Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 27
by1 before winter solstice
The barbed wire fence on the northern slope of Lvcen Mountain is covered with white frost.At the intersection of the metal wires, the ice crystals grow in a hexagonal shape, and the branches branch, cutting the rhombus grid into finer geometric patterns.Frost flowers spread upward from the bottom of the mesh in the shape of branches, with their tips pointing toward the sky.Wei Zhiheng stood in front of the net, holding a painting box in his left hand. The belt buckle dug into the hollow of his shoulder, leaving a red mark under his collarbone.There are several limestone fragments inside the painting box, swaying with the steps, hitting the wooden board at the bottom of the box, making a dull thumping sound, the rhythm is synchronized with the heartbeat, but slower than the heartbeat.
He raised his hand, and his right hand hovered on the surface of the barbed wire, five centimeters away from the frozen metal.The fingers are spread out, the joints are stiff, the fingernails are tinged lavender, and the edges are white.There is a fixed black shadow in the upper left corner of the field of vision, a retinal hemorrhage spot that expanded three days ago, and now the top of the barbed wire disappears into a black round spot.He misperceived: the barbed wire fence was the opening of the shaft, the edge of the skylight, and it was bottomless.
Huang Jinye squatted under the gap.The edges of the black sports shorts were frayed, exposing white fibers. When his right knee was bent, it made a dry friction sound, and the water in the joint cavity swayed under the skin, making a gurgling sound.His right hand grasped the wire at the upper edge of the gap, and his palm pressed against the frozen metal. The coldness penetrated the palm lines and stuck to the blood scab.He pressed down hard, the wire bent, and the ice crystals shattered, making a crisp sound like glass breaking.
“Yes.” Huang Jinye said.The voice was squeezed out of the chest, rough, and hoarse with congestion in the vocal cords.
Wei Zhiheng bent down.The painting box was stuffed through the gap first, the leather rubbed against the wire, and ice chips fell off.He lay down, his body close to the ground, and crawled out of the gap.His right elbow rested on the ground, his joint hit the limestone floor, and a dull pain shot up along his ulna.He tried to hold himself up, his arms were shaking, his muscles were weak, his platelets were low, his capillaries were fragile, and his skin barrier was thin.Huang Jinye’s left hand reached in from below, grabbed his left wrist, and pulled him up.
When his palms came into contact, Wei Zhiheng felt hot, like a soldering iron, while his own wrist felt cold, like a corpse.The calluses on Huang Jinye’s palms rubbed against his skin, making it rough and grainy like stone powder.Wei Zhiheng’s right hand hung down by his side, his fingers spread wide, and the purpura on his fingernails showed a swollen purple color in the pale sunlight.He gripped the leather strap of the painting box tightly, his knuckles turned white and the marks were deep.
Huang Jinye turned around, with his back to Wei Zhiheng, his legs spread shoulder-width apart, and his knees slightly bent.He stretched his right hand back, grabbed Wei Zhiheng’s right wrist, pulled it over his shoulder, and put it on his neck.His left hand moved backward to support Wei Zhiheng’s left knee.Wei Zhiheng’s body leaned forward, his sternum pressed against Huang Jinye’s shoulder blades, and the two bones collided, making a slight friction sound.Huang Jinye straightened up and took on the weight.
Light.Huang Jinye adjusted his center of gravity and kept his gait steady.The right side is heavy, the left side is light, one heavy and the other light, with a steady rhythm. When the knees are bent, the frequency of the water swaying is offset by half a beat from the steps.Wei Zhiheng’s left hand hung on Huang Jinye’s chest, and the purpura on his fingernails showed a swollen purple color in the sunlight.His right hand held the belt of the painting box, and the box hit Huang Jinye’s right hip bone, making a regular thumping sound.
They walked south along the dirt road at the foot of the mountain.Wei Zhiheng’s chin rested on Huang Jinye’s right shoulder, and his skin touched the fabric of the sports vest. It was rough, mixed with the astringency of stone powder and the sourness of sweat.He smelled the smell on the back of Huang Jinye’s neck: old turpentine stains, still lingering from that night in the stairwell, penetrated into the cotton fibers and mixed with the new smell of sweat to form a turbid, organic smell.Wei Zhiheng’s breath sprayed behind the yellow embers, the air flow was weak, sweet rot with ketosis, rotten apples mixed with rust, sinking in the lower part of the nasal cavity.
At the 14th minute, we reached the Chengjiang embankment.The concrete embankment is full of cracks, and withered grass grows in the cracks. The grass stems are withered and yellow, and the surface is covered with white frost.The beach below the embankment is grey-white, with coarse sand, the product of weathered limestone. It is wetted by the morning fog and collapses with a muffled sound when stepped on.
The skylight is at the end of the embankment.The shaft is thirty meters in diameter and bottomless. The edges are covered with ferns, the leaves are dark green, and there are sporangia on the back. The brown dots are now covered with a thin layer of frost.The well wall is exposed limestone, gray-white, with clear longitudinal bedding and traces of depositional extrusion. The gray-white matrix is embedded with dark gray flint strips, which are straight, parallel, and equidistantly distributed.
