Chapter 28 New Year's Eve 1973
Before the dew on the threshing floor had evaporated, Xu Yao heard sharp sneers coming from the well.
The two women carrying water pretended to tie straw ropes, but they glanced at her new blue cloth shirt hanging on the bamboo pole - it was a defective cloth that Xue Han exchanged from the supply and marketing cooperative in the county overnight, and there was a crooked wild ginger flower embroidered on the collar.
"There was a great commotion in the ancestral hall yesterday, but today I have time to show off my new clothes."
The woman in the maroon jacket raised her voice on purpose, and the bamboo shoulder pole made a crisp sound on the bluestone slabs.
Xu Yao's fingers turned white as she gripped the enamel basin, and the mint-scented soap created tiny ripples on the water's surface.
She should have expected that after her third sister was publicly exposed for embezzling the dowry money, those fence-sitters who had been gossiping about her would always change their target.
"Yaoyao!" Xu's mother fumbled for the door frame and called her, her gray pupils reflecting the morning light, "Your father said that Carpenter Li from the east wants to borrow an abacus..."
Before he could finish his words, a hunched figure wearing a straw hat jumped out from the wall.
Villager A held a pipe in his mouth, his cloudy eyes circling around Xu Yao's waist: "Accountant Xu's doorstep is almost trampled flat by boots, no wonder she broke off the engagement and remarried overnight - I think she should donate a chastity arch to the ancestral hall..."
The wooden basin in Xu Yao's hand slammed onto the stone steps with a bang, and soapy water splashed on her cloth shoes.
Just as he was about to speak, Xu's father rushed out from the inner room with a hunched back, his sallow face flushed to the color of liver: "When your wife had a difficult delivery, who bought three pounds of brown sugar on credit!"
"Dad!" Xu Yao hurriedly tried to support the old man who was coughing violently, but was held back by her mother's dry vine-like hand.
Xu's mother fumbled to tidy up her scattered hair, and the rough calluses on her palms rubbed against her earlobes: "I smelled the fragrance of Xanthium sibiricum on your sleeves. That child always brought herbs from the mountains every time he came."
Suddenly, there was a sound of iron scraping against bluestone outside the courtyard wall.
Xue Han parked his 28-inch bicycle on one foot outside the fence. The basket was piled with dew-covered wild berries. The sleeves of his military uniform were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the hideous bullet marks on his forearms.
When his eyes swept over Villager A, he was so shocked that his pipe fell into the gutter.
"Uncle Xu, it's time to get new abacus beads." He stepped over the threshold carrying a brown paper bag, and his iron-like voice shook the grape vines. "I saw red wood ones at the supply and marketing cooperative yesterday."
Xu Yao stared down at the yellow mud on the edge of his rubber shoes, and suddenly discovered that the mud spots were arranged into fine wheat ear patterns - exactly the same shape as the piles of newly threshed wheat in the threshing ground.
Last night he used the excuse of refueling his tractor, but it turned out that he was going to...
"Comrade Xue has arrived at the right time!" Villager A suddenly straightened his back and sprayed cigarette-smelling saliva onto the clothesline, "Our production team will not tolerate corruption..."
"Bang!"
The enamel pot in Xue Han's hand hit the millstone hard, startling the sparrows that were pecking at food.
He slowly unscrewed the military canteen, and the clear aroma of wine mixed with the scent of wild mint filled the courtyard: "Last autumn, someone transported 28 bags of wheat mixed with sand to the commune's granary."
Villager A instantly felt like a rooster with its neck strangled. He stumbled back and crushed his own pipe.
Xu Yao looked at the crawling figure and suddenly noticed that the second button on Xue Han's collar was loose - it was the one she had pulled in a panic last night.
The sound of cicadas suddenly became louder.
Father Xu hid in the inner room with a new abacus and fiddled with the beads, while Mother Xu fumbled to stuff roasted pumpkin seeds into Xue Han's pocket.
Xu Yao was squatting by the well, washing clothes, when she heard a rustling sound behind her.
The sweet juice of wild berries seeped out through the kraft paper, leaving dots of rouge on the bluestone slabs.
"Director Wang of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative said..." Xue Han's military boots stopped in her shadow, "You need to collect seven colors of glass candy wrappers to exchange for maltose."
Xu Yao stared blankly at her reflection in the water.
The figure who always climbed over the wall to bring her herbs late at night was now clumsily imitating the girls collecting candy wrappers.
She suddenly remembered the mint candy he stuffed in her pocket last night. Before it melted, she clearly drew a wild ginger flower on the cellophane with a pen.
"Xue Han." She turned around, clutching the wet corner of her clothes, only to see the man using the tip of his bayonet to pry open her palm - there lay a rice dumpling wrapped in oil paper, with the words "Glorious Labor Award" printed on the wrinkled paper.
The cicada's chirping suddenly missed a beat.
As dusk dyed the clothesline red, Xu Yao felt a warm bullet shell in the pocket of her blue shirt.
There were very small words engraved on the bottom of the copper shell. When I looked closely under the kerosene lamp, I saw the words "1973. New Year's Eve".
She recalled the snowy night when Xue Han came into the yard covered in blood, stuffed a bag of brown sugar into her window, and then fainted.
The window frame was suddenly hit by a stone.
Xu Yao pushed open the wooden window and saw a hunched figure wearing a straw hat standing in the moonlight.
The man threw something onto the windowsill and ran away, startling the crickets in the yard.
