Look at the birds in the sky. They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. Even if people shoot them, you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.
Zhang Youmin is a person who likes to visit ruins, not just because he is an excavator operator, nor just because he is not popular among people. When I was a child, six members of my family lived together. The weather in Zhang Laoer's village is always very cold, and his father's three sets of clothes are worn in turn by the three children in the family. He is not as strong and able to take care of the housework as the eldest brother, nor is he smarter and attracts more attention than the third child. When it was his turn, he would always drag his baggy clothes to the entrance of the village to play with friends, but his pants were too long and would pull down as soon as he ran. He was always caught when playing ghost hunting, and when it was time for him to catch people, the children would always hide in the village. Behind walls, on roofs, in ditches, and running away as soon as they are discovered. When I was in a hurry, I even kicked off my pants and didn't dare to run far. When he was arresting someone, he simply started wandering around the village, catching loaches and poking at ant nests...
He liked the cats in the village. The orange cats were often fed by the rich people who lived in the big courtyards and kept them fat. However, every time they fought, they could not beat the lean black cat with one blind eye. In the end, as soon as the black cat leaned over, the orange cat would jump away in a hurry. Every time when he got tired of playing, he would slowly look for the black cat in the village and watch it pounce on the wild pigeons on the trees. The wild pigeon cooed, but it stopped when its neck was bitten, and only warm blood flowed out.
At first it was difficult to find the black cat, and he always disappeared in a blink of an eye, but he kept looking, and gradually we were able to get along with him. The black cat moved at the top of the earth wall, lowering its body alertly as if hearing something, then relaxed, and suddenly jumped down in front of him. Lying on the wall, I glanced at him and he sat down.
He wanted to raise a cat, but he had no place, so he would occasionally meet the black cat in the wild. He had nothing to feed it, and the black cat never asked for petting. They usually kept some distance between each other and stayed for a while, while the black cat took care of itself.
The village has always regarded the black cat as an unlucky thing, because it is black, but it dares to walk alone and secretly kill Aunt Zhao's chickens. It worked accurately and quickly. When the second aunt lit up the lamp and rushed out with a broom, a pair of green eyes flashed, and its drooped wings disappeared at the other end of the courtyard wall.
The death of that chicken made Henwa very sad, because in his chaotic and unclear memories as a child, it seemed that the first memory was of a chick with yellow fluff that kept croaking, shaking its head and walking towards him. He watched the chick grow and remembered its body pulling out its hard, mature feathers. When his father went out to work and his mother worked in the fields, the chicken stayed with him and laid eggs into his little hands, although the eggs always disappeared. He once bullied this little chicken, when it had just learned to walk. He called it to come over but it didn't answer. So when he got angry, the young baby picked it up and threw it viciously into the trash can. It has a very good character. If you put your finger on it, it will never peck you. Instead, it will stick out its head for you to touch. Even after it grows very old, it still won't resist the baby holding it tightly in its arms sometimes.
The second aunt was very angry because some materials were missing from the banquet held by her son and daughter-in-law three days later. Marrying the eldest son is a laborious and expensive matter, but it is also necessary. The chicken was too old and could no longer lay eggs. She was looking forward to letting Bangwa kill it tomorrow, and then teach him how to bleed the chicken, pluck the feathers and remove the internal organs, and stew it for a while longer. After it was stewed, no one would think it was old. This careful and reasonable plan came to nothing because of the unworthy black cat.
The two of them shared the same hatred, and after the banquet, they planned to kill the black cat in the village. This decision was supported by other chicken-raising villagers. After their serious and lively discussions, a detailed battle plan was set up: let the hook lead it out, and everyone would work together to catch it. Hook is Youmin's nickname. He was not given by his family. He was called Hook because his pants would fall down and leak out of his butt when he ran.
In the village, some people are allowed to go, but some people don't go; at home, some people are allowed to go, because this is a rare thing to earn face, but some people don't go. So he grabbed his clothes and hid in the corner of the village like a black cat. This time, Henwa and the villagers never found him, but they caught the black cat not far from Henwa. It was still struggling before it died. People had never seen such a wild and untamed cat. It arched its back and bared its teeth, scratching anyone who dared to approach it. It avoided many heavy blows with sticks and captures in nets, and kept a distance from people. Some people jumped out of the hiding place, knocked away a villager, and ran towards the black cat. At this time, the black cat turned around and ran away. This time it ran without any care, and was caught by Erga, the dog trainer.
Some people watched it die among the dogs from a distance, the black color was drowned by the khaki howling, growling and biting. These dogs are trained never to bite, but have no mercy on any other creature that feels even remotely threatened. Reappeared, there was only bright red blood and white bones.
After the dogs were all locked up, he asked for some gnawed bones from the black cat that he could still find, and tried to make it look like a cat, but he couldn't make it, so he buried it in the corner where they usually stayed. At this time, Henwa saw it, came over and spat, "It deserves it, it ate our chicken. You still buried it, so ignorant, no wonder no one likes to play with you." He didn't answer, and he didn't feel sad, so he just sat there in a daze. The wild pigeons on the tree cooed, seemingly a little more wildly. They seemed to know that they were safer.
