Word had come up the river road at market. The low flats had been sown this spring. Ren did not write the word down at once. Words from the road were not yet facts. A fact was a thing seen with his own eyes.
He took the river road down in the afternoon. The shop's counter was left with a neighbour's boy. Before he left, Ren had shown the boy the board. He had pointed out the jars to leave alone.
The river road was busy with late spring work. A mule train carried salt toward the landing. Two men mended a fence above the bank. The worked fields of other houses lay green. Ren passed them without slowing his step. His errand lay at the road's end, at Sana's ground.
From the last bend he saw the change. The low flats were no longer all weeds. Long lines of turned soil crossed them. Fresh green showed along the lines in threads. Someone had sown the low ground this year. Someone had done it row by row, by hand.
Sana waited at the edge of her house rows.
The house rows lay close beside her door. Beans climbed their poles in good order. Onions held their thin green lines. A patch of salve herbs grew dark and close. A small patch of feverleaf grew beside them. It was no longer than a shop bed's patch. All of it was tended at two hands' scale.
Her right hand rested on her basket's rim. Its fingers closed slowly around a stem. They opened slowly when the stem was cut. Her left hand did the knife's work now. That much had not changed since last year.
"You heard the road's word," she said.
"I heard a word," Ren said. "I came to see the fact."
"See it, then." She turned her face toward the flats. "The low ground is sown. But not by my hands, Aoyama. Walk it with me and hear whose."
They went down the short path together. Her pace set the pace for both. The path smelled of river mud and warm grass. At the flats' edge, the turned soil began.
The sown rows ran across the low flats. They ran from the bank path toward the ditch. The soil in them was dark and freshly worked. Young feverleaf showed in the rows. It showed in small green points, close together. Rain had pressed the lines smooth in places. Sun had cracked them dry in others.
At the far side, a man worked with a hoe. He worked the last unsown strip by the ditch. His shoulders were broad from heavy trade. Soot had darkened the seams of his shirt. Jōji was the charcoal burner's brother. Charcoal was his family's trade of burning wood. He raised one hand when they came in sight. Then he bent to his work again, unhurried.
"He came to me in the spring," Sana said. "He asked for the low ground, not the house. He asked as a man asks for work ground. Terms were said before any seed moved. You will hear them as they were said."
She counted the terms on her fingers. Her left hand did the counting for her.
"First, the ground stays mine in the count. No paper of his takes it from my house. Second, my share comes off the harvest first. It comes off the top, before any sale. It is weighed at my door, in my sight. Third, my house rows are not in it. No hand of his works them but mine. No share of his touches them either. Fourth, the high flats are not in it. They lie as they lay last year. Nobody sows them under this arrangement."
Ren looked up toward the high ground. Weeds and old stubble covered it still. The quick grass had it, as before. No turned soil showed anywhere on it. Her words and the ground agreed with each other.
"Those are the terms," Sana said. "He holds the low flats under them. He holds nothing else of mine."
"Now hear what did not change," Sana said.
They had reached the rows' middle length. She stopped where the young leaf showed best. Her basket hung empty on her left arm.
"My reasons stand as I said them here. Hands finish, Aoyama. Mine have finished with a field. A hired hand eats the leaf's price. He eats it before the leaf is cut. His wage, his rice, his days of weather. I said all that under this sky last year. I say it again, and it stands as it stood. It is as true now as it was then."
"Then no hired hand works here," Ren said.
"None." Her voice was flat and certain. "Jōji is not my hired hand. I pay him no wage from this house. I feed him no rice from this door. He works ground he asked for, on terms. The risk of his rows is his own risk. The strength of his rows is his own strength. If his back gives out, that is his count. My count was made last spring, and it stands."
She looked along the sown rows once, slowly. It was the look of a woman reading ground. There was no grief in it that Ren could see. There was no pride in it either. It was a reading, the way she read weather.
"The ground heard my count last year," she said. "This year it hears his hoe as well. Both things are true at one time. Ground can hold two truths, Aoyama. It is people who want only one."
Ren walked the rows' length with her. He counted the rows as a land fact. He counted them in fives along the bank path. He counted them again along the ditch side. The two counts met at the same rows. Sown was sown, whichever side he read from.
The rows stopped short of the wet corner. That corner had always gone wet in hard years. Its soil shone dark even in the sun. No seed had been trusted to it yet. The ditch beside it ran low and clear. A week's digging still waited in that corner. It waited for younger backs than Sana's. Jōji's rows left it alone for this season.
Further on, the rows thinned near a stony patch. Elsewhere they held even and close. It was a real sowing, not a show sowing. Seed lay in straight, close rows, in deep worked soil. What the ground would give back was unwritten. Seed in soil is not leaf in a sack. Ren wrote nothing in his head beyond the fact. The fact was rows, sown, on the low flats.
At the last row, Jōji rested on his hoe. Sweat had cut a line through the soot. He greeted Sana first, as the ground's keeper. He greeted Ren after, as a man from the shop.
"You are the leaf shop," Jōji said.
"I am," Ren said.
"Then you have seen my spring's work." Jōji nodded toward the rows behind him. "It is in the ground, all of it. What stands in the autumn is the autumn's affair. I do not sell a crop from the seed bed. No man should buy one there either."
"You will hear no offer from the shop today," Ren said.
"Good," Jōji said, and lifted his hoe again. "Offers before growth are just debts talking." He went back to the last strip by the ditch. The hoe rose and fell at a working pace.
Sana and Ren came back to the flats' edge again.
"Now the shop's part," Sana said. "Say it plainly, Aoyama."
"The shop advances nothing," Ren said. "It lends nothing against these rows. It pays nothing before a harvest is cut. It promises nothing while the leaf is green. No coin of the shop stands in this ground."
"And if a harvest stands?" she asked.
"If a harvest stands, the shop will buy cut leaf. It will buy at the fair price of the season. Leaf will be weighed twice, as always. Leaf will be counted twice, as always. Sound leaf, cut at its right time. That is the whole of the shop's part."
"And if no harvest stands?"
"Then the shop buys nothing, and owes nothing. The rows were never the shop's rows. Their failure would not be the shop's failure. Their success is not the shop's success either. They are another man's rows, on your terms."
Sana weighed his words the way she weighed leaf. Slowly, and with her eyes on the thing itself.
"That is a clean count," she said at last. "His hands sow. My ground holds. Your shop buys leaf, not chances. Each part stays in its own hands. That is how ground should be worked among neighbours."
A light wind moved over the low flats. It bent the young green in the rows. It bent the high weeds on the upper ground too. The river's breath touched worked and unworked alike. The difference was not in the wind. The difference was in the hands and the terms.
Ren took the river road back before evening. His basket carried nothing from the flats. It would carry leaf only when leaf existed. Behind him, the hoe's sound faded by degrees. The house rows by Sana's door kept their order. The high flats kept their weeds and their wait. The low rows kept their green lines in the soil.
At the last bend he looked back one time. Sana had the final say on her own ground. She had said it standing at her own field's edge. No word of his would be added after hers.
"The ground is mine to give or keep," Sana said. "I gave the low part to his rows, on my terms. I kept the rest, on the same terms. When you write it, Aoyama, write it that way."