Meng Zezhi's life in Linjia Village was quite comfortable. Apart from working hard at sea during the day and occasionally sneaking out to earn extra money at night, he had two cheap daughters-in-law to take care of him when he was eating, drinking and lhasa.
Soon it will be the end of August.
As early as the beginning of the month, Lin Sanyi went to work in a food processing factory in the town.
Meng Zezhi was going to take Lin Xiaolu to report to the secondary school in the city.
Luggage was packed quickly.
The quilt was arranged by Lin Dayong and his wife, and the second family helped to buy two sets of new seasonal clothes and toiletries. Lin Sanyi borrowed ten dollars from somewhere, and bought a fountain pen and a fountain pen for Lin Xiaolu. and a bottle of ink.
With the predecessor as an example, the four brothers and sisters have a very harmonious relationship.
Even the commune sent thirty dollars over.
Meng Zezhi used the money to host a rather sumptuous college entrance banquet, which was quite lively.
"Okay, you all go back, we're leaving."
In the evening, Meng Zezhi and Lin Xiaolu got on the big truck sent by the state-owned aquatic product supply and marketing company to load seafood.
They need to stay in the county for one night, then transfer to a bus early tomorrow morning, and they are expected to be in the city tomorrow afternoon.
Everyone in the village came to deliver: "Be careful on the road!"
"Okay." Lin Xiaolu waved excitedly.
The car turned on a flat road, Meng Zezhi took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, opened one, and handed it to the driver: "Master, smoke."
The working environment of the fishermen forced them to use smoking and drinking to ward off the cold, strengthen their courage, relieve fatigue and pass the time. They had a heavy smoking addiction before, and Meng Zezhi was inevitably affected. But the predecessor smoked old dry tobacco, also called leaf tobacco.
Every family in Linjia Village grows seven or eight tobacco sticks in their private plots, makes their own tobacco leaves, and rolls their own shredded tobacco…
Meng Zezhi could not change too much at one time, and usually tried to follow the life habits of his predecessors. It's just that I'm out of the house at the moment, and human exchanges are inevitable. Old dry cigarettes are inconvenient to carry, and cigarettes are obviously of a higher grade.
"Yo, the big front door." The driver obviously knew the goods. He happily took the cigarette from Meng Zezhi and lit it with his hand.
Breathing in the mist, he glanced at Lin Xiaolu in the back seat, and said leisurely, "Brother is very lucky!"
"It's not." Meng Zezhi couldn't stop laughing: "My daughter is good at small grades. She always ranks in the top ten in exams. At the beginning, when the teacher said that she could try to apply for the secondary school, I still had some problems. Don't worry, fortunately, I passed the exam... If only the three bastards in my family had half my daughter's peace of mind... "
The driver who heard this was stunned for a moment, and he couldn't help sighing: "Brother, your heart is really big."
I heard that the tuition fee for a city secondary school is 50 yuan a year, plus living expenses and other miscellaneous expenses, one year less, it would cost 150 yuan.
Three years is four hundred and fifty yuan. If it is in Linjia Village, this is enough to marry a wife, build a beautiful brick house, and have two white and plump sons.
Of course, he did not say that reading is not good, but that should also be divided into people.
If the person sitting in the car was a boy at the moment, he would definitely be full of envy in his heart, but it happened to be a girl sitting here.
What's the use of a girl offering to go out, sooner or later she will marry into someone else's house.
As the old saying goes, it's called a bamboo basket to draw water.
It was only after Meng Zezhi arrived at the school that he understood the meaning of the driver's words.
Lin Xiaolu applied for the accounting major. This year, the city secondary school admitted a total of five people in Qixian, and only Lin Xiaolu was a girl.
A total of 60 students were admitted to the accounting major in the city secondary school, including 10 girls, but only four came to report, which led to the dissatisfaction of the six-person dormitory arranged by the school for the accounting major.
The key point is self-evident.
Except for Lin Xiaolu, the other three girls who arrived first all seemed to have good family backgrounds. They were all in brand-new military uniforms, and their parents were well-dressed.
But it makes Meng Zezhi's father and daughter look a little out of place.
Meng Zezhi didn't feel embarrassed, he put down his things, took out the cigarette in his pocket, and went up to meet him.
