Chapter Three
Three, The Mud Fields
Covered from head to toe in ash, Budori spent half a day’s time walking through the forest toward town. Every time a gust of wind blustered by, the ash came falling from the trees in a swirling, smoky blizzard. However, as he drew closer to the plains, the ash grew thinner, the trees looked green again, and all footprints had vanished entirely.
When he finally emerged from the forest, Budori could not help but stare in awe. From right before his very eyes to the furthest of the blinding-white clouds lay stretched the plains divided into neat, construction paper patches of dazzling shades of gentle peach, rich emerald, and ashen grey. Looking closer, where there was pink, there were in truth, short little flowers blooming everywhere as the bees marched busily to and fro amongst them; where there was green, there were actually dense grass fields putting out little sheaves of grain; and where there was grey, there were muddy, shallow marshes. They were all divided from one another by low, narrow embankments and people worked using horses to dig up and stir the mud.
As all this went on, Budori had walked only a little ways down road when he saw two men standing in the road conversing in a way that seemed suspiciously like arguing. The red-whiskered man on the right spoke,
“I’m sticking with bein’ a spec’later no matter what!”
With that, the other man, a tall fellow in a white, wide-brimmed bamboo hat said,
“When I say ‘give it up,’ you best be listenin’! With all the top dressin’ you laid down, you’ll grow a nice load a straw, but not one speck ‘o rice!”
“You’re wrong! By my word, I say this year’ll be as hot as the past three put together! You’ll see when I grow three years’ worth of rice!”
“Give it up! Give it up! Just give it up already!”
“No! I won’t give up! Seeing as everyone drowned the flowers, I figure I’ll just put down a good sixty cakes of bean meal and just less than four hundred kilograms of bird manure. Being so busy and the like, I’m gonna want some help with the black-eyed peas.”
Without a thought, Budori approached the two men and bowed.
“If that’s so, would you mind putting me to work?”
The two men looked up, startled, and put their hands to their chins as they examined Budori. Suddenly, Red-Whiskers burst into laughter!
“Fine, fine! You’ll be perfect for guidin’ the plow-horses! You’re coming with me, okay? First things first, though. You’re in this with me until fall, sink or swim, unnerstand? In which case, let’s go! And right when I was wantin’ help with those peas, too!” said Red-Whiskers to Budori and the old man, respectively as they walked quickly to the farm.
After a while, the older man took a moment to see them off, grumbling
“Don’t listen to a thing us old folks say! You’ll only end up in tears, ye hear?”
From then on, Budori went day after day after day to the mud fields and stirred mud with the horse. With each passing day each pink and green paper patches were trod down, one by one, and gradually turned into mud fields. Every now and then the horse would kick up muddy water and spray everyone in the face. As soon one mud field as finished, a new one was begun. Days were gruelingly long and finally Budori could no longer tell if he was walking or not. The mud tasted like candy and the mud-water as nourishing as soup. The wind blew time and again, kicking up tiny waves like the scales of fish and making all the water for miles sparkle as if made of tin. Slowly, slowly through the sky drifted sour-sweet clouds which looked, truth be told, worthy of a little jealousy.
Twenty days passed in this fashion and at long last every last mud field were nice and gloppy. The next morning, the owner worked himself into frenzy, working with all the people who had gathered from far and wide to plant in every field thousands of green, spear-like shoots of Oriza. When all the work came to an end after about ten days, the owner took everyone to work the houses of those who had volunteered their help in planting. After a full circulation of that, everyone returned to their respective fields to spend day after day after day tending to the weeds. Though the shoots belonging to Budori’s master were so green they looked nearly black, the shoots in all the neighboring fields were a thin, sickly green. And so, it was such that one could see their field from any great distance, even as far as Saccai. When seven days of weed-pulling had passed, they went again to help others. However, one morning when Budori’s master was leading him past one of his on fields, he suddenly cried out, “AH!” and stood straight as a pole in shock. His whole figured had turned pale blue, right down to his lips, and he stared weakly ahead.
“A plague’s broken out…” said the master at long last.
