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mean with Tom. Old and tough and mean, a man who knew the woods and hills and river. A profane man who swore bitterly at his aching and arthritic joints, who cursed the fate of growing old, who brooked no foolishness and no arrogance except his own foolishness and arrogance. A fanatic when it came to tools and weapons and to domestic animals. Although a horse might be roundly cursed, it was never flogged, never mistreated, well taken care of—for a horse would be hard to replace. One might be bought, of course, if one knew where to go; or stolen, and stealing, as a rule, was easier than buying, but either took a great deal of time and effort and there was a certain danger in either of them. Weapons you must not use lightly. You shot no arrow uselessly. You shot at a mark to improve your skill; the only other time you shot was when you shot to kill. You learned to use a knife the way it should be used and you took care of knives, for knives were hard to obtain. The same thing with tools. When you were through with plowing, you cleaned and polished and greased the plow and stored it in the barn loft, for a plow must be guarded against rust—it must last through many generations. Harness for the horses was oiled and cobbled and kept in good repair. When you were finished with your hoeing, you washed and dried the hoe before putting it away. When haying was done the scythe was cleaned, sharpened, and coated with grease and hung back in its place. There could be no sloppiness, no forgetting. It was a way of life. To make do with what you had, to take care of it, to guard against its loss, to use it correctly, so that no damage would be done to it.
    His father Tom could recall only vaguely. He had always thought of him as having been lost, for that was the story he’d been told when he was old enough to understand. It seemed, however, that no one had actually known what had happened to him. One spring morning, according to the story, he had set out for the river with a fish spear in hand and a bag slung across his shoulder. It was time for the carp to spawn, coming into the shoals of the river valley’s sloughs and lakes to lay and fertilize their eggs. In the frenzy of the season they had no fear in them and were easy prey. Each year, as that year, Tom’s father had gone to the river when the carp were running, perhaps making several trips, coming home each time bowed down by the bulging sack full of carp slung across his shoulder, using the reversed spear as a walking stick to help himself along. Brought home, the carp were scaled and cleaned, cut into fillets and smoked to provide food throughout a good part of the summer months.
    But this time he did not return. By late afternoon, Tom’s mother and the old grandfather set out to search for him, Tom riding on his grandfather’s shoulder. They came back late at night, having found nothing. The next day the grandfather went out again and this time found the spear, abandoned beside a shallow lake in which the carp still rolled, and a short distance off, the sack, but nothing else. There was no sign of Tom’s father, no indication of what had happened to him. He had vanished and there was no trace of him and since that time there had been no word of him.
    Life went on much as it had before, a little harder now since there were fewer to grub a living from the land. However, they did not do too badly. There was always food to eat and wood to burn and hides to tan for clothing and for footwear. One horse died—of old age, more than likely—and the old man went away and was gone for ten days or more, then returned with two horses. He never said how he had got them and no one ever asked. They knew he must have stolen them, for he had taken nothing with him that would have served to buy them. They were young and strong and it was a good thing that he’d got the two of them, for a short time later, the other old horse died as well and two horses