Today, the tool barn is sweating in the heat, a heat that promises a storm. I need — we need, my volunteer and I — to get to work. The swing plow is the lighter of the two and nearest the barn door, but I know that with just two oxen instead of the usual team of four and only two pairs of hands to manage it, I need a set of wheels to support the beam at its fore end. To plow today without a set of wheels would be too difficult and punishing. I’d not get any depth of furrow. The implement would throw its weight against the stilts and handles, and nothing we could do would tame it. So, I pull the swing plow to the side, and in the slanting shafts of light, busy with the dust that I am throwing up, I find the parts of the second plow, the one with wheels. I pull them clear and start to line them up outside the barn.

I do not need to go back to the pillory for my help. He is standing with the oxen, watching me. All three of them are watching me. He must have heard the clatter of the tools, and understood that he should come. He’s ready for the labor. I cannot say he seems a happy man, but at least he looks more upright than he did this morning. And his color has improved, no longer donkey-gray and as mottled as the beasts. He’s brought the sword with him, I see. But that seems sensible. He will not offer any help until I say he should. He doesn’t even greet me. I am the elder man and might expect at least a nod. He does speak, though. “Nose before ear,” he says, without any warmth or flavor to his voice.

I stand and nod at him, surprised. How has he understood so much? It’s not a phrase I’ve heard for quite a while. Possibly he only means it plainly. He thinks I’m not a practiced countryman. He wants me to remember that when I put the plow parts together, the coulter knife that opens up the soil — the nose — must go before the share, the wider blade. And that giant’s arrowhead which cuts the furrow must go before the moldboard — the ear — that throws the ridge. Only a fool or a townsman — me, he thinks, perhaps — would attempt anything different. Without the coulter at the front, the earth will not give way. Without the moldboard at the rear, the earth will not be sufficiently turned.

But there is a greater meaning to the phrase. It is a warning — among country folk, at least — that life should be allowed to proceed in its natural and logical order. In other words, you do not eat before you cook, you do not weave before you shear, you do not attempt to light the fire until you have the kindling, and — to the point — you cannot reap your corn until you’ve plowed and sown seed. He’s obviously guessed what this day of work will be. He understands its greater meaning too: that plowing is our sacrament, our solemn oath, the way we grace and consecrate our land. Not to mark our futures in the soil before the winter comes is to say there’s no next year. I cannot admit to that. The coming spring must be defended. So, we’ll put the nose before the ear. And then we’ll plow.

“Come help me, then,” I say.

As he moves toward me, I can tell he must have been a plowman in the past, before he was a newcomer. His skew is very slightly whiffed, another country phrase. You can always spot a plowman from his uneven legs, they say: the long one’s for the furrow and the short one’s for the ridge. So I let him do the assembly work. I steady the share-beam while my new associate secures the blades, the moldboard and the yoke. And then we set off for the barley stub, a pair of willing oxen and a pair of workingmen, intending to stir and loosen soil one final time.

The barley field has lost much of its spruce since harvesting. It takes only a few days of neglect for weeds and tares to settle in. Already there are newcomers, a tough-leafed smear of green where there was rusty gold. But still the marks my neighbors made are there to read for anyone that knows them well. That knew them well, I ought to say. The stubble has preserved their signatures. Here is our proof we brought the harvest in ourselves. I can tell where neighbor Carr and men like him — thorough, puritanical — have swept their scythes. The cut is low, the stubble short, no longer than a thumb. They haven’t missed a blade of straw, and I am sure they won’t have missed much barley either. Gleaners shouldn’t step in neighbor Carr’s unstinting wake, unless they don’t want any ale for the winter evenings. The wavy cut is Brooker Higgs’s best work. He’s always busy talking when he reaps. His head is raised. His circles are too large. The more he reaches out, the more of the corn he misses. The tallest stub, up to the knee in places, is eager children’s work, or the best that Willy Kip with his bad back can do. His portion looks as if the field was the victim of a massacre. Some horsemen came and, leaning from their saddles, felled the barley with their swords.

It seems an age since I was here with Mr. Quill and Master Kent. We’d named our Gleaning Queen and the master had said what he always says about “this noble day,” how in order of their station everyone and everything would benefit from gleaning — the families who worked so hard, the thoughtless cattle and the thankless geese, and finally the hogs. He had not said that hogs precede the oxen and the plow. He had not reminded us that this once-was barley field was set aside for winter-planted wheat. He had not promised that bread would follow beer. I remember thinking, bitterly, So our master’s dreams for us do not include another crop. Our final harvest must have come and gone. I remember Master Jordan’s words: “You’ll never need the plow again.” We’ll see.

Mistress Beldam’s husband has taken charge. I’m left to lead the animals and urge them on, flicking their pink ears. He grasps the plow handles and plants his feet into the soil, leaning back in expectation of the pull. He has to find a leverage that takes account of cattle, beam and soil, and finding it ennobles him: I’ve not seen his face so passionate up till now, or so full of consequence. He knows what plowing is. If anyone is watching — and I hope Mistress Beldam is — it will look as if he’s pulling against the oxen rather than working with them, that he’s the strongest of the three. Just for today, he’s walking on a field in heaven rather than on earth, he’s plowing up the lands of time, marking out the ridges and the furrows of a trying life. I can tell he has debts to settle of his own. Did not Mr. Quill say that these newcomers were fugitives from sheep themselves, exiles from their own commons? That would explain the man’s evident keenness to commence. We’ve broken bread together. Now he wants to break the earth with me. We’ll liberate the spirits of the soil. We’ll let the little devils breathe.

The key to plowing is to hold a steady line, to be symmetrical, a skill I never quite mastered. I point down the field at a tapered oak which stands high above the hedgerow in the dell. That is the headland we will be aiming for with our first cut, I say. I fancy that even the oxen lift their heads and take a line on it. They place it in the middle of their horns. The oak is known for being still. It will not duck its head or lean, no matter what the winds might try. An oak is trustworthy. It wants the plow to find a true, straight way, then it can preside all year over a pattern that is pleasing to its eye.

The field seems limitless from where we stand, and beyond our mastery. It would normally take twelve days to plow its stubble under, even if we had our usual team of four oxen, and twenty brawny men to help and take their turns. But we are only two, and we do not mean to make a meal of it. We mean to make only a day of it. A narrow scar is all we have in mind: a field length down, the headland turn, a field length back. We will, though, do our best to make a noble and an honest scar. It will be straight and proud if good fortune labors at our sides. The single central ridge will be a proper height, the pair of furrows deep. “This will be … to all of our advantages,” I tell my helpmate, hoping to provoke a conversation. But he stays silent. He loops the reins over his head, with a practiced hand and a fitting nonchalance, and holds them taut round his right shoulder and under his left arm. I flick the oxen. We begin. Three steps, and already we are opening a top and putting up a high-backed slice of soil.