Rustic grilled sparrows

Before Li Long could take down the Scoop Net, he heard a flutter, and a sparrow not far from the Scoop Net took fright and flew away.

What a shame.

Li Long glanced in the direction the sparrow had flown, then carefully took down the Scoop Net and quickly reached inside to grab the sparrow caught in it.

The sparrow pecked at Li Long. He tightened his grip on the little thing slightly, then felt something wet against his fingers. It had pooped.

"Qiangqiang, here. Hold it tight." Li Long handed the sparrow over. "Don't let go, or you won't have any sparrow to eat later."

"Uncle, I understand." Li Qiang nodded solemnly, then carefully took the sparrow from him.

Li Juan watched Li Long with shining eyes.

Li Long smiled, took back the flashlight, and kept searching with its beam.

Sparrows had a hard time getting through winter nights, so there were bound to be more than just those two in the haystack.

Sure enough, he soon spotted another sparrow and caught it.

Now Li Juan had one in her hands too.

In all, Li Long caught four sparrows from that haystack. Two escaped, and then there were none left.

"Uncle, the He family up front has a haystack too!" Li Qiang volunteered with a sniff, holding a sparrow in each hand.

"Inside their yard or outside?"

"Inside."

"Then no." Li Long shook his head. Going into someone else's yard for a few sparrows, especially this late at night, wasn't proper.

"Then..." Li Juan thought for a moment. "The third house out back-do you remember it, Uncle? The Gao family has a haystack on the roof of their side room. It faces outward, so you can see it from outside their yard."

"All right, let's take a look." Li Long also felt that four sparrows were far too few, barely a mouthful for his niece and nephew.

Outside the yard, near the open fields, trudging through snow several dozen centimeters deep wasn't easy. Li Long went ahead, leaving footprints for Li Juan and Li Qiang to follow.

Even so, by the time they reached the Gao family's haystack, all three had shoes full of snow.

But nobody complained about the cold. Even Li Long gazed expectantly at the big haystack, which was a third larger than theirs.

A dog began barking inside the yard, followed by the faint sound of someone scolding it.

Li Long switched on the flashlight and shone it into the haystack.

In less than ten seconds, he spotted a target.

This time, though, Li Long was smarter about it. Instead of immediately trying to catch them with the Scoop Net, he checked the whole haystack first and counted nine sparrows. Then he started catching them one by one from the lower left corner.

He successfully caught six.

They couldn't hold any more sparrows in their hands, so Li Long wrung each bird's neck as he caught it and dropped it onto the snow, ready to take them all home together once he was finished.

"Uncle, farther back, the Qin family has another haystack..." Li Juan said, still eager for more.

"No more. Our shoes are wet now, and your mother's going to scold you when we get back. Come on, home!"

"Then... let's go home." The two children still weren't quite satisfied.

Small as sparrows were, they were still meat.

When the three returned to the yard, Liang Yuemei heard them and hurried outside. In Li Long's flashlight beam, she saw that both children's trouser legs were covered in snow and scolded them:

"Where did you run off to? Why are you covered in snow? Aren't you freezing? Get inside and change your shoes!"

"No! I want to eat sparrows!" Li Qiang stubbornly held up the birds in his hands. "I want meat!"

"All right, all right," Li Long said with a smile before his sister-in-law could speak. "Go change your shoes first. Even if you want sparrows, you have to let me pluck them and clean out their insides first, don't you?"

"Okay..." Li Qiang thought that made perfect sense. He and Li Juan handed their sparrows to Li Long and went inside to change their shoes.

"You just keep spoiling them..." Liang Yuemei grumbled at Li Long. "You hurry up and change your shoes too. They're soaked!"

"Sure." Li Long smiled in agreement and turned to go inside.

After changing into cloth shoes with layered soles-his sister-in-law had made them for him-Li Long put his cotton-lined rubber shoes on the heated wall to dry, then began preparing the sparrows.

With his experience from his previous life, preparing sparrows was easy. He didn't even need to pluck them. He simply twisted off their heads, gripped the skin around their necks, and pulled downward, stripping off skin and feathers together.

It might have sounded cruel, but to children who went year after year without meat, what was cruelty? Not having enough food or any meat to eat-that was cruelty!

After stripping the feathers from all ten sparrows, he pulled out their innards and set them aside. Then Li Long used the broom for sweeping the kang bed to brush off the stove's sheet-metal cover and laid the sparrows on it one by one.

Before going out, he had banked the fire with coal dust. Now the metal cover was quite hot but not glowing red, just right for roasting.

The stove was built from mud bricks, with four iron rods serving as the grate in the middle. The sheet metal on top had been cut from a diesel drum. At this point, few households in the production team could afford a factory-made sheet-metal stove. Although a mud-brick stove didn't conduct heat very well, it was cheap and convenient.

He had just arranged the sparrows and stood up when Li Juan and Li Qiang burst in.

Looking at the sparrows laid out on the stove cover, Li Qiang nearly drooled.

"Uncle, when can we eat?" he asked, looking up at Li Long.

"In a bit. I'll get some salt and chili powder," Li Long said. "Be patient."

"Okay." To his surprise, Li Qiang agreed.

Li Long went to the west room, where he found Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei talking, and said:

"I'm getting some salt and chili powder, sister-in-law."

"All right, I'll get them for you."

Knowing the seasonings were for roasting sparrows for her children, Liang Yuemei said with a smile:

"Long, you're pretty capable. You caught quite a few sparrows."

"Heh." Li Long smiled. In his previous life, he never would have done any of this, but if it could spare his niece and nephew a little hardship now, what did it matter?

With the seasonings in two bowls and two enamel plates the family used for serving food, Li Long returned to the east room and closed the door. He told Li Juan and Li Qiang not to get impatient, set the bowls on the edge of the mud-brick stove, then took pinches of chili powder and salt and sprinkled them evenly over the sparrows.

The chili powder came from their own vegetable patch, while the salt was bought. He couldn't waste any of it. In those days, waste truly was shameful, unlike in later years, when people scattered barbecue seasonings around as though they cost nothing.

He carefully seasoned one side, then turned the birds over and seasoned the other.

Soon, the room filled with the aroma of meat mingled with a spicy tang. Li Long felt a little regretful. Some cumin would have made it even better.

Now even Li Juan couldn't help swallowing as she stared unblinkingly at the sparrows on the stove cover.

After turning them three times, Li Long put two sparrows onto an enamel plate and told the children:

"They're cooked. Take these to your parents. They should eat first!"

Li Qiang looked a little puzzled, but Li Juan understood what was right. She carefully took the plate, opened the door with one hand, and carried it toward the west room with the other.

Li Qiang still looked confused, so Li Long asked him:

"When there's no meat at home, your dad and mom don't get any either, do they?"

"No."

"They work the hardest, don't they?"

"Yes!"

"Then shouldn't they eat first?"

"They should!"

Hearing that, Li Long nodded in satisfaction, picked up a sparrow, and waited for it to cool a little before handing it to Li Qiang.

(End of chapter)