“Do you have a headache or something, sir?” asked Budori.
“I don’t have it. The Oriza does. Look.”
The master pointed at the stalks of Oriza. When Budori squatted down to examine them, lo and behold every last leaf was covered in little red spots the likes of which Budori had never seen. Tears in his eyes, Budori’s master walked a single, silent lap around the mud fields before he began to head into the house. Just as the worried Budori started in after his master, the man wet down a rag, put it on his forehead, and lay down to sleep right there on the wood floor without saying a single word. As soon as he did, the master’s wife came running in from out front.
“Is it true a plague has broken out among the Oriza?”
“It is. It’s all done for.”
“Can’t anythin’ be done?”
“I said it’s all done for, didn’t I? It’s jus’ like what happen five years ago.”
“See, now didn’t I tell you to give up on bein’ a spec’later? Even gran’pa gave up after that!”
The lady of the house broke out into flustered sobbing. As she did, the Master suddenly seemed to regain his health and stood himself right up.
“Arright. Will I, one ‘a the greatest farmers in the Great Plains of Ihatov who ye kin count on one hand be defeated by sumthin’ like this? Arright. I’ll get it right nex’ year for sure! Budori, you ain’t slept a night like you’ve wanted since ye came here to my house. So, whether it’s five days or ten, you go ahead an’ sleep real good, ye hear? When ye get up, I’ll show ye some magickin’ I’ve worked up out in that field there. Until then, everyone in this here house is eatin’ nothing but buckwheat noodles this winter. Though, you probably like buckwheat, don’t ye?”
With that, the master plopped his hat on his head and marched out of the house.
Budori went out to the barn as he had been told by his master, but as much as he tried to sleep, the mud field was still in bad shape. So, with not very much of a choice, Budori dragged his tired body outside to take a look. Standing atop one of the embankments with his arms folded across his chest was the master, having arrived sometime earlier. If one looked closer, one could see the mud field was full of water. The stalks of Oriza were just poking their leaves out above the water’s surface, on top of which floated a layer of petroleum that shone like liquid fire in the sunlight.
“Right this very moment, I’m a tryin’ to steam out this plague.” said the master.
“The source of the plague will die from the petroleum?” asked Budori.
“A person pickled up their heads in petroleum will die, won’t they?” the master said as he took a deep breath and shrugged. Just then, the man from down the irrigation stream came stomping down the road huffing and puffing, shouting, “What in tarnation are you doin’, putting oil in the water like that? It’s all flowing downstream into my field!”
The master, trying as hard as he could to contain himself, replied calmly, “What do ye mean about the oil in the water? If something breaks out in the Oriza yer s’posed te put oil an’ the like in the water.”
“Well, that don’t keep it from runnin’ into my field!”
“Well, if it’s runnin’ into yer field, its just because the water’s a flowing in and the oil comes along with it!”
“Well if that’s the case, then why dontcha shut shut yer gate so the water don’t flow into my field?”
“Well, I’d shut my gate so the water don’t flow into yer field, but that over there ain’t my gate to shut!”
The man from next door threw up his arms in anger and, with saying a word, sloshed through the water and began to pile mud up around his gate.
The master, with a sly smile, said, “That fella’s a real piece a’ work, I tell ya. If I’d stopped the water from my end, he’d be all sorts of angry that I stopped it, so I got him to stop it himself, ye see? That way, if we plug up that other gate, the water’ll stay right at about head-level with the plants. Well, let’s you ‘n I head home.”
And the master went ahead walking with renewed energy in the direction of the house.
The next morning, Budori went again with his master to look at the mudfields. The master plucked a single leaf from out of the water and examined it intently, but he looked nonetheless disappointed. The day after that, he looked exactly the same. The day after that, he looked exactly the same. The morning after that, the master said, with a grim resolution, “Well, Budori, looks like we’re sowing buckwheat after all. You go over there and break down the water gate, will ya?”
Budori did as he was told and broke it down. All the oily water would surely rush with terrible momentum into the neighbor’s paddy. He was sure the neighbor would come over, furious, and sure enough the owner of the land next door arrived carrying an enormous sickle.
