“Pray the good god that it’s the last pit this season,” Kesey suggested, and

“Amen,” both of my carpenters-turned-gravediggers responded.

“It has to stop soon. Doesn’t it?” I asked them.

“It’ll stop when it stops,” Kesey replied. “The rains always end it. But sometimes it stops sooner. I heard a rumor in town about some special water that might cure it. Some spring water that a doctor back west has been trying on people. The courier that brought the news said he’d heard from the courier before him that they were trying to get some to us here, before the end of the plague season, to see if it really worked or not.”

“Did you hear the doctor’s name?” I asked, wondering if Spink had written to Amicas and if he had acted on it.

Kesey shrugged and shook his head. We had shouldered our shovels and were making our way back to the tool shed when we heard a sound we all dreaded: the clop and creak of a team pulling a laden wagon up the hill to the cemetery. “Can’t they just stop dying for one day?” Kesey asked me pathetically.

“I think they would if they could,” I replied, and one of my diggers smiled grimly.

“Those poor devils will just have to lie bare under the moonlight for tonight,” Kesey observed, and I shrugged. It would not be the first time that shrouded bodies had had to wait for a fresh grave. But like Kesey, I prayed it might be the last.

Ebrooks was the driver. He got down stiffly from the cart. “You boys had better help me unload if you want to ride back to town,” he suggested, and we began our grim task. There were seven of them. Ebrooks, knowing my insistence, handed me a list of names. I thrust them into my pocket and helped the other men drag the corpses from the cart. Three men, a boy, and three women we laid out side by side. Kesey had brought a fresh supply of pitch torches from town. Ebrooks helped me set up a circle of them around the unburied bodies. Then the others climbed up on the wagon, bade me farewell, and headed back to town as the long-awaited night began to flow across the land. I hoped it would bring a little coolness with it. I kindled the torches. They burned straight, nearly unwavering, in the calm summer evening.

I went back to my cabin, washed my face and hands, drank deeply, and then turned to the cold meal Kesey had brought me. There was bread and meat and cheese. It was good enough food, and I devoured it hungrily but as usual felt no satisfaction in it. It was only food, and I’d learned that the hunger that burned me most was not a hunger for food. I forced myself to set aside a portion to break my fast the next day, and left my table as hungry as when I’d sat down. I washed up my few dishes and set them aside. With a sigh, I took out what had become a ledger. I opened it to the current page, and unfolded the scrap of paper that Ebrooks had given me.