41.

The Younger Teacher

Orbag, AGH 172

The sampler went into the ground more easily than Eren had expected. She leaned on it, pleased by the clean resistance, and Dena Morcant said, “There.”

Eren leaned a little farther.

“There was a moment ago.”

She stopped. The scratched line on the narrow tube had disappeared into the earth.

“I thought I had a root.”

“You might have. We still want everyone stopping at the same depth.”

Eren drew the tool out. A small fringe of grass hung from its mouth. She had paid for two days of practical teaching on the cultivated margin of Orbag, and less than a quarter of an hour into the first she had collected too much of it.

Dena held out a hand for the sampler. She was short, with warm deep-brown skin and long, tightly curled dark-brown hair drawn back from her face. The lower buttons of her coat had been moved to make room for another layer beneath it. A loose curl kept catching at her mouth. She blew it away, set the tool into a new piece of ground and pressed until the line met the surface.

“Now.”

Eren watched her twist it free. The soil came out in a narrow plug, with the grass still attached at one end.

“And that is all of it?” asked the man beside Eren.

“For this sample.”

“I meant, you don't take more from underneath?”

“If we're comparing this depth, we keep this depth. You can ask a different question farther down.”

He nodded, looking at the tool. His red carrying bag stood between his boots. He had brought a very large notebook for something they were going to do in the rain.

The other learner, a woman with a square patch on the shoulder of her coat, moved closer to see. Dena handed her the sampler and showed her how to release the soil without breaking it across the opening of the tin. When the plug fell, the woman caught the tin under it with a quick movement that made Eren like her.

“I've swept enough of other people's work off floors,” she said.

“Let's try to keep yours,” Dena said.

The tins were numbered on their bases and lids. Dena laid out a sheet of figures and had them find the mass of each empty tin with its matching lid before writing anything about the soil. Eren turned hers over. A deep-cut seven had survived several dents and a dark patch she could not scrape off with a fingernail.

Beyond the wall, the fields rose toward an old footpath and then fell again in a shallow fold. The soil on the sunny face had already begun to pale. Lower down, where the wind was caught among stems, it retained a dark, newly turned look. Eren had walked this margin often enough to know where her boots would pick up mud. Lately, she had found herself making excuses for patches that stayed wet when she expected them to dry. A changed ditch, she thought, or a blocked crossing, or weather arriving at a different time. She wanted a better way of finding out than standing on a path and feeling certain.

The notice for Dena's class had been plain about the price, the two days and the need to bring food. It had promised no account of the whole landscape. Eren had liked that until she arrived, when the landscape began offering her several things she wished to explain.

The man with the red bag followed her gaze.

“Does that look wetter to you?” he asked. “You would know.”

“It looks darker.”

“Yes, but is it wetter?”

Eren looked at Dena. “I was going to ask her.”

“We can measure what comes out of the sample,” Dena said. “You'll have a number to put beside what it looks like. Then you can decide what you want to ask next.”

She took the seven from Eren, checked it against the sheet and returned it with a folded sketch.

“The wall station. This is the earlier position record. Check the two fixed points. Don't choose the ground because it looks interesting.”

“That will be difficult.”

“You can look at the interesting ground afterward.”

Dena gave the other two their places. They would make their first collections separately after the demonstration, then return to the room where the balance and drying rack waited. Eren took another practice sample while the woman watched the depth line. This time she stopped correctly. Her mechanical hand held the tube steady while she freed a strand of root from the opening with the other. The plug slid into the spare demonstration tin with a soft, solid sound. Her own seven waited empty beside her bag.

She wanted to do it again.

The old footpath began beyond a gap in the hedge. Eren knew where it turned behind the wall, where a flat stone rocked if stepped on at the uphill edge, and where someone had once planted a hedge too close to the passage. The hedge had been cut back. She could see a painted peg beyond it, bright against the dull grass.

That would be the wall station.

She put the folded sketch into her coat pocket so she would have both hands free.

