Not many people had seen him at work. That old man spent most of his time holed up in the small cottage by the lakeside, doing who knows what.
The garbage in the lake kept piling up. Sometimes you could spot plastic bags drifting on the surface, but since it didn’t stink enough to affect daily life, no one bothered to complain.
The path beside the lake had once been pitted and uneven, but thanks to the construction workers who came to build the fence, it had been kindly filled with stones. It was much easier to walk now than before.
Before long, we saw the old man in charge of the lake. It turned out he also ran a small grocery shop. He was lying on a wobbly wooden chair, with a tiny fan swaying overhead, suspended by a wire. Even the palm fan in his hand was zigzagging about. Clearly, his limbs weren’t very agile—no wonder he didn’t regularly clean the lake.
“Gu Fan, go buy a case of bottled water. We’ll want something to drink when we’re thirsty climbing the mountain later.” Mother said cheerfully as she handed me a few dozen yuan. After all, in this backward rural village, many shops still didn’t accept QR payments and preferred cash.
I walked up to the grocery, knocked on the wooden door, and woke the dozing old man. After having him fetch a case of the freshest bottled water, I pretended to ask casually while paying.
“Sir, do you know if there’s a temple or a Daoist shrine nearby? I’m not sure about the style of the building, but the deities worshipped inside seemed to be a group of cats.”
“What did you say? Cats? Did I hear you right? How could there be a temple for cats? Never heard of it. But you’re asking the wrong old man. You can go ask that eccentric old lady in the bamboo grove east of the village, maybe she knows what nonsense you’re talking about, hahaha.”
The toothless old man cackled, scratching his sparse white hair, his face’s winding wrinkles crowding together like a hideous demon mask. I really wasn’t very good at talking to the elderly.
I plastered on a smile, hefted the case of bottled water, and hurried to catch up with my parents waiting up ahead.
Father was leaning on the fence, gazing silently down. I knew he was falling into his old habit—whenever he saw a sizable body of water, he’d start thinking if he could cast a line and go fishing.
I suspected one of the reasons Mother chose Father was because he didn’t have any complicated family affairs to deal with and loved fishing, taking life as it came. I thought my own easygoing temperament was at least partly inherited from him.
Grandpa and Grandma’s house was at the very top end of the lake. After a bit more than five minutes’ walk, we finally reached the cluster of tiled houses.
There were so many alleys here, winding this way and that, and all the houses looked pretty much the same. If Mother didn’t know the way, I’d probably spend half the day searching for their home every time I visited, just to avoid walking into the wrong house.
If there was any advantage to living in the countryside, it was the abundance of parking. Just find a small hill and you could park right away. There were no traffic police to ticket you for improper parking.
Father and I followed Mother through the alleys. When I saw the small, slightly blackened wooden doghouse, I was sure we’d arrived.
If it had already passed away, as its favorite little master, I’d have been the first to know. Since there was no news, it should still be inside.
Handing the case of bottled water to Father, I watched as my parents stepped right into the old house. I squatted down before the doghouse and called softly.
“Dahuang? Dahuang, are you there?”
I knocked on the doghouse, but hearing no response from inside, I shrugged and hurried into the house, catching up with my parents.
No matter how much you care about your pets, in your elders’ eyes, their business always comes first. At least you had to put on the appearance of respect.
“We’re back. Where’s Su Mo?”
Mother greeted Grandpa and Grandma in passing, then quickly switched topics to ask about Xiaojiu.
“Him? He hasn’t arrived yet, and he might not go with you to the ancestral tomb anyway. You know how he hates that sort of thing.”
Grandma, sitting on a heavy wooden chair watching TV, turned and rasped her reply.
When she saw me standing at the back, her face broke into a sunflower-bright, kindly smile, and she beckoned me over.
“Good morning, Grandma.”
I crouched down, and Grandma stroked my hair as if petting a dog, then launched smoothly into her annual complaint.
“Fan’er, your hair’s gotten so long. You ought to cut it. Boys look best with a neat, close-cropped cut. That’s masculine and handsome, like a soldier.”
“Mm-hmm, I know. I’ll take care of it when I get home. You just take care of yourself, Grandma.”
Having dealt with this so many times, I just had to put on a smile and go through the motions, fooling Grandma with some routine concern for her grandson.
Sure enough, Grandma didn’t press the issue. In a moment, she’d turned back to continue chatting with Mother.
Father sat in a corner, staring blankly at the burning firewood in the fireplace, not caring at all that the water above was about to boil over the iron pot.
At home or with Mother, he often looked just like this—absent-minded—but still, he more or less fulfilled the duties and responsibilities a father should.
It was just that his personality was too soft and easygoing. Before my eldest uncle’s unexpected death, Mother had always held the reins of the family. The two of us at home were like a weak father and son ruled over by a tigress.
Luckily, although Mother wielded a lot of control, her desires weren’t strong. Father often found time to go fishing, sometimes taking me along when I was young. He’d teach me to let things take their course, do what should be done, and not get involved in irrelevant matters—just focus on tending our own small plot.
Hearing these words often, plus the patience learned from fishing, my originally hot-tempered nature from Mother gradually mellowed.
I unlocked my phone screen, thinking to chat with Zhinian, who was far away in my other hometown, but the signal here was so bad I couldn’t even use the messaging app.
