Chapter 2 (continued)

He had come to the supermarket several times before and had become somewhat familiar with the town.

He parked his motorcycle outside a relatively large veterinary medicine store and went in.

The weather was dull that day, and the store was a little dim. The owner sat lazily behind the counter, watching short videos on his phone.

When Shi Wen entered, the owner gave him an extra look and greeted him in somewhat unstandard Mandarin. "What would you like to buy?"

Shi Wen took out his phone and checked the notes he had made the night before. "I need disinfectant for a livestock shed. What chlorine-based disinfectants do you have?"

The owner pointed to a row of shelves. "They're all here. Which kind do you want? The quicklime is underneath."

Shi Wen looked at the owner, then at the shelves.

The store didn't have the most complete selection of disinfectants, but it had several major types, including peroxides, aldehydes, phenols, and chlorine-based disinfectants.

Shi Wen stood in front of the shelves, momentarily overwhelmed by the choices.

After looking for a while, he checked his notes and compared prices. In the end, he picked two tubs of recently manufactured Xiaoteling, a sodium dichloroisocyanurate disinfectant, along with two bags of quicklime.

As the owner totaled up his purchases, he asked, "Young man, are you from out of town?"

Shi Wen smiled. "You can tell? Have a lot of people come here from out of town lately?"

"With a face like yours, if I don't remember you, it must be the first time I've seen you." Having answered the first question, the owner went on to answer the second. "There haven't been that many people from out of town, but there haven't been too few either. Don't you young people talk about returning to your hometowns to raise sheep? You've come back to your hometown too, haven't you?"

Shi Wen said, "You could say that."

The owner turned off his phone screen. "What do you mean, you could say that? You definitely have. Which family are you from?"

Shi Wen said, "The Shi Family Ranch outside town."

"That rings a bell. No one's been at that ranch for a long time. I thought you'd moved away."

"No, we've come back."

Shi Wen quickly finished his purchase, carried the goods out and strapped them to the back of his motorcycle, then went to the supermarket to buy groceries.

The refrigerator at home still worked, and buying groceries in town every day was too much trouble. He usually bought a week's worth, mostly vegetables that kept well, such as cabbage, tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots.

Shi Wen spent over an hour around town and had a bowl of lamb noodles for lunch before riding home.

After he got home, he first put the groceries in the refrigerator, then started cleaning the livestock shed.

He had already cleaned the shed once early that morning, sweeping out the cattle and sheep dung and other debris and washing it down with water.

Now that the ground was completely dry, he began sprinkling limewater.

Lime was the most commonly used disinfectant here. It was cheap and worked well, so he could use it without worrying about the cost.

Shi Wen put on his old work clothes, a mask, nonprescription glasses, and a hat, then quickly mixed the slaked lime in a bucket reserved for the purpose.

The internet said that slaked lime had to be measured carefully, with 350 ml of water for every kilogram of lime. If the proportions were wrong, the disinfection wouldn't work well and all the effort would be wasted.

After mixing the lime, Shi Wen first disinfected the floors and walls throughout the shed and the areas where the livestock roamed. Then he mixed the Xiaoteling and disinfected the feed troughs, water troughs, and other places where spraying lime was inconvenient.

The ranch was large, and he was working alone. By the time he finished, it was almost dark.

Being on his own, he wasn't much in the mood to cook. He boiled two handfuls of noodles, quickly ate them, then lay in bed reading.

Early the next morning, Shi Wen took a hammer, nails, and other tools and set out to repair the livestock shed and the dilapidated parts outside the house, as well as replace some pipes.

He was halfway through the work when his phone rang. It was Fu Meng, the village chief and neighbor he had met before.

Shi Wen answered, and Fu Meng's voice came through. "Hello, Shi Wen, didn't you say you wanted lambs? The market's on today. Are you going? I happen to be going, so if you are, I can come pick you up."

"Yes!" Shi Wen replied at once. "Thanks, Brother Fu. When are you coming?"

Fu Meng said, "I'm getting ready to leave. Wait at home; I'll be there in ten minutes."

Shi Wen hurriedly put away his tools, took off his work gloves, and went back to his room to change into a more normal set of clothes.

He had just finished getting ready when he heard a vehicle outside the door.

Shi Wen opened the door and saw Fu Meng arriving outside the ranch on a three-wheeled vehicle.

He hurriedly jogged from the front of the house to the outside of the ranch.

Fu Meng smiled. "I was just about to call out to you, and here you are. It's a little dirty in the back. Want to sit next to me?"

The cargo bed of the three-wheeler was covered in dirt and fodder, as well as flattened pieces of dried dung. It had presumably often been used to transport cattle and sheep, and it really wasn't a good place for a person to sit.

Shi Wen got on and sat on the cushion beside Fu Meng, raising a hand to grip the frame. "Thanks, Brother Fu."

Fu Meng said, "No need to be polite. It's on my way."

Fu Meng drove the three-wheeler toward town, its engine chugging along.

The cattle and sheep market was also in town, though it was a little farther down, some distance from the main street.

Shi Wen had only explored the main street before and had never been to the cattle and sheep market.

As they drew closer to the market, more and more three-wheelers and light trucks appeared on the road. The traffic grew more congested and the noise more clamorous.

There were more and more cattle, sheep, and other livestock, too. Some were being transported, others herded, and they were everywhere. The distinctive smell of livestock in the air grew stronger.

Before long, Shi Wen saw people already selling adult sheep by the roadside.

Adult sheep and lambs weren't sold in the same place. He wanted to buy lambs at the market today, so he had to go farther in.

Fu Meng parked the three-wheeler in a designated parking area and walked into the cattle and sheep market with Shi Wen. "Shi Wen, have you had breakfast? Want to get something to eat?"

Outside the market were all sorts of food stalls-lamb offal soup, beef noodles, mutton-fat buns, hot milk tea, yogurt bowls, and more.

Shi Wen breathed in the mingled aromas. "Let's get something. Brother Fu, what would you like?"

Fu Meng said, "How about lamb rice noodles? I'll take you to a longtime place."

The two of them went to the lamb rice noodle shop for a meal.

The lamb came from a freshly slaughtered local sheep. It had no muttony smell at all, and instead had a faint milky fragrance. It was exceptionally tender and fresh, and with chili oil and pickled radish, it was wonderfully appetizing.