Limbani.

The clay that doesn't crack in the kiln is in one very specific place: the lip of the bank, right where the riverside is coming away in pieces. The clay higher up gives cracked brick, and cracked brick doesn't get paid for. So Limbani goes down to the same foot of the bank flood after flood and carries up the mud he needs. He has watched the edge pull back since he started and he still digs the same lip. He doesn't argue it with anyone. Along the bank nobody asks him about it either, because everybody knows where the good stuff is.

At sixteen he watched a flood take the lip of the bank away in front of him. He measured out with a cane where the edge had been the year before and it came to four paces. That same week he was digging the same spot again, because that spot is the one that gives the good clay. What he knows about water is what you learn by getting into it: a hippopotamus does not float and does not swim either. It is too dense. It walks in, keeps its feet on the bottom and crosses underneath in bounds, at around 8 km/h.