the last priest

One of the people who was sent to deliver the letter was named Hu Changzi, because he was long-legged and tall, and his surname was Hu, so he got such a name.

The eldest son Hu is a warm-hearted man. When something happened to the Wang family, he rushed into the yard begging for work without hesitation.One of the people in charge of entertaining guests is called "Zhike". This Zhike is equivalent to the current temporary manager of the Wang family. He is responsible for arranging internal and external affairs and entertaining condolence guests. They are usually dignified and prestigious in the village. people did it.

Hu's eldest son was just in his early thirties that year. Because the family conditions were not good and his wife married late, he only had a son in the first month of that year. After this son was born, Hu's eldest son even walked in the village. It is said that there is a gust of wind in the aisle.

But this person is poor, and he has no status in the village since ancient times. In order to make a good impression on others, he can only help others' families so that others can remember his kindness. This is what rural areas pay attention to.

At that time, there was a distant relative in Lao Wang’s family. In the county next to my hometown, you don’t have to call these distant relatives for weddings in the countryside. People don’t blame you, but if you don’t call for funerals, other people’s families will If you think you are looking down on him, then you have to tie the knot.So, at that time, as long as someone's family held a funeral, there would be many faces in the village. The seven aunts and eight aunts would come to the funeral from far away. Isn't there an old saying in China called: the dead For big!Funerals are the best way to see how wide a family is.

At that time, the big family had to hold a funeral, which was written in the genealogy, and anyone who could have some relatives and stories would be notified, for fear that someone who was missed would not be shouted at by others in the future.However, this old He is a cultural person who hasn't been born in this small mountain village for hundreds of years. As long as he is invited, he will have a bright face.

That county was administratively included in Anhui Province. At that time, there was a road between my hometown and me in this county, but it was very inconvenient to take a long detour and transfer several times. A little-traveled trail climbs over a mountain and passes through it.In addition, that relative lived in the mountains, so not many people were willing to receive letters from this family.

When he heard that no one cared about this difficult task, Hu Changzi patted his chest in the Wang family compound and promised that he would complete the task.The person who pointed out the guest was worried that no one would give it to him, and when he heard that Mr. Hu was willing to go, he immediately took a few more pieces of white rice cakes from the basket and wrapped them for him, and asked the accountant to take out two packs of cigarettes and put them in his pocket. , patted Hu eldest son on the shoulder and praised him as the most promising young talent in the village.

The eldest son of Hu has never been praised so much for his life, and the tears of being moved only swirled in his eyes. Let a group of old ladies laugh.

Hu Changzi lamented that he had finally made a name for himself in this village. He kept everything Cha Wenbin said in his heart, and went out with his canvas bag on his back.

In fact, he had never been to the place where the letter was delivered, so he could only know the general direction, thinking that he had a mouth, so he couldn't ask along the way when he arrived?Then he stepped on his eternal brand [-] big bar bicycle that he bought only when he got married and headed towards the back of Wangzhuang.

There is a big mountain behind this Wangzhuang, called Lion Mountain, with an altitude of nearly a thousand meters, which is considered a high mountain in Zhejiang.The top of this mountain is shrouded in clouds and mist all the year round. As long as you climb over this mountain, you will be in Anhui.

In the past, some farmers from Anhui brought tea and mountain products to Zhejiang for sale, and they followed this path. On our side, there were also some farmers who brought some dried bamboo shoots and herbs to their side for sale.But these are all things before liberation. It should be said that there is an ancient road here, which connects the business exchanges between two adjacent counties. Later, because their respective economies have developed, there are markets in the local area, and the common people So I don't have to take this kind of trouble and waste that little money.

The eldest son Hu was born and bred in Wangzhuang, so he naturally heard the old people talk about this way.On weekdays, the villagers of Wangzhuang often go to Lion Mountain, but most of them go up to the middle of the mountain.

What are you doing up there?As the saying goes, relying on the mountain to eat the mountain, relying on the water to eat the water, this mountain has also raised a group of villagers to a certain extent, who go up to chop firewood, dig herbs and pick tea leaves.There used to be a good piece of wild tea on the mountainside of Lion Mountain. Because of the high terrain, it was half a month later than ordinary green tea.Because the tea juice is fragrant and the shape is beautiful, some peasant women would go up the mountain together to pick two taels of tea before dawn, and then it was already dark when they came down the mountain.

