Sect Year 6 · first month · night of day 10 · the fifty-sixth life: the Mott basin, his fifty-second year
He kept the post for forty years. Nobody gave him the work. It came to him as the hut had come to his grandfather and then to his father, through the cord on the knife handle and the rag on the belt, and by the time his hair had gone dusty and pale, the village had stopped asking him what the notches meant. They called him the notcher instead. They brought him bread at the turn of the year, and they didn’t ask him anything at all.
Once, in the twentieth year, a boy sat down on the low wall while Hollis worked at the post. He had a split lip and bare feet, and he wasn’t afraid of the knife. He watched the four strokes go in and the blade come out clean, and then he asked what the lowest notch meant, the one that sat a full hand below all the others.
Hollis looked at him a long moment. Then he took the dry heel of a loaf from the pouch on his belt, the piece he had been saving for the walk down, and held it out.
