The Butcher's Little Husband - Chapter 59

The apples Li Wenxuan brought home were from the north—someone had transported them back to sell, and they were quite expensive. But Wenxuan thought of his family: the elders, the children—none of them had eaten such a thing before. So he decided to spend the money and bought four.

The apples were not particularly large, but they were a bright red and looked very pleasing to the eye. 

Li Wenxuan took them all out, handing two to Li Amu, one to himself and Father Li, one to Tian Xiaoman, and one to Le-ge’er. He forgot about himself, as during his time as a guard, he was always provided with fruits and vegetables from every season.

Tian Xiaoman was reluctant to let him go without an apple, so he took them and washed them in the kitchen, then cut one in half with a knife. 

He had eaten apples before, too. Although his family was not particularly wealthy, they could afford one or two to satisfy their cravings. But these apples came from the north, so they were rare and hard to find.

When Xiaoman came back out and offered half to Wenxuan, Wenxuan tried to refuse—but one look at Xiaoman’s face, full of quiet insistence, and he had no choice but to accept. 

This year’s apples were so sweet that they warmed his heart before he even ate them.

Li Amu looked at the apples given by his son and was very happy, but he didn’t think about eating them yet. He decided to keep them for now and let Le-ge’er and Xiaoman share them when there was nothing else to eat.

Le-ge’er, seeing the two adults taking a bite, grabbed the apple and took a bite himself. However, his little white teeth only managed to puncture the skin slightly. 

Li Amu quickly grabbed the apple and said, “It’s not washed yet! Wait for Grandmu to wash it for you!”

After washing it clean, Amu realized the apple was still too big for the little boy, so he cut it in half and put one piece away in the cupboard, bringing the other half out to the courtyard along with a small metal spoon.

As soon as Amu sat down, Le-ge’er climbed into his lap. Using the spoon, Amu scraped a bit of the fruit’s surface until it became a fluffy apple mash, then scooped a small spoonful and held it up to the child’s open mouth.

The moment the sweet taste spread across his tongue, Le-ge’er was utterly captivated. He chewed once or twice, swallowed, and immediately opened his mouth again, signaling that he wanted more.

It was a sunny day, and as Amu fed the child, he decided it was the perfect time to pickle some vegetables. Soon the weather would turn cold again, and fresh greens would be scarce.

Pulling the pickle jar from the corner of the kitchen, Li Amu rinsed it with water. The jar was large, as it had to last from winter into spring.

After washing it, Li Amu asked Li Wenxuan to turn it over and place it mouth down on the ground so the water could evaporate quickly. All that was left was to go to the field and cut the vegetables.

When Tian Xiaoman heard this, he also wanted to go with them. He hadn’t even seen where their family plot was yet, so he decided to accompany them. 

The whole family went, except for Father Tian, who was still up on the mountain repairing traps.

Before leaving, Wenxuan ducked back inside for a moment. Xiaoman gave him a curious look, but Wenxuan just grinned mischievously, shouldered two big bamboo baskets, and strode off with light steps.

On the way, Tian Xiaoman and Le-ge’er looked around like they were out for fun, picking dogtail grass or pulling up dead branches, never stopping.

Their vegetable garden was at the foot of the mountain, surrounded on three sides by hills. It only got direct sunlight for about an hour or two after noon each day, so it wasn’t the best land, but they had reclaimed it themselves, asking for little in return.

In the backyard, they grew more precious vegetables, such as cabbage and radishes, which were more hardy. There was also a type of vegetable specially made for pickling.

Today, they were going to harvest some radishes and cabbages, with the most plentiful harvest being mustard greens.

 Li Amu took a sickle and began cutting, while Tian Xiaoman went to pull up the radishes. 

Li Wenxuan didn’t go down but instead walked around the mountain and came back with a bunch of dead branches.

Seeing him, Xiaoman’s eyes lit up. “You’re not thinking of roasting sweet potatoes, are you?”

“Exactly!” Wenxuan laughed. “I even grabbed a few from the kitchen before we left. You’re so smart, Xiaoman!”

He dug a shallow pit with his hoe, placed the sweet potatoes inside, and covered them lightly with soil.

“Hey! Why are you burying the sweet potatoes? Aren’t you supposed to roast them? How can you eat them with mud on them?” Tian Xiaoman asked anxiously, setting down the radishes and walking over to him for an explanation.

“Ah, you don’t know this trick,” Li Wenxuan replied with a proud look, as though he was about to share some deep wisdom. “When you usually roast sweet potatoes, you just throw them into the fire and wait for them to cook. But the outside gets burnt, while the inside doesn’t cook properly, so they’re not really that good.”

