all the way

Liu Chuan returned home with Liu Hai on the afternoon of the stove sacrifice, and the New Year's atmosphere at home immediately came.

There was another heavy snowfall a few days ago, and Liu Chuan and his wife went from Wangning to Liujialing, from ten o'clock in the morning to five o'clock in the afternoon.

The production team killed an old cow that could no longer go to the field. Liu Changqing's family got 24 catties of beef and some beef bones, as well as Liu Changqing and Liu Kui's rabbits. There were many, and there were three left. Liu Xia never remembered that their family had so many delicious ones.

In addition to the snacks and gifts that Liu Chuan brought back, he also had 30 yuan and a pair of white pull-back shoes for Liu Hai.

Liu Hai looked at the pair of shoes, mumbled for a long time before saying, "Yao'er is the youngest, so why do you buy it for me?"

Liu Chuan stuffed the shoes into his arms with a smile: "Brother told me when he wrote to me, you don't need to bring anything else, but you must buy a pair of pull-back shoes for you."

The black cloth shoes on Liu Hai's feet were made by Xiumei. Although Liu Hai took good care of them, the cotton shoes were comfortable but not strong, especially on a half-sized foot like Liu Hai, who didn't have many big toes. There's a hole in there.

Many of Liu Hai's classmates are wearing pull-back shoes, some are white and some are blue. Liu Hai likes clean white. He just couldn't help being envious when he saw his classmates wearing them. He never thought about what he would wear.

For the 30 yuan, Liu Changqing hesitated for a long time, but decided to take out 20 yuan to pay the bill first, leaving [-] yuan.

Give Liu Hai an extra yuan every month so that he can buy a vegetarian dish every day; and buy some eggs to supplement Liu Ling and Mao'er.

What Liu Xia and the others didn't know was that Liu Chuan also brought back a piece of good news that only Liu Changqing and Liu Kui knew for the time being: after the Chinese New Year, he would go to the Spring City Army Academy to study for a year, which meant that he might be promoted after returning.

This news made Liu Kui feel as if he had let go of a huge rock: If Liu Chuan gets promoted, he can earn tens of dollars a month in wages, and there is hope that his family's 700-odd dollars bill can be paid off.

Of the money, only one hundred was borrowed by Liu Kui from his comrades in the county, and the other 600 or so was borrowed by Wang Changmin from the people in the commune compound and Wang Changmin's comrades and friends in Rongze.

If they didn't pay the money for a day, Secretary Wang Changmin had to bear the favors of many people. This made the Liu family men feel more guilty and uneasy than the money they owed them directly.

The place where Liu Chuan served was the border. Liu Xia only knew that it was far away from home, but Liu Changqing and Liu Kui knew that Liu Chuan had such an opportunity, and he must have sacrificed his life for it.

Liu Chuan's unit is the field army, and Liu Chuan is in the artillery reconnaissance company. People in the deep inland don't know the situation outside, but Liu Changqing and Liu Kui, who are soldiers, are particularly sensitive to this aspect. Reporting worries, but they can always see the problem from the subtleties between the lines.

"Do it well!" That's what Liu Changqing said when he heard about his son.

After sending two packs of dim sum, two dried fish and [-] catties of white noodles to the third grandpa, the family still had two packs of dim sum and a jar of white flour, together with dried fish, beef and rabbit meat, the family had an unprecedented lively And a prosperous year.

Except that Liu Mao didn't come back, everything else was perfect.

Returning to school after the Spring Festival, the first news Liu Xia got was: Chu Fenghe dropped out of school.

The heavy snowfall two years ago collapsed the shack of Chu Fenghe and his sons. It was covered by heavy snow, and it was not easy to find some sticks and corn stalks to rebuild the shack.

Chu Fenghe had no choice but to lead Chu Xiaohe home, and begged his uncle to let him live with Chu Xiaohe at home for a few days, and when the weather cleared, he would go find something and build a shed.

His uncle didn't speak, he took the hand of his six-year-old son and went out.

His stepmother said with a smile: "When you two walked away, everyone said that I, the stepmother, couldn't tolerate you, and the neighbors in the neighborhood also poked your uncle's spine. Why, you gave me a bad reputation." Yes, now you can come back if you want?

This man, as long as he has a little bit of backbone, he can't lick up the phlegm he spit on the ground; if I were you, if I had the ability to leave, I would starve to death and freeze to death, and I wouldn't come back with a shy face; I want to come back to this again Home?Hmph, unless you have the ability to ask your uncle to divorce me..."

The following results can be imagined, Chu Fenghe did not have the righteousness of Boyi and Shuqi not to eat Zhou Su, and of course he did not have their self-cultivation. He slapped the two women in a fit of anger.

And his father, who came back from buying stove candies for his youngest son, drove them out of the house with a pole.

"My brother's spine was rammed with a shoulder pole for several blood purlins. The captain of my production team applied some medicine to the health center for both of us. Now we live in the breeding room of my production team. My brother now goes to Qianhe Mountain every day to pull blood. Feet, the donkey belongs to the team leader, my brother pays him [-] cents a day to feed the donkey, and the rest is mine.” Chu Xiaohe kept sniffling, his frostbitten hands were worse than frostbite The carrots are also scary.

Liu Xia asked, "How much money does your brother earn a day?"

Chu Xiaohe's already dejected face suddenly became darker: "It's just after the new year. People in the north have already pulled coal, and there are very few people who need to pull their feet when crossing Qianhe Mountain. In good times, they can earn two or three cents a day. At the time, I didn’t earn enough to pay the captain’s family thirty cents, but my captain didn’t ask me to pay, and he left five cents for my brother.”