As the saying goes, people in this era are still very simple, and they have a sense of superiority, but they are not despised.
"This is your daughter, she looks so handsome."
"It's not as tall as your daughter, she's almost as tall as me."
…
That's how parental friendships are built.
The atmosphere became lively in an instant, and even Lin Xiaolu was not so restrained, and he could add a sentence or two from time to time.
At the end, one of the mothers asked: "By the way, why are you the only one to deliver the child? Where is the child's mother?"
Meng Zezhi was making the bed for Lin Xiaolu: "The child died when he was very young."
She was stunned for a while, but she didn't want to accidentally hit someone's sadness. She immediately changed the subject: "Then it's very hard for you to raise your child by yourself."
"Fortunately, the child's future is bitter and sweet!"
"It makes sense." She smiled: "By the way, are you also a daughter?"
Otherwise, who would be willing to send their children to school, just by looking at his clothes, he knew that the family conditions were not very good.
"It would be great if she had only one child. She has three older brothers on top of her, and none of them are worry-free." Meng Zezhi said casually.
"Huh?" Everyone's surprise was the same as that of the truck driver.
It's just that the former is disapproval, and the latter is gratified, for Meng Zezhi's enlightenment.
The more she looked at Meng Zezhi, the more cordial she felt, and she looked around, wondering if she could help.
When she looked at it like this, she really found something wrong. She said, "Oh, didn't you buy a kettle for your child?"
"How to say?"
"The school dormitory has no private bathroom. If you want to take a bath, you have to go to the public bath. It's a bit far from the dormitory. You can bring a kettle to get hot water every night after the self-study. For example, I prepared two kettles for my children. In winter, I make two pots at a time, one for the evening and one for the next morning, just right."
"I really didn't consider this." Meng Zezhi said, "This is also the first time I have sent my child to school."
"My niece graduated from here, and she told me these things." She said in detail, "And this cafeteria..."
"Well... ok..." Meng Zezhi listened carefully.
After everything was sorted out, Lin Xiaolu sent Meng Zezhi to the school gate.
Meng Zezhi took out twenty dollars from his pocket and handed it to Lin Xiaolu: "This is for your living expenses this month. Don't be reluctant to spend it. I'll send you two hot water bottles in a few days."
The meals in the school cafeteria are quite cheap. One-third of millet porridge, one-third of fried dough sticks, one-third of sesame flatbread, and six-cents bowl of Yangchun noodles with two or two weights... No food stamps, no matter how much a child eats, No more than fifteen bucks.
"Thank you dad." Lin Xiaolu threw herself into Meng Zezhi's arms, speechless with excitement.
Compared with the girls in the same village who had no chance of going to school at all, and her female classmates who dropped out of school after graduating from elementary school, she is undoubtedly happy.
Meng Zezhi touched her head: "Okay, study hard, don't let your father's hard work."
"Yeah." Lin Xiaolu nodded solemnly.
After leaving school, Meng Zezhi found a hostel for one night. Early the next morning, he went straight to the black market with the storage space in his pocket.
When he got there, he walked around the street carrying a large sack, and naturally someone followed the smell.
When he reached a small alley, he put down his things, and the people behind him immediately surrounded him.
"Big brother, is it seafood?" A middle-aged woman asked impatiently.
"Well." Meng Zezhi poured out all the contents in the sack.
All are good dry goods, dried shrimp, dried small yellow croaker, dried cuttlefish, dried conch, dried oyster, dried mussels...
It was all that he sneaked into the sea at night to catch them, and then dried them with the blazing sun array after they had been dealt with.
nice one.
Everyone's eyes lit up.
"How did you sell it?"
"One pound of dried shrimp, 60 cents of dried small yellow croaker, 90 cents of dried cuttlefish... 60 cents of dried mussels, 10% off if you have a ticket."
"So expensive?" The middle-aged woman tried to bargain.
"It's not expensive. Only three catties of fresh shrimp produce one catty of dried shrimp. How can fresh shrimp on the market cost thirty cents a catty, and you may not be able to buy them." Meng Zezhi said.
"What tickets do you want?" Someone asked.
