Chapter 756 The new house is completed
When the last dish - steaming scrambled eggs with green peppers - was served on the mottled wooden table, Yang Huaiqing's butt had just touched the edge of the bench.
He pushed the chipped rough porcelain bowl forward, and the bottom of the bowl made a slight sound as it rubbed against the cracks on the table.
Zhao Shuzhuo then moved closer to the main seat, and spoke in a low voice mixed with the smoke from the stove:
"Brother Zhao, when we were marking the boundaries on the muddy ground of the brick factory at noon, why did you stop us from picking up that piece of land? Could it be that you were hiding some shameful treasure?"
Zhao Shuzhuo's chopsticks holding the pickled cucumber stopped in mid-air. His coarse cloth sleeve swept across the broken corner of the bowl, revealing the winding scar on the back of his hand - it was left when he blasted the mountain to get rocks last year.
He raised his eyes to look at He Yushui who was diagonally opposite him, and saw that she was wiping the soup off Yang Xiaohua's cuffs with a blue flowered handkerchief. The patch on the edge of the handkerchief swayed slightly in the shadow of the kerosene lamp.
The firewood in the stove burst with a crackling sound, and sparks splashed on the holes in the window paper, making his bronze face flicker:
"It's not a secret, it's just..."
His fingers unconsciously stroked the rough glaze of the bowl.
"This morning, Huaixi and I were measuring the foundation on the back slope of the brick factory. He squatted on the newly leveled open space and slapped his thigh."
Wang Jianguo swallowed a mouthful of corn porridge with a rolling sound in his throat, and the tip of his chopsticks knocked against the edge of the bowl.
He recalled passing by the mass grave this morning and seeing the newly planted cypress saplings shaking their white plastic ropes in the wind.
The half green brick left behind when the grave was moved was still inserted obliquely on the slope, with dark brown humus embedded in the gaps between the bricks.
He Yushui's cotton shoes quietly moved half an inch towards Yang Xiaohua, her toes rubbing the ash on the ground, and she suddenly remembered the scene of Xiaohua working the night shift at the town hospital three years ago.
When I returned to the dormitory in the early morning with ginger soup, there were still traces of iodine on the cuffs of my white coat, which were left there when I changed the dressings for the wounded.
"Where on earth is it?"
Yang Xiaohua took off her flowered apron and draped it over the back of a chair. The end of her braid brushed across the glass cover of the kerosene lamp, startling a circle of fluttering moths.
She saw that Zhao Shuzhuo's ears were as red as the charcoal in the stove, and the second button of his coarse cloth jacket had loosened its thread, rising and falling gently with his breathing.
The branches of the old locust tree outside the window scraped against the window frame, filtering the moonlight into silver fragments that scattered on the back of his hand. The scar was now clenched into a fist, with his knuckles pressing against the wet soil under the table.
"It's... the mass grave at the east end of the village."
Zhao Shuzhuo's voice was torn in two by the draft and drifted towards the cobs of corn hanging from the beams.
"Originally there were 72 ownerless graves. The other day the commune invited a fortune teller to look at the feng shui and built a new cemetery with red bricks and moved the graves there."
He suddenly remembered the hard object that the shovel hit when he was turning the soil - after digging up the loose soil, he found half a coarse porcelain bowl with a vague "Fu" character engraved on the bottom of the bowl, and the glaze surface was cracked with spider-web-like patterns.
"Huai Xi said that the slope faces southeast, and the rotten leaves that fell last year are half a person deep. You can squeeze out oil from a handful of soil, and if you plant Astragalus, it will definitely grow to two feet high."
Yang Xiaohua dug her nails into her palms and then released them, her fingertips touching a half-crumpled medicinal material atlas in her apron pocket - in the commune warehouse last month.
She had seen the roots of Astragalus in paintings curled up like old tree roots, and the fine hairs on the roots looked like the hair of a newborn baby.
He Yushui pushed a plate of cold dandelions in front of her. The missing corner of the celadon plate reflected the light:
"Brother Shuzhuo still thinks you are a city girl who screams when she sees frogs when she goes to the countryside for the first time."
