"No rush. I might as well rest a few more days. These past couple of days have kept me so busy my feet barely touched the ground anyway. I haven't had any rest."
For once, Father Ye did not argue, call him lazy, or launch into a long lecture about working harder while he was young because he would not be able to when he got old, and so on. Instead, he nodded.
"Mm, a couple more days' rest is fine. As long as it doesn't rain and interfere with you buying dried fish, it won't matter."
"Don't jinx it."
"Uh, ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!" Father Ye immediately caught himself and spat a couple of times.
But who knew whether his father's jinx had really worked?
The sun never appeared the next morning. It was overcast, with fairly thick clouds, and by noon the sky had grown somewhat dark.
The neighbors nearby were all a little afraid of a downpour. Seeing the sky darken, they hurried over to his house to ask whether he could weigh and buy their dried fish right away.
Ye Yaodong readily agreed. He was afraid a downpour would ruin the dried fish too.
He had already planned to weigh and buy all the dried fish they had after lunch.
As it happened, A-Zheng had gone to the city the night before, and he had asked him to help accompany a shipment of over two thousand jin of dried fish. Since Uncle Zhou's tractor had become privately owned, he had spent the past few days raising the sides of its bed with wooden planks, so it had carried a little more last night, freeing up over half the space at home.
Still, he wondered whether he should build a bigger warehouse, rather than having the house crammed