After finishing his bowl of lamb offal soup and chatting about everyday things for a while, Li Long listened under the kerosene lamp as his elder brother, Li Jianguo, gave his niece and nephew problems such as counting chickens and rabbits in the same cage. To him, this was happiness.
They were poor, but life was peaceful.
Seeing that quite some time had passed, Li Long got up, said goodnight to Li Jianguo, and returned to the East Room.
The coal fire in the East Room's stove had been banked earlier. He stirred it with the poker, sending up a rush of smoke and flame. Once that had cleared, he lifted the stove lid with the poker, put in a few lumps of coal, and replaced the lid. Then he began taking stock of the day's gains and planning for tomorrow.
After subtracting the cost of the Sesame Cakes, the tea, the gloves he had bought for Tao Daqiang, and the ten yuan he had given his sister-in-law from the proceeds of the antlers and Water Rat pelts, he had less than ten yuan left, including the money he had started with.
But with the packet of ammunition his elder brother had given him, Li Long was confident he could trade for another one or two frozen sheep tomorrow.
He planned to buy more tea, salt, and similar supplies tomorrow. Even if Harimu's family had enough, he could leave them at his place and trade with other herding families for different goods.
Although the herders' Winter Camp was not far from the foot of the mountains, they had more concerns to weigh and no spare money, so they rarely came down to buy things.
But they had goods on hand, and Li Long could barter for those and sell them at the purchasing station.
He checked the time. It was only ten, and he was not sleepy yet, so he wondered how to pass the remaining hours.
In these days, without a radio or television, let alone a mobile phone, passing the time really was difficult.
Li Long considered going to someone's house to play cards. He vaguely remembered that Fight the Landlord had not caught on yet; there were only Shuai Erzi and Zheng Shangyou.
There was very little entertainment in the eighties. Otherwise, Gu Ermao would never have invited Li Long to go look at someone else's television.
So far, the entire Production Team did not have a single television-they did not even have Changming Electricity connected.
As he was thinking, barking and footsteps sounded outside.
Li Long pulled on his coat and went out.
Someone stood outside the courtyard gate. Judging by the silhouette, it was a girl.
Li Long called out:
"Who's there?"
"Li Long, it's me, Gu Xiaoxia," the girl answered.
Gu Xiaoxia?
Li Long quickly remembered her. She was the daughter of Gu Boyuan, the Production Team's only university graduate. According to his elder brother, Li Jianguo, Gu Boyuan had arrived with his daughter over a decade ago. When the team leader heard that he was a university graduate, he had been stunned.
Back then, even middle school graduates were considered intellectuals, never mind university graduates.
Few people in the Production Team knew why Gu Boyuan had come to a place that, back then, had been in the middle of nowhere. But a highly educated man had come to the team and wanted to stay, so of course he was welcome.
His daughter had only been three or four when Gu Boyuan arrived. By now, she should still be under twenty.
For particular reasons, Gu Xiaoxia had returned to the team after graduating from high school. In Li Long's memories of his previous life, she seemed to have eventually married Gu Ermao because he kept pestering her, then divorced him because of domestic violence. After that, her whereabouts were unknown.
"Oh, Xiaoxia, you're here. Is your father doing well?" Li Jianguo also opened the door and came out just then. Seeing Gu Xiaoxia, he asked with a smile, "Come inside."
"N-no, thank you. Uncle Jianguo, I... I'd like to buy some lamb from you. My father's ill, and I wanted to get him something nourishing." Gu Xiaoxia spoke very softly. It was clear that she felt deeply embarrassed to say it.
"Your father's ill? Has he taken any medicine? What's wrong?" Li Jianguo asked with concern.
He had graduated from middle school. Though he was not as highly educated as Gu Boyuan, he was still one of the Production Team's few "intellectuals," and the two families were on good terms.
"He has. Dad said it's nothing serious. He caught a chill."
"Wait here. I'll cut you a piece of lamb." Li Jianguo hurried back inside and came out with a piece of lamb. Rather than handing it to Gu Xiaoxia, however, he gave it to Li Long.
"Long, walk Xiaoxia home. It's pitch-dark out there, and it isn't safe!"
Gu Xiaoxia did not refuse.
Li Long went back into his room to put on his hat, then headed out carrying the lamb.
Gu Xiaoxia followed silently beside him, keeping a meter and a half between them.
In these days, gossip could ruin a person.
"When did your father get sick?" Li Long asked.
"Yesterday. We were running low on firewood, so Dad was chopping wood in the yard. He worked up a sweat and caught a chill."
"Then it shouldn't be serious. He'll be fine after sweating it out." Li Long nodded. "You still have medicine at home, right?"
"Yes." Gu Xiaoxia answered each question Li Long asked. All the while, she kept her head slightly lowered.
Li Long found little point in continuing, so he stopped talking too.
When his elder brother, Li Jianguo, said it was unsafe outside, he truly meant it. Although they were more than twenty kilometers from the mountains, wolves had appeared in the reed beds outside the Production Team just a month or so earlier. The team's dogs were no pushovers either. The local dogs in those days tended to be big and fierce.
Even more dangerous were the hoodlums who stayed out at night with no proper outlet for their energy.
Otherwise, there would not have been a crackdown on crime a couple of years later.
The Li house was about three hundred meters from the Gu house. The moon had not risen yet, but the snow reflected enough light from the sky for them to just make out the road. Li Long carried a flashlight. Though he had not switched it on, he kept it ready.
Halfway there, as they were about to turn a corner, Li Long heard footsteps a short distance ahead. Gu Xiaoxia, behind him, edged back a little. He reacted immediately and shouted:
"Who's there?"
As he shouted, he switched on the flashlight and aimed its beam toward the corner.
A dark figure ran off quickly, soon darting behind someone's courtyard and disappearing.
A burst of barking rose from that direction.
"It's all right now. Probably someone passing by." Li Long turned to Gu Xiaoxia. "Let's go."
Gu Xiaoxia was still shaken. She could more or less guess what that dark figure had intended to do. What she had not expected was that Li Long, whom she had always heard was rather timid, would be so "fierce" now.
Li Long said nothing else for the rest of the walk to the Gu house. Once they entered the courtyard, Gu Xiaoxia hurried ahead a couple of steps and opened the door.
Li Long carried the meat inside and saw Gu Boyuan lying in bed.
He was asleep and had not heard them.
Finding the room reasonably warm, Li Long said:
"Keep some warm water beside your father. Drinking plenty of water will help him recover faster." With that, he put down the meat, turned, and went out.
"Let me pay you!" Gu Xiaoxia came after him and called out.
"My elder brother said this is to help your father get better. No charge." Li Long waved a hand and headed home.
Li Jianguo seemed to have mentioned that the Gu family earned even fewer work points than their own family by the end of the year. They received hardly any money and even had to pay some in.
Fortunately, Li Long remembered that next spring, the Production Team would become a village, and a village primary school would open. It would teach only the first and second grades; children would go to the brigade for third grade. Gu Xiaoxia seemed to have become a teacher at the village school then, and her family's life had improved.
As he walked home, he thought about the dark figure from earlier.
Who could that have been?
Why had that silhouette looked so familiar?
(End of chapter)
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