“Let me kill him, let me kill him! A person like that is a menace alive. Dead, at least he won’t drag you down anymore!”
Before Bai Lan even reached the recycling station, she could hear Ning’s mother’s hysterical shouting. As she yelled, she was walking back toward the courtyard, looking like she was ready to go fight someone. Startled, Datou and Qin Yan frantically grabbed hold of her to stop her.
“Well…”
Bai Lan looked at Xu Jianbei. There were dark circles under his eyes—clearly, he hadn’t slept well the night before. He had come home, eaten breakfast, and immediately gone back out with her to check on Datou. She felt a pang of sympathy for her husband, running back and forth like this. But if the situation in Datou’s family wasn’t handled properly, someone might actually end up dead.
Xu Jianbei reached over and patted her hand. “Don’t go over there. Be careful—you don’t want to hurt yourself. I’ll go say a few words, then run over to the textile mill.”
People had already started moving about in the streets. Hearing the commotion, they craned their necks curiously. Bai Lan knew they couldn’t linger here. Even worse, they couldn’t let the truth about Datou’s father come out just yet. They needed to bring the factory leaders over and resolve everything in one go.
They still needed to figure out exactly how many years Datou’s father had been faking his illness. And by doing so, he had defrauded the factory of various subsidies for nearly twenty years. The total amount was surely enormous. In the current era, such behavior would definitely lead to arrest and imprisonment. This was taking advantage of the state!
Over by the commotion, Xu Jianbei finished his round of persuasion. Seeing that Ning’s mother finally understood she needed to consider Datou’s future, he took his leave and headed toward the factory.
Seeing that mother and son could now speak calmly, Qin Yan also ran over to Bai Lan, linked her arm, and whispered, “I really think Aunt Ning wants to kill Datou’s father.”
Bai Lan thought about the kind of life Datou and Ning’s mother had lived all these years. It wasn’t hard to understand Ning’s mother’s impulse. Who wouldn’t want to kill someone after going through something like that?
——
The group of four, each lost in their own thoughts, slowly walked back toward the courtyard.
The courtyard was as lively as ever. Early in the morning, everyone was either eating breakfast or washing up. The whole place was bustling.
Seeing Bai Lan, Qin Yan, and the mother and son enter, everyone looked over curiously. Some even asked why they were coming back from outside so early in the morning.
Bai Lan brushed it off with a laugh. “We just ran into each other at the public restroom.”
What an excuse. But in those days, it worked pretty well. As soon as people heard “public restroom,” they immediately stopped asking.
Before heading home, Bai Lan shot Datou a meaningful look, signaling him to stay calm once he got inside. They would wait for the factory leaders to arrive before doing anything else.
To be honest, if Datou and his mother had wanted to keep this hidden, they could have. They could have discussed it among themselves and then announced that Datou’s father was slowly getting better. That would have made things much easier to handle.
But if they let it slide like that, then all the suffering Datou and his mother had endured over the years would have been for nothing.
So, mother and son chose to expose everything. They wanted to rip off Datou’s father’s hypocritical mask completely.
Xu Jianbei worked fast!
Bai Lan had barely sat down at home and hadn’t even warmed her chair before he came running back.
Seeing this, Miao Daju asked curiously, “Are you two not going to work today?”
Xu Jianbei wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Right. We have some things to take care of, so we took the day off.”
Miao Daju wasn’t one to pry. Seeing that they would be home, she said she would make a little extra lunch.
The other households were equally calm. No one had noticed anything amiss with the Ning family. After breakfast, everyone went off to school or work as usual. Before long, the lively courtyard grew quiet again.
Bai Lan and Xu Jianbei sat in their own room, their ears pricked, listening carefully for any noise from the front courtyard.
But the front courtyard remained completely silent. Datou and his mother had returned home. Seeing that figure still lying on the wooden bed as he had for over a decade, mother and son both clenched their fists. But they had agreed to endure a little longer. Otherwise, they would have grabbed the man right then and there and demanded to know why he had been faking paralysis.
Ning Geda had no idea what his wife and son were thinking. Seeing them come back together, he asked Datou directly, “You’re back from your delivery run? How did you run into your mother?”
