When Lin Guoqing returned home, it was dinner time. The dishes had already been placed on the table, kept warm in covered bowls, waiting for the remaining person to arrive before they could start eating.
Chen Chunhua was stuffing cotton with the cloth she had cut earlier. When she saw Lin Guoqing coming back pushing a tricycle, she put down her work and prepared to eat.
"Wash your hands and eat!"
With a shout, a group of people rushed back from the backyard. Liang Shengdi immediately went to see if there were any ducks on the tricycle. Seeing the two mallards with their feet tied and lying in the tricycle with no desire to live, she felt relieved.
I went to the rice mill this afternoon, and there are a lot of bran and rice husks at home. Now the old man and four children are feeding the chickens in the backyard. If there are any extra, we will open the door and pour them for the ducks in the backyard.
"Hurry up and wash your hands and eat, the food today is really good!"
Dried fish, sauced crab, diced bamboo shoots with beaten eggs and stir-fried eggplant, accompanied by a pot of rice cooked with new rice, made everyone's stomachs full.
"Hey, are you going to sell vegetables today?" Lin Guoqing asked Chen Chunhua after the children went to bed in the evening.
Chen Chunhua nodded and said, "Of course I should go. It's been almost a month. If I don't go, how will I get any income?"
"Then go see if Lao Shi is back? I haven't been to Guanqian Alley for so long, I'm really worried about him."
I hadn't seen him for almost a week before the autumn harvest, and I felt like something had happened.
"I know. I'll ask Uncle Wu and the others if they've ever met him on the street."
We were all city dwellers after all, so who knows, we might just bump into him during the day? As long as he was alright, that was all that mattered.
***
After more than half a month, Chen Chunhua went to Guanqian Lane again with her vegetables. The weather was much colder than before the autumn harvest, so everyone postponed setting up their stalls.
She arrived at the previous time. She was the only one in the alley. It was quite creepy. Just as she was thinking about how to kill time, someone suddenly stood up in the dark corner. She was so scared that she almost fell to the ground.
"Sister-in-law, don't be afraid, it's me." The man called out softly from a distance, and Chen Chunhua recognized the man's voice.
"Brother Shi?"
“Hey!”
Lao Shi took a few steps closer to Chen Chunhua under the light, and finally people could see him clearly.
His limbs are intact, his arms and legs are all there, but he doesn't seem to be in good spirits.
He was wearing a tattered thin cotton-padded jacket wrapped tightly around his body. His once neatly trimmed flat hair was now disheveled and even had some gray hair. His entire face was covered in unshaven hair. His dark circles were almost as dark as the tip of his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot, revealing a heavy air of death.
"Brother Shi...what happened to you?" Chen Chunhua almost didn't recognize him. It had only been a month since they last saw each other. Is this still the same high-spirited old Shi?
Lao Shi pulled the corner of his mouth, revealing a not very happy smile, and did not directly answer Chen Chunhua's question, but just said,
"I came here half a month ago. Old Wu said you guys went back for the autumn harvest and it would probably be busy for a while. I thought it was almost done these past two days, so I came here to wait. It seems I was right..."
Chen Chunhua was stunned. Waiting for them? "Is there anything we can help with? Just tell us, we will definitely help if we can!"
Lao Shi took out a few banknotes from his pocket and handed them over. "That water snake isn't big, so I sold it for 80 cents. Here's the money, keep it."
Chen Chunhua almost forgot about the snake. She took the money and looked at Lao Shi blankly, "Just for this? You've been waiting for us for several days?" What did she say? Lao Shi's character is absolutely the best!
Lao Shi licked his lips, "It's not entirely because of this..." He took out the small box containing the tickets from his arms and asked a little embarrassedly,
"I just want to ask, do you still need tickets? If so, I'll sell them to you at a discount... I won't do this job anymore."
Chen Chunhua and his wife bought quite a few tickets from him. Of course, they didn't buy big ones, but they kept buying small items such as food tickets, meat tickets, cloth tickets, etc. He knew they had this need, so he thought of asking them first. If they didn't want it, he would look for other ways.
"You, why don't you... No, I didn't bring that much money today... You don't have to sell it to us cheaply if it's what we want. Just take the original price..."
Chen Chunhua was a little flustered for a moment. Lao Shi wanted to sell all the goods at once. Was there something wrong with his family's financial situation? He also said he would quit in the future. Didn't he also need money?
Chen Chunhua didn't know where to start asking. After all, they didn't usually ask each other such personal questions, but Lao Shi did have a good relationship with them...
"Count how many there are and how much do they cost? I'll ask Guoqing to bring them tomorrow... Um, Lao Shi, if you're short on money, just ask. We can always scrape together some..."
Lao Shi really laughed this time. He sat down in the corner and waved his hand, "I'm not short of money, don't worry."
"I just... maybe I'll never be short of money again... One person's food will keep the whole family full..."
Chen Chunhua was stunned. "Aren't your parents..." Lao Shi said that they became ticket scalpers because their parents needed medicine. Why now...
"They've all left, and I'm the only one left..." Lao Shi sighed, his eyes red as he looked up to the sky. "...They've all left..."
Lao Shi, whose real name is Shi Zhiqiang, was born to a father who was a technician at the city's steel mill, earning 60 or 70 yuan a month. This allowed his wife to raise their children and live a good life even without working.
Unfortunately, he accidentally injured his spine while working, and has been paralyzed in bed ever since. The factory was kind enough to cover all of Shi's medical expenses, and Shi Zhiqiang joined the factory after graduating from high school to take over his father's job.
With his own efforts, he became a fourth-level worker in the steel plant in five years, with a monthly salary of 58 yuan. Such conditions were not bad. At that time, Mrs. Shi had to receive several matchmakers every day!
However, not long after, Mrs. Shi was diagnosed with lung cancer, a disease that was basically a death sentence in those days.
He has a paralyzed father in bed and a terminally ill mother who cannot stop taking medicine. He has to go to work during the day and cannot take care of them at all, so he asks his neighbors to help take care of them. But this is not free care, he has to pay.
Now, let alone getting married and having children, even if Lao Shi split his salary in half, it would still not be enough.
So he thought about other ways to make money. Since he started working as a ticket scalper, his living conditions have indeed improved a lot. When he goes to the hospital to get the best medicine, he can ask the doctor to give him the best. He can afford to buy whatever his parents want to eat. This year he is going to take the college entrance examination, and his ticket selling business is booming.
He even thought about whether he could ask someone to bring something back from Shanghai for the Chinese New Year this year so that the two old people could try something new.
But unexpectedly, his mother's condition suddenly worsened.
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