The old oilman who did not leave his name came suddenly and left slowly that year.
My father had his second child, my sister, when he was thirty-three years old. He has a son and a daughter, is content with his ambitions, and is no longer content to live at the bottom of the mines. He spent all his family savings determined to build an ironworks and blew the horn of his dream of getting rich.
This amount of money amounts to 40,000 yuan. A small part of it was saved since he went out to learn carpentry in Xiaoxing'anling when he was 20 years old. After that, he went to the mines, worked in the mines, did decorations, and participated in the agricultural movement. He saved for thirteen years. . The larger part actually comes from my mother's income from raising pigs and selling popsicles, wontons, and steamed buns on the street while pushing a bicycle. The rest was raised by my uncle. At that time, my uncle had just bought a house with an area of 70 square meters and a price of 4,000 yuan. It was not easy to raise more money to support his brother.
My uncle, who is three years younger than my father, is the director of the foundry, so he feels that there is no need to worry about the sales of the ironworks' products. My father built the blast furnace and four workshops next door to the foundry, hoping that the blast furnace would come out. The molten iron flowed directly into the furnace of the foundry, and he made his wishful thinking.
The abacus beads were quickly scattered all over the floor. Not a drop of molten iron ever came out of the blast furnace. My father, a layman who made iron, struggled for several more months, and finally gave in. He lost all the money that my uncle could afford to buy ten new houses, and he has been bedridden since then. My mother was so anxious that she ran out of breast milk and cut off my sister’s food rations. I am not good at mathematics, physics and chemistry and am partial to subjects. I am about to enter the third year of junior high school and face an important exam. The newly built buildings of the iron smelting plant are no longer bustling, but are deserted and deserted.
That day, an old oilman came from nowhere. He found the place and, with my mother's consent, lived in that abandoned house. He went out during the day and wandered in the streets. If there was furniture in someone's home that needed oiling and painting, he would have an income. When new houses were built on the mines, his business prospered. At sunset, he came back, inserted a red plate of electric stove wire, boiled the pot, rolled out a roll of dried noodles, took it into a bowl, sprinkled a layer of chopped green onion and minced garlic, put a spoonful of salt, poured a little vinegar and a few drops of sesame oil, this is what he Daily dinner.
He would carry this same bowl of noodles that never changed every day. He would come to my father every evening, take out a shiny chess set from his shiny shoulder bag, and lift my father out of bed. Arouse, play chess. He was holding the sea bowl in one hand, and the other hand was busy wandering on the black and yellow canvas with the chessboard painted on it. He caught my father thinking about it, picked up a handful of noodles and rolled it into his mouth. He ate such an inconspicuous bowl of noodles with great devotion and chewed it so deliciously. My father had lost more than 20 kilograms at that time and did not think about food and drinks. Seeing how the oilman was enjoying himself every day, after this, he gradually became willing to serve more bowls of his own food, and his health gradually recovered.
In my opinion, the oilman's chess skills are not very good. He is often killed and the chessboard is empty, but he refuses to admit defeat and ends up in a desperate situation. He really loved regretting chess. Every time he was killed and a piece was placed on the edge of the chessboard, he would wake up and put it back again. After that, when my father killed the chess piece, he put it in his inner pocket, then bent down, put it under his belly, and held it tightly to prevent the oilman from snatching it away. Then he simply gave it to me to keep me away. The oilman raised his eyes to beg me, and I turned around. I turned around and saw my father smiling. I haven't seen his smiling face for a long time.
The oilman can never win, but I have never seen him angry. Once when others laughed at him, he murmured, "It's just chess. If you lose, you have to start over." My father was startled after hearing this. Thinking.
After the summer vacation, the oilman came to say goodbye and said he was going back to his hometown, Jingxing County, Hebei Province, to harvest the autumn harvest. I had bothered him to come to my house every night a few times before, but at that moment I felt a little reluctant to let him go.
I have also started school. The old oilman never came again, and I had no news about him. The schoolwork in the third grade of junior high school is very stressful. I always think of the oilman during my breathing, eating noodles, and playing chess. I can’t explain why, but every time I think of him, I feel that my father’s numerous injuries and my unknown future arouse a vigorous force, and life and study become interesting again. I later became the top scorer in the high school entrance examination in my class and got full marks in chemistry. What I remember most clearly is the formula on how to obtain iron.
The old oilman who did not leave his name came suddenly that year and then left slowly. Now thirty years have passed. In my young mind, I just thought of him as a god. (Zhang Xiaofei)
