In the early years, there was a family in the west courtyard of my house.
His youngest son, who was about two years older than me, was tall and thin, smart, and a leader. When I wasn't in school and after I went to school, I would often go to play with him. Strangely, my mother never liked me going to his house.
Although the house built against the mountain is only separated by a wall, the terrain of the west courtyard is higher than my house. On the east side of the neighbor's yard, there are always a few large stacks of soybean straws, and on the west side, there are some vegetables and a few small furrows; Wild Artemisia and various other weeds grow everywhere. The terrain from north to south from high to low, forming a large slope, in the middle is a small road for people to walk, running down, can rush to the village road in one breath.
My yard has always been level, and the garden is planted with all kinds of vegetables, in an orderly manner, and there is no land to waste.
Chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs are the standard equipment of almost every household, but in my impression, it seems that I have never seen such livestock in a neighbor's house.
Obviously, the yard next door is more wild and more suitable for children to play.
I've almost never met the man in my neighbor's house.
The hostess, whom I call "the aunt", had a withered yellow countenance, thin and tall, as if a gust of wind could blow it down.
She seems to have been sick all the time, living with her two sons and never seen her out of the house.
Although it is an east and west courtyard, and there is a little kinship, there is almost no contact between our two families.
I feel that apart from me, there have always been few people going to the West Courtyard.
Occasionally, I would hear people in the village talking, and whenever his family was mentioned, everyone's expressions would become ambiguous.
I don't know why.
However, even if you are young, you will actually feel that there is something mysterious about the West Courtyard:
The man who almost never appears;
The hostess who is sick and always doesn't go out;
The door is always closed;
Rarely visited, overgrown yards;
Everything seems quiet and quirky.
One sunny afternoon, I rushed to the West Courtyard to play with my friends.
I didn't notice at all, the closed door, the curtained window.
Rural children don't have any etiquette.
I opened the door and walked a few steps through the stove room to the back room.
In the back room, the windows are firmly covered by curtains, and no sunlight can penetrate a little, and the lights are on, but the wattage is obviously very low, and it is very dim. There is a dining table on the kang and a kerosene lamp lit.
The aunt was lying on the kang, and her partner was carrying a huge needle in her hand.
Seeing me rushing in, my aunt pulled a quilt to cover it, and my little friend looked a little sneering.
The atmosphere was eerie.
There was a strange smell.
I'm a little confused. Time and air seemed to freeze, no one spoke, but what could be felt was an aura of people being outside the door.
Some of them are gray, feeling like they're doing something wrong, but they don't know what they're doing wrong.
In a daze, I ran out and went home.
My mother happened to be at home, and I couldn't help but tell her about the situation just now. My mother scolded me, probably meaning that she wouldn't let you go, wouldn't let you go, but you always ran to other people's homes.
But I still didn't understand, so I broke the casserole and asked what they were doing.
The mother said unhappily: What else can you do, smoke a lot.
This was the first time I had learned about big cigarettes, that is, drugs.
Big smoke, scientific name poppy.
When I was a child, my mother often planted a few large fireworks under the cherry tree in the yard, mixed with other colorful flowers. This kind of flower, the plant is tall and big, and the flowers are either snow-white or red, surprisingly gorgeous, and no flower can take away its unique style.
There was once a song with lyrics: Spirits are the most fragrant, poisonous flowers are the most beautiful, how to consume them. Come to think of it, the poisonous flower should mean the big fireworks.
After the large fireworks are gone, they will produce green spherical fruits, which are delicate and tender, and when ripe, they are the size of a single head of garlic. A slight stroke of the fruit with a small blade will cause a white sap to seep out, so use a vial tube to collect the sap very carefully. After the juice solidifies in the bottle, it becomes a black paste, hard and odorless.
The few trees planted by my mother are naturally not for sale, but for cure. Big cigarette cream seems to work wonders for headaches, brain fever, diarrhea and other diseases. At that time, the management was not too strict, and many farmers would secretly plant a little.
Now it's illegal to plant one.
I slowly learned the story of my friend's family.
My aunt has been addicted to drugs for some years. It is said that at first, he was instigated by his own man, and he didn't know the reason and logic for doing so.
Big smoke paste is very expensive, ruining people, and basically ruining homes. The man began to sell and smoke, and gradually became famous, so the public security bureau began to arrest him, and he absconded, and for many years he did not dare to return home.
