Chapter 58:
Luo Zhi’er ran up a few steps and looked around the pigsty…
The pig lay in the pen as if asleep, with plenty of uneaten pig feed in its trough, along with yesterday’s pig feed…
Zhou Shi must have been wailing here just now, as there was a pile of flattened pig feed faintly visible on the ground…
Luo Zhi’er found a piece of cloth to cover her mouth and put on a pair of the gloves that Li Sanmao usually wore.
“Miaomiao, stay away from this pig. Don’t touch it.”
She found a piece of cloth for her to cover her mouth too, then squatted down, pried open the pig’s mouth, and searched inside for leftover grass. Besides the usual pig feed, she didn’t find any poisonous grass.
Nor did she see white foam coming from the pig’s mouth…
Zhou Shi came up and nagged in her ear, disrupting her train of thought. “What do you think you, little hussy, can find? Your daughter fed the pig to death and refuses to admit it? As parents, shouldn’t we compensate?”
Old Li Tou came up too, and Zhou Shi said again, “Old man, look at her behavior. She’s armed herself like a masked great hero…”
Old Li Tou rubbed his ankle and looked at her curiously, seeing her prying open the pig tail and searching all over the pig’s body.
“Third daughter-in-law, what can you find now that the pig is dead? Forget it, let’s just let this matter pass. Have Sanmao carry it to the river in a bamboo basket and rinse it away later…”
His family didn’t lack pork. Sanmao went hunting, and wild boar meat was delicious. He couldn’t figure out how this pig died exactly, and lately he’d heard that several households in the neighboring village had pigs die too…
Could it be swine fever? But if his wife said Miaomiao fed it to death, then that’s what happened. No point investigating. Next time Sanmao went hunting, he could just hunt a few extra ones.
“Cough… Have Sanmao hunt a few extra wild boars when he goes hunting normally, sell them, and buy two more piglets to raise.”
One died, so replace with two, plus extras—meaning he’d have to hunt several more in his spare time beyond normal hunting…
Forget it? She wouldn’t forget it. She wouldn’t let Miaomiao be wronged, beaten, and blame herself…
Old Li Tou saw his third daughter-in-law was stubborn and wouldn’t find anything, so he sighed, went back to his room. His back had been hurting badly lately, and he’d taken another beating, so he went to lie down…
Li Sanmao set down the bamboo basket, his face grim. No matter how this pig died today, he couldn’t escape having to compensate for it…
Seeing his wife run around all day and faint, her plump body searching everywhere on the ground for poisonous grass, with teary-eyed Miaomiao following her mother to search too, his heart ached.
Zhou Shi saw the old man go into the room. Luo Zhi’er was just flipping the pig tail and pig mouth over and over. Satisfied, she ran into the room to pick faults!
What she regretted was why hadn’t she disposed of the corpse and erased the traces?
She feared the old man would blame her for feeding the pig to death, so she made the excuse that Miaomiao did it, which was why Old Li Tou hadn’t dealt with the pig.
If she had explained clearly to Old Li Tou from the start, this pig might have already been swept away by the river by now!
Li Gui had changed into clean clothes and was about to get into bed to rest when his mother suddenly came in the door holding a needle. “Gui’er, Mother’s hand got some thorns in it. Mother’s eyesight is bad—help Mother pick them out!”
Li Gui quickly pulled the quilt over himself and shrank inside.
“Mother, I’ve told you many times—why don’t you knock when you come in?” Li Gui frowned.
“Mother saw it was so late and you were washing up in the backyard just now, so she thought you weren’t reading and came in. Mother didn’t disturb you!”
Li Gui felt he had no privacy.
Zhou Shi continued,
“Gui’er, you came out of Mother’s belly. What hasn’t Mother seen? What’s there to be afraid of? Alright, alright, next time Mother comes in, she’ll definitely say hello first!”
Li Gui took the needle from Zhou Shi’s hand, his displeasure showing on his face. Mother was just like this, without any sense of boundaries—really annoying!
Holding her hand to pick out the thorns, her hand was so rough, like tree bark. Looking at it, how were there so many? How long would it take to pick them all?
…
Luo Zhi’er searched for a long time and saw Li Sanmao limping over. She walked up to him,
and said softly,
“Sanmao, I know you’ve been running around all day and are very tired, but… I don’t want Miaomiao to be wronged. It might be a small matter to you, but it could affect her whole life.”
“Could you trouble yourself to dissect this pig? I want to check if there’s poisonous grass in its stomach?”
Li Sanmao gazed at her silently, then glanced at Miaomiao looking at him eagerly nearby. “Wife, what trouble? For you and Miaomiao, of course I’m willing. Wait here, I’ll go put on clothes…”
With that, he went and put on the leather jacket he wore for slaughtering wild boars, got a knife, and carried the pig to the usual slaughter rack.
He lit a large torch and began working…
At night, the wind was a bit cool, surrounded by frog croaks, with fireflies twinkling faintly in the distant fields…
With the rise and fall of his knife, the pig was gutted, split in half, and hung on iron hooks.
“Sanmao, after you take out the internal organs part, put it here…”
“Wife, this pig can’t be eaten—the internal organs have to be thrown out too!”
Li Sanmao thought she wanted to make braised intestines again. He suspected this pig didn’t die of poison but of swine fever…
“I just want to look…”
“Oh!”
The internal organs were pulled out by Li Sanmao and dumped into the large wooden basin on the ground. She mainly wanted to look at its stomach.
While they were slaughtering the pig, Li Daqiang came out too. Seeing this scene at home, he didn’t know what to say. His wife had been emotionally off all day and hadn’t said half a word to him.
He had no mood to care when his mother cursed and hit people. Actually, he’d just come back from the fields too!
The room was cold and empty. He’d put the two kids to sleep! He didn’t know if his wife was still unwell?
To top it off, another pig died. With the pig dead, the family lost another source of income. Yunliang and Muqing still owed school fees!
When he came back from the fields, his mother was already cursing and wailing that the pig was dead. His wife had a cold face and ignored him.
So cold, utterly indifferent. Once a woman’s heart died, could it never be warmed again?
He had been shaken by her words “Why did you say you’d be good to her for a lifetime? She chose the wrong father for the kids…” and hadn’t come back to his senses from last night until today…
The leftovers in the pot were just corn paste stuck to the pot bottom as dry pot scrapers.
He ate a bite casually, drank some cold water. He didn’t care—his heart was cold anyway. Just fill the stomach.
He had to work hard to make this family better. Dad and grandma were getting old, Second Brother went to town, Third Brother had to hunt. The wheat fields at home needed plowing…
He figured waiting to borrow an ox after others in the village were done would take who knows how long. His family’s relationship with the villagers wasn’t that good!
So he took a hoe to turn the soil himself, cut wild grass with a knife and burned it, to see if he could make the land more fertile… If he didn’t take the initiative at home, who would?
“Sanmao, third sister-in-law, what are you doing… Um… do you need oldest brother to help?”
Luo Zhi’er looked up at this oldest brother. He rolled up his sleeves, his face dark and swarthy. When he spoke, he revealed a mouth of big yellow teeth. Not yet forty-one, but his face was full of wrinkles…
He really was like an old yellow ox, the kind that was stubbornly filial to a fault…
“Oldest brother, the pig died. Mother beat Miaomiao. Wife wants to see how the pig really died…”