The last part of the approach sloped more sharply than she remembered, pressing her toes against the fronts of her boots. There were cut branches on one side and a track of barrow wheels across the bare ground. Eren stepped over them. At the peg, she set down her bag and crouched beside a patch of ground close enough to touch the marker with her elbow.

Little leaves had opened between the larger grasses. She knew their shape from the wetter edge of the old ditch, though there had been fewer here when she last paid attention. A root had worked up beneath the peg's foot. The ground smelled sweet when she pressed the sampler into it, and water shone for a moment on the cut face of the plug.

She stopped at the line.

Getting the sample into tin seven took less care than her first attempt. She wiped the tube clean, closed the lid and wrote the number, depth and wall-station name on her sheet. Then she added the little leaves, the old dead stems among them and a sketch of the root. She spent some time making its turn intelligible.

When she looked up, the woman in the patched coat was coming along the lower path with the basket Dena had given her for the tins.

“Have you finished?”

“Nearly.”

The woman waited while Eren added a leaf to the sketch.

“Is that part of it?”

“It may be useful.”

“Mine has a stone on it. I drew a circle.”

Eren looked at the neat little circle in the woman's notebook. “That is an excellent stone.”

“You can tell?”

“Immediately.”

The woman took tin seven and set it firmly beside her own. At the meeting place Dena asked whether they had all recorded where they stood. Eren held up her page. The man was still writing.

“She was by the painted peg,” the woman said, nodding toward Eren.

Dena glanced along the margin. “Good. Close the lids properly. We want the water still in them when we weigh.”

Eren pressed the lid of seven again before the basket went under its cloth.

They walked back along the wall. The wind had found a way beneath her collar, but her hands were warm from the work.

*   *   *

The teaching room had windows on two sides and a drying cupboard near the stove. Someone had pinned a sheet above the sink asking that soil be put in the bucket before anything was washed. Below it, in another hand, someone had added a much larger word for the bucket.

Eren approved of the second person.

They weighed the closed tins first. The balance lived on a broad table against the inner wall, away from the opening windows. Dena made each of them settle the pans and read the result again before it went onto the sheet. The woman with the patched coat brought her face close to the scale, straightened, then bent again.

“It was between them.”

“Then write that. Don't give it a precision you couldn't see.”

Eren could see her own reading clearly. She wrote it beside the seven, then took off the lid and spread the small amount of soil as Dena showed them. The identifying mark remained on the tin. The lids went on a separate shelf.

While the samples dried, Dena gave them earlier sheets to practice reading. They had lunch in the yard, then came in to check the drying and compare another pair of records. The man with the red bag was quick at subtraction and slow to stop explaining how he had done it. Eren listened to the first account. During the second she looked through the window at a blackbird pulling something out of the short grass. She lost the third altogether.

“Did you get the same answer?” he asked.

She looked down at her blank space.

“Not yet.”

He started again. This time she moved her chair so the window was behind her.

By the later afternoon their own samples were ready to weigh. Dena had them replace each matching lid before the tin went onto the balance, then take it off again for another spell of drying. They repeated the weighing the same way. The second readings held. Only then did she let them finish the comparison.

Eren's sample had lost more water than either of the others. She put her pencil down, pleased, and Dena slid a second sheet toward her.

“What if you had taken twice as much soil?”

“I would have had a great deal more trouble closing the tin.”

“After that.”

Eren examined the two quantities. She had already subtracted the tin and lid. It took her a moment to see what Dena wanted. The fuller sample on the practice sheet had lost more water, but it had contained much more dry soil as well.

“Ah.”

“Use the dry quantity to make the comparison.”

Eren worked it out, checked it against the example and set the result beside the earlier wall-station record. The difference was still large. She felt a second pleasure, more settled than the first.

“It is wetter.”

“That sample is,” Dena said.

The earlier record was from a class Dena had taught several weeks before. Its place name matched Eren's. She ran a finger along the line of numbers and looked back at the sketch she had made outside.