Datou pretended not to hear the voice. He walked straight to the eaves, lit the stove, and started boiling water. As for Ning’s mother, she turned directly to the cupboard, took out some flour, and prepared to make dough drop soup. When she saw the few eggs inside, she didn’t hoard them like she used to. Instead, she took out four eggs at once, cracked them into a bowl, added a bowl of white flour, and mixed in water.
Ning Geda heard the commotion and knew breakfast was being made. He was still happily waiting to eat something good.
But even after the dough drop soup was cooked, Ning Geda’s meal never came. Instead, Datou and his mother each took a large bowl and squatted under the eaves, eating directly. The fragrant smell of wheat made Ning Geda’s mouth water.
Immediately, as he did every day, he began pounding on the bed, trying to get the attention of mother and son. But the tactics that usually worked were utterly useless today.
Instead, he only tired himself out, sweat beading on his forehead. He wanted a drink of water, only to find his cup empty.
“Xiaocong, get me some water.”
Datou tipped the last bit of soup from his bowl into his mouth, wiped his hand across his face, and pulled his mother toward the door.
Today, they were done being beasts of burden for a piece of trash.
Mother and son sat together at the entrance of the alley, letting the draft blow through, and waited for the leaders to arrive.
Meanwhile, Ning Geda, realizing that his wife and son were ignoring him, still had no idea his secret had been exposed. He furiously kicked the bed frame with his feet, then finally calmed down.
He began to wonder what had gotten into the two of them.
The neighbor next door also heard the commotion from the Ning household. After all, Ning Geda had shouted several times. Knowing he was paralyzed, the neighbor came over to see what was going on.
Hearing that Ning Geda wanted water, the neighbor kindly poured him a cup and casually asked where Datou’s mother had gone.
How would Ning Geda know? He grumbled, “I don’t know. Normally, that woman tells me before she goes out. Today, for some reason, she just left with the boy.”
Just as the two were talking, a commotion came from the alley outside.
Hearing it, the neighbor forgot to keep chatting with Ning Geda and immediately hurried outside.
Outside the alley, it was a lively time of day.
All the unemployed grandparents, aunts, uncles, and young wives were either going to buy vegetables or gathering in the alley to mend clothes and chat.
So when the factory director appeared with several people, he was immediately recognized. For the factory director to show up at the workers’ residential alley early in the morning was quite an unusual event.
The courtyard quickly heard Aunt Wan’s shout: “Oh my, the textile mill director is heading our way. I wonder who he’s coming to see.”
Hearing this from inside her room, Bai Lan immediately pulled Xu Jianbei outside.
“Aunt Wan, is the factory director really coming?”
Aunt Wan didn’t know why Bai Lan was asking, but she nodded. “Isn’t that right! And it’s not just the director—he brought a doctor from the clinic up front and several people in cadre uniforms. I don’t know whose house they’re going to. Oh my, for the director to come in person, it must be something big.”
And it was indeed something big.
Bai Lan wondered to herself how the Ning family situation would play out. In the end, Ning Geda would probably be arrested. As for what would hold Datou back, it would likely be that his reputation would be ruined, and his temporary driver job at the transport company might be jeopardized.
Thinking this, she sighed and prepared to go to the front with Xu Jianbei to take a look.
Just then, Aunt Wan, who had been excitedly telling everyone about the director’s arrival, suddenly shouted, “Oh my, oh dear! Is that a fire?”
At the word “fire,” several people in the courtyard looked in the direction Aunt Wan was pointing. What they saw was truly alarming. Behind the Wan family’s house and the former Qian family house—the same small side room where Bai Baowei now lived—smoke had begun to rise.
Although summer had arrived, the weather was still very dry. There were no reliable firefighting methods back then, and the courtyard was made of wood. If a fire really broke out, it would be very difficult to put out.
So, before Aunt Wan could finish yelling, people had already rushed out of their homes to go check the source of the smoke.
Xu Jianbei, treating this as a serious threat, immediately called out to his mother. Then he said to Bai Lan, “You and Mom go outside first. I’m afraid the fire might really spread.”
Bai Lan was grateful that her mother’s family wasn’t home at the moment. She pulled her mother-in-law and headed outside, shouting “Fire! Fire!” as she went.
But just as she reached the entrance of the courtyard, she ran straight into the factory director and his group. These people had just encountered Datou and his mother and hadn’t yet had a chance to speak.
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