But the near way of the clods, as she knew them, as she leaned over them, were a strength to destroy her strength. There, present, the heaviness of the clods pulled at her arms and the field seemed to reach very far before it stopped at the pool by the quarry. The struggling grass, matted into the soil, clung about the plants here and there and scarcely yielded to the two or three blows of the tool. She felt the weight of the grass as she tore it away, and now and then a blow so sharp that it made her flanks ache was needed to turn the soil. The field had been neglected for the summer rains had lasted overlong. She ceased to think of any day before this day or of any task before this. Each plant freed of weeds was something liberated, but another stood trammelled, the same endlessly snared, the same, until she tramped a treadmill and her thought was clodded with earth. The sun was warm on her aching shoulders and her strong knees quivered with the strain. As she plied the hoe a quick image of a year, a season, from planting to cutting and stripping, stood forth as if it were in the soil, a design, all finished and set apart. The design of the grass roots matted with the soil lay under her eyes, complete forever, varying in every detail but forever the same. The hoe came down over and over, no two blows exactly alike but no varying in the form. The year stood plainly designed, one with the grass and the dust, a certain year, formed with beginning and end, planting and cutting, gay laughing and places to go. She had said happy things and they had seemed to have meanings, and people had said things back to her, things she had kept in mind to smile at afterward. All now lay in the form of the year. A little nick in the bright edge of the hoe twinkled in and out of the brown of the earth. The hoe cut in half its depth or it cut in more, and the grains of earth fell airily against the dull upper part. The year began to turn, a form moving lightly upon itself, but she minded nothing of the year, for her body had changed, and the hoe and the soil now cut each other sharply, visible and near. ‘Jonas,’ she said, over and over. It was a name, that was all, a name for something that was gone.

Her feet were uncomfortable in Henry’s old shoes, but her own were nearly out. The loose old plough shoes dragged heavily under her feet and rubbed at her bare ankles. She could say the word over and over, ‘Jonas, Jonas, Jonas.’ It was nothing but a word, gone out of her body, as gone as last year’s breath. Clods had fallen into one of the shoes and she stopped an instant to shake the brogue free, then back to the hoe again. She felt the stride of her limbs as she moved to the next plant and her shoulders knew the power of the grass. ‘Jonas,’ she said, ‘Jonas.’ It was a word, less than a being, a bit of a design lost in a turning year. ‘Jonas,’ a flat sound without meaning. Suddenly a wave of pity and grief swept over her. She had played too long with the name and it had taken life. Lonely flesh beside her lonely flesh. She was standing by MacMurtrie’s gate in the moonlight and the hounds were running down the field. She was sitting half the night seeing the logs burn low and renew. The year broke and fell out of its design, becoming real, becoming a stored-up part of herself, and emotion rolled over her to drown her. The dust was enlarged and the sharp edge of the hoe wavered, for tears were washing over her eyes.