“The damp has been lasting longer there. I thought it was. There used to be more bare ground between these plants.” She turned the sheet so Dena could see. “They spread into the open places, and then the litter stays wet underneath. If the wetter part of the season is lasting longer, you could get this without much change in the path itself.”

The man leaned over to look at the drawing.

The woman in the patched coat looked at the balance.

“Or that is wrong.”

Dena turned toward her. “Which part?”

“The weighing. We used it all afternoon. Something could have shifted.”

Eren wanted to return to the plants. She had the particular patch in her mind, the dead stems held among the green ones, the way the soil had come apart beneath the sampler. The balance sat on a sound table. It had shown them the same thing twice.

Dena took a small reference weight from its box and set it on the pan.

They waited. The indicator settled where it should. She removed it, checked the empty balance, then set it down again.

“That is where I want it,” she said.

“All right,” the woman said.

“Did you notice those plants when you took the first one?” Eren asked Dena.

“I didn't take the first one. One of the previous class did. I checked the place with him.”

“Then we ought to look at his drawing.”

“We can look at yours beside it.”

Dena unfolded the sketch she had given Eren that morning. Eren recognized the wall, the little opening at its base and the corner where it turned uphill. Between the two sat a cross and two short measurements.

“Where did you stand?”

“By the peg. Just below the path.”

“Show me.”

Eren put a finger beside the cross, then moved it a little lower. On paper the old path ought to have approached from the other side. She turned the sketch toward herself.

“There was a mat of roots beside it. Here, I think. The little leaves were all along this edge, and there were dead stems left through them. I drew those.”

“Which edge of the wall?”

Eren looked up.

“I didn't measure from it.”

The room had gone quiet except for a faint ticking from the stove. She could have described the sample's surroundings for another page. She had drawn the turn of a root smaller than her finger.

The woman pushed her own record across. It had the circle and two measurements beside it.

Eren looked at it for a moment.

“Your stone has been more useful than my entire garden.”

“It hasn't had to be dried.”

Eren laughed. The man did too, and then tried to fit his own much larger account onto the sketch. He had followed the edge of the wall correctly but described the peg as though its position settled everything.

“I thought it was the old place,” he said.

“So did I when I looked across,” Dena said. “Let's go back in the morning. Before we decide what changed.”

Eren moved her finger again, trying to bring the path to the place she remembered. It would not come. She could say that the lower ground had always been wet; that would be true. It would not tell her where she had stood in relation to the cross.

“We can take both?” she asked.

“If we find two places that need comparing.”

Dena drew a light question mark beside the location on Eren's sheet.

“Leave the number,” Eren said.

“I am.”

They put the dry samples away. Eren cleaned the sampler over the bucket and worked a scrap of root from its edge. The scrap was far too small to tell her anything useful. She dropped it in with the soil.

*   *   *

The next morning the painted peg was exactly where Eren expected it to be.

That was briefly gratifying.

She led them by the old path, past the rocking stone and the cut hedge, and stopped with her bag beside the shallow hole left by her sampler. The woman who had collected the tins nodded.

“There. That is where I found you.”

Dena stood at the peg, holding yesterday's sketch open against her coat. Eren watched her turn from the wall corner to the small drain opening.

“Those don't meet here.”

The man unwound the measuring cord. Dena had him hold its end at the wall corner while she took the marked length toward the ground shown on the sketch. Eren stayed by the peg. From here she could see the slope between them, a difference that had scarcely registered while she was looking for a familiar approach.

They checked the second distance from the drain opening. At the recorded length, the cord reached the same bare patch above Eren, close to the path among the cuttings.

Eren went up to it.

There was a narrow socket in the ground. One edge had collapsed under a wheel. A pale scrape continued across it and out toward the gap in the hedge, where the barrows had been passing. The painted peg below stood at the edge of the cleared strip, out of the way.

“They moved it,” the woman said.

