Shenmei Office

In July, the northern countryside is in the heat of the summer, and the wind blows the wheat waves in the fields, wave after wave, which is really beautiful.But what the wind brings is not coolness, but boundless heat.

The country men who have received farm work wear thin sweatshirts, and they are not afraid of the sun.A few colleagues were talking about their children and mother-in-law, or talking about their plans for the second half of the year.

"Where is grandma here again?"

The leader of the men saw the grandma who was wearing a flowered shirt and sitting under a grape vine, so he approached the grandma obediently and begged for a sip of water.

"Why are you drinking in such a hurry, slow down, don't waste it."

"I'm tired after working all morning. Grandma, your water is ice-cold, and it's comfortable to drink! I don't know what's wrong with the weather, the temperature is getting higher and higher. I'm afraid I won't dare to go out in the future."

After the man drank the water, the grandmother scooped another bowl of water from the barrel and handed it to the young man behind him.

The young man took the water and gulped it down, then smiled at the man, showing his small white teeth: "Then you don't want to bray like a donkey at home."

"Screw you!"

Seeing the group of elders bickering like children, Grandma smiled and picked up the needle and thread in her hand, and continued to embroider the unfinished pattern.

In the center of the field, there is a small brick-red yard, not big, about five feet square, inside which is an old well, a rattan chair, a wooden barrel, a stack of white porcelain bowls, and a small pavilion against the wall. And a rack of vines growing just right.

Grandma is over 80 years old this year, and my wife has already gone to Naihe Bridge to wait for her.My sons and daughters all work in big cities. I went to the city to take care of my grandchildren for a few years, but then I decided to come back anyway, and I never went to the city.

The children have no choice but to ask acquaintances to help take care of grandma.

Grandma's life is simple. When I get up in the morning, I cook a bowl of noodles. The noodles are made by Grandma herself. They taste soft and won't be boiled. At home, I went to clean the inside and outside of the house, and watered the vegetables in the yard; when the mung bean soup was cooked, grandma put it in a thermos bucket, and carried it in a small cloth bag made by myself. , slowly went to sit in the small yard in the field.

Use the white porcelain bowl placed in the small courtyard to put a bowl of mung bean soup outside the small pavilion, and then light a stick of incense.

Sometimes grandma would open the small pavilion to wipe the dust off the stone Buddha statue inside, but most of the time grandma would just lie quietly on the rattan chair after finishing these things, do some needlework, or send out hair. daze.

"Grandma!"

In the afternoon of this day, Grandma was sitting on the wicker chair and dozing off when she heard a crisp female voice coming in from outside.The one who came in was a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl with a ball head, and the part of the back of her head near her neck was shaved, which looked a bit nondescript.He was wearing white short-sleeves and black denim shorts, and a large blue slipper on his feet. It looked like he had just changed at home.

"Ah, Lulu is back." The granny who was woken up showed no impatience on her face, but instead smiled and waved to the little girl: "Come on, drink some well water to cool off."

"Okay!" Lulu squatted next to Grandma, picked up the white porcelain bowl and drank it bluntly, and said while drinking, "This well water is so sweet!"

Grandma stretched out her hand and touched the back of her somewhat prickly head: "Why did you shave the hair here? Girls look like tomboys."

"Oh! I shaved like this because of you, grandma." Lulu rubbed her palm in the palm of grandma coquettishly: "Grandma, you want to see my long hair, but summer is really hot! You especially swept the neck underneath The other day, when I went to the barber shop, I told people that I was going to have my hair cut, thinking that the summer vacation was coming, and grandma, you liked my long hair, so I let you shave like this."

"You are the only one who can talk!" Grandma smiled and patted Lulu's arm: "Long hair is good, my Lulu has long hair like a little fairy."

Hearing this, Lulu stood up and twirled in a circle, made a pose of a fairy flying to the sky, and said in a whisper: "That's not right, ah, grandma, you brought him mung bean soup again~"

"It's hot, bring him some."

Grandma looked at the faded shrine tenderly, as if she was looking at an old friend she hadn't seen for a long time.

Lulu took out a stick of incense from the incense tube on one side, bowed to the shrine decently, inserted the incense into it, and said in her mouth, "Dragon God bless! Bless me next semester It can be done smoothly, and can I become a physique that is not afraid of heat? I feel like I am about to be fucked by a hot adult recently!"

