Food: Selling Boxed Meals at a Construction Site

Although Xu An had heard about what happened with the greenhouses, he didn’t pay it much mind.

He was most worried about Aunt Hong, but since she was working with him, she had come through this ordeal unscathed.

’As for the others, what do they have to do with me?’

The afternoon was as busy as ever. Some vegetables in the garden by the river had long been harvested, but because he’d been so busy lately, he hadn’t had time to clear out the plots.

Today he finally had some free time, so Xu An put on a straw hat, slipped on his waders, grabbed a small stool, and headed out with the two little ones to go clean up the vegetable garden.

The tomatoes were pretty much all harvested, leaving only a few small, green fruits. Time to pull them out!

The bok choy, choy sum, and other greens had been harvested long ago, and the plot was now overgrown with weeds. Time to clear them out!

...

Xu Kang and Xu Le had initially volunteered to help, but with the fickle nature of children, it wasn’t twenty minutes before they were both crouching off to the side, studying how ants carried things. To get a better view, they even took out the small cookies they were reluctant to eat themselves, crumbled them up, and fed them to the ants.

Every so often, they would cry out in excitement. "Whoa, this ant is huge! This one’s so dumb, it saw the food and just went around it! Hey, I think these two ants are fighting!"

...

As long as they weren’t getting into any real mischief, Xu An let them be.

The main point of bringing them out was to let them get some fresh air, not because he actually expected them to work. As long as they weren’t making more trouble for him, they were good kids.

The thought of being a hindrance reminded Xu An of a funny incident from his own childhood.

Granny Xu had told him to clear a field of weeds in preparation for planting peanuts. As he pulled and pulled, he started to feel like the weeds were endless, that he could pull for a lifetime and never be done.

So, he came up with a clever but misguided plan. He went home, lugged a hoe back to the field, and tilled the entire plot from one end to the other. The once tall, green weeds were chopped into pieces and mixed in with the loose soil.

Granny Xu was very good-tempered. She didn’t hit or scold him. Instead, she accompanied Xu An and patiently picked out every last piece of the chopped-up weeds. The task took them two whole days!

That was when Xu An learned that chopping up weeds doesn’t kill them. As long as a piece has a root, it will continue to absorb nutrients and grow.

As Xu An was lost in his memories, a group of seven or eight kids appeared on the opposite bank of the river. They looked like they had just started elementary school.

They were laughing and horsing around, and after pulling off their shirts, they were about to jump into the river.

"Get back! It’s dangerous to play in the river. Go find somewhere else to play," Xu An shouted, standing up.

The children stopped in their tracks when they saw Xu An. They huddled their little heads together, whispering for a moment, then scattered in a flash.

Watching them leave, Xu An sat back down on his stool and resumed his grand undertaking of pulling weeds.

He had been weeding for over an hour but had only cleared half a row. He still had another half a row to go!

’Argh! I hereby declare that pulling weeds is the most torturous job in the world!’

Just as Xu An was engrossed in his weeding, he heard the sound of children roughhousing again. He looked up to see the same kids from before run past him, looking panicked and dripping wet.

It looked like after leaving, they had just found an empty stretch of the river to go play in.

One, two, three, four, five, six...

’Wait, why are there only six? Weren’t there seven of them?’ Perhaps one went home a different way. Xu An stood up again, straining his eyes to look into the distance. Far, far away, he saw a child stumbling along. Suddenly, the boy swayed and collapsed onto a narrow path between the fields.

’Holy crap! What’s wrong with him?’

Just then, Third Granny came over to the garden to pick some vegetables for dinner. Xu An put Xu Kang and Xu Le in her care and took off sprinting toward the spot where the boy had collapsed.

Even from a distance, Xu An could see that a wide stretch of the river water was tinged pink.

He rushed over to the child and found him pale-faced and ice-cold, with large beads of cold sweat dripping from his skin. The boy’s body was shaking uncontrollably...

Xu An quickly examined the boy and found a massive gash on the sole of his mud-caked foot, still seeping blood.

’First, stop the bleeding!’

He ripped off his own shirt, tore it into strips, and tied them tightly around the boy’s lower calf. Blood still seeped out, but the flow had slowed somewhat.

’It’s not enough. He won’t make it to the hospital like this!’

Xu An scanned his surroundings, and his eyes finally landed on a plant called mugwort. ’Mugwort ash can be used to stop bleeding,’ he thought. ’The plant itself should work too, right?’

’At this point, it was a desperate situation that called for a desperate measure!’

He grabbed a handful of mugwort, stuffed it into his mouth, and began chewing rapidly. The plant’s potent flavor shot straight to his head, making his eyes water and his nose run. The acrid taste made Xu An grimace in disgust.

Once the mugwort was chewed into a paste, he plastered it directly onto the wound and used the previously torn cloth strips to hold it in place. Then, he scooped the boy up into his arms and ran headlong toward the village.

Partway there, he saw a towering figure sitting by the river, fishing. Xu An yelled at the top of his lungs, "Uncle Guosheng! Uncle Guosheng! The hospital! Quick, your truck! We have to get him to the hospital!"

The float on his line was already bobbing. A fish was about to bite.

But Xu An’s shout scared the fish away. Xu Guosheng turned around, slightly annoyed, only to see the child in Xu An’s arms, pale as a sheet, with blood dripping from his foot onto the ground.

Holy shit!

His fishing rod went flying into the river. Xu Guosheng took off running toward the village, the ground seemingly trembling with every heavy footfall!

Fortunately, they were close to Xu An’s house. In just over ten seconds, both of them reached the small truck. Xu An jumped into the passenger seat with the boy, and Xu Guosheng slammed his foot on the accelerator. The truck lurched forward so fast that Xu An was pinned to his seat with a surprising amount of force.

"Where to?"

"Find the nearest clinic! We need to stop the bleeding first, then we can take him to a hospital," Xu An answered quickly.

The bleeding had slowed considerably. He didn’t know if his folk remedy was working, or if the situation was simply taking a turn for the worse...

The small truck was fast. In a little over a minute, it screeched to a halt in front of a small clinic, completely blocking the entrance.

The doctor inside, who was in the middle of seeing a patient, was about to yell at them for blocking the door when he saw Xu An leap from the truck and burst into the clinic. "Doctor, he’s bleeding out!"

The doctor saw the boy’s pale face and the bloodstains all over Xu An and immediately understood the gravity of the situation. He abandoned the patient he’d been attending to and took the child from Xu An’s arms.

"The sole of his left foot, it looks like it’s been cut," Xu An said, panting, with his hands on his knees. "I chewed up some mugwort and plastered it on to stop the bleeding. I don’t know if it did any good."

Weak and slow pulse, blood pressure 83 over 52... Phew. The doctor let out a long sigh of relief. The situation was bad, but it wasn’t the worst-case scenario yet. He ordered, "Call the town hospital. The patient will need a transfusion. I’ll work on stopping the bleeding here first."

Several people in the clinic simultaneously pulled out their phones and dialed 911.

Seeing the doctor take charge and methodically organize the rescue effort, Xu An finally let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. His body went limp, and he slumped to the floor.

Although it felt like it had taken a long time, in reality, less than five minutes had passed.

For a full five minutes, his adrenaline had been surging. The sudden release of tension left his body weak.

It was only then that Xu An realized he’d lost his shoes somewhere along the way. His pants, hands, and feet were all stained with blood...

Uncle Guosheng wasn’t in much better shape. He was also sitting on the ground in a sorry state, gasping for breath.

Running at that speed had really been an ordeal for a man of his size.

Still, as long as the boy was alright, that’s all that mattered. As long as he was alright.