Dena crouched at the socket. She checked the sketch again and brushed a piece of cut stem away from the edge.

“It stood here. The clearance has gone straight through.”

Eren looked back down. The peg was only a short distance from them. She had crossed more ground than that while searching for a place to put her lunch bag.

“I came by the old hedge opening,” she said. “It used to bring you out on this side.”

She showed them where the former path had narrowed into the edge of the cultivated ground. With the hedge cut back, the easier line now ran below it. She had followed that line without feeling she had changed direction.

The man pulled in the cord.

“I looked at the peg too.”

“Yes,” Dena said. “I should have checked it before I sent you out.” She pressed the sketch flat against her knee. “We have the position now. And we have where Eren went.”

Eren returned to the small hole. She could see the darker ground continuing beyond it, below the line of the old station. She set a clean tin on her bag, then felt a cold drop strike the back of her hand.

The man put his notebook under his coat. He had learned that much without a lesson.

The next drops were closer together. By the time they reached the open-sided shed beside the field, the cuttings had begun to shine.

Dena put the equipment basket on the dry end of a narrow bench. The woman set her bag beside it. Eren stood under the projecting roof and watched the rain make a wavering line along the gutterless edge.

It was not heavy enough to obscure the field. She could see little threads of water join where the barrow wheels had pressed the earth, then leave the track and take the shallow run below the peg. For years she had pictured the water passing nearer the old hedge. Even this morning, looking at the map, part of her had continued to put it there.

“Is it going down to your hole?” the man asked.

“Past it.”

“Shall we cover it?”

“We'll take fresh soil beside it,” Dena said. “We won't sample the hole again.”

She stood beside Eren for a moment, looking at the same water. Then she took off her wet coat and shook it once outside the roof. Her curls had loosened at the temples.

“We might as well eat.”

“Already?” the woman asked.

“You can watch us.”

The man produced a parcel from the red bag. It was very well tied. He worked the knot loose, unfolded two layers of cloth and revealed a broad, flat piece of bread with cheese pressed almost through it.

“It wasn't like that when I left.”

“What was on top of it?” Eren asked.

He looked into the bag. “My notebook.”

The woman laughed so hard she had to take her food away from her mouth.

“You could have brought a smaller one.”

“I didn't know how much there would be to write.”

Dena reached for a piece of the flattened bread when he offered it. She bent it, examined the cheese that had worked into the crust and took a bite.

“Better than having it fall out.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I have that corner?”

He separated it with his thumbs and gave it to her.

The woman had packed hers with slices of pickle between the cheese and the bread. She held up a sagging corner in reluctant concession, then ate it before anyone could offer advice. Eren found that the heel of her own loaf was large enough to share and too hard to divide neatly. She held it in her mechanical hand and tore with the other, which produced one generous piece and a small stubborn crust.

“Which would you like?” she asked Dena.

Dena took the crust.

“You can have the other.”

“I'm going to dip it.”

She had brought a little pot of soup wrapped separately from everything else. It was no longer hot, but she opened it, bent over the rim and ate the bread with evident satisfaction. Eren kept the larger piece. It had a pocket of flour in the fold that she liked very much.

The rain ticked against the roof. They were hungry enough for a while to leave one another alone.

Eren wiped moisture from the outer joint of her arm. A crumb had lodged beside the cuff. She took it out, dried the edge again and pushed the sleeve down where it would shed the drops. Across from her, the man was testing whether the center of his bread had become too dense to bite through. He turned it sideways and found a better angle.

Dena tipped the last of the soup toward the crust.

“There's a little more room that way,” Eren said, pointing with her own bread.

“For what?”

“To get the last bit.”

Dena shifted the pot. The soup moved away from her.

“The other way,” Eren said.

“You can stop helping me.”

Eren sat back against the wall.

Beyond the shelter the shallow stream had found a course through the small-leaved plants. Eren could see the tops lift and settle as water passed beneath them. The patch continued a little uphill of the current wet line, into stems darkened by older weather.

