Pail

The rain barrel by the kitchen door had filled over the night, and Nyra set a tin pail beside it for the morning carry. The girl lifted it once empty, then once brimming, to learn the difference in her arm. Water, Nyra told her, was the one thing in the garden that would not hold still to be counted.

“Watch the surface, not your feet,” Nyra said, and she set off down the path with the pail swinging only a little. “The trouble starts when you stare into the pail. You try to still the water by looking at it, and your hand tightens, and then it slops the worse for your worry.”

The girl took her turn and made it three steps before a cold ribbon ran over the rim and down her wrist. “It wants to climb out,” she said, half laughing. “How do you keep it in?” “You do not keep it in,” Nyra answered. “You walk so the pail forgets it is being carried. A smooth stride, a loose shoulder, and the water settles into the going of it.”

They walked the rows together and poured a steady measure at the foot of each late bean, and by the gate the girl had found the trick of it, her pail arriving nearly as full as it had left. Nyra counted the trips aloud and made a small mark in the book for each, the way she had marked the baskets and the bushels before.

Later, with the book open on the sill, the girl asked whether it had written down the carrying. “It wrote the number,” Nyra said. “A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. It cannot hold the cold on your wrist, or the weight that leans you sideways, or the small pride of a pail set down still brimming.” The book keeps the count, and you keep the carrying of it.