The miner's lamp left behind by grandpa can be used to identify people. The light turned on, indicating that there was still someone waiting for him to come back underground.
But the miner who disappeared in 1973 was named "Ma Dacheng" in the household registration book, and "Zheng Dacheng" in the mine file - one person, two names.
The first year I went into the mine, I discovered that my grandfather's account book did not record money, but the water, fire, and human lives that had been mined for thirty years.
Ma Xiaochuan, a 22-year-old safety engineering graduate, was assigned to the Heilonggou Coal Mine and learned to work underground from his grandfather's old apprentice Zhou Deshun. On the first day of registration, the master gave him a bag of salt: "It will be useful down the mine."
There was a knocking sound from behind the closed wall of the abandoned alley; the old miner's lamp lit up by itself in the deserted alley; on the file of the alley closed in 1973, my grandfather's name was signed at the end. The elders say: Evil spirits are not ghosts, but the fear in people's hearts.
Zhao Banxian, the fortune teller in the town, Song Laizi, the alley guard who is lame on one leg, and Wang Jianjun, the mine manager who holds three accounts in his hand - everyone knows something, but no one can tell the whole story.
A bag of salt, a red rope, a lamp to identify people. Ma Xiaochuan followed the marks left by his grandfather and walked step by step towards Nansan Alley, which had been closed for thirty years. There is a person buried there, and also the deepest secret of a mine.
There is an old rule in the well: lights, don't cross the water outlet.
But grandpa's lamp was stained with water.