She put down her bread.

“That strip was getting water before this.”

Dena looked up.

“See the older stems among the new growth? The mat underneath them is established. It hasn't appeared since breakfast.”

“Can you show me when this eases?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it against our two places?”

Eren followed the strip with her eyes. “Below the old station. Through the place I used yesterday.”

Dena set the empty pot on the bench and unfolded the field sketch again. This time Eren could put her finger down without moving it afterward.

When the rain weakened, they went out together. Eren showed them the older rooted growth and the way the water had parted around it. The man knelt to see what she meant. He touched one of the stems, then looked up the slope toward the socket.

“So the low bit stays wet.”

“It has been wet often enough for this to do well,” Eren said. “That doesn't tell us what we'll weigh.”

Dena had already set out the fresh tins.

*   *   *

They collected the new samples while the leaves were still dripping.

Dena held the cord at the wall corner. Eren checked the second measurement herself, found the higher position and marked it on the sheet before she touched the sampler. She chose intact ground beside the reference point, clear of the old socket and wheel track. Beside the location she wrote the time and that the rain had just stopped.

The depth mark met the surface. She stopped, twisted and drew out the plug. This soil held together less neatly than yesterday's, and she brought the tin close before releasing it. A small piece broke away. The woman caught it on the lid and tipped it in with the rest.

“Thank you.”

“You were about to wear it.”

Below them the man was holding the lower tin ready for Dena. They took that sample from undisturbed ground beside Eren's first small hole. Both tins were closed within a few minutes of one another. The woman carried them back together in the basket.

At the teaching room, Eren took off her coat and hung it beside the stove. She could still feel damp at the back of her collar. The room smelled of warm cloth and earth.

She weighed the higher sample. Dena watched her settle the pan and check the number against what she had written. At the other side of the table, the man did the lower one. They took off the lids and put the tins into the drying cupboard with their bases visible.

There was more time to wait than Eren wanted. The first day, waiting had seemed part of learning how things were done. Now she knew where both samples had come from and wanted to see the difference at once.

The woman wanted the window open. Dena wanted it shut while they used the balance. They settled on opening it between weighings, which gave Eren a seat in a cool draft and the others something to object to whenever she forgot to close it.

She copied the two sites onto one clean sketch. The old route went above the lower station and approached the higher one from the side. She drew the new easier path separately. That was the part she had failed to notice while her feet were doing it.

Dena came to look.

“Can someone who hasn't been with us find those?”

Eren added the wall corner and the drain opening.

“With the measurements.”

“Put them on this sheet too.”

Eren did. There was plenty of room when she gave less of it to the root.

The woman leaned over the drawing. “Is my stone on there?”

“It isn't near these samples.”

“I know. I wondered whether you had liked it enough.”

Eren drew a small circle at the proper edge of the field. The woman examined it and nodded.

They replaced the lids for the first dry weights, opened the tins for longer drying and checked again. As on the first day, Dena waited for the readings to hold. Eren found that she had begun to recognize the sound of the cupboard latch and was looking toward it whenever someone crossed the room.

The lower sample was wetter again. After the tin masses had been removed and the water compared against the dry soil, the difference was plain.

Eren moved yesterday's reading aside and put the old upper-station record beside today's. These two belonged to the same place. She traced the two lines with her pencil. She could still see a possible longer change in them, beyond the mistake with the peg.

“If the higher ground is changing too,” she said, “we might find...”

“What do we have at that same place?” Dena asked.

“The old class. Today.” She kept the two sheets together. “We have the place right.”

“And the weather between?”

Eren looked at the blank margin.

“Not enough.”

Dena put the two new results beside each other. “These are useful.”

“I know.” Eren drew them closer. “I want more of them. Through the rest of the year.”

“Then you know what you would have to keep recording.”

Eren took yesterday's sheet. She put a line through the station name, leaving it legible, and wrote the lower position beside it. The measurement stayed where it was. She added the link to the new sketch so the correction would make sense after the three sheets had been separated.

