The story took place in a small mountain village in my hometown in the late 1980s, when my cousin was killed! When the evidence was presented in court, my cousin was like a mute, and Xu Shu entered Cao Ying without saying a word. That was what I heard from my mother when I left my hometown to work and returned home for vacation.

1

The story started in the late 1970s. When my cousin was young, she was a gentle and taciturn girl. She was very beautiful, with big eyes, a flat round face, and rosy and shiny skin.

His father died young and he lived with his skinny mother in a bamboo bay. At that time, her home was a thatched cottage.

Her mother would treat people's minor ailments, and the method she used was a bit like witchcraft. When I was a child, I had a toothache and got angry, and my mouth was full of blood. My mother took me to her house for treatment. The old lady painted all over my face with ink, but I didn't want to. I cried and scolded her. When I got home, the adults asked me why my face was so dark. I still don't understand what the treatment was.

I have a distant cousin whose surname is Zhang. He is the youngest, young, handsome and talented.

At that time, on the first day of the first lunar month every year, he would come to our house to pay New Year greetings to my grandma. My grandma often praised him for his outstanding appearance and wanted to find him a daughter-in-law.

When men got married when they were older, and women got married when they were older, gradually someone came to help matchmaking with the cousin, who later became the cousin's aunt. When they got married, my mother and another aunt went to marry the bride. I was still a primary school student at that time. My mother asked me to go after school at noon. I even asked my cousin for a handkerchief (it was popular in rural areas at that time to give flowered handkerchiefs to children at weddings). Son).

The village where my cousin lives lives in two surnames: Chen and Zhang. Except for one family named Chen, the others are all uncles and brothers surnamed Zhang in my cousin's family. Normally the neighbors are harmonious, but they occasionally quarrel over trivial matters, which is quite normal in rural areas. The young couple of cousin and aunt are also very hard-working and simple, and they go out as a couple every day, which is very enviable.

There is a family named Chen in the village. Because his father has a small official position in the local fifth-tier city, he found a job for his brother. Since his mother is in his hometown, his brother occasionally goes home to visit.

Chen Erjian, the younger brother of the Chen family, is about the same age as his cousin. He is dark, thin and capable, but not as handsome as his cousin. He works as a private teacher in a local village school and is married to a teacher from a neighboring village. Teacher Gu is not tall, with a round, rosy face and a round figure.

After a few years, the two children were born one after another and gradually grew up. My cousin's eldest brother lives next door to Chen Erjian, and his eldest brother's daughter and I are good friends.

One time on the way to school, his niece said to me: "It's really annoying. I always hear Chen Erjian and his wife quarreling. His wife always makes fun of my uncle, saying how good my uncle is and how useless her own husband is. . ”

I didn’t take it seriously. Who should students care about those things? Isn’t it normal for rural couples and neighbors to quarrel? But who knew that this grudge would become the trigger for a vicious incident a few years later.

A few years later, one late autumn morning, the sky was overcast. A gust of cold wind blew away the dead leaves, and my cousin who was cleaning up the vegetable garden shivered. Something he never dreamed of happened!

Next to his vegetable plot is the Chen family vegetable plot. That morning, Chen Erjian came to the vegetable garden after him. He made trouble and said that his cousin had taken over his vegetable garden. The cousin had a strong personality and argued hard, so the two started to quarrel. Without his cousin taking any precautions, Chen Erjian pulled out a dagger from his lower back and penetrated his cousin's heart!

"You..." The cousin fell down clutching his chest, blood gushing out. My cousin failed to save her in the end... This is what my cousin's brother told me later when he asked me to help write a complaint letter and hire a lawyer. Because the Chen family had connections in the city, the intentional homicide was turned into manslaughter, and they were only sentenced to more than ten years in prison. I was filled with righteous indignation! The matter passed like this.

2

Two years later, my cousin’s family saw that their aunt and her two children were orphans and widowed, and they wanted to help her. The man and his cousin Cuo lived together, but due to the weak legal awareness in the countryside, they neither asked the cousin's consent nor allowed them to get a marriage certificate. Good intentions often lead to bad things, but behind the seemingly good things are hidden secrets. A greater tragedy.

One year on the first day of the first lunar month, my cousin’s second husband, Uncle Zhang, came to my house to pay New Year’s greetings. At the wine table, Uncle Zhang drank too much and it was obvious that he was in a depressed mood and drank to drown his sorrows, so he accidentally broke it. Wine glass, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, it is very unlucky in rural customs to break things at other people’s homes. My dad was very angry at the time! He told him to stop drinking, and said in a very ugly way: "If you drink again, get out of here! You have no virtue!"

"I feel bitter in my heart!" My cousin replied, what's wrong with him? What about suffering?

3

In Cousin's village, there lived a man named Ji. He was about forty years old. His wife fell ill and passed away. He had a son and a daughter.

I heard from people of my mother’s generation that when he was a collective in the countryside, he was a lazy, lecherous and obscene person. He would salivate whenever he saw a young girl, and he would do something despicable in a deserted place. Dirty deeds. Because he was a widower, his cousin and her current husband did not have a marriage certificate. Gradually, he began to seduce his cousin.

Her cousin is a weak and honest person. She does not like the second husband that her family arranged for her at all, and she does not like her at all. They are a family in name, but in fact they are inseparable and live in separate beds. .

Who knows the true sorrow of many families who look glamorous on the outside? Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The man named Ji was very poor and his family was very poor. However, in order to win the favor of his cousin, he stole a neighbor’s chicken and killed it for her cousin to eat. In order to hide her from others, she locked her cousin at home. Uncle Zhang couldn't bear the shame and humiliation, so he returned to his hometown. He became depressed and became ill. Two years later, he died in loneliness. Seeing that she had no hope of living with a man named Ji, her cousin returned to her poor home.

Year after year, my cousin’s son and daughter grew up. And the man surnamed Ji married his daughter to an old man who was 20 years older than his daughter for money, causing her daughter to live in pain all her life. And when he was riding a motorcycle for fun, he didn't listen to other people's dissuasion, rode very fast, fell off the cliff on the winding mountain road, and died on the spot!

But Chen Erjian was released after serving his sentence and went out to work. While working, he broke a leg when a wall collapsed. His wife has not been a school teacher since he was imprisoned. She is on pins and needles all day long, worried about the Zhang family's revenge on her children. Later, his wife rented several houses in the village and started preschool classes, which she did for several years. …

Many years have passed. I went home during the Spring Festival last year to chat with my mother, and accidentally talked about my cousin’s daughter. My mother said that my cousin’s daughter had married and bought a house in the county. The child was two years old. , his son was a soldier in the army and stayed in the army because of his good performance. But my cousin, who lives with her daughter, has white hair and devotes herself to worshiping Buddha.

The world's right and wrong, grievances, joys and sorrows, all pass away with the wind like passing clouds...

Right and wrong, grievances and grievances pass by with the wind, and leave a breath of fresh air to fill the universe!