一
The uncle’s family has six children, and the third brother is the most similar in age to her.
It was a sunny day in spring. The third brother carried a basket to the wheat field to pull wheat seedlings to feed the chickens. She followed the third brother’s broad gray shirt with a square patch on the back. “Third Brother, Third Brother” Yelling, holding up the broken wheat seedling leaves in his hand, he threw them into the basket with great effort. Her fingers were dyed green by the green juice of the wheat seedlings, and there were faint bruises on her floral skirt. The third brother would turn around to comfort her and say: Okay, stop pulling, be careful not to stain your clothes.
At that time, the third brother was only four or five years old.
She is Third Brother’s loyal follower. At an age when her walking legs are not yet good, she already knows how to pull Third Brother’s sleeves and run around the village. On a hot summer afternoon, while the adults were asleep, she and her third brother sneaked to the well platform to catch ants. The old willow beside the well lowered his eyebrows to please his eyes, and the shadow of the sun filtered through it carefully, motionless. There was a noisy cicada overhead, as sharp as cracked silk. The third brother put his hands on his hips and kicked the old willow tree with his feet like an adult. He raised his head and shouted: If you scream again, you will be burned and eaten. The sound of cicadas stopped suddenly, and she looked at her third brother with admiration. After a while, the sound of cicadas started again.
Sometimes it is a group of children catching crickets in the open fields after autumn. The third brother is the king of the children. With a wave of his hand, the position moves from one flat and soft dry land to another in the autumn with weeds. The ground seems to command thousands of troops. Occasionally, the crops were trampled, and the fist-sized melon eggs from the melon seedlings on the roadside were picked as weapons, and the broken green melons were thrown all over the road. I went to someone's vegetable garden and secretly picked tomatoes. I ate half of them and threw them away. I picked a cucumber, took a few bites and threw it on the spot. After looting, the vegetable garden was full of messes. If unfortunately they are discovered by adults and shouted from a distance, they will scatter like frightened foals. She ran slowly, so the third brother stayed behind her and shouted at her to run quickly. In her little heart, she was always worried and worried. She looked back while running, hoping that her third brother could escape from danger as soon as possible. But unfortunately one time, the third brother was caught by an adult and sued to his uncle. The third brother received a good beating. She felt guilty about this for a long time.
The eldest uncle’s family is all boys, and the aunt and uncle all like her very much. One time, the aunt said to her: Give me your home so that you can play with your third brother every day. "Sure enough, she had a little thought, weighed the left and right, and couldn't make up her mind. When she went home to discuss it with her mother, she frowned and said with a look of embarrassment: I can't bear to leave you either, and I also want to go to my uncle's house. Her mother said with a smile: Silly girl, your aunt is teasing you.
But in her heart, she already has ignorant expectations. If the moss on the well platform at the entrance of the village is wet and fresh,
二
p>One winter, the snow fell very heavily
She wore a small red cotton-padded jacket, combed two thin pigtails, and struggled to step on her knee-deep legs with her long rubber shoes. In the snow, she went to play with her third brother, one step at a time, while humming the nursery rhyme her mother had taught her: "There is an abstraction on the river, there is a hole on the well, the yellow dog is white, the white dog is swollen." There were tiny beads of sweat hanging on it.
There was not a single dog on the road. From time to time, the crisp north wind blew up the glistening white snow, which swayed and fell like a soft yarn. The small village covered with ice and snow looked like something out of a fairy tale. The glass world was as quiet as she was walking along, dragging a long string of feet, like a scene in a fairy tale.
The third brother was squatting boredly at the gate, scratching on the snow with branches. When he saw her coming, he immediately stood up and said, "Come on, let's build a snowman." She said, "Okay, okay, third brother, please teach me."
They spent a whole morning on it. A big fat snowman was piled under the acacia tree in front of her uncle's house. She found two black buttons from her aunt's sewing machine box to use as eyes for the snowman, and asked her uncle for a red pepper hanging on the wall to use as a nose for the snowman. , but the third brother found a mess of black wool from somewhere and put it on the snowman's head as hair. He carefully sorted it with his hands and said, "Look, the hair looks like hers." She refused and said that the snowman's nose looked like the third brother. She also used a branch to write the word "Fang Qingmin" crookedly on the snowman's belly. She had just learned to write at that time. "Fang Qingmin" was the name of her third brother. She tilted her head and thought about it, and then wrote "Fang Qingmin" underneath. She wrote the three words "Fang Hongmei". "Fang Hongmei" was her name. She wrote carefully and carefully. After writing, she suddenly covered her stomach and laughed. The third brother who didn't know what was going on also laughed too. The two figures looked like He laughed like a fool.
