60s: I have a store

Chapter 596 Meeting
Everyone carried the food on their shoulders back to the courtyard, and everyone was exhausted.

There is still some distance from the black market back to the courtyard. Besides, many people were not full, and the little "stock" in their stomachs was consumed completely.

An old man knocked on the door, and the gate of the courtyard was quickly opened.

Many women saw this and rushed out to help.

With the help of everyone, the food was quickly

Everyone in the courtyard looked at the bulging grain bags - the golden color of cornmeal, the dark red of sorghum rice, and the light brown of bran, interweaving into the color of hope in the morning mist.

"Come out and share the food!" An old man's shout pierced through the mist and startled the sparrows under the eaves.

The wife of Lao Wang was the first to rush out of the door. The child in her arms was holding half a piece of hard steamed bread, and her eyes were fixed on the grain bag: "Is there really food? We are finally getting what we have been waiting for."

Her voice was trembling, and the corners of her apron were still stained with last night's wild vegetable soup.

The second uncle took out the old abacus from his home, and the beads clashed with each other. "Let's start with the most difficult ones! Old Wang's family and Widow Ma's family, five catties of cornmeal and three catties of sorghum rice for each household."

The third uncle held up a wooden board with names written on it, the chalk writing slightly blurred in the morning dew: "Yimin, come and help weigh the grain!"

Zhou Yimin did not refuse, and then picked up a bag of cornmeal. The heavy weight made his arms sore.

The wife of Lao Wang took it with trembling eyes, and suddenly her tears fell on the rough sack: "Thank you, thank you, the child has become so thin that he looks unrecognizable."

The child behind her reached out his hand timidly, but just as his fingertips touched the cornmeal, he pulled his hand back as if he was scalded.

Zhou Yimin took out some corn kernels from his pocket and stuffed them into the child's palm: "Take it, go home and ask mom to cook corn paste, it's delicious!"

The child took the cornmeal from Zhou Yimin only after seeing his mother's permission.

After distributing to the extremely poor households, people in the yard lined up voluntarily.

Li Youde took out a crumpled receipt with "Twenty Yuan" written on it in pencil.

The third uncle fiddled with the beads on the abacus and reported the figures: "Three catties of cornmeal and two catties of sorghum rice."

When Li Youde took the bag of grain, he didn't say much. He went back home and put the grain away.

A Mao tiptoed forward. He only paid five dollars, and the bran he got was less than half of what others got.

"That's all," he muttered softly, unable to hide the disappointment on his face.

Zhou Yimin saw this and quietly poured more cornmeal into his bag: "Take it, and don't make any noise. Young people need to eat more to grow."

Ah Mao's Adam's apple rolled violently: "Brother Yimin, if you have any problems in the future, just call me!"

After more than half an hour, the last bag of food was distributed.

There were scattered grains of rice on the ground, and several children were scrambling to pick them up, holding small iron boxes.

Widow Ma held the food she was given and said to the old man with red eyes: "Everyone, I will remember this kindness! After I get through this, I will make thousand-layer cloth shoes to thank you all!"

On the old locust tree, the cries of baby birds came from someone's bird's nest. A new day was slowly beginning with this heartwarming food-sharing ceremony.

When the last bit of cornmeal was poured into the pottery jar, the flagstone road of the courtyard was still scattered with golden crumbs, gleaming in the morning sun.

The chirping of cicadas in the old locust tree gradually became louder, but it could not cover up the yawning sounds that came one after another.

An old man wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, looked at the empty cart and sighed: "Let's all go back to the house and take a nap, it's three quarters past three in the morning."

In the dimness of the alternating moonlight and morning light, everyone dragged their tired bodies and staggered towards their respective houses.

The creaking of wooden doors and the shaking of bamboo beds could be heard one after another in the yard.

Old Wang's wife hugged her sleeping child and pressed the newly divided cornmeal bag tightly under the pillow. The rough sack rubbed against the child's flushed cheeks, and she patted him gently, as if coaxing a fragile treasure.

When A Mao stuffed the bran can under the bed, he accidentally hit the enamel jar. The crisp sound was particularly abrupt in the silence. He hurriedly covered his mouth for fear of waking up the neighbors. His eyes wide open in the dark still retained the excitement and anxiety when distributing the food.

Zhou Yimin dragged his legs, which felt like they were filled with lead, back to the house. The mud on his overalls rubbed against the door frame, leaving dark marks. Every step he took felt like he was stepping on cotton, and sleepiness and fatigue surged over him like a tide.

I don’t know how long I slept, but the sharp sound of the alarm clock suddenly pierced my dream.

The second uncle rubbed his red eyes and kicked off the quilt, mumbling: "I have to get up just after closing my eyes. When will this day end?"

