Sect Year 5 · eleventh month · night of day 28 · the fifty-second life: the Haskett bend on the river, his seventy-third year
The river ran high and brown under the willows that spring, and the sky over it was wider than Emmer remembered it being when he was young. He stood at the gate with one hand on the post and watched the lower pasture for the young red steer. His knees hurt. They had hurt all winter. Each morning he had to stand still at the foot of the barn stair until they agreed to carry him the length of the yard, and he had stopped minding the wait. It was only the ground asking for time in another shape.
The bend had changed around him in sixty-five years, though not as much as the people who had come and gone on it. The old willow at the gap had been cut back to the stump three times and had grown up again each time, straighter and greener. The hawthorn at the top of the bank had dropped its blossom on the grass above Dapple’s grave. The grave itself had long since sunk into the turf, so that only the tree still marked it. The barn post had cracked along its length, and Emmer still cut his notches in it every spring.
