And later, when I could walk again, we moved through the village, and when we sat in the sun to rest, a thin dog licked salt from my ankles.

When we sat to fish, I watched my husband cut into the speckled trout he had separated from the creek; with one quick turn of the wrist he could slit the fish and free and lift out the blood-black line which lay along the fish-spine.

Who would wish for some other world?

Then I laughed at the thought that I, of all women, had just had. I laughed so loud and so heartily that my husband jumped back a little from me just as he would jump back if one of his trout opened its mouth, spit out a coin, and began to speak to him.

HER STRENGTH had clearly returned by the time the corn began to ripen, and one day when they were out walking her husband turned from studying the horizon to find that his wife had disappeared into the cornfield.

“Two? Where are you?”

But there was no answer.

“Mary!” He called her Mary when he was worried.

From a little distance, he heard her: “Sheninjee?”

“What are you doing?”

“Come and see.”

He found her in the thickest part of the cornfield: she had taken off her outer garments and placed them on the ground. Now she wore only her loose brown undergarment. She held her arms up toward the warmth of the sun; she was stretching. And then she lowered her arms slightly, turned, and held them out to him.

When he stepped over to her, she held up her index finger and placed it on the bridge of his nose. She drew a light line downward until she reached his lips. There her finger rested as if to hush him. Sheninjee breathed, finally, and his lips parted. Then she lowered her finger and brought her own lips close to his. He raised his eyebrows.

“I feel strong,” she said.

“Are you certain?”

In answer, she slipped one strap of her undergarment off her shoulder and let it hang loosely against her arm.

Close against him, she traced the curves of his chest with her slim fingers. She traced slowly, in ever-descending arcs.

WHEN the seasonal afternoon light the color of corn silk lay on the hills, Mary and her husband often picked up gouged lacrosse sticks and moved a ball back and forth between them. Later they walked together, and sometimes Sheninjee withdrew somewhat from her to scan both the far landscape and the clumps of trees that lay afield near the creek.

She had lately learned to turn from excessive studying of her husband’s face to study the trees, the underbrush, and the sky.

In this way, my world opened and I began to comprehend all lineaments, even my husband’s, better.