It is said that there is a better piece of tea on the top of the Lion Mountain, but no one has dared to go up to pick it, because people say that there are wild ghosts on the top of the mountain, and it is forbidden to go there. It was rumored from the local hunters. To be honest, Hu's eldest son's father died on this mountain.

Before the country implemented gun control, most people in rural areas had their own homemade guns, which were fired with black powder and had no rifling. Most of them were filled with shotguns. This thing is also called a soil gun.Although the accuracy is poor, the short-range power is quite astonishing. If you use tin strips to twist them into bullets and put them in, you can directly bring down a two-hundred-jin wild boar at a distance of 30 meters.

At that time, after the autumn bustle was over, several villagers made an appointment to go up the mountain to hunt wild boars, and chased the pigs with dogs until they were trapped on the top of the mountain, and then the hunters surrounded them from all directions and shot.

A father and son participated in this hunting operation: Hu's eldest son's father and his own grandfather.

Both of these fathers are good at hunting. After they separated to search the mountains, the grandfather of the elder beard slowly moved up through the bushes, only to see two pig ears flickering non-stop not far away. The old man salivated in the palm of his hand and slowly raised the gun to aim. From his years of experience, he could tell that it was a wild boar looking for food.

There was a "bang" gunshot, and the pair of big ears fell to the ground. Mr. Hu's marksmanship is a first-class master.The old man yelled his son's name and other villagers, informing them that the pig had already been hunted and came over to carry it. He excitedly took out a hatchet, split the thorns and rushed in. When he walked over and saw it, he was dumbfounded. It was his own son lying in a pool of blood!

By the time other excited hunters sensed the scene, Mr. Hu had already fainted beside his son.According to the old people in Wangzhuang, Hu Changzi's father's head was directly bombarded by a tin rod as thick as a little finger, and a hole the size of a small wine glass was opened, because the tin will carry a very high temperature after the gunpowder is fired, so the whole The wound was still scorched at the time, which can be described as horrible.

At that time, Xiao Hu's eldest son was only two or three years old, and he was still a baby who walked one step and fell two steps.The mainstay of the family was gone, and Hu's eldest son's mother quietly packed her luggage and ran out a month later, never coming back.But this incident did not cause much trouble back then, and after Mr. Hu accidentally killed his own son, he was also very sad and blamed himself. He hugged his eldest son Hu every day and talked about what he saw was really a big wild boar with black faces and fangs. A year later, Mr. Hu lost weight day by day and died. Before he died, he said that what he saw was a wild boar.

Afterwards, people said that there was a wild ghost on that mountain who wanted to kill him. Otherwise, how could an old hunter like Mr. Hu beat his son to death as a wild boar? up.The eldest son Hu also grew up eating a variety of meals, and once his family declined, he became the few people with the lowest status in the village today.

Hu's eldest son bought this [-]-year-old car with the money he had saved for two years, so that he could bring his wife back with big red flowers on the day he married. He was already riding a bike At the foot of the mountain, it is said that he had to ride for several hours on the other side of the mountain to deliver the letter to the village.

This kid is not only tall, but also very strong. Children from poor families are like this. He has been used to doing coolies since he was a child. Now he is climbing up with the [-] big bars on his shoulders and humming a little song.He knows what happened to his father back then, but he has long forgotten what his father looked like. He has been chopping firewood on this Lion Mountain since he was fifteen or sixteen years old, but he has never been to the top of the mountain, because the firewood at the foot of the mountain It is enough for this small Wang Zhuang.

The road down the middle of the mountain, because people are active all the year round, there is a small road. The eldest son Hu has walked up to the halfway up the mountain without any effort.He felt very happy in his heart. After this incident, everyone in the village would definitely feel that he was enthusiastic. Otherwise, how could he have given out more packs of cigarettes and received a few more cakes than others.

The more he thought about the more beautiful things, he simply stopped to rest, took out the white rice cake, and looked at the sweet stream in the small ditch next to him, Hu Changzi felt that he had never been valued so much in his life.Not counting after eating, he took out the pack of Ashima cigarettes with exquisite stickers, put it under his nose and sniffed it, but was reluctant to open it. This is a high-end product. After struggling for a long time, he finally took out one, lit it, and tasted it. After a few mouthfuls, spit out a few circles, took a deep breath and sighed: This is life!