The snowman sat with his eyes bright and his nose was red.
It seemed like it was snowing again at night.
The next morning, the snowman's black woolen hair was dotted with white, like hairpins covered with childish white chrysanthemums on the roadside after autumn. The snowman's belly was also a lot bloated, and the writing on it was almost invisible, except for the words "green and red" with jagged strokes.
She was lost in thought about those two words for a while, and the snowman looked at her with a vague expression.
三
The third brother entered school two years earlier than her, but by the third grade, she and the third brother were already in the same class. She has good academic performance, is smart and smart, and always sits in the middle of the first row of the classroom. The third brother stayed in the first grade for a year. He was the tallest but the worst at studying. He sat in the corner of the last row of the classroom, without a desk, and was all alone.
She couldn’t help but look towards the back of the classroom during class. Sometimes her third brother would sleep on the table, as silently as a big cat. Sometimes I sit there with a confused look on my face, my big eyes full of confusion, as if I am in a deserted snowy wilderness and completely lost. In other words, to him, those letters and numbers are just a chaotic world without any trace of people. God has not yet used light to illuminate the darkness and open up his ignorance.
She always finished her homework early every day, and then asked her third brother to copy it. Sometimes she took the initiative to lecture her on topics, but he seemed to not understand. The third brother persisted in going to fifth grade and then dropped out of school. He stayed at home mowing grass, herding cows, and raising rabbits. The eldest uncle's family has many children and a heavy burden. The third brother's dropping out of school is as natural as the wind blowing through the village. It's just that on a pale morning in the east, the third brother does not need to carry his schoolbag into the lonely and undignified corner of the classroom. Instead, he faces the morning light, holds a whip, and drives the cows freely in the countryside. On the road, the cowbells tinkled, neither slowly nor urgently, just like the rhythm of life destined by the third brother, every day, month and year.
She could only play with her third brother on Sundays. She would graze the cows with him. They would walk a long way until they found a grassy hillside, and then let the cows gnaw the grass casually. The child murmured softly under the neck, and its long tail was rolled up on the back from time to time, flicked gently, and then hung down leisurely. She ran all over the hillside picking wild flowers and fruits, as excited as a bird out of its cage, but her third brother always surprised her unexpectedly: sometimes it was a handful of green and red jujubes, which he put in her hand, and she looked so sour. He grinned and ate with gusto. Sometimes it was a handful of Imperata roots freshly dug out of the ground, which tasted slightly sweet when chewed. Sometimes it was a few tender green onions, which filled his mouth with green juice, or She took a few soft and red persimmons that were ripe. She took a small bite on the skin of the persimmons with her teeth, and with a slight slurp of her mouth, all the thick and sweet juice was sucked into her mouth. She would smile at the third brother while eating, and the third brother would smile honestly and say: Eat it. It is as if he is the master of nature, sitting on the mountain full of fresh breeze, full of grass, full of flowers and fragrance of flowers, and countless beautiful fruits. He is generous and generous.
Sometimes she would think that the third brother was born to belong to the earth. Perhaps only the gentle and honest soil under his feet could nourish such a clean and pure smile on the third brother's face, and she, she also She didn't know who she belonged to, but she was vaguely worried. Maybe she and her third brother would take two completely different paths.
四
The year she was admitted to high school, the whole village was shocked. The village, which had been dormant for many years, had its first female scholar. The honest and kind-hearted neighbors came to congratulate her. The third brother also specially gave her a pair of rabbits. One was as pure white as snow, and the other was mottled and gray. They were placed in a delicately handmade wire cage. She named the two rabbits Xueer and Xiaoye, and asked her mother to take good care of them at home. She must take good care of them.
The county town is more than ten miles away from home. The third brother drove a tractor and went to school with his father to see her off. The villagers from the neighbors followed the tractor all the way to the village entrance.
Saying goodbye to the thousands of mountains and rivers of her hometown, waving away thousands of rice bean sprouts from her hometown, she bid farewell to the small village, her mother, uncles and aunts with tears in her eyes. The mountains and rivers she left here are long and the rivers are vast, and she will eventually go there. Fighting against the unknown sky with immature wings, but the nostalgia is so heavy. She and her father sat in the back of the tractor, silent, and there were large and small bags of luggage beside them, also silent.
