“Hi. How are the children?”

“They’re fine.”

“Where are they?”

“At the school.”

“I’ve got some riceballs. I had to walk like mad, but at least I got some food.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s keep our spirits up. Look at this. Most of the things we buried are fine. We’ll be all right for the time being.”

“We should have buried more stuff.”

“It’s all right. With all this, we’ll be able to hold our heads up high wherever we go for help. I’m going to take some food to the school. You stay here and rest. Here, have some riceballs. Take as many as you like.”

A woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight is in some ways more mature than a man of forty or more. She was a rock, a model of composure. Her perfectly worthless brother-in-law proceeded to rip a few planks from the fence, lay them on the ground in the field in back, and sit down with legs crossed to stuff his cheeks with the riceballs she’d left. I was completely without resources or plan. But, whether good for nothing or just plain stupid, I didn’t give a thought to what we were to do. The only thing that really concerned me was my daughter’s eye problem. How in the world would we go about treating it now?

Before very long my wife and sister-in-law arrived. My wife had the baby on her back, and my sister-in-law was leading my daughter by the hand.

“Did you walk all the way here?” I asked my daughter.

“Uh-huh,” she said, nodding.

“Is that right? That’s really something. The house burned down.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded again.

“It looks like the doctor’s place is gone, too,” I said, turning to my wife. “What are we going to do about her eyes?”

“We had them washed out this morning.”

“Where?”

“A doctor came by the school.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“No, just the best they could do. A nurse did it.”

“Oh.”

We took shelter for the day at the house of a schoolfriend of my sister-in-law’s on the outskirts of town. With us we carried the food and the pots and pans we’d unearthed from the pit. Smiling at my sister-in-law, I pulled a watch from my pocket.

“We’ve still got this. I grabbed it before I ran out of the house.”

It was my brother-in-law’s pocket watch. I’d found it in the desk some time before and taken it out for my own use.

“Good going.” She smiled back at me. “You surprise me. This really adds to our assets.”

I was rather proud of myself. “It can be pretty inconvenient if you don’t have a timepiece, you know.” I pressed the watch into my little girl’s hand. “See?” I said. “It’s a watch. Put it up to your ear. Hear it go tick-tick-tick? Look at that,” I told my wife and her sister. “It even makes a good toy for blind kids.”

My daughter was standing perfectly still with her head cocked and the watch pressed against her ear when suddenly it slipped from her hand. It made a clear, tinkling sound as it hit the ground. The crystal was smashed to pieces. It was beyond repair. One could hardly expect to find a shop selling watch crystals.