Ram held his head in his hands. He could not focus his mind. He had a mosaic of memories of the last three days; there had been no time or order, no day or evening. Every few hours he had stumbled to the outhouse. Sometimes he had woken to the sound of Leela’s squeals outside, or the braying of a mule, or his mother’s voice, but he could not resist the tyranny of sleep. Once Amarjeet touched his shoulder to ask if he wanted to eat, but he did not know whether it was lunch or supper. Once Padma sat with him, the jewel in her nose gleaming against dark skin, liquid eyes filled with worry. Her chunni was draped around her nakedness; she held a baby to her breast. Once he woke in the darkness and saw Karak leaning over him, staring, speaking words Ram barely heard, head and shoulders silhouetted by a nearby lamp. A coyote had howled. What had Karak wanted? The truth about his injuries? The events of the past year?

Ram had been aware of a vague idea: he would ask Karak to lend him money for passage home. But something blocked Ram from telling Karak everything. How would he borrow money from Karak when he could not reveal his recent shame, why he wanted to return? It was a problem he would solve after he healed; it had been easier to sleep.

Ram stepped outside through the porch door. The dawn was coming. The air was hot and dry. He walked toward the moon and saw a small pond, the ditch that fed it, a fence on which hung large clay urns. Jivan’s house was modest, made of wooden boards. In the corner between the porch’s screen door and the house wall sat a small stove, a sturdy bench, a stack of crates. A green-yellow field of alfalfa reached to a pink sky, a distant mountain. Ram closed his eyes. The morning air refreshed him. He walked for a while in the fields, stepping on the bare dirt between the rows. How familiar it felt, these lines of young plants, the desert dust, the crusty earth underfoot. How different from the forests of Hambelton in the north.