When the music is gone, when he has played out the last wringing ache of memory, Anton walks back to the house. The cornet hangs from his hand; it drags through the tall grasses that grow along the irrigation ditch. He has no strength left to raise the instrument. In the distance, small and pale against the night, he can see Paul and Al herding the milk cow into the pen beneath the old cottage. Locking the animals up for the night—life on the old farm goes on, whether Anton is there with his family or no. Life everywhere continues. It is inexorable, and in its persistence, mysterious and
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