He looked at her, but saw that she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes were focused on something far off. She looked away from that direction and said, “Don’t wait for somebody to come to you. Drink whenever you can. If you faint out here, they’ll never let you forget it.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She took the cup back, tossed it in her bucket, and moved on to another thirsty worker.

There were men returning from other places now, probably from jobs in the surrounding towns, or from supply trips. Many of them picked up tools and stepped onto the ground that was being cleared for cultivation. Within about a half hour, the original crew that had begun in early morning was nearly replaced. Chain saws whined again, and men and women with hoes and mattocks followed them in lines on the field. Eventually a large man Ed didn’t know came up to him and said, “Why don’t you let me take over for a while?”

The man seemed friendly, and didn’t seem to expect a refusal, so Leonard let him go to work. The man was strong and fresh, so he made good progress in removing rocks.

Ed walked up the hill to the pond where people swam, immersed himself in the cold spring water, lay on the bank for a few minutes resting, and then walked down to the storehouse, where he had been living with Lonny Mann. As he put on some clean clothes, he heard voices.

He moved slightly closer to the center of the storehouse and saw a scene that seemed tense. Lonny Mann was sitting on his bunk with his arms folded, staring at Lee Wolf with a sullen expression. Wolf said, “I’m only trying to help you. If they think you’re faking the work, they’ll wonder what else you might be faking. You have to realize that these people are tender anyway. For their adult lives, they’ve been told that the way they think is so old-fashioned, it’s stupid. The jobs they know how to do are practically obsolete. If a machine isn’t already doing them, it’s because the machine is too valuable to use that way. They can’t live on the money they make. They feel like their country has been taken from them and given to other people. They were lost and scared and mad to begin with, and since I’ve been with them, the government locked a bunch of them up with me. I’m out, but the others are still in cages in different parts of the country. Just don’t play with these people.”