Trovatella
In the spring they woke hungry, ate morning cakes of maize and grass seed and went out to the fields before the sun had burned off the mist. Lilies covered the swamp and poppies sprouted on the fallow land. The air was rich and rotten, with a salt burn that caught in the throat. It was a week’s job to hack out the scrub and drag a board piled with stones between the hedgerows, a day to run tracks behind an ox and plow and two weeks to dig the furrows down to their full depth, going foot by foot with a spade. In the hills the soil was yellow and full of stones. Nearer the water it was soft and black, but the mists hung late, and if the rains were heavy the swamp would creep outward to drown the green shoots.
At midday the air cleared and a light smell of brimstone blew off the