The mountain road was bumpy and bumpy, and the third brother skillfully drove the tractor forward. The mountain wind blew the third brother's hair, fluttering like dove wings.
五
One weekend in her senior year of high school, she returned home from school and picked acacia leaves from the yard. She was feeding Xueer and Xiaoye when she suddenly heard her mother say to her father: Qingmin's daughter-in-law will come to visit her home tomorrow, and we'll go and have a look tomorrow too.
She suddenly stood up, ran to her mother and said: Mom, what did you say?
My mother said: "Someone has proposed a wife to your third brother. I heard that she is very good-looking. You should go and see her tomorrow." ”
“I’m not going. "She turned around and ran into the house.
Her mother was still nagging outside: "You are such a heartless girl. Your third brother is the closest to you. ”
She opened the quilt and covered her head and fell on the bed. Unknowingly, her face was wet.
In the evening, her mother came to ask her to eat, and she pretended to be asleep. She refused to wake up. Early the next morning, she said she had to make up classes at school, so she left with her schoolbag. Her father wanted to see her off, but she refused. Her father said, let your third brother see you off. She ran away fiercely. When she got to the door, she left a few cold words: I wouldn't let anyone see her off, and fled in a hurry.
She walked alone on the rugged mountain road, feeling like she was losing water. The leaves of the acacia tree were as light and fluttering, allowing the mountain wind to penetrate easily and tear them apart at will. She recalled that on a midsummer night, the uncle's family was sitting at the gate collecting tobacco leaves. She squatted in front of the third brother, responsible for passing the tobacco leaves to the third brother, while watching. The third brother's hands covered with black smoke flicked up and down flexibly while listening to everyone talk about interesting things, and laughter burst out from time to time. She recalled that the third brother once drove a tractor to the school to deliver food to her, and even took pictures before leaving. He patted her head and said softly: Study hard. She remembered that her third brother taught her to identify purple flowers, small leaf tea and plantain, taught her to choose sweet and sandy watermelons, and taught her to use a brazier to cover sweet potatoes and potatoes. , teaching her to catch sparrows with bamboo baskets in the snow, as well as rolling snowballs and making snowmen...
When she thought of snowmen, her heart suddenly trembled. From then on, her joy and sadness seemed to be in harmony with each other. The third brother has nothing to do with him anymore, just like the snowman she and the third brother built together many years ago, it is its own business to cling to the cold and resist the sun alone, whether it is hard or soft, indulgent or self-sufficient.
< p> She was very nervous about studying in her senior year of high school, and she seldom went home since then.Sixth grade
Her father once came to see her at school and told her that public transportation was available in the village and asked her to do so. She had time to go home and take a look. When the autumn harvest was approaching, she got on the bus home. The mountain road was winding, and the car crawled slowly and carefully like a loaded snail. The wilderness outside the window exudes a strong mature atmosphere with a low-key richness: there are numerous pods on the pale bean trees, the yellow corn stalks hold round corn cobs, and the dark green creeping sweet potato seedlings and their young, round and dense leaves The peanut seedlings hide the surprises in the ground, and the large tobacco fields also show signs of fatigue. The branches and leaves are all lazy, like an old girl who has no intention of dressing up in her boudoir. The simplicity and complexity, the sparseness and the density, the noise and the quietness gave rise to some indescribable emotions.
There was a sudden commotion among the people in the car, and the car horn honked anxiously. Non-stop. When she came back to her senses, she noticed that a group of sheep had appeared in front of the car. The leading ram had long curved horns and a steady pace. The sheep behind them lowered their heads and walked past the car window in a leisurely manner. There was a smell of hot and fishy wool. The driver blew the horn almost straight, but the sheep remained the same. At this time, a man suddenly stood up on the grassy slope by the roadside and whistled loudly, holding a whip in his hand. Waving out of thin air, the sheep automatically squeezed into a straight line and gave way to the car.
She looked out the window curiously, and suddenly discovered that the sheep herder turned out to be her third brother. The third brother in Qiuyang had a dark red face, a gray sweatshirt tied around his waist, his trouser legs rolled up one high and one low, holding a whip in front of his chest with both hands, expressionless as he watched the car slowly pass by, and then With another whistle, the sheep quickly resumed their previous formation.