He fumbled to put on his wrinkled work clothes, his fingers touched the flour crumbs that had stained the corners of his clothes last night, and he vaguely recalled the scene of distributing grain.

Zhou Yimin turned over and buried his face in the pillow.

The soft cotton cloth wrapped around the eardrums, blocking out the sound of footsteps gradually fading away in the yard.

The silence around him seemed to have weight, dragging him back into sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the sunlight had already filtered through the window covered with newspaper, casting crooked spots of light on the wall.

Tiny particles of light floated in the air. He reached out to grab them, but his hands were filled with only warmth.

He fumbled for the watch beside his pillow. The pointer on the dial pointed to half past ten, and the second hand was still ticking slowly, making a slight ticking sound.

There was a slight crisp sound as his muscles and bones stretched. Zhou Yimin sat up and looked at his crooked shadow on the wall.

Zhou Yimin finally felt like he was in the future, going to bed in the middle of the night and sleeping until he woke up naturally.

Just like in the past, I opened the store space first and saw today's flash sale products. It seems that my luck is pretty good.

There are 100 kilograms of beef, 100 kilograms of pork, 100 kilograms of peanut oil, and 100 barrels of gasoline.

After getting up and washing up, I didn't want to go to work at the steel factory.

Suddenly remembering the pile of work in the factory, he sighed heavily and pulled over the work clothes draped over the back of the chair.

Amid the sound of fabric rubbing against each other, a kernel of corn that had been left out last night fell out of a pocket and rolled to the bottom of the bed, as if hiding a little secret.

He bent down to pick it up, but when he stood up, his vision went dark and he held on to the edge of the table for a long time.

The sunlight outside the window became increasingly dazzling, forcing him to squint his eyes. At this moment, he wished he could put everything aside and continue to enjoy this rare tranquility.

Pushing open the glass door of the steel plant's office building, the wrenches in Zhou Yimin's work clothes pocket were still clinking.

The lights on the corridor ceiling flickered, and the slogan "Work hard and fast" on the wall was worn white by time.

As soon as he turned the corner of the stairs, Zhou Dazhong saw Zhou Yimin and hurriedly said, "Uncle Sixteen, hurry to the conference room on the third floor for an emergency meeting!"

Zhou Yimin paused in his tracks. The morning light shone in from the air vents, casting a thin spot of light on his oil-stained trouser legs.

Zhou Yimin pushed open the heavy wooden door of the conference room, and a heat wave mixed with a strong smell of smoke hit him in the face.

More than twenty long tables were put together in a U shape. The front row was already filled with workshop directors, and the ashtrays were filled with twisted cigarette butts.

Zhou Yimin glanced across the crowd: Old Zhao from the production department was scratching the meeting notebook repeatedly with his fingernails, causing the edges of the paper to become frayed.

Section Chief Yang of the Security Department kept rubbing the thermos cup, and the enamel paint on the cup was polished to a shine.

Zhou Yimin found Wang Weimin waving at him in the corner of the back row.

The two men's work clothes still had dust on their shoulders from last night's running around, and they sat down against the wall in tacit understanding.

The plastic chair legs made a harsh sound when they rubbed against the ground, causing someone in the front row to turn around and glance.

Zhou Yimin straightened his back, but unconsciously shrank into the shadows - among this group of middle-level cadres, he, a small section chief, was really insignificant.

He secretly looked around: Accountant Zhang from the Finance Department in the front row was biting the cap of a pen, his eyes behind the lenses staring into space, as if he was calculating a budget that didn't exist at all.

Old Chen from the Technical Department tapped his fingers on the edge of the table in an anxious rhythm. He was unaware of the cigarette ash falling on the documents. It was obvious that he was also worried about the shortage of supplies.

"Is everyone here?" Director Hu's voice came from the main seat.

He knocked on the enamelware mug, causing ripples to form in the tea.

At this moment, his brows were twisted into the shape of a "川" character. "The year is almost over, but there is still no gift distributed to the workers. Let's talk about how to solve this problem."

The rustling sound of the pen tip sliding across the paper suddenly stopped.

The workshop directors in the front row suddenly lowered their heads collectively. Some pretended to organize documents, while others stared at the blank space on their notebooks in a daze.

Accountant Zhang pushed his glasses up and his Adam's apple moved but he said nothing. His mind was full of the factory's tight accounts.

Lao Chen reached out to take a cigarette, but found that the cigarette box was empty, so he had to rub his fingers awkwardly.

Suddenly, the roar of a steel furnace was heard outside the window, making the glass windows of the conference room buzz, but it could not cover up the suffocating silence.

Wang Weimin gently kicked his foot, and the two looked at each other, seeing the same helplessness in each other's eyes - in those years of material scarcity, even food and clothing became a problem, so where could they find enough gifts?
The fluorescent tubes in the conference room made a slight sound of electricity. Time passed by minute by minute, but no one dared to break the oppressive silence.

