Ten

A few weeks later, Master came to me in the field just before the lunch break. 

“Momma told me you buried twins,” he said.  “Young girl like you gets started now, no telling, you could have ten or a dozen babies before long.”

He wanted to move me from my bunkhouse to bed with a man.  I don’t know how I was so bold, but I told Master about Frank.  I hoped Frank wouldn’t mind, but he had chosen me first.

“Was he their father?” Master asked.

I nodded.

“Well, then that’d be fine,” he said.

I moved my few possessions to Frank’s cabin that night.  I took Akin’s bracelet and my good dress from Uncle’s wedding, which I had cleaned the best I could down in the stream.  I saw Frank’s beard was dark now.  He was already father to two dead babies.

Frank was always particularly miserable in the night after he had worked a long day in the field, which was pretty much every night.  But I knew just how to make him laugh. 

“You should be the hare,” I said.

“What do you mean? How could the hare, just a little rabbit like him, plow the fields any faster than I can with all my strength?” retorted Frank, kissing me as we lay in the small bed curled together.

So I told him the story of the hare and how he tricked the other animals to help him get ready for his wedding.  If he had heard the story before, he didn’t stop me.  Hare was too lazy to do the work himself, so he went to Elephant and asked him to tug on a rope when he felt the rope tighten.  And then Hare went to Hippopotamus and told him the same thing.  Hare left the rope strung between Hippopotamus and Elephant and the two of them pulled the rope against each other with all their might.  The pulling was enough work to clear the land so that Hare could have his wedding.

“And that’s how you can plow the field for Master,” I said. 

Frank rolled closer to me in our bed.

“The others will hear,” I said.

But he wouldn’t listen. 

“I’m too busy to plow Master’s fields,” said Frank.  “He can plow them himself.  He probably doesn’t even know how.”