About the work

She remembers the day she first saw the trough. It had arrived on a flatbed, too large for the barn door, and her grandfather had sworn at the driver for hours. Then they dug the trench for it, a line of sweat and curses, a new scar on the land. He’d filled it with the garden hose for the first year, until the well was dug, until the wind pump went up. Now she’s here with two buckets and a fading t-shirt, not the garden hose, not a well, just this: a trough full of dust, two hundred feet from the nearest tap, and the sun already too high. She will empty it by hand, later. Why the wind pump stopped turning is something nobody ever talks about.