When he was a little older, he went to the city to work, moving bricks and building walls and cement, whatever he had to do. At that time he liked the city, where the people were beautiful, things were convenient, and the house was warmer. He used part of the money he earned from his first job to send to his family, and the rest bought himself some well-fitting clothes. After a few more times, he bought some bricks and mud and wanted to build a house for himself in the city, with a small second floor, like the rich people in the village, but it was demolished just two days after it was built.
He was angry: "Why demolish my house?"
A group of men in uniform came over and told him: The land under his feet did not belong to him, and the state stipulated that he could not build a house here.
"It's not mine..." he said, "Whose is it then?"
"It belongs to the country."
"Whose country does it belong to?" He wanted to ask who cares about this matter.
"The country? The country is you and me. When we come together, we are called the country. Anyway, there are regulations that do not allow random construction. Your building that has not been approved by the planning bureau is called private random construction. Do you understand?"
"Then which bureau should I approach for approval?"
"Don't worry, people will definitely not approve of this. The land in the city is very valuable, and the country uses it. If you want a place to live, rent it. Migrant workers like us can only rent a house to find a place to live. Land is very valuable in the city, and this newly built building is worth more than a hundred thousand square meters."
"But I built this building?"
"Did you build it? Did you pay for it?"
"No."
"You still say you built it without you. I think you are just moving the bricks here. They bought the bricks and the land, and you just put them on for them, and you still say you built it. It's true that you built it. The ownership belongs to them, and they just pay you a little money."
After that day, he fell in love with demolishing walls, and he always rushed to do demolition work. He doesn't understand the country, policies, and economic benefits, and he doesn't care about them at all. He just hates building things for people who don't know or care about him. His own sweat goes into the cement to form the appearance of a city, but they live comfortably. He felt that in the eyes of the foreman and the people walking on the street, he was like a brick, but the purpose of this brick was to lay cement on the upper floor. These people move in and decorate the outside and inside so that the ugly cement cannot be seen. No one cares about cement except the companies that can make money from them. And dismantling it yourself is like a kind of revenge, happy and powerful. He changed his name to Zhang Youming. He likes to wear black pants and black tops. He is as fashionable as many migrant workers, but he looks good in this outfit.
Zhang Youming often crowded with his co-workers in a temporary board house with six people. He likes to come out after dinner or before going to bed, use a flashlight to look at the ruins he demolished during the day, and then pick up whatever he wants. He picked up a long piece of wood and carried it back to the house with great difficulty, leaving it there after the project was completed. He also picked up a length of heating pipe with a T-shaped end, which he could swing easily.
The day he picked up the heating pipe, he rewarded himself with a piece of ham sausage, and while he was eating it, a black cat saw him. The black cat was not alert. It waited for a moment, then pounced on him and scratched his trouser legs, staring at the meat in his hand. There was no one around him. He looked at the cat expressionlessly, then suddenly smiled and threw the ham sausage to the ground.
The cat hurriedly pounced on it, biting into the packaging with its teeth and scraping the meat with its tongue. He looked at it, then suddenly took a few steps back and picked up the heating pipe.
Hit it and the cat will stop moving, splattering some blood. Seeing that no one was around, he waved a few more times and almost vomited. Then he leaned over, held his breath, stroked the cat's fur, and then tore open the cat's skin, took out the cat's heart, touched it, squeezed it hard, touched all the internal organs and intestines, and then threw it into the rubble. He lit a cigarette, got up and rinsed it, then threw the cigarette away and into the rubble.
On this day, he picked up something unusual. The thing glowed with a shiny metallic luster in the sun. It seemed to be very valuable. It was segment by segment, like a watch without a dial. It felt smooth and even had a vague strange feeling. He put the watch away and patted it. He felt relieved when he remembered that in a few days, his father would come to ask for tuition from the third child.
A few hours later, he woke up in the middle of the night and felt a vague discomfort, combined with the stimulation of blood, and he lay down dizzy. An increasingly strong sense of vomiting swept over him. He was dizzy, had unbearable abdominal pain, his arms and legs were weak, his gums were bleeding, and purple blisters appeared on his face and back. When his head was twisted slightly, a lot of strands of hair fell off his head, and he was sent to the hospital.
One day later, his father took the third child to the hospital, bought several kilograms of fruit in advance, and paid for the hospitalization fee with tuition. He felt very weak, with black stools, high fever, and even his nails and teeth were a little loose. Is this an illusion?
A few days later, he was transferred to another hospital many times, but no one could determine the cause of his illness. Even his father and brother lost a large bunch of hair while taking care of him in the hospital, and they felt even more nauseated and vomiting due to the fever. And what about him? Even the skin began to fall off in large areas. In the painful dizziness, he could vaguely see that the room he was in was falling off and shaking, and even the doctor began to feel uncomfortable. He was isolated.
Ten days later, he developed hair loss, sore throat, difficulty breathing, blood spots all over his body, and pus. Not a piece of his skin was intact, and the doctor's explanation was meaningless. In fact, the doctor was also coughing, vaguely, as if the whole hospital was coughing. He heard a gurgling voice, which was stuck together with the doctor's radioactive voice, as if the explanation was clear, but there was no way. He is gradually disintegrating, his organs are peeling off and melting, and the whole world is collapsing. The whole world, the world that goes its own way, the world that sucks blood and sweat, the world that is boring, lonely, hollow and cruel, the world that has been asking for everything collapsed at the moment he died, burying him, just like this world has always done.
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