Tian Xiaoman nodded, recalling when he roasted sweet potatoes with Xiaoguo before. Often, he ended up eating a mouthful of black ash with nothing else, but he’d still enjoyed the smell and the fun of it.

“If you bury them under a thin layer of soil,” Wenxuan went on, “the fire won’t touch them directly. They’ll cook evenly, soft and fragrant, and won’t be burned at all.”

Just hearing him describe it made Xiaoman’s stomach growl. “Then start the fire already!” he said eagerly.

Wenxuan chuckled at his impatience, pulled out a flint stone, and struck it until sparks caught on a handful of leaves. Soon, the firewood was crackling.

As they waited for the sweet potatoes to roast, Li Wenxuan took a sickle to help Li Amu harvest the cabbage. 

Tian Xiaoman watched and remembered the summer when Li Wenxuan helped his family harvest rice just to please him. Back then, he didn’t know how to use a sickle!

Thinking of it now, Xiaoman’s lips curved unconsciously. And now, I’m married to him. The thought filled him with warmth. Remembering how he’d once resented Wenxuan felt like something from another lifetime. Now, every part of Wenxuan seemed wonderful—except maybe that he had too much energy; sometimes Xiaoman really couldn’t keep up…

Le-ge’er, who was playing with the grasshopper that was on the verge of being torn apart, noticed Tian Xiaoman’s flushed face. “Why is Momo red?” he asked, tugging on Tian Xiaoman’s sleeve.

Embarrassed, Tian Xiaoman quickly straightened up. “I’m going to pull radishes!” he said hurriedly, walking away from Le-ge’er.

Le-ge’ersighed like a little adult, “Adults are really strange!”

By the time they had harvested two baskets of vegetables, the fire for the sweet potatoes had nearly burned out, leaving just a few smoldering embers.

Li Wenxuan used a long branch to move the ashes, then began gently prying up the sweet potatoes from the soil, careful not to damage them.

Tian Xiaoman and Le-ge’er smelled the delicious fragrance of the sweet potatoes at the same time and rushed over.

Li Amu, who had gone to a spring in the mountains to wash his hands, returned and smiled when he saw them. 

Sometimes, he felt that Tian Xiaoman was like Le-ge’er’s grown-up version. When they stood together, people would believe that Tian Xiaoman was Le-ge’er’s real Amu.

Thinking of Le-ge’er’s actual Amu, he felt a pang of discomfort. Originally, he hadn’t minded his son-in-law, but the fact that he hadn’t even returned for such an important event as Li Wenxuan’s marriage left him feeling cold. I only have two sons, he thought bitterly.

But when he heard Tian Xiaoman and Le-ge’er calling him to come eat sweet potatoes, he pushed those thoughts aside. For Le-ge’er’s sake, he wouldn’t think about it any longer.

When Li Wenxuan unearthed the sweet potatoes, Tian Xiaoman eagerly grabbed one, despite the heat, tossing it back and forth between his hands, unwilling to let it cool for a moment.

He had already touched the sweet potato, which was soft and completely different from the burnt, charred one he had eaten before. Once it cooled a little, he peeled it and bit into it. It was sweeter than honey!

Tian Xiaoman walked over to Li Wenxuan with excitement. “Husband, you’re amazing! This sweet potato is delicious!”

Li Wenxuan beamed, feeling satisfied. It was worth baking a sweet potato just to hear his husband praise him. If he had known that a little cooking would earn him this much affection, he would’ve done it sooner. But at least it showed that, at this stage, food still came before him in Xiaoman’s heart!

“Let me have a bite,” he said.

Tian Xiaoman wasn’t stingy this time. He held up the sweet potato and let Li Wenxuan have a bite. After all, there were more over there!

The couple shared a few sweet potatoes affectionately before deciding to head home and dry the pickled vegetables.

Back at home, Li Wenxuan emptied the basket and spread the vegetables out on the ground. He washed and cut what needed washing and trimming.

Though it was winter, the warm sunshine in their simple farmyard made everything feel cozy. The well water wasn’t cold to the touch, and even Le-ge’er helped by washing a radish.

The busy day passed quickly. The mustard greens and cabbage still needed another day or two to dry, while the radishes had been cut into strips and packed into a small jar. All they had to do was wait for a while, and they’d have fresh, tangy radishes to enjoy.

Nearly a month had passed since Xiaoman’s wedding.During these days, in addition to helping with housework, he followed Li Amu around the village, getting to know the villagers.

Before his marriage, Tian Xiaoman had often heard the villagers talk about Willow Tree Slope as a poor place. There was a saying that “poor mountains and bad waters breed unruly people.” Naturally, the people in Willow Tree Slope were thought to be unreasonable, and Tian Xiaoman had been a little nervous, wondering if he would be bullied by them. 

