Chapter 669 Half truth and half lie
"The bad thing is that this word got to the ears of a high-ranking official."
Wang Jianguo lowered his voice.
"The official didn't dare to come openly, so he sent his men to ask me for medicine. I'm not a greedy person. I'm willing to give eight or ten pills to those who have done me a favor, but I won't give any to those who use their power to pressure me."
"This really offended people. One night, they actually set fire to the courtyard where I lived. The neighbors didn't have time to escape, and the whole courtyard was burned down."
"Thanks to He Yushui who came home late from get off work and dragged me along to run, I was able to save my life."
His eyes were a little red, and he reached out to wipe his face:
"We both hid all the way here, and I was holding my breath."
"I can't just stay like this. I have to do something decent here. When I return to the city, I'll have to settle things with them. I can't just let myself be bullied for nothing."
Director Song frowned upon hearing this, while Director Liu puffed on his pipe without saying anything. Wang Jianguo rubbed his hands and continued:
"I know this sounds like a storyteller, but it's true."
"I work honestly here, not for anything else, but to go back with my head held high one day and let those people know that ordinary people are not easy to bully."
The room was silent for a while, and Director Liu suddenly patted him on the shoulder:
"My boy, although this place is remote, it can accommodate decent people. Just stay here and do what you need to do. With the two of us old men here, no one can bully you."
Director Song also nodded and took out a steamed bun from the drawer and stuffed it into his pocket:
"Let's eat first. We can talk about big things after we finish eating. Just treat this place as your own home. Whenever you want to talk, we can sit down and talk slowly."
Wang Jianguo took a bite of the steamed bun and felt a tightness in his throat. The sunlight outside the window shone on the brick kiln, making the whole land warm.
He suddenly felt that although this place was rustic, it was more down-to-earth than the tall buildings in the old city.
Wang Jianguo sat in the conference room, his fingers gently stroking the edge of the teacup, his eyes alternating between Director Song and Factory Director Liu.
He recounted the whole story in detail, with truth and falsehood mixed in his words.
When he came to the key point, his fingertips tapped the table unconsciously, as if to add a footnote to some vague details.
The sunlight outside the window slanted into the room, casting a shadow on his angular profile. The light flickered and it was hard to tell the emotion in his eyes.
Director Song leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his abdomen, and tapped the buttons of his suit with his fingertips.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, and remained silent for a long time after listening to Wang Jianguo's words, as motionless as a clay sculpture.
The cigarette butts in the ashtray flickered, and the rising white smoke swirled in front of him, making his expression even more gloomy.
He sorted out the information carefully in his mind. Those true and false fragments were like scattered puzzle pieces, and he was putting them back in place bit by bit - he was judging which were the edges of the facts and which were the deliberately blurred mist.
In contrast, Director Liu's reaction was much more intense. This man, who was nearly fifty years old, was already strong and muscular, and at this moment, veins bulged on his forehead.
With a "bang", his palm slammed heavily on the solid wood table, causing a few drops of tea in the enamel cup to splash out.
He stood up suddenly, the chair scraped against the ground with a harsh sound, and the key chain on his waist rustled with the movement.
"It's just nonsense!"
His thick eyebrows were raised and his voice was like a bell.
“Where is the organizational discipline?”
He paced back and forth twice, his leather heels tapping on the floor, and suddenly turned around and stared at Wang Jianguo, his eyes burning with anger.
"Comrade Xiao Wang, please tell me the truth - who is this person? We must get to the bottom of this matter now!"
Wang Jianguo clenched the teacup fiercely, his knuckles turned blue due to excessive force, and the cruelty surging in his eyes almost boiled the strong tea in the cup.
A suppressed roar rolled out of his throat, as if there was a trapped beast hidden in his chest:
"The night of the accident, I squatted at the entrance of the alley and vomited all night. There was a smell of rust under my fingernails."
"Later, I asked Lao Zhou, a bicycle repairman in the suburbs, whose cousin was on night shift at the Archives Bureau, to help me look through three piles of personnel files in the dark. Guess what happened?"
"That bastard's work ID photo is sinister, and the teardrop mole at the corner of his left eye looks like a splash of blood!"
He suddenly loosened his hand, and the teacup hit the pine table heavily, and the splashing tea left dark marks on his coarse cloth trouser legs.
"But what can I do? I am a nobody and my words carry no weight. They can make me disappear from the world in just a cigarette's time."
His voice suddenly became hoarse, as if it had been sanded.
"So I lied to my family and said I was going to the south to do transportation. I didn't even dare to attend my grandma's birthday party. I took all my gold and silver and got on the train."
"On the way here, I swore to myself that I would make a name for myself, so famous that he would tremble when he heard my name!"
Director Song's spine tensed up when he heard this, and he didn't even notice that his reading glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose.
He fumbled for the pen and held it over the letter for a long time. The blue-black ink cast a small shadow on the paper:
"Jianguo, I, an old man, understand your willingness to endure humiliation and bear heavy burdens."
The old man suddenly grabbed the young man's wrist, where veins bulged, and the calluses on his palm rubbed against the scar on his knuckles.
"But don't forget that what our state-owned factory values most is advanced models. Didn't Mr. Li from Workshop 3 stand up straight last year by being called a 'technical innovation expert'?"
He suddenly raised his voice, and a light flashed in his cloudy eyes.
"Well, I'll write you a letter of recommendation and hand it directly to the Propaganda Department of the Agricultural Reclamation Bureau. When you're named a 'Young Commando' and your photo is published in the newspaper, you'll be a golden signboard!"
Wang Jianguo stood up suddenly, and the wooden chair made a harsh sound on the concrete floor.
He pressed Director Song's hand holding the pen, and the calloused fingers scraped the edge of the letter:
"Director! Do you still remember the raid by the mechanized farming team on the 'remnants of the rightists' two years ago? The security department searched my toolbox three times!"
He lowered his voice and glanced across the half-open wooden door.
"Last week, the field office came to inspect. I saw Mr. Zhao from the secretarial department glancing in the direction of my dormitory. The muddy spots on his leather shoes were exactly the same as the 'Qianjin' brand shoes that the driver often wore."
He took out a crumpled notebook from his trouser pocket, which contained half a yellowed ticket.
"Look at this date. I have been in the Great Northern Wilderness for more than ten months, and I have never dared to send a single piece of postmarked paper home."
"Wait until the autumn harvest, wait until I lead the fifth squad to reclaim the alkaline land, wait until the whole reclamation area knows that 'Iron Oxen Build a Nation' can grow rice ears on rocky land—"
He suddenly smiled, and his smile was as cold as the ice and snow just melting.
"By then, even if he wants to do something to me, he will have to first ask the front-page article in the provincial newspaper whether it agrees."