Sect Year 5 · eleventh month · night of day 28 · the fifty-second life: the Haskett bend on the river, his tenth year
Two springs went over the bend, and Emmer grew into the yoke the way a sapling grows around a fence wire. He was ten by the time the thaw came off the far hills and the river rose brown and fast against the lower bank. His shoulders had widened. Two hired boys worked the higher terraces for Haskett, but they had no patience for the ox, so Emmer walked Dapple alone now, from first light until the light went.
He counted the furrows each morning from the barn to the headland. There were a hundred and twelve on the lower field and a hundred and four on the north terrace. There, the ground was stonier and the share had to be lifted twice to clear a root. The counts did not change from one spring to the next. He took a quiet comfort in that, and he didn’t tell anyone he did.
At dusk the ox lay down by the barn wall, folding his forelegs first, and Emmer sat with his back against the warm flank and felt the slow breath rise and fall. Nobody came to the barn at that hour. It was the one part of the day that belonged to neither of them, and neither of them ever said so.