“What are you trying to pull, lettin’ all that petroleum into some else’s field?”
“The master once again pulled a voice from somewhere deep in his gut and said,
“What’s so wrong with lettin’ loose a little petroleum?”
“All my Oriza’ll die, that’s what!”
“Before you start shoutin’ about whether your Oriza’s gonna die or live, take a look at the Oriza in my mud field first. As of today, they been covered up to their heads in petroleum. Even so, they’re still standin’ there plain as day. Sure they’re all red from the plague, but they’re still fightin’ thanks to that petroleum! You’re just letting the oil flow right on by the feet of your Oriza, but probably all fer the better!”
“Yer saying petroleum’s like fertilizer?” the man opposite the master said, his face turning a much softer color.
“Well, I don’t much know if petroleum’s like fertilizer or if it ain’t, but all petroleum is is oil, right?”
The neighboring man’s mood seemed to brighten and he smiled. The water gradually receded and in little time at all, the roots of the Oriza began to show. They were covered in red blotches and looked downright scorched.
“Arright, I give on trying to reap me some Oriza here.” said the master, laughing. He and Budori then began to cut down every last stalk of Oriza and walked about in the dirt sowing buckwheat. That year, just as the master had said, everyone in the house really did eat nothing but buckwheat.
The next spring, the master said to Budori,
“Budori, since the field this year is only about a third the trouble it was last year, work is gonna be pretty easy. So, instead, you take these books my dead son’s used to read and study ‘em good and hard. You figure out a way to raise Oriza that’s so amazin’ it’ll make anyone who laughed at me for tryin’ to be a spec’later shout out in surprise!”
And so, he gave Budori a large pile of assorted books. In his free time from work, he read every last book from cover to cover. Therein, there was a book that spoke about someone named Kubo’s philosophies in regards to a variety of things. Budori found it incredibly intriguing, reading it time and time again. He also heard that this person taught month-long school classes in a city in Ihatov and felt very much that he would like to go there and study.
So, early that summer, Budori truly managed to distinguish himself in the master’s eyes. When, at about the same time as the year before, the Oriza broke out with a plague, Budori used wood ash and salt and was able to prevent it from overtaking the crop. Then, in the middle of August, the every last stalk of Oriza came into ear. On each ear bloomed tiny, white flowers. Each flower then gradually turned into a tiny light blue grain of rice and everything undulated like lazy waves in the wind.
The master was nothing short of bursting with pride. To every person who came by, he would gloat,
“Well, I failed at being an Oriza spec’later for the last four years now, but wouldn’t ye know I got those four years back in one shot! That ain’t half bad, if ye ask me!”
However, the next year did not go nearly so well. When it came time to plant the Oriza, not a single drop of rain fell. The canals were parched, the mud fields were cracked, and by autumn there was only enough food to last through the winter. Though there was hope for next year, the following year’s weather turned out to be just as dry. Continually hoping next year would be better, Budori and the master were eventually unable to even lay down fertilizer. The horses were sold, and slowly but surely, so were the mud fields.
One fall, the master said sorrowfully to Budori,
“Budori, I used to be a great farmer of Ihatov and I made quite a bit doin’ it, too. But thanks to the cold and the drought not lettin’ up, my mud fields are down to bein’ a third of what they used to be and next year we won’t even have any fertilizer to lay down in ‘em. It ain’t just me, either. There ain’t anyone in Ihatov anymore who can put fertilizer to lay down. Thanks to that, there ain’t even any use in me thankin’ ye for all the work ye done for me. It’s a shame that you, in the prime of yer young workin’ years, came to work here. It ain’t much, but if you could, take this with ye and go get yerself some better luck someplace else.”
The master handed Budori a sack of gold, brand new linen clothes dyed a dark navy blue, and a pair of red leather shoes. Budori forgot all about how hard the work had ever been, and although he did not need any of these gifts and wanted to stay and work, there would be no work for him to do. So he thanked the master again and again, parted with his master and the mud fields where he had worked so hard for six years, and set off walking down the road in the direction of the station.
