The year the flood drowned the fields, the whole village shared its seeds

The flood that summer drowned every field in Riverbend Village in three days.

When the water went down, the whole village stood on the field ridges looking at a mess of silt, and nobody spoke. The autumn grain was gone beyond argument, and the winter wheat sowing was already at the door. The seed had rotted in the ground.

Fifth Grandfather, the oldest man in the village, stepped forward and said the thing people would repeat for years afterwards. "The fields belong to all of us. The trouble belongs to all of us now. Whoever still has seed put by, bring it out. We divide it across the village."

Riverbend had an old custom. After every harvest each household set aside a small portion of its best seed against the following year. Fifth Grandfather proposed pooling all of it and handing it out according to need: the good seed to the families with rich soil so they could sow first, the drought-hardy seed to the households on the high ground, the vegetable seed split evenly down to the last door. He led from the front, carrying out on his back a whole sack of wheat seed he had stored for three years.

Someone muttered, "If we give the seed away, what does my family eat next year?"

Fifth Grandfather said, "The whole village is here. What is there to be afraid of? Your house gets back on its feet first, and next year what you lend mine won't be a loan thrown away."

So that autumn Riverbend saw a scene no outsider would have believed. The whole village queued at the threshing floor with its own seed, and the seed was registered, inspected and allocated. The accounts went up on the blackboard in chalk. Who had brought how much, who had taken how much, plain for anyone to read. The village accountant pressed his thumbprint to the ledger. "These seeds will be paid back double at next harvest." Not one person refused to press.

The wheat that year was the most united planting Riverbend had ever done. If a household's seedlings went wrong, the neighbours walked over to look. If a household was short of labour, hands appeared. When the harvest came the following summer, every family came forward to return seed: the same varieties and the same quantities they had borrowed, but the best batch they had. The chalk accounts were struck out one by one, until a single line was left, written at Fifth Grandfather's instruction. "Don't wipe this page. Leave it for the children to see."

When the seed went out it was grain. What came back was not only grain but a village's confidence: a flood can drown the fields, it cannot drown people standing together.

The story had a sequel. Ten years later Riverbend was known across the district as a seed village. Because of that one division of seed, every household had put its best into the common pile, and the village simply built a seed house for selecting and keeping stock. On its wall hangs a photograph of the old blackboard, and beneath the photograph a line that Fifth Grandfather had added before he died. "Keep the best seed. Deal with people at their truest."

The local textbook used by the village primary school now carries the story. The teacher asked the children why the village had been willing to divide its seed that year. One child's answer was written down. "They knew it was no use only saving yourself. It only counted if the whole village lived."

The chalk line on the threshing-floor blackboard has been protected properly now. When the village renovated its activity room, they had a glass case made for that blackboard. Every year when the new wheat goes into the granary, the old people bring the children to look at it and read the old accounts aloud, pointing at the chalk. Fifth Grandfather has been gone nearly ten years, and every child can tell the story of his sack of wheat seed. The shelves of the seed house hold dozens of crop varieties, and the labels carry, under the name of the variety, one small extra line: source household. The grandfathers' names, the fathers', the grandchildren's. Generation after generation, all of them there.