She unfolded the crumpled cigarette box paper, and the blurred pencil words exuded a chill in the moonlight:
The night wind made the kerosene lamp flicker. The shadow of the wild ginger flower on the glass candy wrapper drifted on the wall and gradually condensed into a distorted word "injustice".
Xu Yao grasped the stone into her palm, the metal edges pricked her so hard that it hurt - she would never mistake the handwriting, it should have been burned to ashes half a year ago... The moonlight flowed on the bluestone road, Xu Yao counted the seventh cracked stone slab, and the crackling sound of the exploding oil lamp in the convenience store was still echoing in her ears.
Villager B raised the wine bottle and spit on the enamelware tank of the glass counter: "If you ask me, the workers are all like wolf cubs. Why do they target the girl from the Xu family?
Maybe it's..."
Xue Han's kettle suddenly slammed heavily on the counter, causing the canned fruits on the shelf to buzz.
Xu Yao pressed the back of his hand with bulging veins and found that his sleeves were stained with the unique red tassels of the seventh wheat pile in the threshing floor - that was the mark she had made with a piece of rag this morning.
"Uncle Zhang," she slapped the receipt from the supply and marketing cooperative on the glass cabinet. The ink printed "Five feet of defective cloth" was still glowing with indigo, "your Chunni received Dacron last month. It was the discount coupon Comrade Xue exchanged for his military medal, right?"
Villager B's wine bottle fell crookedly in the pickle jar, and the sour smell of pickled radish mixed with the smell of cheap liquor spread.
Xue Han suddenly pulled out a tin box from his trouser pocket. The word "Glory" was vaguely printed on the rusty lid.
The box was neatly packed with colorful candy wrappers, and the one on top, which was of wild ginger flower, still had the lingering scent of last night's mint candy.
The sound of the old accountant's abacus floated out from the window of the village committee. The thirteen mahogany beads touched the mark of "1973. New Year's Eve" - that was carved by Xue Han with the tip of the bayonet.
Xu Yao looked at the hemostatic bandage wrapped around the abacus beam, and suddenly remembered the night when her father coughed up blood and Xue Han went into the mountains in the rain to collect rock coptis.
"Everyone has seen this abacus, right?"
She raised her voice, her nails digging into the old calluses on her palms, "Last month, the commune checked the accounts, and my third sister said that 28 kilograms of food coupons were missing..." Suddenly, a muffled sound of a haystack collapsing came from the direction of the threshing ground, startling the crows that were roosting at night.
Xue Han's boots rolled over the candy wrappers on the ground, and the moonlight shone on the metal whistle on his waist - it was used during militia training, and there were still fine marks on the whistle left by wheat awns in the threshing floor.
Xu Yao noticed that there was a loose hole on his belt, which was pulled open by her when he was carrying firewood last night.
The third sister's blue headscarf flashed past the back door of the supply and marketing cooperative, and several village women wearing headscarves ran to the threshing ground carrying wooden shovels.
Xu Yao counted the wheat grains stuck to the soles of their rubber shoes. There were exactly twenty-eight of them, exactly the same number as the sand mixed into the granary last year.
"Yao girl," the old accountant held on to the door frame tremblingly, "your father asked me to bring some wild berries..." Purple-red juice seeped out from the cracks in the bamboo basket, forming a blurred word "injustice" on the bluestone slab.
Xu Yao suddenly remembered that snowy night when Xue Han stuffed a bag of brown sugar into her hand and hid a blood-soaked petition letter.
The tip of Xue Han's bayonet picked up the straw at the bottom of the basket, revealing neatly bundled old newspapers.
The headline of the news on New Year’s Eve in 1973 was prominently displayed: “Red Star Commune Advanced Producers Commemoration Conference”.
In the yellowed photo, the young third sister is pressing her red handprint on the list of winners.
The night wind blew up the wheat husks in the threshing ground, and the wild ginger flower on Xu Yao's wrist suddenly fell off.
Xue Han silently unbuttoned his belt. The lining was densely sewn with glass candy wrappers, and seven colors of light flowed under the moonlight.
The middle position was empty, and its shape just matched the candy wrapper with the words "Glory Labor Award" in his palm.
"It's going to rain tomorrow," he said suddenly.
Xu Yao looked up at the loose buttons on his collar, and the blue cotton thread fluttered in the wind like a question mark.
The sound of iron shovels hitting each other came from the direction of the threshing ground. In the shadow of the seventh wheat pile, half of a wooden stake wrapped with a red hairband was faintly visible - it was exactly the style used to tie the curtain of the sedan chair when my third sister's daughter got married.
The kerosene lamp cast their shadows on the bulletin board, covering the award certificate for "Advanced Producer".
Xu Yao touched the candy wrappers lining the belt and suddenly discovered that there were dates written in pen on the back of each one: 1973. New Year's Eve, Qingming Festival, Grain in Ear... The last page stopped at tonight, with a picture of a wild ginger bud.
The moonlight suddenly dimmed, and the third sister's sharp laughter pierced the night: "Comrade Xue's belt is really exquisite, no wonder it can hold so much..." Her deliberately drawn-out tail tone was interrupted by the sound of an iron whistle, which startled the night owl hiding in the haystack.
Xu Yao held the bullet shell that was still warm from her body, and the word "injustice" on the metal surface hurt her palm.
Xue Han's boots rolled over the candy wrappers on the ground, creating sparks on the bluestone slabs, illuminating a new notice posted in the corner of the bulletin board - the red handprint of the third sister was right there, pressing on the account of Xu's father's medical expenses last year.
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