"Cloth tickets, oil tickets, food tickets, industrial vouchers...all of them. One foot of cloth tickets is worth five pounds, and one or two oil tickets are worth three pounds..."
"I have an industrial coupon, give me two catties of dried shrimp and two catties of dried cuttlefish."
"I have a cloth ticket, give me five catties of dried mussels."
…
Hearing what the big guy said, the middle-aged woman didn't care about bargaining anymore, and immediately said, "I have food stamps, and I want two catties of dried cuttlefish..."
After two days of small business selling, I finally hooked up the big customer.
"How much stock do you have?" The other party was a young man, straight to the point, and didn't ask him where the things came from.
"There must be four or five thousand catties." Meng Zezhi added: "By the way, there are more than ten catties of sea cucumbers in it."
The young man's eyes lit up: "I want it all, you have to give me a 20% discount for the price."
"Okay." Meng Zezhi was also very cheerful: "But you have to get me some watch tickets."
"no problem."
The next day, Meng Zezhi went to the city secondary school with a lot of things.
"This is the kettle, this is the panacea, this is the vanishing cream... this is the watch."
The Lu family won't be looking for him until a year later, so it's still too late to nourish Lin Xiaolu from now on.
"Watch?" Lin Xiaolu was stunned, holding a lot of things.
She had seen this watch in the hands of a male classmate in the class, and I heard that one piece costs one hundred and twenty yuan.
"Take it, don't lose it, your brother has them all."
His predecessor was always a bowl of water. He sent Lin Dayong to be an apprentice, bought a bicycle for Lin Erde, and spent 300 yuan to stuff Lin Sanyi into the factory so that Lin Xiaolu could go to secondary school.
"No," Lin Xiaolu said, "Father, where did you get so much money?"
"Diagnosis money from seeing a doctor." Meng Zezhi never made a draft of what he said.
"Diagnosis fee?" Lin Xiaolu was skeptical.
"Well, your father is very good, you will know later." Meng Zezhi gave her a vaccination: "Okay, it's almost time for class, you can go back."
"Oh well."
Saying nothing and asking nothing, Lin Xiaolu forced herself to believe it.
Meng Zezhi was not in a hurry to return to Linjia Village. He stayed in the guest house for a week, and finally on September 10th, he checked out of the room under the scrutiny of the waiter, and then went to Rongsheng Hall.
Rongshengtang is the most famous traditional Chinese medicine store in Ding City and even in Hu Province.
When he arrived, the sitting doctor in the pharmacy was chatting with a middle-aged man.
"...How's the old man?"
The middle-aged man frowned: "I'm afraid it won't last long. Alas, this is a prescription. Please give me three medicines."
"Okay." The sitting doctor took the prescription and glanced at it. It was Wenzhong's pain-relieving prescription.
He walked to the medicine cabinet, and the guy in charge of dispensing the medicine immediately gave up his seat.
Meng Zezhi took advantage of the situation and ranked behind the middle-aged man.
"Okay." The sitting doctor handed the medicine to the middle-aged man.
"I'm bothering Doctor He." The middle-aged man only said, "How much is it."
"Wait a minute." The guy on the side was very discerning and saw that he took the abacus and started playing.
Meng Zezhi handed over the prescription: "Doctor, get the medicine."
Doctor He originally wanted to talk to the middle-aged man again, but seeing this scene, he had to look away and took the prescription from Meng Zezhi's hand.
"Good word." He sincerely praised the moment he entered his eyes.
Then he continued to look down: "Four coins for raw astragalus, one or two coins for Morinda officinalis... Six coins for safflower..."
He let out a 'huh', the prescription was weird, and the dosage was obviously wrong, probably because the person who prescribed it didn't want to reveal the real prescription.
He asked, "Do they all have to be packed separately?"
"Yeah." Meng Zezhi replied.
"A total of six yuan and seventy-three cents." The guy on the side stopped fiddling with the abacus.
"Okay." The middle-aged man immediately took out the money from his pocket.
really.
Doctor He couldn't help but ask, "What kind of disease are you using this recipe for?"
Meng Zezhi raised his eyebrows calmly, "Uremia."
"What?" The middle-aged man turned his head sharply to look at him.