Grandma shook her head, not going to correct her whimsical wish.But after Lulu finished speaking, a breeze blew in from the gate of the courtyard, carrying cool moisture, which made her very comfortable.

"Wow, this...is this a manifestation!"

Lulu hid beside Grandma in fear, making Grandma couldn't help touching her hairy head.

"Don't be afraid, he is greeting you."

"Hey..." Lulu looked at the shrine twice, and after finding nothing unusual, she clasped her hands together and bowed: "Hello, hello, I just came here recently, please take care of me."

"..."

The temperature by the well is always lower than other places. Lulu stood at the gate of the courtyard and looked at the road that was about to be deformed by the heat outside, and silently retracted the stretched out leg.

Grandma took out an old newspaper from the cloth pocket she brought and spread it on the floor, motioned for Lulu to sit down, and lowered her head to embroider the pattern that was almost completed.

"Is this an embroidered dragon?"

Lulu, who couldn't stay idle, lay on the armrest of the chair, looking at the lifelike pattern on the white silk silk, and asked in a low voice.

"Yes."

"Hmm..." Sleepy Lulu squinted her eyes at the embroidery, and asked in a daze, "Grandma, do you think there really is a dragon god here?"

"There must be. In the past, there was a shrine at the mouth of the well. The little dragon god of this well was worshiped inside. It was to thank the dragon god for giving us water. It is very effective."

After finishing speaking, she found that her little granddaughter was still sitting on the ground in a weird posture, falling asleep on the handle of the chair. Grandma smiled helplessly. After cutting off the last thread, she completely wiped the cloth in her hand. Expand.

Under the golden little dragon, there was a girl wearing a beautiful floral dress and two big braids.

Lulu stayed in her hometown for less than ten days, and she became a little black tan, she ran out to play with her former playmates all day long, and the whole village could hear her laughing like a lunatic Voice.

In the evening of this day, Lulu, who had been crazy for a day, returned home and found that there were porridge and side dishes on the table as usual, but her grandmother was nowhere to be seen.After finishing the porridge and side dishes on her own, she went to wash the pots and bowls, took a small stool and sat in the courtyard waiting for grandma to come back.

With the coming of night, the crickets in the grass and the frogs by the stream all uttered their unwillingness to be lonely.

But for some reason, the sounds that used to accompany her to sleep became extremely harsh today. After irritatingly slapping the mosquito blood on her hand, she ran into the house and picked up Grandma's old flashlight.

She went to the homes of a few acquaintances first, but they all said they didn't see Grandma.

The man who often asked for water from his grandmother after farm work saw that Lulu looked anxious and about to cry, so he took a flashlight from home, asked his wife and baby to rest first, and called a few to do farm work together on weekdays. Her buddies went to help her find her grandma.

But this night, they almost alarmed the entire village, but they couldn't find Grandma.

When it was almost ten o'clock, Lulu suddenly picked up the flashlight and rushed out. The elders didn't know what was wrong with the girl, so they didn't dare to go up to persuade her, so they could only follow her silently.

The fields at night finally became clearer.The road leading to the small yard was still an unrepaired dirt road. Lulu accidentally stepped into a small pit and fell to the ground, but she didn't care about the pain, got up and ran towards the small yard.

The tension in my heart became more and more intense as the distance shortened.But when she really stood outside the courtyard and saw that the courtyard door was not closed, she hesitated to go in.

"You kid, why are you running around all of a sudden?"

After the men chased after Lulu, they found that her face was covered with tears, and her hands were tightly clenched on her chest, so that she could vaguely see the dots on her lower lip. bloodshot.

The small animals around the courtyard should have been disturbed by the group of uninvited guests who came in in the middle of the night, and jumped away one after another, with the sound of blades rubbing against each other.

Lulu cautiously pushed open the courtyard door, and the courtyard was filled with thick humidity, so cold and damp that people wondered if she had fallen into the water.

And her grandma, with long silver-white hair tied into two long braids, was wearing a floral skirt made of cotton cloth, lying quietly on the wicker chair, as if she was asleep.

Beside grandma, the small wooden door of the shrine was wide open, and there was a small bamboo basket in front of it, which contained a set of clothes that she had sewn, a small shoe, and a pattern that grandma had embroidered for a long time.

"Grandma!"

Lulu wept and knelt beside Grandma, the deserted moonlight shone on him.And in the shrine that she didn't notice, there was a dense layer of water droplets on the face of the Buddha statue, as if it was soaked by the thick mist.