Who wrote "That Tree"

That tree

Wang Dingjun

That tree has been standing on the side of the road for a long, long time. When the road was just a muddy path, it stood there; when the first car passed on the road, it stood there; when there were only a few old-fashioned bungalows in this area, it stood there. There.

The tree is a little stooped, showing its age, but it is strong and stable, and the top of the tree is as dense as a newly exploded firework. People who know that tree say that one year, a typhoon blew for two days and two nights in a row. All nearby trees were blown down, and many houses collapsed. Only that tree remained standing, and it was said that not even a leaf was left. None fell off. This is unbelievable, but it is said that before new apartments were built in this area, during the typhoon emergency sirens on land, someone would always insert a stick of incense into the swirling hole in the tree trunk!

It was indeed a strong tree. There were raised ribs and vertical cracks on the moldy black and moist bark, like it was made of pig iron. A few feet away, under the soil, you can still see the veins of tree roots. People who walk with their necks straight under the summer sun will rush to the foot of the tree like a hound, take a breath of the thick shade, look up at the thousands of palms and fingers holding the sunlight, and see the broken mercury leaking from the gaps between the fingers. Sometimes, indeed, even the leaves stand completely still.

So the birds came. When the birds sang, the children in the kindergarten a few feet away were also singing.

So the couple stopped. At night, there was a darker darkness under the tree, so the tree, the silent tree, secretly extended its roots, increasing the area of ??land it could shade, centimeter by centimeter. outward.

But there are other things in this world, other things are spreading faster. Asphalt is spread mile by mile, high-voltage wires are erected a thousand yards and a thousand yards, and apartment buildings are lined up in rows. Come over here. Everything that had grown naturally on the ground was removed and uprooted. Only the tree was surrounded by layers of dead fish-like gray and white, and even its roots were crushed under the gray by the steamroller. But the top of the tree was still dripping green after the rain, and the green was very deep after being set off by the rapid new buildings. Buses and buses put stop signs next to the trees so that people getting off the buses can hold umbrellas under the trees. At night, the drizzle is lighter than a cat's steps. It falls into the leaves and merges into bits and pieces that ring on the road. It reveals the secret. It is very wet and very poetic. The tree had been scrutinized and calculated countless times by the foreman and the staff of the Public Works Bureau, but it remained green.

Taxis came like hungry locusts. "Why is there a tree here?" a driver muttered. "And it's such an old and big tree." The passenger also murmured. In the billowing yellow dust raised by the wheels, in the anxious and angry sound of trumpets, that piece of clear shade is no longer useful. The bus station was moved and moved into the bus shelter. The fruit stall was moved to a place where pedestrians could stop leisurely. The kindergarten also needs to be moved to see where it belongs to the children. Only the tree stood still, not even a leaf fell. The fluffy leaves are still green, very green.

Ah! Ah, trees have no legs. The tree is a hereditary native and a follower of spring mud. When a tree is separated from its roots and the roots are separated from the soil, the tree is destroyed. Their tradition is to be killed at the neck, and even the mythologists never talk about escaping into the forest. Not even a leaf escapes, no matter how strong the wind is. Even though there are hundreds of thousands of clouds floating above my head, there are millions of footprints on the ground. Even though the birds jumping far between the branches have inhabited every green mountain. When the seedlings grew up, when God stretched out his hand to baptize, God once said: "You are green here, you live green, you die green, and you die green again." Ah! So the tree risked its life to cover the lost land, making a futile contribution, looking up to God under the starry sky.

On this day, a drunk driver hit a tree trunk at a speed of 70 miles. So people die. So the traffic expert pronounced that the tree must pay with its life. So the day came. The chainsaw bit off the tree's ankle bone, chewed it up, and sprinkled a ring of white bone meal. The tree just groaned as it fell to the ground. The massacre was carried out late at night so as not to affect traffic on the road. The night was very quiet, just like the time of the tree's ancestors, when stars were shining over thousands of households and the sky was solemn, but the tree didn't say anything, and neither did God. Everything is predetermined, everything has a tacit understanding first, no more words. The old lady who lives next to the tree said that she heard the old tree sighing, one after another, like a severe asthma attack. The workers who felled the tree heard nothing. When the tree tilted slowly, they only discovered one thing: the street lamp hidden under the leaves was exceptionally bright, and the road suddenly opened up, as if it had been widened several feet.

The dismemberment and removal of the body were completed overnight. In the morning, pedestrians saw broken leaves on the ground, but every square centimeter on the leaves was still green. The remnants of the green world no longer exist, and it indeed lives and dies green. Slowly, the road surface was dyed with glow; slowly, the scavenger woman appeared all the way waving her broom. They wear bamboo hats and wrap their arms, and are relatives of the tree. After sweeping the tree roots, they stood around the growth rings, looking at the wind and rain patterns in circles, and estimated how big the roots were and how many kilograms of firewood they could split. She said: Yesterday morning, she swept this street. The tree was still there, but the ants living in the trunk moved away, and a thin black river flowed from the root of the tree to the other side of the road. She said in a testimonial tone that she had never seen so many ants, and it must be an ant country. She even said that some of the ants were as big as flies. As she spoke, she used a broom to draw the route of the large immigrants. Car tires cut the procession into several sections several times, but the order was not disordered. To a few of her wide-eyed companions, she displayed the special wealth of knowledge of a country woman.

The old tree is psychic. It foresees being cut down and tells the inhabitants of its body its disaster. So the small but resilient people decided to go on an expedition, just as they had come. When each black fighter leaves the nest, he first walks around the tree trunk to express his reluctance to leave. This is what the cleaning woman from the country said. This is the end, they came to attend the tree's funeral.

Two weeks later, the roots were dug up. In order to cut off this big, bearded head, the executioner made a trap close to it and cut off all the veins and arteries. It was still night time. There were no stars or moon on this night, and it was as dark as a piece of grass ice. They came with sharp axes and American-made pickaxes, as well as work lights. The artificial strong light cast the shadows of the pickaxes and axes. On the road, on the curtains on the second floor of the apartment, it jumped and galloped like a Big Mac. The sweat has exceeded the budget, and some people doubt that the dead tree can still resist. Before the trap was filled, the vehicle was diverted, and several motorcyclists who took pleasure in violating the rules fell into it and were carried to the hospital. But all this has passed. Now, with the sun and moon shining brightly, and the thoroughfares as sharp as a stone, no one knows that such a tree has ever existed, let alone that thousands of broken roots are suffocated under layers of stones, asphalt, and asphalt.