Sect Year 3 · seventh month · night of day 9 · the twenty-eighth life: Duanwei, the river quarter, his first year
The grain ran all day at the river granary. It poured down the wooden chutes into the sacks with a dry hiss. The sacks were tied off and stacked against the wall and carried out on the backs of men who hummed when the clerks were not listening. Ning could hear it from the bench.
He could hear it from the floor, too. Just then, he was set down there to crawl, and from the sleeping room under the roof edges at night, when the last cart had gone and the river took over the work. Then the sound was water instead of grain, and it was easier to sleep through.
Their mother kept a noodle stall at the scale-house gate. There, the wagon drivers waited with their carts in a line that ran down toward the water. She came in at dusk smelling of broth and burnt onion, and she went out again before the bells. Ning knew her by her hands. They were red to the wrist from the hot pot, and they never stopped moving. When she lifted him she smelled of the stall, and she didn’t sit down, not once, not even when he fell asleep against her shoulder.