Liu Xia looked at Chu Xiaohe's torn cotton-padded jacket and trousers, and asked, "Do you still have a change of cotton trousers? If so, give me the one on your body, and I'll take it home and ask my mother to mend it for you. "

Chu Xiaohe definitely didn't have another cotton-padded jacket. While cursing that conscientious stepmother and her unworthy father, Xiumei tore Liu Xia, Liu Wei, and Liu Rui so much that they couldn't wear them anymore, and planned to tear off the ones that stuck to the uppers. The usable parts of the old clothes were carefully cut out, and a pair of old trousers that Liu Hai wore too small and intended to be remade by Liu Xia were dismantled. With subsidies, Chu Xiaohe made two pieces of the same patchwork clothes. Cotton jacket and trousers.

On the evening when Chu Xiaohe put on the new cotton-padded clothes, Liu Xia and the others saw Chu Fenghe, who was as thin as a bamboo pole, wearing an extremely tattered cotton-padded clothes, leading a donkey, at the intersection of Wangning Street.

Chu Fenghe said: "If I, Chu Fenghe, never turn over in my life, I will find someone from your family in my next life, and I will repay you like a cow."

Liu Ling and the others were a little embarrassed, Liu Ling said: "Fenghe, what are you talking about, we used to be in the same class, so it's better, it's just an old cotton-padded jacket, don't dislike it."

When hundreds of flowers cover Fengxi Mountain, Maoer can finally really call "Uncle", and clearly call "Little Uncle", "Liu Xia", "Xiao Xia" and "Yao Er".

The little worries in Liu Xia's heart that had never been known to others were swept away, and he felt relaxed and happy about Mao'er's behavior of calling him "Xiao Xia" and "Yao Er" at him.

The tense atmosphere of Liu Ling's college entrance examination emerged when he returned to school after the new year. By the time of the pre-examination in April, the whole family began to get nervous.

Liu Ling passed the preliminaries with the highest grades in the school, and then filled in the application for the college entrance examination.

For college entrance examination volunteers, they have never had a successful college entrance examination around them, so there is no one to give them experience and guidance.

In the end, Liu Ling’s college entrance examination application was filled out under the guidance of his teacher. There were fifteen items in total. He couldn’t remember what he filled in. He only knew that his first application was Yuancheng School of Finance and Accounting, and his final application was Rongze Normal University. .

The teacher said that as long as it can become commercial food, it doesn't matter what school it is.

In June, Liu Ling took the initiative to ask to live on campus. Although Sun Chang'e felt uncomfortable, she also knew what the college entrance examination meant. For the happiness of the child's life, she must suffer some punishment now.

From the day she moved into the school until two days before the college entrance examination, Liu Ling never returned home.

Liu Xia had to go to the high school to see Liu Ling once a day, even if he could see him every day, he could still notice that Liu Ling was getting thinner and thinner.

Four days before the college entrance examination, Liu Xia was on summer vacation. Although he only scored 2 points in Chinese in the final exam, his overall score was still 21 points ahead of No. [-] Chu Xiaohe.

During the three days of Liu Ling's exam, Liu Kui lived in Wangning Commune. He pulled a shelf cart there on the afternoon of the [-]th. There was a mat, a list, and a stack of cornmeal pancakes in the cart.

At night, Liu Kui slept outside Liuling School, the shelf was flattened, and it was almost like a bed when it went up.

All the money in the family was taken away from Liu Kui. For three days, Liu Ling ate millet porridge and deep-fried dough sticks in the state-run cafeteria every morning, fried noodles with egg soup or sesame seed cakes with meatballs at noon, and porridge and steamed buns for dinner. , and a plate of fried vegetables.

After the exam, Liu Ling and Liu Kui came back with a cart. Looking at his thin body that was almost out of shape, the whole family unanimously refused to ask him about the exam.

Liu Ling also didn't take the initiative to talk about his exam situation with his family, mainly because he didn't know what to say.

He didn't want to disappoint his family, so he didn't want to speak Chinese. He gave a few cartoons and asked them to write an argumentative essay based on the cartoons. I'm afraid even their teachers have never heard of this kind of composition.

He has never even seen the question types of the last few questions in mathematics. After all, Zeng Guangtong is not a high school teacher, and the high school textbooks in Kyoto are different from those in Central Plains Province. I went to the teacher to ask a few questions about my review materials. The teacher looked embarrassed at the time and asked him to go back first. The teacher told him after thinking about it.

But he didn't want his family to have too much hope. The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. Liu Ling can be sure that there will be no one from Wangning High School this year.

Liu Ling is very clear about the level of his school. It can be said that he has almost never indulged his expectations for the college entrance examination. He knows his destined ending.

Even if it was just to comfort his once passionate heart, how could he willingly admit that he had a sliver of expectation suppressed in his heart like an idiotic dream?

So many days and nights, all efforts were made with despair, towards a doomed end.

Many days later, when life presented countless broad roads in front of Liu Ling, and he had the power to choose and make decisions, Liu Ling recalled his feelings at this time, and he finally dared to face his true heart calmly. .

That period of hard work without expectations was just the last struggle in the face of the upcoming predetermined destiny. From then on, he will return to the common life track of his ancestors for generations, and spend his life in the deep mountains, in poverty and death. lifetime.

That last struggle was a good memory he left for himself when he was dying, and it was the only chance he could add a touch of brilliance to his short youth in the life he thought he was doomed to be gloomy.

How can he live up to it!