somewhat joyful. I can’t guess whether he was relieving his loneliness or expressing his undying longing for love, but one thing is certain: he donated money to do something meaningful for everyone, which brought him peace of mind and joy. .

The singing accompanied me to farther and farther places.

Contact information:

Postal code: 717304

Address: Hejiagou Village, Yangjiapuan Town, Zichang County, Shaanxi Province

Author ：Cai Zhijie

Tel: 09112315114 landline