She recalled that during the rainy season last year, Xiaohua squatted on a muddy ridge to give first aid to a member who had suffered from heatstroke. Her hair was stuck to her cheeks by the rain, and she didn't even have time to pull her white sneakers out of the mud.
Zhao Shuzhuo suddenly grabbed the enamel pot on the table and took a sip of herbal tea. The tea stains at the bottom of the pot cast a dark brown circle in the light.
He caught a glimpse of Yang Xiaohua's drooping eyelashes casting a fan-shaped shadow under her eyes, and the rice grains on the ends of her hair trembled slightly as she lowered her head.
Outside the window, the night watchman's clapper struck three times, "knock knock knock", startling the swallows under the eaves.
Only then did he realize that the third button of his coarse cloth jacket had come loose at some point, and the thread end was like an ellipsis hanging in the air, swaying with his heartbeat.
Yang Xiaohua suddenly raised her head, the light from the kerosene lamp flickered in her eyes:
"Brother Zhao, what's wrong with the mass grave? I've seen more dead bodies in the hospital than the population of our village."
She pushed up her sleeves, revealing a light scar on her forearm from being scratched by herbs last year.
"The other day I heard someone at the herbal medicine station say that humus soil is the best for growing Astragalus root. Look at this..."
Before he finished speaking, He Yushui suddenly burst into laughter, and the beans on his chopsticks fell back into the bowl:
"Brother Shuzhuo is so concerned that he has forgotten that Xiaohua is used to holding a scalpel!"
The kerosene lamp wick on the wooden table burst into flames again, illuminating the tip of Zhao Shuzhuo's nose which had suddenly turned red.
He looked at the fire dancing in Yang Xiaohua's eyes, and suddenly remembered the tender sprouts pressed under the half coarse porcelain bowl when he turned the soil this morning.
Fingerprint-sized Astragalus seedlings were poking out from the cracks on the edge of the bowl, their tender yellow leaves still stained with last night's dew.
Time was like sand slipping through fingers, flowing silently for four months in the breathing of Wang Jianguo as he sat cross-legged and practiced Qigong every day, and in the morning dew that was crushed when he searched for spiritual herbs in the mountains.
During these four months, the smoke from the kitchens in Jianye Village continued to rise on time, and the crops between the ridges grew and advanced with the solar terms.
Only Wang Jianguo's figure seemed a little more silent - he always disappeared into the bamboo forest behind the mountain after dusk.
The glimmer surging in his palm resonated quietly with the spiritual power floating between heaven and earth. Those energy threads that were invisible to others were being woven bit by bit into the key to unlock the space.
When the first gust of wind with a humid and hot breath passed through the old locust tree at the entrance of the village, the chirping of cicadas gradually exploded among the branches and leaves, announcing the official arrival of summer.
On this day, Jianye Village was even more lively than an ordinary summer day, and the doors of every household were open.
Men, women, old and young, carrying melon seeds and candies, rushed to the east end of the village. The laughter of the children chasing and playing scared away the swallows under the eaves.
On the newly leveled open space at the east end of the village, two brand new buildings stand side by side:
One is a tiled house made of blue-grey bricks, the sloping roof is covered with neatly arranged red tiles, the eaves are slightly upturned, and the wooden sign in front of the door, with the red silk still attached, exudes a sense of solemnity.
The other adjacent building is a bungalow with white walls and blue windows. The words "Jianye Village Health Center" are painted in large letters on the wall with lime water. The glass windows are polished to a shine, and a brand new medicine cabinet can be vaguely seen inside.
"Brother Jianguo is really capable! This brick house is more impressive than the supply and marketing cooperative in town!"
"That's right. From now on, if you have a headache or fever, you don't have to walk ten miles in the dark to the commune clinic!"
The villagers gathered in front of the building and marveled at it. Grandpa Li touched the delicate joints on the brick wall, his face full of admiration.
Aunt Zhang leaned against the window of the clinic and counted the medicine bottles inside.
Wang Jianguo, wearing a clean blue cloth jacket, stood in the crowd, smiling and handing out cigarettes. Beads of sweat on his forehead sparkled in the sun, but the joy in his eyes went far beyond the building in front of him.
No one knew that late last night, when the last ray of spiritual power was injected into the jade pendant in the palm of his hand.