Covered from head to toe in ash, Budori spent half a day’s time walking through the forest toward town. Every time a gust of wind blustered by, the ash came falling from the trees in a swirling, smoky blizzard. However, as he drew closer to the plains, the ash grew thinner, the trees looked green again, and all footprints had vanished entirely.
When he finally emerged from the forest, Budori could not help but stare in awe. From right before his very eyes to the furthest of the blinding-white clouds lay stretched the plains divided into neat, construction paper patches of dazzling shades of gentle peach, rich emerald, and ashen grey. Looking closer, where there was pink, there were in truth, short little flowers blooming everywhere as the bees marched busily to and fro amongst them; where there was green, there were actually dense grass fields putting out little sheaves of grain; and where there was grey, there were muddy, shallow marshes. They were all divided from one another by low, narrow embankments and people worked using horses to dig up and stir the mud.
As all this went on, Budori had walked only a little ways down road when he saw two men standing in the road conversing in a way that seemed suspiciously like arguing. The red-whiskered man on the right spoke,
“I’m sticking with bein’ a spec’later no matter what!”
With that, the other man, a tall fellow in a white, wide-brimmed bamboo hat said,
“When I say ‘give it up,’ you best be listenin’! With all the top dressin’ you laid down, you’ll grow a nice load a straw, but not one speck ‘o rice!”
“You’re wrong! By my word, I say this year’ll be as hot as the past three put together! You’ll see when I grow three years’ worth of rice!”
“Give it up! Give it up! Just give it up already!”
“No! I won’t give up! Seeing as everyone drowned the flowers, I figure I’ll just put down a good sixty cakes of bean meal and just less than four hundred kilograms of bird manure. Being so busy and the like, I’m gonna want some help with the black-eyed peas.”
Without a thought, Budori approached the two men and bowed.
“If that’s so, would you mind putting me to work?”
The two men looked up, startled, and put their hands to their chins as they examined Budori. Suddenly, Red-Whiskers burst into laughter!
“Fine, fine! You’ll be perfect for guidin’ the plow-horses! You’re coming with me, okay? First things first, though. You’re in this with me until fall, sink or swim, unnerstand? In which case, let’s go! And right when I was wantin’ help with those peas, too!” said Red-Whiskers to Budori and the old man, respectively as they walked quickly to the farm.
After a while, the older man took a moment to see them off, grumbling
“Don’t listen to a thing us old folks say! You’ll only end up in tears, ye hear?”
From then on, Budori went day after day after day to the mud fields and stirred mud with the horse. With each passing day each pink and green paper patches were trod down, one by one, and gradually turned into mud fields. Every now and then the horse would kick up muddy water and spray everyone in the face. As soon one mud field as finished, a new one was begun. Days were gruelingly long and finally Budori could no longer tell if he was walking or not. The mud tasted like candy and the mud-water as nourishing as soup. The wind blew time and again, kicking up tiny waves like the scales of fish and making all the water for miles sparkle as if made of tin. Slowly, slowly through the sky drifted sour-sweet clouds which looked, truth be told, worthy of a little jealousy.
Twenty days passed in this fashion and at long last every last mud field were nice and gloppy. The next morning, the owner worked himself into frenzy, working with all the people who had gathered from far and wide to plant in every field thousands of green, spear-like shoots of Oriza. When all the work came to an end after about ten days, the owner took everyone to work the houses of those who had volunteered their help in planting. After a full circulation of that, everyone returned to their respective fields to spend day after day after day tending to the weeds. Though the shoots belonging to Budori’s master were so green they looked nearly black, the shoots in all the neighboring fields were a thin, sickly green. And so, it was such that one could see their field from any great distance, even as far as Saccai. When seven days of weed-pulling had passed, they went again to help others. However, one morning when Budori’s master was leading him past one of his on fields, he suddenly cried out, “AH!” and stood straight as a pole in shock. His whole figured had turned pale blue, right down to his lips, and he stared weakly ahead.
“A plague’s broken out…” said the master at long last.
“Do you have a headache or something, sir?” asked Budori.
