Sect Year 2 · fourth month · day 2 · the rim of Sallow Basin · the unnumbered life, seen from the rim: a river village, her thirty-fourth year
By the fourth dry year the lane had emptied from the top down, the way a cup drains when someone has knocked a hole in its base. The Yao family’s well went first. It went in the spring, with a sound the rim carried to Lin clearly: a long hollow cough from the bottom of the shaft, and then nothing but wind coming up the stones. The Yaos walked to the coast the next morning with their pots tied to their backs and their goats left behind to find what they could. The Hu well followed in the summer. After that the walkers went every few days, in twos and threes, and each family that left took the lane’s noise with them. They left a door standing open and a pair of sandals on the step, and nobody came back for the sandals.
The woman stayed. Every morning she went to the rail, laid her hand on the wood, and drew the buckets up. Every morning she tied a knot in the cord at her belt for each bucket she drew, and the knots crowded together along the cord like beads on a string. She had stopped trying to make the cord hold the water. It could only hold the count. A count was the one thing the well could not…
