“Aye.” Tian made a visible effort to do just that. “What do’ee think of my field, gunslinger? I’m going to plant it with madrigal next year. The yellow stuff ye saw out front.”

What Eddie thought was that the field looked like a heartbreak waiting to happen. He suspected that down deep Tian thought about the same; you didn’t call your only unplanted field Son of a Bitch because you expected good things to happen there. But he knew the look on Tian’s face. It was the one Henry used to get when the two of them were setting off to score. It was always going to be the best stuff this time, the best stuff ever. China White and never mind that Mexican Brown that made your head ache and your bowels run. They’d get high for a week, the best high ever, mellow, and then quit the junk for good. That was Henry’s scripture, and it could have been Henry here beside him, telling Eddie what a fine cash crop madrigal was, and how the people who’d told him you couldn’t grow it this far north would be laughing on the other side of their faces come next reap. And then he’d buy Hugh Anselm’s field over on the far side of yon ridge…hire a couple of extra men come reap, for the land’d be gold for as far as you could see…why, he might even quit the rice altogether and become a madrigal monarch.

Eddie nodded toward the field, which was hardly half-turned. “Looks like slow plowing, though. You must have to be damned careful with the mules.”

Tian gave a short laugh. “I’d not risk a mule out here, Eddie.”

“Then what—?”

“I plow my sister.”

Eddie’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me!”

“Not at all. I’d plow Zal, too—he’s bigger, as ye saw, and even stronger—but not as bright. More trouble than it’s worth. I’ve tried.”

Eddie shook his head, feeling dazed. Their shadows ran out long over the lumpy earth, with its crop of weed and thistle. “But…man…she’s your sister!”

“Aye, and what else would she do all day? Sit outside the barn door and watch the chickens? Sleep more and more hours, and only get up for her taters and gravy? This is better, believe me. She don’t mind it. It’s tur’ble hard to get her to plow straight, even when there ain’t a plow-buster of a rock or a hole every eight or ten steps, but she pulls like the devil and laughs like a loon.”

What convinced Eddie was the man’s earnestness. There was no defensiveness in it, not that he could detect.

“Sides, she’ll likely be dead in another ten year, anyway. Let her help while she can, I say. And Zalia feels the same.”