Water prose

There are many rice fields in my hometown, which have not decreased for many years. There are thousands of acres from Buffalo Pond in Beijinzhuang to the entrance of Xichang team's bathhouse. Every summer, the fields are green, and waist-high rice seedlings are endless.

There is a wide and remote ditch behind the village, which has quietly provided water for this paddy field for many years. During the rice growing period, remote ditches are always filled with water, and it is common for some villagers to carry shovels to irrigate their fields.

My family also has rice fields, so I often go to drain water, but I often go at night. There are too many people draining water during the day, and the water flow is slow, which is time-consuming and laborious. It's more leisurely at night, not only the water is fast, but also not many people come, so you can relax.

At that time, there were stars hanging in the sky, strong winds blowing in the fields, reeds rippling in remote ditches and fireflies swaying. I poked open the dam mouth of the field, and a gurgling sound quickly rushed to the rice field. The vertical and horizontal spacing in the rice field is like a fishing net, and the water turns into a silver line between the longitude and latitude, with a bright luster.

This is a world of night, green rice seedlings and frogs on the water. My foot is in the gap between rice rows, and I can't see my foot at all. I only feel the cool water running to my feet, and my clothes are soaked by the dew of rice leaves.

My feet are like a pair of blind people who don't know the direction. I can only follow the distance. This step is practical, but I don't know where it will go next. I suddenly waited for a while and broke into this silent world, so that the moths hidden under the rice seedlings flew out in a hurry, humming insects that I didn't understand, and disappeared into the distant night.

Many graves are hidden in the seedlings. When I approached, I suddenly jumped out, my heart suddenly tightened and I hurried around. During the day, I have seen many small holes in the grave, thinking that it is the residence of mice or water snakes. Maybe they will stand at the mouth of the cave and look at me now. If they know I'm a water discharger, they'll flood the house and maybe come out and bite me.

I'm not too afraid of the grave at the end of the field. This is a magnificent tomb, made of water and clay. I often sit on the top of the grave to rest and catch my breath. I'm not worried about voles and water snakes there. The moonlight shone brightly on the grave. These animals can't see the sun, so they dare not climb it. I can sit on it, listen to the frogs in the distance, look at the fireflies around me and look at the fields in the distance.

Everyone who releases water belongs to a production team. Although the moonlight is hazy, I can still tell who he is from his figure and the posture of carrying a shovel. Sometimes you don't have to look, you can know when you hear a cough or two. Every time they pass my farm, I cough, which is not only a greeting, but also to prevent them from blocking my dam to release water.

People who discharge water will cough, especially when passing the grave, there will always be two or three sounds as a warning. Those animals and graves don't understand, but they still cough. It seems that this will give them some courage and slow them down.

Of course, some people don't want to cough. They are sneaking around in the fields. I didn't know their intention at first, but later I found that there was no water in the ditch, only to know that they had stopped the dam upstream. So, he took a shovel and went to demolish the dam, cursing while demolishing it. Although the man who blocked the dam coughed hard in the dark, no one paid attention to it and the scolding remained.

Zhao in the old street is such a person. Seeing that there was too much water in other people's rice fields, he secretly cut their dam to get water. He doesn't want to stand in the field and wait. When the dam opened, he didn't have to bother himself, and went home triumphantly with a shovel. When other people's water is put together, he can also fill it up.

Every time I see him draining water, I feel very uneasy and cough loudly. I want to remind him in this way and hope he can restrain himself. Can he really stop? Not necessarily. I didn't know he was a difficult person to educate until one day I found many small holes with running water under my dam.

Actually, even if I go to him, it won't help. He always argues confidently. There are already many eel holes between the ridges. How can we prove that he stabbed those holes with the handle of a shovel? Later, I found Zhao very timid. Every time he comes to drain water, I hide in the grave and learn about some strange ghosts. Zhao immediately changed his face and disappeared with a shovel.

The upper reaches of Yaogou are Gaosong River, and Panji Electric Irrigation Station is near the river. When there is no water in the ditch, the villagers will always find the electric irrigation station along Yaogou. In those years, production just arrived at home, and the supporting facilities in rural areas were not fully implemented. People are always in a state of competing for seeds and harvesting, and stealing water was a very common phenomenon during that time.

Especially in the rice flowering season, the whole town is using water, and there is even less water in remote ditches. However, at this time, the upstream villages will still stop water and build dams, and they will flow downstream until they are all put together. To this end, the production teams along the line organized some young people to steal water.

Upstream of us are Chen Zhuang and Sanlizhuang, both of which have their own water stealing teams. To this end, our production captain considered for many days and decided to ask Zhao to be the captain of the water thief. This is obviously a good idea, because everyone in the team knows that Zhao is the only one who can do something as simple as releasing water.

At night, Zhao slipped slowly with a shovel, without anyone. He never let go of water seriously in his life, but harvested crops season by season by stealing water. He has accumulated a lot of experience in stealing water. Earlier, he cut open someone else's dam to steal water, and was immediately blocked by his master's house after discovering it. Later, others will make their dams wide and high, like a path. Even so, he can steal, and people admire his scheming and want to poke holes in the bottom of the dam, which is impossible to prevent.

The villagers in the upper reaches don't know the severity of Zhao. Their dam shows no signs of being damaged, but there are many small holes flowing out below. They didn't care at first, but the Qianli levee was destroyed by the ant nest and washed away before midnight. When they called someone to fill the dam, the water had already flowed downstream.

I will still think of these things until now, and I will feel that those years were our proud days. Zhao not only stole the water from the production team, but also brought us a sense of superiority. This sense of superiority allows us to release water without worry, and also allows us to harvest every year.

Autumn wind will blow secretly in the harvest season. Yesterday, the green earth was blown away overnight, leaving only a heavy golden yellow. In the dream, people heard the ears of rice slowly bow their heads, and the rice grains clattered. They knew that there was no need to drain the fields, and the harvest was about to begin.

As a result, the villagers began to be busy sorting out wheelbarrows, grinding sickles day and night, and asking about the recent weather while busy. They saw that the water in the field had been baked into a black cloud by the scorching sun, hovering over the rice fields, and it was impossible to tell when it would turn into a rainstorm.

On the whole, Zhao is an unlucky person. He died in the west when his son got married. At this point, the production team has no need to worry about water release, and the team has already set up an electric irrigation station in a remote ditch. Water is no longer a nervous thing. Villagers don't have to stay up late to release water, let alone steal it.

There is a special person in charge of water discharge in that electric irrigation station, and it only takes one day to irrigate the whole rice field. People rest assured to sleep late and deliver rice fields to a dark night and a world composed of frogs, water snakes and voles.

Zhao's tomb is buried in the rice field near the intersection. He can watch the water in the ditch slowly flow into the ground at any time. At night, someone passed by Zhao's grave and coughed twice, but there was no expression in front of the grave and he stood indifferently. Only the rice fields next to it are green.

The water in the remote ditch has been flowing for so long, how many years will it flow? No one knows, but the story that can flow down is unforgettable. When the water rises and dries up, it is recorded in our hearts and becomes an unforgettable memory of our generation.