The summer was ending, and the heat had thinned.
It still lay on the street at noon. By evening it had holes in it. The light went sooner behind the roofs. Behind the shop, the beds gave off their smell in the cool part of the day. Ren worked the counter in the mornings. He worked the yard in the afternoons. The shelf behind the counter held fifty-one jars. Five were of the first autumn month. Sixteen were of the second autumn month. Thirty were of the first month of this year. The oldest month went first, by the rule. Its five jars had little life left. Their labels said so, plain as print.
On the last morning of the week, a cart came up the street before the heat.
It was a low cart, pulled by hand. Jōji had the handles. He was the charcoal seller's brother. This year he held the low flats, on Sana's terms. The high flats lay in weeds still, as Sana had left them. Her house rows were hers, and untouched by his hand. The low rows were his to cut. He had cut them. The cart carried the cut in sacks. The sacks were tied at the neck. Leaf showed green at one loose tie. The smell came off the cart in waves as it moved. Ren knew that smell in his sleep. Feverleaf, cut in its season, by a hand that had taken it clean.
"You came early," Ren said.
"Cut leaf wilts in a cart by noon," Jōji said. "Sana said bring it while it still knows the ground."
He set the handles down in the yard. He rolled his shoulders once. His forearms were scored with fine cuts. Leaf work always wrote itself on the hands.
Jōji told the share's part before any sack was weighed. At Sana's door, her share had come off the top first. It had been weighed there, at her door, in her sight. She had watched the beam settle on it herself. That share stayed at her house, apart from the cart. What the cart carried was what was left after it. That left part was the part the shop would buy.
The weighing was done in the yard, off the beam.
The shop's beam scale hung from the yard post. It had hung there for the heavy work for years. Ren hooked the first sack to the beam. The weight settled. He read it aloud. Jōji read it after him. They were the same reading. Then the sack came down. It went up a second time, on the other hook. The beam settled at the same place. Ren chalked the weight on the post. Sack by sack, the cart emptied. Each sack went up twice. Each reading was said twice. No sack was taken on one man's word.
Then the bundles were counted, on the back bench.
Inside each sack the leaf lay in bundles. The bundles were tied with grass cord. Ren laid them out in rows of ten. Jōji counted the rows behind him. Then they changed places. Jōji laid out the last sack's bundles. Ren counted behind him. The two counts met. What the beam had said, the bench agreed with. The leaf was whole leaf, well cut. The stems were short. There was no mud in the bundles. There was no weed leaf mixed in. One bundle held leaf cut a day too young. Ren set it aside, on the bench's edge. Jōji nodded at it, without argument.
"That one dries thin," he said. "It was at the row's end. I should have left it standing."
"It goes back to the ground," Ren said. "It is not counted, and it is not paid."
"It is not counted," Jōji said.
The counted leaf came, by the shop's measure, to twenty-eight jars of the cure, once it was dried and made. That measure was the bought part's measure, after Sana's share. Sana's share stood outside that count, at her house. Not a promise. A measure, from weight and count, the way leaf had always been measured in that yard. Ren wrote the measure on the tally slate. He wrote the young bundle under it, as not counted. The slate would keep both lines till the making was done.
Then the price was named, and it was the fair price.
Leaf from the flats had a price in its season. Both men knew it. Neither man reached for another. Nine hundred and fifty, for the counted leaf, at the season's fair price. Ren opened the strongbox in the back room. The box held eleven thousand, eight hundred and ten. He counted the price out onto the bench, in hundreds. Jōji watched the count. Then Jōji counted it back, coin by coin, into his own hand. The counts agreed. He knotted the money in a cloth, the way his brother knotted charcoal money. He put the cloth inside his shirt.
"The low rows gave well," he said. "Better than Sana feared. Worse than the old years, she says."
"The old years had the whole flats," Ren said.
"They did." He looked at the empty cart. "My part is a part. It cut what it cut. Next year the rows will know my hand from the start. That may count for more."