However, he soon realized that people everywhere were similar: some were nice, some were hard to get along with, but they weren’t as unreasonable as he had imagined.

As time went by, the Laba Festival approached.

On that day, Li Amu took them to the street to buy ingredients for Laba porridge. 

Since it was Xiaoman’s first year as a newly married spouse, the village children would all visit to “test the new husband’s cooking skills” by asking for porridge. Naturally, the meal had to be perfect—or those little rascals would tease him for weeks.

They took Le-ge’er to the village cart and headed for the county town. 

On the way, Li Amu chatted with other villagers, while Tian Xiaoman conversed with a ger named Ayun, whom he had recently met.

A-Yun was the tofu-maker’s husband, gentle and soft-spoken—very different from Xiaoman’s usual friends. Xiaoman found him easy to like, almost like an older brother figure.

Le-ge’er sat in Tian Xiaoman’s arms, holding a small twist in his hand, and stared at a little boy sitting alone in the corner of the car. The boy looked at everyone with a sharp gaze.

Le-ge’er kept staring at the ger, unsure how to respond to the attention. The boy, noticing Le-ge’er looking at him, made a fierce face, causing Le-ge’er to quickly bury his head in Tian Xiaoman’s arms.

“Le-ge’er, what’s wrong?” Tian Xiaoman asked with concern upon noticing his strange behavior.

“Afraid!” Le-ge’er said, motioning with his eyes towards the boy.

Tian Xiaoman turned his gaze and saw a child sitting quietly in the corner, looking rather docile.

“Don’t be afraid,” Xiaoman said lightly. “If he scares you again, Momo will beat him up for you later!” Tian Xiaoman reassured, though the child shrank further and buried his head in his lap. 

After a while, the boy quietly eyed the small twist in Le-ge’er’s hand and licked his lips.

Le-ge’er, already half asleep in Xiaoman’s arms, didn’t notice.

When they arrived at the county town, they got off the cart outside the city since the ox cart couldn’t go in. After exchanging greetings with other villagers, they walked into the town.

Seeing Tian Xiaoman holding Le-ge’er, Li Amu took him from his arms. As soon as he held him, Le-ge’er woke up and immediately struggled to get down.

They let him go, and he walked hand in hand with Li Amu, slowly making their way to the southern goods store.

Most families had their own way of preparing Laba porridge. Poor families usually only had white rice and glutinous rice mixed together to make it soft and sticky, while richer families added all sorts of other ingredients, some of which Tian Xiaoman had never even heard of.

This year, to show off Tian Xiaoman’s cooking skills, Li Amu spent quite a bit of money on lotus seeds, longans, red dates, lilies, red beans, and wolfberries, along with the rice and glutinous rice they already had. All in all, he spent several hundred dollars.

There was no need to buy anything extra for the ancestor sacrifices on Laba Festival, so after buying the ingredients, they headed to Li Wenxuan’s shop and then took his cart back home.

While passing by a cloth shop, Tian Xiaoman suddenly thought of Le-ge’er’s broken grasshopper toy. He figured Le-ge’er didn’t have much to play with, so he went into the shop and bought some scraps of cloth and cotton to make a cloth tiger for him.

Li Amu realized he hadn’t noticed that Le-ge’er was actually quite bored at home. Seeing Tian Xiaoman’s thoughtfulness made him even more satisfied with this son-in-law.

When they reached Li Wenxuan’s shop, they found that only a small part of the two pigs on his chopping board hadn’t been sold yet. Since the next day was a festival, Li Wenxuan had slaughtered an extra pig.

There was only Li Wenxuan in the shop when they arrived, with Niu Jin, who usually helped him, nowhere to be seen. 

Li Wenxuan explained that Niu Jin’s grandparents had come to take him to find a husband, so he was absent that day, leaving Li Wenxuan to handle everything alone.

Tian Xiaoman spotted a pig’s trotter on the chopping board and suddenly had a craving for soybean pig’s trotter. He asked Li Wenxuan to set the trotter aside so it wouldn’t be bought by someone else.

Li Wenxuan, of course, didn’t dare refuse and set it aside immediately.

Just then, a middle-aged ger came bustling over. “Hey, young man, got any pig’s trotters? My son-in-law just gave birth, so I need some to help with milk production!”

“I’m so sorry, the pig’s trotters are sold out. How about you come early tomorrow? I’ll make sure to save one for you!” Li Wenxuan replied, coaxing the old ger away. 

Before leaving, he bought a pound of meat.

Tian Xiaoman watched Li Wenxuan handle everything with such calmness, trying not to laugh. But deep down, he felt a sweet warmth in his heart.