Chapter 10On my first trip to town in the spring, I passed the sign posted at the north end of town reading, Yanube City, Pop 760, 737, 702. Puzzled over the crude, hand-lettered changes, I stopped to visit the town’s blacksmith and farrier. Timo Bowers was a good source of gossip.
The smith had been the first man to touch me back when I had but eighteen summers. I’d been apprenticing with him, and on my last night there, he entered my darkened sleeping room and put his mouth to me. After I delivered my seed, he departed without uttering a word. This morning, he made sense of the altered town limit sign. Some of the settlement’s population, especially sesesh settlers from the south, were pulling out to seek warmer climes in Texas or returning home. The long depression was taking a toll on
