You, she said that I dropped by the mill, and there was a firm view in her tone. If you don’t pass information face to face by voice, it’s probably not authentic. The envelope is dirty like work, wearing old gloves, oily and wrinkled. During the delivery process, it was wet and left a wrinkled and waterlogged surface. There was no reply address, but Ada knew the font with her name written on it. She put the letter in her pocket and didn’t want to monitor reading in Ruby.
Together, they unloaded the sacks to the smokehouse, and while Ruby led the horse back to the shed, Ida prepared a plate for her. Just now, Ruby kept talking about cabbage while eating. In fact, there are not many kinds of pickled cabbage, fried cabbage, stewed cabbage, meat rolls and cabbage salad. When Ruby finished eating, they kept a bag of cabbage and waited for the astrology to turn back to the right time to make kimchi, otherwise it might rot in the altar and bury others for winter. This job is strange and annoying for Ida. People dug a grave-like pit behind the fumigation room, padded the cabbage with hay, covered it with more hay, and then filled the soil to cultivate a mound. Ruby set up a wooden board on the mound to mark the shovel’s head, which looked like a tombstone.
Come on, Ruby said it would save us looking everywhere in the snow in January.
Ida thought it was really miserable. In the middle of winter and December, it was a cloudy day, and the wind roared at noon. The bare trees were shaking and the ground was covered with a layer of gray old snow, which had formed a hard shell to dig the grave. It was a cabbage.
Late in the day, Ida sat on the stone steps behind Ruby, one step taller than her. Ruby pillow Ida’s calf knees as if they were cross braces on the back of the chair. They watched the sun set, and the blue shadow of Jonas Ridge crossed the stream and covered the grass. A group of domestic swallows flew around mindlessly. Ida gently combed Ruby’s black hair, and her fingers shone like a brand-new gun barrel. She passed through Ruby’s hair and divided it into seven parts, each of which was heavy and full of elasticity. Ida put them on Ruby’s shoulders one by one.
Ada Ruby knitted her hair in the competition. It was Ada’s idea. When she saw Ruby, she absently knitted Ralph’s tail hair into complicated patterns, which led to the idea that Ruby would be thinking about something else behind Ralph. Her eyes were confused and her fingers passed through its long tail hair without any effort. This seemed to help her think that Ralph was sleepy. He shook his hind paws and kept blinking, but when he walked, his hind legs were always slightly cringed, nervous and embarrassed until one of them went to brush his tail.
Ruby’s mind was lost and intoxicated when she braided the horse’s tail. Ida imagined that she was wandering around the countryside like an abandoned child. She braided the tail of an old horse with lonely farmland in order to get close to warm life. She longed for an intimate and distant way, not to touch the living body directly, but to caress the beautiful but bloodless part that extended from life. Thinking like this, Ida suggested that they compare and see who could braid each other’s hair in the most complicated, beautiful or weird way. This competition would be more interesting because no one knew it. You know how your hair is braided. You can’t see the back of your head until you get back to your room. Whoever loses will work late, and whoever wins will sit on the porch and watch the sky get dark and count the stars.
Ida’s hair has been braided, and Ruby has been working on it for quite a while, even pulling and pulling Ida’s hair on her temples tightly to the back. Even the corners of her eyes can feel her reaching behind her head to touch it, but Ruby won’t let her know the details in advance.
Ida weaves three strands of Ruby’s hair into a simple braid, which is the easy part. She plans to weave the remaining strands into a complex herringbone according to the pattern of her own raffia basket, and fold them at the first braid. She picks up two strands of hair at the side and ties them up.
The four crows, led by their wings, flew down into the field. When they saw the new scarecrow screaming and flying away, the audio and video was that the pig had been shot.
Ruby said it seems that they have a high opinion of Ada’s craftsmanship.
That hat is especially good, she said
It’s French, Ida said
Ruby, France, said that it’s not like we weave straw hats for butter and eggs alone in Dongcha River without a top hat. Hatters in town make beaver fur hats and wool hats, but they usually have to pay for them.