Left with no choice, I grabbed a small stool and sat by Father’s side, calmly tossing small sticks into the fireplace with him. We watched them crackle and pop before turning to ash.
Since not everyone had arrived for the Qingming ancestor worship, we weren’t rushing to the cemetery yet. People had to gather in the ancestral hall first. Grandpa and Grandma’s family had once been led by my eldest uncle, but now the role should go to Xiaojiu or Mother. I hadn’t often come home for Qingming in past years. My relationship with Grandma was average, but since I was a precious grandson, she’d make a point to show some concern.
Another main reason I came this time was because Mother told me the old golden retriever at home, Jinmao Dahuang, had fallen ill and might not last the year. She wanted me to come see it one last time. Plus, Zhinian was finally coming home after a long time, and we needed to pay respects at the grave of that uncle I’d barely met. So I decided to come back with Mother.
Father was basically our driver and porter—pretty pitiful, but that’s just how things were in our family. I often saw him that way too, unintentionally, influenced by Mother’s attitude. Even though she’d changed, I hadn’t corrected my own views yet.
Honestly, if it had been the twisted me from junior high who reunited with Zhinian, I’d have scared that timid little cat-girl into running for her life. She wouldn’t have liked me back then. Even now, the perfect version of me she sees is just an elaborate disguise. I don’t know when my real nature might slip out and make her despise me and leave.
“Woof?”
Just as I was thinking of Zhinian, the little cat-girl, a deep dog bark sounded in my ear.
I looked towards the sound and saw an old golden retriever, its fur dull and faded, standing at the door, staring at me from afar.
It made a questioning noise, wrinkling its scabbed nose, then seemed to catch my scent. Its calm tail rose high behind it, much like Zhinian when she was excited.
The old dog I’d named Dahuang wagged its tail so hard it slapped against the door frame and the nearby stone, then dragged its heavy body toward me step by step.
You could smell that typical doggy odor from a distance, but after all, I’d brought it home as a puppy, feeding it goat milk every few hours like raising a child. I couldn’t bear to dislike it.
Back then, I’d considered giving it an elegant or majestic name like “Starlight Emperor,” but Grandma said simple names were best for raising pets, so I settled for the plain and humble “Dahuang.”
“Dahuang.”
When I called its name, Dahuang, as a puppy, would happily wag its head, even tugging at my pant leg to show its joy. Animals don’t care about having a cool name. They just care whether their master loves them. However you call them, they’ll accept it gladly.
“Woof woof~ whimper whimper.”
Dahuang, backlit by the doorway, barked at me a few times from afar. Once it got closer, it started making adorable whimpering sounds.
Maybe all dogs are like this. Every time Dahuang saw me, he’d paw me with his dirty forelegs and wag his tail like a propeller. That overflowing affection always made the corners of my mouth turn up involuntarily. After all, who could refuse to be treated with such warmth?
In a way, the reason I could stay with Zhinian was because she always looked at me with such emotion. Compared to an ordinary cat-girl, she was more like a magical combination of cat and dog—elegant in appearance but passionate and loyal at heart.
Maybe that makes me sound a bit calculating, but honestly, after so many years being raised by Mother, I’d used those thoughts to carefully pick out such a childhood friend who could give me so much emotional value.
Sitting next to me, Father got whacked several times by Dahuang’s tail, as sturdy as an iron rod, and frowned in pain.
With an amused glance at me, he calmly picked up his stool and moved to the bedside where Grandpa lay, sitting there silently and unmoving.
Grandpa now seemed to have senile dementia. Even when awake, he spent most of his time lying in bed staring at the ceiling, only making a sound if he was hungry or thirsty so Grandma would bring him something, then lying back down. Sometimes he wouldn’t even get up to use the toilet, just did it in bed, leaving Grandma to do all the work.
Seeing Grandpa like this made me feel pessimistic about the distant future. With my own body harboring hidden dangers, I really didn’t want to drag Zhinian down. She still had so many youthful years ahead; she shouldn’t waste them on someone like me, who’d once hovered so close to death.
I worried this terminal illness would come and go without warning. What if I married Zhinian, had kids, and then couldn’t bear the responsibility of being a husband and father? I couldn’t expect her to become a widow for my sake, could I?
So I’d always kept our relationship ambiguous, pushing and pulling with Zhinian. I could feel what she felt for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to make a decision.
Dahuang circled me over and over, unable to suppress his joy. Though his legs were so old they could barely move, seeing me made him grin like a child.
Dahuang’s pale gold fur was dusty and smeared with dirt, but I didn’t mind. At worst, I could just wash my hands.
I petted Dahuang boldly, gently telling him to quiet down. Even after years apart, he remembered every command I’d taught him, obediently squatting at my feet and staring up at me.
Strangely, I almost saw him as that cute cat-girl begging for a head pat. Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I kept petting him while listening in on Mother and Grandma’s conversation.
They were talking about Qingming, not avoiding mention of my eldest uncle at all. In their eyes, the uncle who’d died only last year seemed to have been gone for many years already, just a yearly ritual for grave-sweeping.
“Dahuang, you’ve gotten old too.”
I could sense the faint air of death in this room. I’d felt it before, with Grandma’s earliest tabby cat.
That tabby had supposedly been around even before I was born, and when I was a newborn, it came over and sniffed me for a long time.
During the period when I was sent to live with Grandma as a child, the tabby was always by my bedside, like a nanny clocking in for work every day, reminding me to get up and to go to bed.