"Next year is next year's count," Ren said.
Jōji took the young bundle off the bench. He laid it in the cart, for the ground it came from. Then he took the handles up. The cart went down the street empty, light on its wheels. The yard kept the leaf's smell after him. It would keep it for days.
The flats' leaf is bought, at the season's fair price, from the hand that cut it. Weighed twice, counted twice, the counts agreed. Paid: nine hundred and fifty. The box stands at ten thousand, eight hundred and sixty. The leaf measures twenty-eight jars of the cure, to come. One bundle, cut young, not counted and not paid, gone back to its ground.
The street took the old month out in the days that followed.
The first autumn month had five jars left. Their life ended in the first weeks of the autumn. The rule of the shelf was plain. The oldest month went first. No jar of it would be kept past its life. No jar of it would need the fire, if the street came in time. The street came.
A jar went to a house by the well, on the first day. The fever there was a plain fever. The woman heard the taking through, standing in the doorway's light. The whole course, three days, morning and evening, the cup hot. The price went onto the counter, at the board's price. A jar went up the lane the next day, carried by a daughter. She gave the course back twice before she took it. A jar went to the dyers' end of the street. A jar went to a carter's house, paid in counted coin. The fifth jar went on the month's last safe day. An old woman came for it herself. She walked slow, and she carried it home slow, wrapped in her sleeve.
Five jars out. The month was empty. Ren counted the empty place on the shelf twice. Then he wrote the month closed in the book.
The month had gone out whole. Sixteen jars of it had stood at the opening count. All sixteen had been served since then. Not one had met the fire. The fire had taken jars in other years, in other months. It took none of this one. The book said so in one line, and the line was enough.
The second autumn month gave four jars in the same days.
Its life ran to the heart of the autumn. It was in no hurry, and the street was in no great need. Four doors asked. Four jars went down off the shelf, in their order. Each course was told the same plain way. Each price was the board's price. The coin of those days went the counter's way. It was counted at the shutter, night by night. It was not box money. The box held the hill's lines only.
At the week's end the shelf held forty-two jars. Twelve were of the second autumn month. Thirty were of the first month of this year. The old shelf had only its young months left now. Behind them, in the yard, the year's second making was going up.
The second making took all three leaves.
First came the beds' leaf, the second cut. Ren cut it himself, in the cool of the morning. The beds had grown back strong after the first cut. The rows gave their leaf by the basket. He carried the baskets in, two at a time. In the back room, he spread the leaf over the racks. Each layer stayed thin, with air between the leaves.
Then came the flats' leaf, out of its sacks. It went onto its own racks, apart from the beds' leaf. Its tally was chalked at the rack's end. Twenty-eight jars, to come, if the drying held. The measure would be tested at the sealing. It would not be written as jars before then.
Last came the bought leaf, the rest of the year's first bought part. One part of it had gone to the year's first making. The rest had waited in its bales, in the dry store. It had come at the fair price, earlier in the summer. Ren opened the bales and shook the leaf loose. It went onto the third set of racks. Its tally was chalked apart too.
Three leaves. Three tallies. One cure, when the making was done. The racks filled the back room, level over level. The room smelled green and sharp. Ren left the door on its latch, for the air. He turned the leaf on the second day. He turned it again on the fourth. What dried too fast at the edges, he moved inward. What lay too thick, he spread thinner. The work was slow, and it was all the work there was. The jars would be counted when there were jars. For now there was leaf, and tallies, and time.
That night he wrote the week's end in the book, in the hand he used every day.
The first month of autumn is closed: out whole, none burned. The second month of autumn stands at twelve. The year's first month stands at thirty. The shelf stands at forty-two. The second making is on the racks: leaf of the beds, second cut; leaf of the flats; bought leaf. Not yet counted in jars.
Outside, the street lamps were lit against the early dark. The summer's last heat came off the roofs and went. In the back room the leaf lay drying in the quiet. Three tallies were chalked at three racks' ends. The count of it was still to come.