Her heart was beating fast, she quickly looked away and buried her hot face in her chest. After a long time, I couldn't help but put my face against the car window, watching the third brother and his sheep getting further and further away, getting smaller and smaller, and finally disappeared into the valley. For a moment, she suddenly felt a strong sense of time and space. Maybe the mountain road and the sheep, maybe the car and her, all existed in parallel, but they were running on different tracks in time and space, so they could only pass each other occasionally. Therefore, we can only go farther and farther in our respective directions.
She closed her eyes in infinite melancholy, and her eyes were filled with sheep swaying in the golden autumn sun, white and scorching.
七
In the winter of her freshman year, when the Spring Festival was approaching, her third brother got married, and she attended his wedding while she was at home during the vacation.
The bride is a girl from a neighboring village, her name is Lanli. She has a healthy and moist wheat complexion, big almond eyes that are gentle and kind, and her black hair is tied into a high bun with stars sprinkled on it. Dots of glittering sequins and a bright red cheongsam wrapped around her well-proportioned body, making her look generous and beautiful. "A great man is so happy, with rich and beautiful clothes, a charming smile, and beautiful eyes." Today, Lanli is the bride of the third brother. Today, only Lanli's happiness is comparable to that of the third brother, and all the others Everyone watching has their own concerns, including her.
Her eyes pretended to wander casually, and she saw the third brother in the crowd who was wearing a suit for the first time. He had a red flower on his chest, his skin was a firm bronze color, and he was as stable as a rock. Although he The smile on his face is as gentle as the soil, but there is a sweetness that cannot be concealed. Yes, it is like the sweetness of the cogongrass roots in the soil. It is the kind that is hidden, but it is indeed sweet.
She squeezed out of the crowd with some dejection and fled home. The sound of people behind him was boiling, the music was noisy, and the high pitch of the suona was sharp and festive, easily breaking through the tranquility of the small winter village.
八
After graduating from college, she stayed in a newspaper office in the city to work. Her sharp writing style and hard-working professionalism made her career famous and she quickly became a A well-known media person in the industry. It's just that she has never been married, although there are many and excellent people pursuing her.
Her parents went to visit her and told her about the third brother in bits and pieces. The third brother had two children, a boy and a girl. The number of sheep raised by the third brother already exceeds one hundred. The third brother submitted an application for party membership to the village party organization. The third brother also participated in the election of village chief. But in the end, the topic always returned to her lifelong events, and she fell silent. There was a stiff confrontation in the air, but her mother always compromised first. As time passed, her mother let her go.
One winter, she took a bus back to her hometown. When she was approaching the village entrance, the car broke down. Carrying large and small bags and wearing high heels, she had difficulty walking on the uneven dirt roads in her hometown. She had no choice but to Call dad.
After a while, the third brother came. He was riding a motorcycle, wearing a helmet, breathing white air from his mouth, and hurriedly drove in front of her. She was a little surprised but shyly called "Third Brother". The third brother smiled at her honestly, lowered his head and helped her tie the big and small bags evenly on both sides of the motorcycle. He also told her to sit carefully before starting the motorcycle carefully.
The wind at the entrance of the village blew against her face with a sharp whistle like a knife. She buried her head behind the third brother, carefully pulled the third brother's skirt, and crossed the frozen mirror-like pond beside the village. Passing through the dilapidated school, through the abandoned well platform covered with grass, and through the streets and alleys she once knew so well, the memories are scattered bit by bit, like this winter wind, willful and wanton...
In fact, she once learned a chapter about spectrum in her high school physics textbook. After white light is dispersed by a prism, it shows seven colors: "red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, and violet." They are quiet, excessive, soft and consistent, and are distributed in a band according to the established order. At that time, she had already discovered that Qing and Hong were so far apart, just like she and her third brother, embedded in the same family genealogy, loving each other and reflecting each other's warmth, but never intersecting.
So close, so far, the third brother she has been looking at since she was a child is just another path in her life that she cannot choose at the same time, but she is willing to do it for the end of the world, for the spring breeze, and for the endless journey beside the road. The green of the sky and the shadows of clouds in the sky are waiting for a simple warmth deep in life. Because there will always be a place in her heart that only belongs to the third brother in her hometown.
Third brother, she whispered in her heart. The winter sun shines through the leaden clouds, scattering a faint golden glow, and a touch of warmth gradually gathers in the mountain village.