The man watched her.

“Do we leave that in the folder?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it was the wrong place?”

She showed him the two current positions. “It was that place. I wrote the wrong name.”

He looked back at the first sheet. “I see.”

Dena checked the correction and laid the sheets together. Eren wrote a shorter note for herself: both present positions after rain; the lower one wetter. Beneath it she left room for a new question.

The woman at the window was looking at the sky.

“Are we going out again?”

“Not for another measurement today,” Dena said. “I want you each to show someone how you would begin.”

She brought an unused tin and a little practice soil to the bench.

*   *   *

Eren laid her corrected sketch between herself and the man with the red bag.

“We'll start with the place,” she said.

The two routes were clear to her now. If he could see how they fitted together, the measurements might mean more than lengths to remember. She began with the slope, showing him how the old hedge had guided the feet, how the clearance had made the lower path easier and how the vegetation followed a watercourse that did not begin and end where the path did.

He nodded at each part. His hands stayed around the sampler.

“So which side do I stand on?” he asked.

Eren looked at the tool, then at the drawing between them. She had put it where she could see it best. From his side, the wall lay upside down.

She turned it round.

“Find the wall corner first.”

He set the sampler down and found it with one finger.

“This one?”

“Yes. Then you check from the drain opening as well.”

He followed the second measurement to the cross. Eren let him do it. When he reached for the sampler again, she moved the practice tin within his reach and asked where its number ought to go on the sheet.

He turned it over.

“Before I get it dirty?”

“That would be convenient.”

He wrote the number and found the empty tin's mass in the little table Dena had laid beside them. Then he showed the depth line, set the sampler upright over the tray of practice soil and stopped it where he should. When he drew it out, he had the tin under it already.

Eren had to keep herself from reaching in to help. He freed the soil with a little shake. Most of it went into the tin, and the rest stayed in the tray.

“That would have worked,” she said.

He looked pleased. “I thought you meant I had to remember all the plants first.”

“So did I, apparently.”

Dena was at the next table setting out sheets for another class. She glanced at the practice tray and came over to ask the man to show her the first step. He turned the drawing toward her, then stopped and turned it back toward himself.

“I have to be able to read it.”

“Yes,” she said. “You do.”

Eren went to the sink. She shook the loose earth from the used tins into the bucket before washing them. The woman joined her with the sampler, and they argued mildly about which of them was making more mud on the floor. The man dried the tins and put them in order, discovering that the nine became a six if he held it the wrong way.

“There's a line under it,” Dena said, without looking up from her sheets.

He found it.

Eren wiped the table while Dena put the reference weight back into its box. Outside, a small patch of sunlight had reached the field beyond the window. She wanted to go and look at the soil in it. She also wanted dry clothes and whatever Tarren had put aside for supper at the hill house they shared.

“Would the same sampler do in my garden?” she asked.

“For the same kind of comparison, yes. The shops that carry field tools have them.”

Eren flexed her mechanical fingers around the handle once before putting it away. “I liked this one.”

“You can ask for the same size.”

The woman had her bag over her patched shoulder. The man waited at the door, folding the loose sheet until it would fit his notebook. He opened it again to make sure he could still read the measurements, then put it away.

Eren thanked Dena. Dena said she had enjoyed having them, then asked the woman whether she was taking home the damp cloth by mistake. She was. They exchanged it for her own and went out together.

At the lower turning, the other two took the road into town. Eren went toward the hill. The strap of her bag had caught a fold of her coat, and she stopped beside a familiar stone to settle it more comfortably.

The ground beyond the stone rose slightly before it dipped into the shade. She had often noticed how long the shaded part stayed dark after rain. From here she could reach both places without crossing the planted strip.

She looked back at the stone, then at the corner of the wall behind her. Both would be easy to find again.

Her cuff was still damp. She pulled it clear of the strap and continued up the path.