Huang Jinye stopped at the edge of the shaft.He bent his knees and put Wei Zhiheng down.Wei Zhiheng’s right foot touched the ground first, and his knee was bent for cushioning. A dull pain exploded deep in his left hip – the aftershock of the steel needle rotating in the bone seam.He staggered, and Huang Jinye’s left hand grabbed his right elbow to steady him. His fingers dug into the skin and pressed against the purpura, causing dull pain and sharp pain.
“Sit down.” Huang Jinye said.
He pointed to a rock.Limestone, eroded by river water into a smooth curved surface, covered with hoarfrost, gray and white, is the cross section of limestone.Wei Zhiheng walked over, his steps dragging, and his right heel touched the ground first, making a dull impact.He turned around and sat down, his buttocks touching the rock surface. The chill penetrated the fabric of his school uniform pants and penetrated his sitting bones, which was the same temperature as the 16°C underground river surface.
He can no longer draw.The painting box sat at his feet, its lid open, revealing a blank canvas and a few pencils inside.He just sat, holding the rock surface with his left hand, rubbing the white frost on his fingertips, and the powder was embedded in the gaps between his nails, mixing with the graphite chips from before.He stared at the northern slope of Mount Greencen, at the exposed sections of limestone, at the longitudinal bands of flint.
Counting stone mountain texture, strip by strip, stored.One, two, three.He misperceived: those textures were moving, like earthworms burrowing under the skin, like underground rivers changing their courses, like blood flowing backward in veins.He blinked, and the texture was still. It was still a texture, but the edges were blurred and part of it was swallowed up by the black shadow on the retina.
Huang Jinye stood in front of him, blocking part of the sunlight.He took off his school uniform jacket, No. 055, cotton, old, frayed at the edges, and wrapped it around Wei Zhiheng’s shoulders.The coat carried his body temperature and was hot, in contrast to Wei Zhiheng’s coolness.There are three fresh scratches on the back of Huang Jinye’s right hand, running across the palm prints. They were cut by the barbed wire when climbing over the wall. The blood has solidified and is dark red, with white ice crystals embedded on the edges.
“Wait.” Huang Jinye said.
He turned and walked toward the path above the embankment.The steps are one heavy and the other light, heavy on the right and light on the left. The accumulated water in the right knee is sloshing and gurgling.His back moves among the dead grass, wearing a black sports vest and broad shoulders.
Wei Zhiheng sat alone.The left hand moves on the rock surface, fingertips caressing the texture, longitudinal grooves, and sedimentary sequences.He felt a depression and dug his fingertips into it.He clenched his fists, and his nails left four crescent-shaped indentations on his palms, pressing against the coin-sized piece of purpura.The sharp pain made him confirm that he was still at this coordinate.
The wind blows from the direction of the Guixi River, it is fishy and sweet, carrying moisture from the underground river, with a constant temperature of 16°C.Wei Zhiheng couldn’t smell it.His olfactory nerves were paralyzed by ketosis, and there was only the smell of sweet rot in his nose, exhaled from his lungs and deposited on his collar.He looked at the river, which was dark green and flowing slowly. There was white foam floating in the backwater bay, a mixture of spilled turpentine.
Huang Jinye is back.He held two enamel bowls in his hands, white with blue curled edges. The edges were peeled off in three places, revealing black iron sheets.The bowl is filled with raw pressed rice noodles, which are white and smooth. The surface is covered with soup and minced meat. The heat rises and forms a white mist in the cold air.There is an oil film floating on the surface of the soup, and the edges condense due to cooling, giving it a translucent milky white color.
He sat down on the left side of Wei Zhiheng. The surface of the rock was cold, and the chill penetrated the fabric of the black sports shorts and penetrated his sitting bones.He handed a bowl to Wei Zhiheng, not handing it over, but stuffing it.The bottom of the bowl touched Wei Zhiheng’s palm and was hot, in contrast to the coolness of the rock.Wei Zhiheng’s fingers searched for a fulcrum on the edge of the bowl. The pads of his fingers were unstable and the skin was thin, with purple blood vessels bulging under the pale skin.
Huang Jinye picked up another bowl, kneaded the rice noodles directly with his hands, and put it into his mouth.Chewing, the wet and glutinous sound echoes in the skull cavity, the sticky feeling of starch being decomposed by salivary enzymes, swallowing, and the Adam’s apple rolling.He ate quickly, not because he was hungry, but because he was filling his stomach, which was a prelude to stomach expansion.He finished the first bowl and placed the empty bowl on the rock. The bottom of the bowl came into contact with the limestone, making a crisp impact sound. The reverberation formed a brief echo in the shaft and was absorbed by the roar of the underground river.
