The chickens cluck furiously, beaks gaping, as they retreat from the straw mat where the millet has been hulled. Yongt’ae’s mother is searching the grain for bugs. She flicks the bugs aside and the chickens flock to where they land, then disperse. Yongt’ae’s mother shoos the chickens away and pours the grain onto a winnow.
Suddenly the chickens flock together, combs bristling, as a pig appears, snout to the ground. Interrupting her winnowing, Yongt’ae’s mother drives the pig off with a stick.
As the pig runs past the bamboo fence that borders the vegetable patch, the bamboo casts vertical shadows along its back.
Yongt’ae’s mother turns to see the chickens pecking at the millet in the winnow.
“Shoo, birds. . . . How come they don’t feed that pig?” she grumbles.
“Did you feed the pig?” asks Ujŏm’s mother. She and Ujŏm are out in the paddy. She’s using a chipped wooden bowl to water the rice shoots.
“Uh-huh.”
The rice shoots tremble as the muddy water splashes them. A sodden mole cricket grapples with one of the shoots, trying to climb it.
Ujŏm, when her mother isn’t looking, throws a clod of dirt at the cricket.
Again her mother’s voice: “Did you shut the pigpen tight?”
“Uh-huh.”
The rice shoot droops under the weight of the mole cricket.
Ujŏm examines the cricket as it struggles to climb the shoot.
“Are you sure you fed the pig?” her mother asks. She straightens and proceeds to pummel the small of her back with her soiled hands, her shadow flickering on the surface of the muddy water in the irrigation pool.
Yongt’ae’s mother moves the winnow under the eaves and continues to sift the millet for bugs. “Grain’s never going to ripen,” she mutters.
Yongt’ae is inside picking stray bits of reed from a reed mat. “We haven’t had any rain, that’s why.” He goes to school in Seoul, and speaks in the Seoul dialect.
Grains of millet bounce above the back of Yongt’ae’s mother’s hand.
Yongt’ae’s eyes follow the bouncing grains.
“All we get is the halo around the moon, and not the rain that’s supposed to follow,” he says.
His mother’s hand sifts the grain more quickly.
“I wonder if your father found some water for the paddy.”
Kŭnhu wipes his sweaty face with his sleeve. There’s scarcely a breath of wind, not enough to ruffle the sleeve.
“Hey, Ujŏm, is our Yongt’ae still inside?” he shouts.
“Don’t know,” says Ujŏm, content with her mole cricket.
Ujŏm’s mother shouts back, “Why don’t you let him be? A boy needs his rest after all that studying.”
“Rest? What for?”
“‘You can let an only son die, as long as the grain doesn’t burn up.’ Is that it?”
There’s no breeze, but somehow wisps of cloud come together and float gently overhead. Before long they’ve vanished into the clear blue sky.
The water in the paddy is drying up. The yellowish-brown color of the rice shoots is getting darker.
Kŭnhu keeps digging into the irrigation ditch. The flow of water increases with each shovelful of dirt that’s removed. Sunlight glints momentarily on the wet tip of the shovel. Herons skim the paddies, looking in vain for a place to light. The water level in the ditch drops as the water soaks into the dry ground.
Yongt’ae’s mother is still picking through the millet, searching now for tiny cocoons, which she crushes between her fingers.
“That pig got loose again.”
“Weren’t Ujŏm’s folks going to slaughter it and use the head for a rain ceremony?” says Yongt’ae.
“That’s right.”
“And the shaman’s going to bring us rain?”
“Don’t talk like that, child. She did last time.”
Yongt’ae returns to his work with the reed mat.
“I tell you, that pig is a runt. They don’t feed it right.”
“The one they bought with the money they got for Ujŏm’s elder sister?”
“That’s right.”
The pig works its snout beneath the bamboo fence and roots around in the vegetable patch. It finds a runner of baby squashes, uproots it, bites through the runner, and is startled by the resulting snap. The pig runs off, only to startle again, this time at the rocks in the path. It turns and runs in the opposite direction.
“Remember how they sent Ujŏm’s sister off to her in-laws with just the clothes on her back, because they spent her bride price on the pig? Too bad for her, if you think about it. But she’s a bit thickheaded, that one. She couldn’t put up with all the children he had by his first wife, so she came back home. What an awful thing to do! I heard even a shaman got involved. But what can a person do if it’s her fate to marry a widower?”
An insect bounces off the back of her hand and out of the winnow.
“Her in-laws live up in the hills, don’t they?”
“Yes. Up there the millet and sorghum are still doing all right.”
“Not their rice plants, though. I’ll bet they’re shriveled up.”
“Now that you’ve got the sleep out of your eyes, go see how your father’s doing. He was up all night trying to get some water to the paddy, but I’m afraid the sun has dried it out again.”
With his weeding hoe Taegŏn digs a channel through the earthen barrier that Kŭnhu has built to dam the flow of water to the other paddies. Beside him Kŭnhu frantically shovels sod to re-block the flow.
Taegŏn scrapes furiously at the dam. “You’re only looking after yourself—what about the rest of us?”
“What about us?” Kŭnhu says.
The back of Kŭnhu’s shovel slants toward Taegŏn’s shoulder, misses, and bounces off the ground. Off balance, Kŭnho tumbles, writhing, into the paddy.
Kŭnhu crawls back up to the elevated path through the paddies, blood oozing through the soil caked above his eyebrows. He claws at the mud, attempting to repair the dam.
The chickens gather beside the winnow.
Yongt’ae claps his hands to shoo the chickens away. Instead of scattering, they merely bob their elongated necks.
His mother works the winnow. Perspiration spreads through the clothing on her back.
“Does it get this hot in Seoul?”
“Even hotter.”
His mother pours the winnowed millet into a wooden bowl.
“I hear in Seoul they’ve got all kinds of wild animals that people can go see. How can animals live in this heat?” She settles the grain in the bowl.
Yongt’ae scatters the bits of reeds in front of the chickens and rises. Instead of the chickens it’s flies that swarm about the reed bits.
“I guess you don’t need to go check on your father. He’s probably all right.”
Yongt’ae dons his straw hat.
His mother rises as well, bowl in hand.
“You’re going after all?”
“You, child!” calls Ujŏm’s mother, just as Ujŏm reaches out for a dragonfly resting on a withered mugwort stalk.
The dragonfly’s head moves back and forth. Just as her shadow is about to cover the dragonfly, Ujŏm moves to the side.
“Where are you, you little mischief?”
The dragonfly flits away from Ujŏm’s fingertips. It seems about to light where it was before, but then flies high into the air.
Ujŏm whirls around. “What’s the matter?”
Her mother runs up to her, brandishing a fist. “What are you doing, you little bitch? You’re supposed to be looking for the pig.”
“Uh-huh.”
Kŭnhu’s mud-covered form appears in the distance.
“Ujŏm,” he calls, “send Yongt’ae here.”
“All right.” Ujŏm’s gaze drifts in the direction the dragonfly has flown.
“Grain’s never going to ripen,” mutters Yongt’ae’s mother as she enters the kitchen.
The cloudless sky looks too far off for it to be evening already.
A bee falls to the ground. It’s coated with pollen from the squash flowers.
Head to the ground, the pig makes its way through the vegetable patch. Its shadow, cross-hatched by the silhouette of the bamboo fence, is as long and thin as can be.