My Dad's Left Shoulder Is an Inch Shorter

"Those things are the ears of our ancestors." "You ask the wood. If the wood rings once, it means a sentence. If it rings three times, you have to kneel down and listen." Before my mother died, she told Shouzhuo what she said. Shouzhuo was illiterate, and he didn't understand what his ancestors' ears were. All he knew was that on the day his mother died thirty years ago, she thrust a palm-sized wooden sign into his hand. The wooden sign was pressed against his chest and cooled down. It's not as cold as being soaked in river water, it's as cold as if there's a piece of ice that's been frozen for three years hidden in the wooden sign. He kept it for thirty years. Liang walked up to his shoulders, and his left shoulder was an inch shorter. Liang walked up to his eyes, and there was a grain of cinnabar embedded in his left eyeball. Liang walked to his heart, and his heartbeat slowed down for half a beat. Shouzhuo didn't know what it was. He only knew that tonight, in the yard of the Liu family in Weikou Village, someone was holding a wooden sign, guarding an old cloth, and guarding the ear of an ancestor. He was an inch shorter at the shoulders, Mupai knew.