The stagnant air in the conference room seemed to have frozen. Director Hu's enamel pot slammed heavily on the solid wood table, causing the scattered meeting materials to rustle.

His eyes behind the lenses swept over the people who were bowing their heads and shrinking their necks, and finally fixed on Director Ding in the corner of the back row: "Director Ding, as the director of the logistics department, how do you think this problem should be solved?"

Director Ding, who was called, straightened his back suddenly, and the third button of his navy blue Zhongshan suit was shining.

His Adam's apple rolled up and down three times before he squeezed out a hoarse voice: "Well, we can contact the supply and marketing cooperative to check the inventory."

Before he finished speaking, his sleeves were already stained with dark traces of cold sweat. He flipped through the notebook in front of him, his fingertips making messy wrinkles on the blank pages: "Or, mobilize the families of employees to collect some."

"Okay. You sit down first!" Director Hu couldn't bear to watch it anymore and had to interrupt.

He grabbed the thermos and took a gulp, but he choked and coughed because of his hasty action. His cloudy eyes suddenly swept to Zhou Yimin in the shadows, "Yimin, can you tell me something?"

At that time, Zhou Yimin was staring at the shadows of the swaying poplar trees outside the window in a daze, and the touch of cornmeal stuck to his fingernails when the grain was distributed last night seemed to still be there. Until Wang Weimin elbowed him hard in the ribs and lowered his voice: "Yimin, Director Hu asked if you have any solution!"

He was so startled that he nearly knocked over the enamelware pot on the table, and when he stood up, the pen that fell over left a long blue mark on the document.

"I... I did think of a way." Zhou Yimin's overalls rustled as they rubbed against the chair. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white.

"I have chickens from two villages that are about to be released from the cages. There are quite a few of them. It might be a bit difficult to get one for each person, but half a chicken should be no problem!"

These words were like a huge rock dropped into a deep pool.

Accountant Zhang from the Finance Department in the front row was unaware that his glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. The workshop directors all turned their heads, and the gust of wind blew the reports on the table.

Director Hu stood up with a bang, and the chair he knocked over hit the wall with a dull thud: "Yimin, are you telling the truth?"

Zhou Yimin looked at the sudden fiery light in the factory director's eyes and thought of the crowing of roosters in Luojiazhuang.

He straightened his back, the wrench in his work clothes pocket poking at his thigh: "Director Hu, I definitely wouldn't joke about this kind of thing."

Suddenly, there were gasps in the conference room. Some people swallowed subconsciously, and some people took up their pens and wrote quickly. The morning light shone through the dusty glass, stretching his shadow very long and casting it on the wall covered with production reports.

As soon as Zhou Yimin finished speaking, the conference room fell into silence for ten seconds.

Director Hu pressed down heavily on the table with his palm, his knuckles turning blue from excessive force. In the white porcelain cup behind him, the unfinished tea began to ripple.

Accountant Zhang from the Finance Department in the front row was so shocked that he took off his glasses and wiped the lenses back and forth in his hands, but he never put them back on, revealing his bloodshot eyes.

The first person to break the silence was Lao Zhao from the production department. His pencil dropped onto the document with a "click": "Half a chicken? This is real meat!"

There was undisguised excitement in his voice.

The suppressed discussions of several workshop directors rose one after another. Some were estimating the weight of the chicken in a low voice, while others were counting on their fingers to calculate how many employees would benefit.

With this good news, the workers will definitely work harder.

Director Hu walked around the long table and came in front of Zhou Yimin, the pen in the pocket of his Zhongshan suit clinking gently with his steps.

He squinted his eyes to look at the young section chief in front of him, his gaze swept over the patches on the cuffs of his work clothes and the unwashed mud stains on his trouser legs, and suddenly reached out and patted Zhou Yimin's shoulder heavily: "Sure enough, you are still reliable!"

His voice was filled with uncontrollable excitement, which made the glass in the conference room tremble slightly.

Wang Weimin in the back row gave Zhou Yimin a thumbs up, his mouth grinning from ear to ear.

Director Ding felt like he was sitting on pins and needles, his fingers unconsciously tugging at the hem of his suit, and his already pale face became even uglier.

The sunlight outside the window had become scorching hot at some point, slanting in through the dusty glass, casting alternating light and dark shadows on everyone's faces.

Some people stood up and approached Zhou Yimin, asking about the specific location of the chicken farm. Some people took out their notebooks and took notes quickly, not even noticing that the pen tip scratched the paper.

However, Zhou Yimin definitely cannot tell anyone about this kind of thing, as these are resources that he controls.

Seeing that Zhou Yimin had no intention of saying anything, everyone stopped asking.

Since the matter has been resolved, there is no need to continue this meeting.

Everyone started to pack up and leave the meeting room.

(End of this chapter)