In the most destitute days, the herringbone ditch saved me.
The first time I walked into the herringbone ditch, it was raining and the road was muddy and black. On her feet were a pair of blue tennis shoes with completely worn out soles. Black muddy water got into her feet and came out from the instep. The shoes slip on the road and the feet slip in the shoes. It was the end of April or the beginning of May in the lunar calendar. It wasn't very cold, but it was rainy, cold, and wet. The mountains were covered with pine trees hidden in the misty rain and mist. A few crisp cow bells could be heard occasionally among the roar of machines in the ditches.
I am at the end of my rope. When I returned home from school, I was living in a bare house. I read and wrote at night and couldn't afford kerosene for lighting, paper, or pen and ink. Smoking (141 cents per pack of Chenhe brand) was only paid by catching one or two snakes occasionally and selling them. When the last 300-gram manuscript cost one yuan and twenty cents for postage and I was penniless, I was really desperate. After my friend Xiaorong paid the postage for me and sent the manuscript away, I sat alone by the river at the mouth of the river below Manchuan for a long, long time. No matter what ideals or careers... As long as this poverty is as cold as iron, no one can survive. Now, how can we realize our spiritual pursuit? That day, I made a decision and took out a loan of fifty yuan from the village credit union. I said goodbye to my family and set foot on the coal mining road north to Tongchuan.
My uncle worked as a contractor in Jiaoping’s Herringbone Valley, and he took me in. As a close relative, he was in a difficult position. Although I am already twenty years old, I have just left school. How can I do the hard work in the mines? The average team does not want a weak man like me. Finally, my uncle arranged for me to carry water and help cook in the kitchen. I started working part-time for the first time in my life.
My uncle gave me a pair of long-waisted rain boots, a pair of yellow rubber shoes, and a whole carton of filtered Yellow Princess cigarettes. I suddenly became rich.
Renzigou is actually an ordinary ravine in Weibei, but it is unique because of the rich coal underground. My main job is to carry water. The distance from the water hole to the kitchen of the work team is about 400 meters. It is a gentle slope and a foot-wide yellow mud path. I can carry 30 to 40 loads of water a day. In the kitchen is a half-ton mining bucket used as a water tank. One bucket holds sixteen loads, and three buckets are used a day. On the third day of work, Master Zhu, the cook, made me suffer a big loss. He did not close the lid of the mine bucket at night. Two mice fell into the bucket of water that I was carrying at night, and the whole bucket of water was poured out. Before dawn, he asked me to get up and carry water again. I was very angry, but Niu Jiner also came up and refused to carry it. He couldn't do anything to me, so he went to my uncle to complain. My uncle felt sorry for me. He also knew that I had just started working and was a little overwhelmed. However, the kitchen had to open meals on time and could not delay the meals of the workers who went to work at 8 o'clock in the morning. He coaxed me and gave me another cigarette. The puddle was dug from a wetland in the bush, and it was basically never clear. On windy days, there will be toilet paper floating on it, and the cows of the surrounding people often come to have a drink. Repeated roads, monotonous work, and lonely hearts continue day after day helplessly. The outlook on life shaped by the school completely collapsed in the face of the ruthless reality. My childhood playmates and friends who dropped out of elementary school are using their strong bodies and high wages to silently mock me, a poor man who has some culture, some ambitions, and some dreams.
I forced myself to adapt slowly. Use Mr. Ah Q's spiritual victory method to comfort yourself. Anyone who is given a great responsibility from heaven must first work his muscles and sharpen his mind... I imagine that the words of the old master were written thousands of years ago for future generations... In the quiet of the night, I curled up in a corner of the work shed, stroking the swelling on my shoulders. It hurts, but despite the dim light, I still stubbornly crawl on my own grid.
There is a very fair reward for physical exertion here. Every sunset and sunrise will give you one more day of work, and one more day of work will earn you a few more dollars. It is real and immediate. Compared with the dream of literature, part-time work is like hot buns, as long as you reach out, you can get them to satisfy your hunger, while writing articles is like looking at the menu, which is full of delicious food, and what you can afford is too limited. The Gutter completely changed me. It taught me to clearly understand the relationship between material and spiritual life, and to turn the cart-before-the-horse concept cultivated in school on its head. While fully understanding that I was a farmer, I also took the path that a farmer in a poor mountainous area had no choice. I let go of my pride and gradually became one with everyone. The next time I visited this land, I went down a well, shoveled a shovel, and pulled a cart. My face was blackened with charcoal and my hands were calloused. When you occasionally wake up and feel sad, drink alcohol quickly, get yourself drunk, and then fall asleep. In the future, what will still be needed underground is labor, not fantasy.
However, the coal area gave the hometown more than just wealth. Its rudimentary safety facilities, destructive mining methods, and harsh production environment have successively claimed the lives of several young people in the village. . Once, at the mouth of a well opposite our work team, four young men collapsed and died in one shift. There was a young man named Li who was the same age as me. When he pulled himself up into the well, his intestines were still hanging out of his body. When I was a child, my classmate worked as a contractor at the wellhead. The underground gas levels seriously exceeded the standard. The mining department violated production regulations, which eventually led to a gas explosion. All seven workers were burned to coke. The classmate had diarrhea before he came out of the wellhead. He was lucky enough to escape... These days, a I'll just pay 10,000 yuan to save my life. My elder brother died in the coal mine, and my younger brother still went to the coal mine when he grew up. It's not that he is not afraid of death, but he was born in such a poor and harsh environment and has no choice but to do anything. On the hills on both sides of the herringbone ditch, you can find lonely graves of people who died in a foreign land everywhere. It is hidden among the trees and grass, and no one will ever cultivate a piece of earth or burn a stick of incense.
Every time I meet them, coldness rises from the bottom of my heart and spreads to every pore of my body. A kind of despair for the future tightly grasps my heart, making me painful and suffocating.
The charm of the herringbone ditch is in winter and spring. A heavy snow has buried all the colors that are inconsistent with nature. The branches of the pine trees on the top of the mountain have been weighed down by the snow, making them appear taller and more vigorous. The sharp wind blows across the top of the mountain, like tearing a big piece of cloth, mixed with the fleeting silhouette of crows. . Although spring comes late, the mountain flowers are still in full bloom. The two most popular flowers are golden wild roses and pink wild cherries. There are clumps and patches of them. Where there are no pine trees, there are them, blooming lively and fragrant. In your spare time, grab a book, stay away from people, find a flat place, lie on the fragrant pine needles, and enjoy the sunshine and flowers. People who have never been down a well will never know the preciousness of blue sky and sunshine. Every time I get off work, I see the dazzling skylight at the mouth of the well, and my soul feels a tremor of escape from the sea of ??suffering. It is more intoxicating than the lover's smile.
I went to Shengzigou five times in four or five years, once a year on average, and learned almost all the jobs in a small coal mine, from driving a winch, electrician, tile inspection, blasting coal, to running in the main alley. , supports, push mine carts, shovel shovels, as well as welders, repairs, etc., they have experienced a long evolution from small coolies to small contractors. If I were to work in a small coal mine again, there would be no work that I couldn't do, both above and below the mine. When the herringbone ditch became a memory, I often missed it and thought about it. It gave me not only hard-earned money, but more importantly, it tempered my will and made me better able to withstand hardships. .