“I don’t have it. The Oriza does. Look.”
The master pointed at the stalks of Oriza. When Budori squatted down to examine them, lo and behold every last leaf was covered in little red spots the likes of which Budori had never seen. Tears in his eyes, Budori’s master walked a single, silent lap around the mud fields before he began to head into the house. Just as the worried Budori started in after his master, the man wet down a rag, put it on his forehead, and lay down to sleep right there on the wood floor without saying a single word. As soon as he did, the master’s wife came running in from out front.
“Is it true a plague has broken out among the Oriza?”
“It is. It’s all done for.”
“Can’t anythin’ be done?”
“I said it’s all done for, didn’t I? It’s jus’ like what happen five years ago.”
“See, now didn’t I tell you to give up on bein’ a spec’later? Even gran’pa gave up after that!”
The lady of the house broke out into flustered sobbing. As she did, the Master suddenly seemed to regain his health and stood himself right up.
“Arright. Will I, one ‘a the greatest farmers in the Great Plains of Ihatov who ye kin count on one hand be defeated by sumthin’ like this? Arright. I’ll get it right nex’ year for sure! Budori, you ain’t slept a night like you’ve wanted since ye came here to my house. So, whether it’s five days or ten, you go ahead an’ sleep real good, ye hear? When ye get up, I’ll show ye some magickin’ I’ve worked up out in that field there. Until then, everyone in this here house is eatin’ nothing but buckwheat noodles this winter. Though, you probably like buckwheat, don’t ye?”
With that, the master plopped his hat on his head and marched out of the house.
Budori went out to the barn as he had been told by his master, but as much as he tried to sleep, the mud field was still in bad shape. So, with not very much of a choice, Budori dragged his tired body outside to take a look. Standing atop one of the embankments with his arms folded across his chest was the master, having arrived sometime earlier. If one looked closer, one could see the mud field was full of water. The stalks of Oriza were just poking their leaves out above the water’s surface, on top of which floated a layer of petroleum that shone like liquid fire in the sunlight.
“Right this very moment, I’m a tryin’ to steam out this plague.” said the master.
“The source of the plague will die from the petroleum?” asked Budori.
“A person pickled up their heads in petroleum will die, won’t they?” the master said as he took a deep breath and shrugged. Just then, the man from down the irrigation stream came stomping down the road huffing and puffing, shouting, “What in tarnation are you doin’, putting oil in the water like that? It’s all flowing downstream into my field!”
The master, trying as hard as he could to contain himself, replied calmly, “What do ye mean about the oil in the water? If something breaks out in the Oriza yer s’posed te put oil an’ the like in the water.”
“Well, that don’t keep it from runnin’ into my field!”
“Well, if it’s runnin’ into yer field, its just because the water’s a flowing in and the oil comes along with it!”
“Well if that’s the case, then why dontcha shut shut yer gate so the water don’t flow into my field?”
“Well, I’d shut my gate so the water don’t flow into yer field, but that over there ain’t my gate to shut!”
The man from next door threw up his arms in anger and, with saying a word, sloshed through the water and began to pile mud up around his gate.
The master, with a sly smile, said, “That fella’s a real piece a’ work, I tell ya. If I’d stopped the water from my end, he’d be all sorts of angry that I stopped it, so I got him to stop it himself, ye see? That way, if we plug up that other gate, the water’ll stay right at about head-level with the plants. Well, let’s you ‘n I head home.”
And the master went ahead walking with renewed energy in the direction of the house.
The next morning, Budori went again with his master to look at the mudfields. The master plucked a single leaf from out of the water and examined it intently, but he looked nonetheless disappointed. The day after that, he looked exactly the same. The day after that, he looked exactly the same. The morning after that, the master said, with a grim resolution, “Well, Budori, looks like we’re sowing buckwheat after all. You go over there and break down the water gate, will ya?”
Budori did as he was told and broke it down. All the oily water would surely rush with terrible momentum into the neighbor’s paddy. He was sure the neighbor would come over, furious, and sure enough the owner of the land next door arrived carrying an enormous sickle.