Buying a hat halfway around the world makes Ruby understand that people who can think about this kind of thing are definitely not stable enough. Ruby doesn’t need things like new york or Charleston, France, and there are few things on the ground that she wants, but she can’t plant or find in the mountains. She doesn’t like traveling. Whether she goes to Europe or other places, she is now in a well-organized world, and the residents will be very suitable for their local life. They have neither the need nor the desire to travel. Post cars, railways and steamboats don’t need these ordinary workers. People are contentedly staying at home because of the fact that many bad things have happened since ancient times. In such a stable world, some people may be happy for a generation, but they never want to go to their own fields to see if it is a pig or a setter, whether it is solid color or miscellaneous hair.
Ida is fine. Ruby argued because she imagined that the imported hats would become very important in her future life. After braiding, Ida was very disappointed. She tried her best to braid a beautiful knot, but she couldn’t imagine the difference. She felt like a crazy or drunk sailor rolling up a pile of hemp rope at random.
Ada Ruby got up from the steps and smoothed each other’s heads or stuffed them into braids. They came to Ada’s bedroom with their backs to the dresser and a big mirror. Ada’s braids were simple and strong, and her hands were as hard as chestnut branches, and they would not be scattered for a day’s work.
Ruby looked at the mirror for a long time, and it was the first time that she saw the back of her head. She stretched out her palm and stroked her hair repeatedly, saying that it was so beautiful, and she ruled that Ida won without hesitation.
They went back to the front porch. Ruby was just about to go into the hospital to finish her bedtime work when she suddenly lived in the shadow of the porch. She looked around and looked up at the sky. She reached out and touched the braids on the back of her neck and head. When she saw that there was still enough light to read a few pages of midsummer night’s dream, she said this to Ida, so they sat back on the steps and explained Robin’s words while reading, which greatly interested Ruby. When he said it, I changed horses into hounds, wild boar bears or wildfires. Ruby repeated these words over and over again, which seemed to contain poor meanings.
The light soon became too dim, and the two mountain-toothed crows called to each other back and forth, and it was the same every time. Three Ruby got up and said I had to work.
Go and look at us and clip Ida and say
There’s no need for you to catch nothing during the day. Ruby just said and left.
Idahe put a boxwood leaf in it as a sign. She took Inman’s letter from her skirt pocket and held it in her hand to face the west with a little light. The letter was vague. Inman made a plan to go home for her own injury that afternoon. She had read the letter five times, but she didn’t read anything more than the first time. She felt that Inman seemed to have made some decisions about their feelings, but she couldn’t say what she thought about it. She hadn’t seen Inman for almost four years. From the second time, he sent a letter from Petersburg. It’s been more than four months now, and the letter was written in a hasty and sloppy tone, as if the writer was a distant relative, but this is not surprising. Therefore, the former Inman once asked them never to expect too much from the development of the two after the war. No one knew what the situation would be like at that time and imagined all kinds of possibilities, whether it was pleasure or pain, which would cast a shadow over his mind. During the war, their correspondence had been intermittent, many times in a row, and then it was silent for a long time, but in the end, the interruption was too long even by the usual standards.
Ida didn’t date this letter, and the recent events didn’t even help to judge the time and weather. It may have been written a week ago or three months ago. Judging from the damage of the envelope, it should be close, but Ida never knew whether he said he was going home now or after the war, or whether he had been delayed on the road for a long time or just sent Ida to remember the road. Prisoners tell stories through the bars of the court. She was worried that prisoners in every county were like this.
She narrowed her eyes and read the letter. Inman’s font was smaller, and it was difficult to recognize that she could see only the short paragraph in the dark.
Come on, you still have the photo I sent you four years ago. I beg you not to leave it. I have nothing in common with it in terms of appearance and spirit
However, Adama went to the bedroom to light a lamp and searched in several drawers for a long time, and finally turned over the photo. She first put it up because it didn’t look like Inman at first. When she arrived at the photo, she showed it to Monroe. Monroe had never taken a photo before, and she didn’t plan to take it after that. Although he was young, he had a portrait painted twice. He looked at Inman’s face with interest for a moment, then snapped the box to the shelf and smoked it. He read a passage, Emerson took a photo. Experience tells us whether you are worried that the image is blurred, and you dare not move a finger. Holding your fist as if you are going to fight or on the verge of despair, don’t you feel that your face is getting more and more stiff, your eyebrows are frowning darkly, and your eyes are dull like cramps, crazy people or dead people’s eyes.
