This Census-Taker

29

He said, “Let’s put this place out of our sight.”

Halfway between what had been my house and the bridgetown the man clicked within his throat and veered off the path.

I was so surprised I stopped at the edge of the rough and watched him. He turned to face me and walked backward to keep up with his mule. He beckoned as he went so I stepped after him among the stones, pulling my goat. It came, complaining.

“Careful,” the man said. “We’re going wherever there are people to count.” The mule sniffed but I thought it sounded happy.

The coming darkness and the picking of the plant life against my ragged trousers and the sway of our step-by-step descent narcotized me so I felt myself retreat behind my eyes, watching from a long way back, listening to my own body until after some hours at the start of deep night as we approached a spreading canopy, the foothills and the hill’s forested surrounds, the census-taker woke me for a startled moment by lifting me to put me in the saddle, nestled between bags. I fell asleep again, proper asleep, at once.

Much later I lurched half out of a bad dream with a cry, shaking, my hands clutching for something. Perhaps the animals had sounded. I don’t think so.

We were in the wooded lowland, I realized. We were off the hill.

I looked still sleepily at the flat land that somehow did not shock me alert, or all the way awake.