“What are you trying to pull, lettin’ all that petroleum into some else’s field?”
“The master once again pulled a voice from somewhere deep in his gut and said,
“What’s so wrong with lettin’ loose a little petroleum?”
“All my Oriza’ll die, that’s what!”
“Before you start shoutin’ about whether your Oriza’s gonna die or live, take a look at the Oriza in my mud field first. As of today, they been covered up to their heads in petroleum. Even so, they’re still standin’ there plain as day. Sure they’re all red from the plague, but they’re still fightin’ thanks to that petroleum! You’re just letting the oil flow right on by the feet of your Oriza, but probably all fer the better!”
“Yer saying petroleum’s like fertilizer?” the man opposite the master said, his face turning a much softer color.
“Well, I don’t much know if petroleum’s like fertilizer or if it ain’t, but all petroleum is is oil, right?”
The neighboring man’s mood seemed to brighten and he smiled. The water gradually receded and in little time at all, the roots of the Oriza began to show. They were covered in red blotches and looked downright scorched.
“Arright, I give on trying to reap me some Oriza here.” said the master, laughing. He and Budori then began to cut down every last stalk of Oriza and walked about in the dirt sowing buckwheat. That year, just as the master had said, everyone in the house really did eat nothing but buckwheat.
The next spring, the master said to Budori,
“Budori, since the field this year is only about a third the trouble it was last year, work is gonna be pretty easy. So, instead, you take these books my dead son’s used to read and study ‘em good and hard. You figure out a way to raise Oriza that’s so amazin’ it’ll make anyone who laughed at me for tryin’ to be a spec’later shout out in surprise!”
And so, he gave Budori a large pile of assorted books. In his free time from work, he read every last book from cover to cover. Therein, there was a book that spoke about someone named Kubo’s philosophies in regards to a variety of things. Budori found it incredibly intriguing, reading it time and time again. He also heard that this person taught month-long school classes in a city in Ihatov and felt very much that he would like to go there and study.
So, early that summer, Budori truly managed to distinguish himself in the master’s eyes. When, at about the same time as the year before, the Oriza broke out with a plague, Budori used wood ash and salt and was able to prevent it from overtaking the crop. Then, in the middle of August, the every last stalk of Oriza came into ear. On each ear bloomed tiny, white flowers. Each flower then gradually turned into a tiny light blue grain of rice and everything undulated like lazy waves in the wind.
The master was nothing short of bursting with pride. To every person who came by, he would gloat,
“Well, I failed at being an Oriza spec’later for the last four years now, but wouldn’t ye know I got those four years back in one shot! That ain’t half bad, if ye ask me!”
However, the next year did not go nearly so well. When it came time to plant the Oriza, not a single drop of rain fell. The canals were parched, the mud fields were cracked, and by autumn there was only enough food to last through the winter. Though there was hope for next year, the following year’s weather turned out to be just as dry. Continually hoping next year would be better, Budori and the master were eventually unable to even lay down fertilizer. The horses were sold, and slowly but surely, so were the mud fields.
One fall, the master said sorrowfully to Budori,
“Budori, I used to be a great farmer of Ihatov and I made quite a bit doin’ it, too. But thanks to the cold and the drought not lettin’ up, my mud fields are down to bein’ a third of what they used to be and next year we won’t even have any fertilizer to lay down in ‘em. It ain’t just me, either. There ain’t anyone in Ihatov anymore who can put fertilizer to lay down. Thanks to that, there ain’t even any use in me thankin’ ye for all the work ye done for me. It’s a shame that you, in the prime of yer young workin’ years, came to work here. It ain’t much, but if you could, take this with ye and go get yerself some better luck someplace else.”
The master handed Budori a sack of gold, brand new linen clothes dyed a dark navy blue, and a pair of red leather shoes. Budori forgot all about how hard the work had ever been, and although he did not need any of these gifts and wanted to stay and work, there would be no work for him to do. So he thanked the master again and again, parted with his master and the mud fields where he had worked so hard for six years, and set off walking down the road in the direction of the station.