Although Inman’s photo effect is not completely in line with the description, Ada has to admit that it is not too far away. She put the photo up to prevent Inman’s memory from being disturbed by it.
It’s not uncommon for Ada to take small photos with this kind of machine in her hand now. She has seen many people who join the army or their husbands. Almost all of them have a picture even if it is set in a simple tin box. There is a Bible, a candle and lex leaves beside the mantelpiece or table, which gives people a similar impression of an altar. In 161, soldiers could take photos with glass tin, silver iodide paper or silver photography as a souvenir. At the beginning of the war, Ada thought these photos were generally funny, but as people died in the photos, they turned against it. It made her feel very depressed. One by one, they sat stiffly in front of photographers with weapons, waiting for a long exposure, or they wore pistols on their chests or bayonets and rifles beside them, or they brandished shiny new Bowie hunting knives and military caps and wore them proudly in the first rural areas. Children’s faces were happier than pig killing day. They were dressed in rags from work to military uniforms, and some people dressed up strangely. Even in normal times, they might get shot for wearing such clothes.
Inman’s photo is different for most people because he spent more money in the box than usual. It is a beautiful carved silver box. Ida rubbed it over and over the hip skirt for a long time to wipe off the dust on the surface, and then hit it to get the lamp. The image is blurred like a layer of oil floating in water. She has to hold it in her hand and carefully adjust the light angle to get a clear eye.
Inman Regiment’s dress requirements are very casual. Their head of the regiment reached an agreement that wearing household clothes can kill the Union Army. Inman wore a loose tweed collar shirt with a wide-brimmed soft hat brim hanging down to his forehead. At that time, he left a small goatee and looked more like a gentle and carefree man. His butt was covered with a Colt navy pistol, but his hands were stretched over his legs instead of touching the gun. He tried his best to keep his eyes on one side of the camera at 20 degrees, but during the exposure, his eyes were stretched over his legs. Moving seems vague and strange, and his expression is serious and focused, so it looks like staring at something hard, like being interested in something, but not being a camera or taking pictures, and it’s not even that others will evaluate his static meter.
It doesn’t mean much to Ada to say that he is no longer the same person in the photo. In terms of aspects, this photo is Ada’s last memory. Before going to the battlefield that day, he came to Ada to say goodbye. It was just to take this photo a few weeks ago, when he was still living in a room in the county, but he would send it for up to three days in two days. He read it by the fireplace in the living room and didn’t come to say goodbye. Ada Inman walked towards the slope and stream. Ida can’t remember what Inman was wearing at that time, except for the wide-brimmed hat in the photo, On the first day of a wet and cold morning, just after the rain was high, the grass beside the cloud creek was still scattered with a faint green color. Last year, new buds sprouted in the withered grass stubble, and the grass was soaked through by the rain. They had to carefully choose their feet and sink into the deep mud of their calves, along the stream bank to the hillside, and the flowers of Bauhinia and Cornus were scrambling to put their branches in the gray forest, covered with little green leaves.
They walked along the stream and walked across the grass. During the conversation, Inman seemed to be excited and depressed for a while. After a while, he took off his hat, Adabai, which was a prelude to kissing. He took off a pale green dogwood petal wrapped in her hair and put his hand on her shoulder to pull her to him, but when he did so, he touched Ada’s collar. A pearl agate collar pin snapped into a stone and bounced into the stream.
Inman put on his hat and walked back into the water, groping around the mossy stone for a while, and finally found the collar pin. He pinned it back to her collar, but his hands were wet and she got it back dirty. Inman retreated from Ida and his trouser legs were dripping. He raised his foot to let the water go to his new boots. He seemed frustrated and spoiled it in a gentle moment, and he couldn’t think of any way to get it back.
Ida flashed a thought in her heart, what would happen if he was killed, but of course she wouldn’t tell it, and it was unnecessary, because almost at the same time Inman said that five years after I was killed, you probably wouldn’t remember my name.
She is not sure whether he is teasing himself or saying what he really thinks.
You know it won’t happen, she said