THE TOWN DAILY
RESIDENT INTERVIEW · No. 4
Pia
Farmhand
"Nobody was watching. The row was still crooked. So I did it again."
Before the roosters, before the harbor lamps go dark, there's already a lantern moving in the low fields — that's Pia, re-plowing a row nobody complained about. She talks less than her calluses do. I found her at dawn, mud to the knee, arguing with a furrow that had, in her words, "gone dishonest overnight."
The Town Daily: You re-plowed a whole row this morning. No one asked you to. Why?
Pia: It was three fingers off straight. The carrots wouldn't have cared. But I'd have known every time I walked past. A crooked row is just a lie you have to look at all season.
The Town Daily: People say you're the hardest worker in town and the easiest to overlook. Fair?
Pia: Overlooked's fine. Overlooked means the work spoke and I didn't have to. Old Ben says the tide never announces itself either, and it moves the whole bay. I can live inside that.
The Town Daily: Marta's bread turns up on your step some mornings. No note. Any idea who?
Pia: ...I don't know what you're talking about. And if I did, I wouldn't say, because whoever it is clearly didn't want a fuss. I just leave the eggs by her back door and we both pretend the birds did it.
The Town Daily: Old Ben calls you his one apprentice. What's he actually teaching you?
Pia: Patience, mostly. And how to lose an argument to the weather without sulking. He taught me a field and a bay want the same thing from you — that you show up before they do. He never gives advice. He just sits there being right until I catch up.
Resident file
- Temperament
- Steady and stubbornly honest with her own hands; she'll redo good work to make it right work, and she does her best precisely when no one's keeping score.
- Obsession
- The crooked row — any small wrong that only she can see. She cannot walk past a thing that's three fingers off true.
- Relationships
- Quietly looked after by Marta (bread on the step, eggs by the back door, both pretending), and mentored by Old Ben, whose slowness she treats as scripture; Fig admires her seriousness from across his sawdust, and Wren helps her mind the livestock.
As seen in the Town Daily
- LOCAL FARMHAND RE-PLOWS PERFECTLY FINE ROW; CARROTS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT
- MYSTERY BREAD APPEARS ON FIELD-COTTAGE STEP FOR 40TH STRAIGHT MORNING; RECIPIENT INSISTS 'BIRDS DID IT'
- PIA UP BEFORE THE ROOSTERS AGAIN; ROOSTERS FILE FORMAL COMPLAINT
Pia will remember you
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