"Aren't you three tired? You have to talk about those things now?"
"Mom, we are not sleepy." We have been so stimulated that we are awake. If you don't tell us, we will only be unable to sleep even more.
Mrs. Xu looked up at her three sons and sighed.
In fact, she knew it well.
What these three people do outside is dig sewers.
He was probably hired as a short-term corvee, otherwise he wouldn't have taken home so much wages.
Why do you think you will earn more by doing this? Sewers and modernity here are two different things. Modern sewage can be discharged through septic tanks and the like, and workers at least have protective masks and gloves. She guessed that they would not drink so much "brine" containing bacteria in their stomachs.
The water here can't be called sewage, but brine. All kinds of maggots will crawl in through the mouth and nose, and it is particularly dangerous.
Because modern times use reinforced concrete, the sewers here are made of clay and spliced into ditches. When a large amount of discharged sewage rushes over, especially when it rains heavily these days, it will collapse at any time, and people will be washed away along with all kinds of sewage. Even if you try to salvage the whole body, you won't be able to find it.
Although she didn't understand the specifics, Mrs. Xu knew that there were two reasons.
First, unless the locals are extremely poor, they are leech collectors. They are people who walk in ponds and rivers and use their bare skin to wait for the leeches to bite. When their legs are covered with leeches, they let the leeches absorb their bodies and suck blood. , and then pick the leeches and sell them to the medical clinic. Purely selling blood to make money.
The second is not to do the corvee cleaning up sewage. This kind of money is a lot of money, but you think there are leeches in the pond, and there are all kinds of insects in the sewage brine regardless of dilution. After being bitten by various bugs in the autumn, in modern terms, all the bacteria entered along the wound, and many people suffered from various diseases. Many people's legs were sawed off, not to mention that they could be washed away by sewage at any time. Many people would rather work for two more months and help the government mine and build city towers instead of doing this and just work hard to make money.
And her sons earned money by selling their lives, which is why the Wangjiagou people laughed at her when they fought against her.
Thanks to good luck, all of them came back.
But she couldn't cry, howl, and complain: "How could you risk doing this?"
Could it be why? I'm poor, there's no need to ask.
In addition, because of their young age, each of them always feels that he is in good health, has little respect for death, and feels that some misfortunes will not happen to him.
So why are you scolding the children?
In the future, if the family is not poor, there will be no chance for them to worry about making quick money anymore.
Believe it or not? Just when she said she owed so much money, these three guys started thinking of making quick money again.
Mrs. Xu motioned to the three boys to let her go back to the house to talk.
The three brothers didn't know if it was an illusion, but they always felt that their mother's gestures and movements, beckoning them to come in and talk, carried an indescribable power.
It seems that he was trained as a leader in the village.
How could the three of them know that their mother-in-law had changed her mind a long time ago and was not the old lady who could be fooled and smiled before seeing money. It's not that the mother doesn't love them, it's just that sometimes it's a matter of perspective.
After Mrs. Xu entered the house, she first arranged for her granddaughter to go to bed. She had a bad cold, so she asked Qin Niang to burn the big house's kang and spread the kang mat and quilt.
Otherwise, the three brothers would have no place to sleep tonight, and both rooms would be filled with food. Especially the third and fourth children had no place to stay in their house.
Hearing the big house, the three brothers of the Xu family hurriedly raised their eyes to observe their niece.
The big house is the house specially reserved for the eldest brother by the whole family.
It is true that the eldest brother will not come back, so the whole family decided to have a house even if he comes back, and no one has ever lived in the kang in that house.
It’s just that I would put the table in that room specially when I eat every day, because I don’t want my eldest brother’s room to be deserted.
I kept that house because I planned to let my niece live there when she was a year or two older and no longer afraid of sleeping alone. Let Tian Xin get married from the best house in the family.
But at this time, if my mother asked them to go to the big house to sleep in a while, my niece would be unhappy.
The three uncles looked at Xu Tianxin in confusion. He put down the brewed dandelion tea and said to his grandma: "I'm not sleepy yet. Go help my aunt lay the kang and wash the dishes. You two can chat."
After the granddaughter leaves.