He picked up Wei Zhiheng’s bowl.Wei Zhiheng didn’t move, his chopsticks stuck in the rice noodles and solidified fat.A film has formed on the surface of the rice noodles, and the oily film of the soup combines with the starch paste to form a translucent gel-like covering.Huang Jinye moved the bowl in front of him and started eating the second bowl.He asked for it for Wei Zhiheng, but Wei Zhiheng’s bowl was bitter and tasteless.Huang Jinye’s taste buds worked normally, and he tasted the smoothness of the rice noodles, the toughness of the fiber of the minced meat, and the freshness of the soup. But when he swallowed it, what he felt in his esophagus was not satisfaction, but a blockage, a hard lump, and swallowed limestone fragments.
Wei Zhiheng watched Huang Jin eat wildly.He watched Huang’s Adam’s apple rolling, watching the soup overflow from the corners of Huang’s mouth, dripping along his chin to the collar of his sports vest, forming dark stains on the black fabric.He misperceived: it was not soup, but blood, turpentine, and exudate after bone marrow puncture.He blinked, and Huang Jinye raised his head, with grease stains on the corners of his mouth. His eyes were unfocused and scattered, falling on the shaft behind Wei Zhiheng.
Two bowls of rice noodles.The bowl has been moved, the chopsticks are inserted, the rice noodles are stuck together, and there is a film on the surface.The bowl was empty, with soup and minced meat scraps remaining at the bottom. The grease solidified into white edges and adhered to the enamel surface, forming irregular ring-shaped deposits.Huang Jinye placed two bowls side by side on the rock, with white enamel and blue curled edges, one empty and one full, symmetrical.
Wei Zhiheng’s left hand is still touching the rock texture.When he counted the seventh flint strip, the black shadow in the upper left corner of his vision expanded, swallowing up the upper half of the mountain.He stopped counting and hovered his fingers over the rock surface, stopping three centimeters from the grain.The fingers were spread out, the joints were stiff, and the fingernails were tinged with light purple.
Stop action.
The fingers are hovering, the joints are locked, and they are in a grasping posture.Huang Jinye reached out, not to hold Wei Zhiheng’s hand, but to stuff a limestone fragment into Wei’s palm.The edges of the fragments were sharp and off-white, causing a dull pain in the purpura on the palm of my hand.Wei Zhiheng tightened his grip, and the stinging pain woke him up.Blood oozed from the fingertips and mixed with the old blood stains on the stone to form new reddish-gray mud.
“Does it look like it?” Wei Zhiheng said.The voice is dry, and the vocal cords make a rough sound when rubbing, with the sweet rotten smell of ketosis.He means the texture of the stone with the music, with the veins, with the layering of the skylights.
Huang Jinye did not answer.He bent down and picked up a piece of gravel from the ground, a fragment of limestone with sharp edges.He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, raised it to his eyes, and looked into the daylight.The stone is translucent, off-white, with bubbles and solidified foam inside, and the surface is covered with ice crystals.The ice crystals refract in sunlight, forming tiny iridescent spots that travel inside the stone.
He released his fingers, and the stone fell back to the ground, hitting the edge of the rock with a crisp impact sound. It bounced once, stopped, rolled to Wei Zhiheng’s feet, and stopped next to his canvas shoes – the ones soaked in turpentine that night in the stairwell. The uppers were gray and yellow, and the edges were cracked. The old turpentine stains were mixed with the new mud stains.
The river continued to flow, the sound was dull, the friction of mud and sand as the underground river changed its course, and the blood hit the eardrums.Wei Zhiheng sat on the rock, his body gradually getting cooler, and his body temperature approached the constant temperature of 16°C limestone.Huang Jinye sat next to him, thirty centimeters apart. There were two enamel bowls in the middle, one empty and one full, symmetrical and exchanged.
Huang Jinye’s right hand hovered over Wei Zhiheng’s left shoulder, stopping five centimeters away from the school uniform jacket.The fingers are spread out, the joints are stiff, and there is white stone powder on the edge of the nail plate.He didn’t fall, he just hovered, letting his body temperature conduct in the air, exchanging hot and cold, invisible convection.
When Wei Zhiheng counted to the twelfth texture, he stopped.He held the fragments of limestone up to his eyes and compared them with the shaft.The flint strips of the stone are parallel to the bedding of the shaft walls. They are all deposition, both compression, and both are sequences of time.His blood formed a new layer of deposits on the surface of the stone, covering the old marks, turning from ivory white to pink, then to dark brown.
The wind stopped.The river embankment fell into silence, with only the roar of the underground river, low, about sixty times per minute, synchronized with the heartbeat, but slower than the heartbeat.Huang Jinye retracted his hand, put it into his trouser pocket, and touched the piece of eucalyptus candy with his fingertips. It was wrapped in tin foil and had green stripes. It had softened and deformed. It was mixed with Wei Zhiheng’s blood and became sticky.
They sat, no dialogue, no touching, just sitting side by side, two pieces of limestone deposited on the river bank, two static symbols, waiting to be read, waiting to be weathered.