But anyone who is contaminated with this stuff probably smokes it at first, commonly known as smoking a big cigarette. I don't know if there are other links in the middle, anyway, in the later stage, that is, at the stage of the aunt, smoking can no longer solve the problem of drug addiction, only by injection, that is, to smoke a lot.
The large smoke paste is solid and heated with an oil lamp, which can melt into a liquid, suck it into the needle, and inject it directly.
At this stage, it seems that there is no cure at all.
My little friend, at the age of just starting school, took care of his mother in this way.
I haven't been to his house since.
After school, I had some new playmates, and I went to him even less.
One winter, on my way home from school, I saw in the distance the gate of my neighbor's house, and the narrow village road was crowded with people.
A large truck is parked on the road**.
At that time, there were still very few vehicles, and almost all children loved cars.
I started running.
When I got to the car, I saw that the villagers were talking about something, either excited or panicked.
Something happened to the neighbor's house in the West Courtyard.
At this time, a man, of medium stature, was tied up by five flowers and was pulled out of the courtyard by several people. Pushing, scolding, walking to the side of the truck, the man was put down by several people, and then several people worked together, and the man was thrown directly into the trailer of the truck, which seemed to be pigs and sheep to be slaughtered.
Boom", that was a loud sound.
Ah", there was an exclamation from the crowd.
The little friend is crying, the aunt is trembling, and she is crying when she is being supported. The crowd rushed to the truck.
But the truck still started resolutely and drove away with an unquestionable attitude.
My friends, and a few others, were chasing the car behind, running, crying.
That scene is still vivid in my mind.
The mystery is revealed in everyone's talk:
The male owner of the neighbor's house has long been secretly home, but he has never shown his face in front of others.
He had been hiding in the large pile of soybean straw in the west courtyard.
Under the straw, I don't know how long it took him, dug a tunnel and went straight into the room.
In the evening he went to his house to spend the night, and at dawn he walked down the tunnel and returned to the straw stack.
It is unknown how long it has been hidden.
Except for his own family, no one should know that he came back secretly.
However, Skynet is magnificent, negligent but not leaky.
On that day, the police, dressed in civilian clothes, came to the door and grabbed him and took him away.
It has never been clear who he was accused of or which "fairy" found out.
Most of the tragedies of a family are just the talk of other people's families. After all, everyone is the protagonist of their own life, and it won't be long before the affairs of other people's families will be forgotten, no matter how sad they are.
His yard is less crowded.
But children always can't remember things, or they don't care about such things.
Occasionally, I still play with that little friend.
I remember one time, his expression suddenly became very serious, and he said to me, "Do you know who I hate the most? ”
Hate whom? "Police! ”
I was surprised. You must know that in that era, children's favorite except for the People's Liberation Army was the police.
But come to think of it, my partner does seem to have a reason to hate the police. He firmly believed that it was the police who took his dad roughly.
At a young age, of course, he would not realize how many families, wives like his family, and even family ruin, would be separated due to his father's drug trafficking.
In my limited understanding, once drugs are contaminated, the final outcome will be ruined and the family will be ruined, and there will be no exceptions.
At that time, there was another family in the village, and it was also because of smoking a lot of cigarettes, and finally there was no house. So in the middle of the east and west teams of the village, a shack was built close to the root of the mountain. My house is not much walk from the shack, and I pass by on my way to and from school. If you don't have a house, the land will probably be sold, and it won't belong to your own family, so you don't know how the family will live. It's just that no matter who loses something in the village, the first one to be suspected or abused is his family.
There is also the "village keeper" in the village, who is also the result of his parents' drug abuse and fetal poisoning.
It wasn't long before the mistress of the neighbor's house died, and it was very desolate.
The little friend was adopted by one of his relatives and was not in our village.
The house in the west courtyard was first vacant; The glass of the windows is gone, and the doors are gone, forming hideous hollows; Then, the roof was torn down, and the bricks and stones were removed little by little by his relatives and transported back to the yard walls or livestock sheds for his family. In the end, the whole house was gone, empty, and only a circle of foundations remained. Later, even the foundation of the house was mixed with the weeds and was never seen again.
I never saw this childhood friend again, and I almost never heard of it.
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