Mrs. Xu sat cross-legged on the kang and signaled her sons to drink the mother-in-law's water first. The mother-in-law's water would clear away heat and detoxify and remove the sewage in the belly. After drinking, she would lie down on the hot kang to warm her waist, and light the mugwort pillar to smoke her navel. .
The three boys didn't want to show their bellies in front of their mother. She was a girl, so they were glared at by Mrs. Xu. The boys in the village were not born by her, and they have been shirtless recently. Guan Erbald showed his big white buttocks, which is not as fussy as yours.
While digging into his heart he said:
"Let's start with your eldest brother's comrade Zhao Dashan... My guess is that Liu Laozhu was afraid that his eldest son's affairs would be exposed, so he coaxed me to take charge of the affairs and wanted to tie my legs and keep my mouth shut."
Xu Laoer held a moxa stick in one hand, with only a hint of his navel exposed, while looking at the roof of the shed. He felt very unhappy when he heard that Li Zheng's eldest son was serving in the military.
It turns out that military service can be avoided. It would be great if someone in his family could help him.
Mrs. Xu noticed the loneliness of her sons: "Do you feel uncomfortable listening to it? So he didn't want me to tell anyone. Of course, if he really told the people in the village, he wouldn't be afraid, but his reputation was not good. Okay, what can the villagers do to him? The villagers are quite simple."
Mrs. Xu has come to understand through her recent contacts with the villagers that there are really no treacherous or evil people in Erdaohe. Even counting Yu Jiaguang next door, he is not a rotten evil person, he is rotten because of his lack of integrity.
Strange phenomena can only be seen in village life. Many villagers can fight over three melons and two jujubes, and wish they could not talk to each other for two months because of a chicken feather. But if there is a happy event or a funeral in someone's family, there will be no benefit at all. Take the initiative to help organize.
The three brothers of the Xu family thought: Yes, it is a skill to be able to evade military service. No matter how jealous they are, they will not expect Liu Laozhu's eldest son to die. Death on the battlefield is one less thing.
Mrs. Xu continued: "He was afraid that if I were stabbed outside, if Zhao Dashan stabbed him further, his whole family would go to jail, otherwise he would listen to me? However, he also changed later. And because of this Jiang Yu, our whole village is fighting with Wangjiagou, we can fight well..."
Mrs. Xu and her sons explained everything in detail, even telling them what they were thinking at the beginning. Step by step, she wants fish, so how can she achieve what she wants. She also wants to go out and make money. But living in the village, how can we borrow Liu Laozhu's strength from above, and how can we prevent the villagers from being jealous of our family and not making the Xu family the target of public criticism?
Otherwise, your family will be rich and other families in the village will be poor. It's okay if your family is rich from the beginning, and everyone will be used to not being jealous. But if your family suddenly becomes rich, the poorer the people in the village will be, the more psychologically unbearable it will be. If I can't bear it, can we live a peaceful life? Our family is not a big one. If a family of six wants to have a place, we eat meat, but we have to let the villagers drink some soup. She told her sons.
Mrs. Xu didn't mind it, she was a member of the family.
What Mrs. Xu didn’t know was that the second and fourth Xu Lao Er were fascinated by what they heard. The third lao squinted until his mother said, “If Zhao Dashan came home and told the market, I would quickly buy the wasteland... …The money is the twenty taels your eldest brother left to Tian Xin, he only told me before he left."
Xu Laosan woke up in confusion and was burned by Lao Si's Aizhu.
Xu Youyin collapsed while gesturing with half of the Ai Zhu. Comparing one person to another would lead to death. Comparing several brothers had to be thrown away: "Mom, how much money did my eldest brother make when he went to Yanmen Pass with the caravan?"
Why were the three of them so tired that even including the seven and a half taels from the robbers, they only got less than 20 taels in total. As for their eldest brother, I heard that he went out for a trip and spent fifteen taels on his own wife when he came back. He also added two acres of fertile land to the family and bought clothes and materials for his mother.
So what made the three brothers most upset this night was not the debt, but the fact that the eldest brother still had money left behind after many years.
Back then, it would have been better to let them serve in the military, but they had no ability, so they left their eldest brother behind.
Isn't that right? It was late at night, Xu Laoer came to the backyard first, touched the tree planted by Xu Youtian, his eyes were red, "Brother, I miss you again."
Then the third and fourth children came over silently. They guessed that the second brother was here.
