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kids. Not worth the cost of the powder to blow him to hell or the match to touch it off with. I spat in his eye and came out here from Ohio when I was nineteen. You could still get decent homestead land back then, and I lied about my age to file a claim. It was a whole new life. Looks to me like you’re a man looking for a new life, too. I hope you find it.”
    “What do you want to be?” said the photographer.
    “I’m not sure. Something with machinery, I think.”
    “Up in Saskatchewan last year, I saw a machine called a ‘combine.’ It was like a reaper and a threshing machine, all put together. It took twelve horses to pull it, and a gasoline engine to run all the inside works, but it could move through a field mowing a twelve-foot wide swath and threshing it, all at the same time.”
    “What do they have for a crew?”
    “Four men can bring in the whole harvest.”
    “Good heavens,” said Mrs. Christian.
    “That doesn’t seem right, somehow,” said Charlie.
    “It would be the death of the threshing bee, that’s for sure,” said Walter.
    “Well, it was definitely the end of my business,” said the photographer. “If everybody farmed like that, I’d be back to shooting nothing but weddings and portraits.”
    “Why would anyone want to do that?” said Mrs. Christian. “The harvest is the best time of the year. There are neighbors we never see any other time. It’s better than Christmas or Easter, even. It’s the time when we’re, um… Well, I would just cry if it all came to an end.”
    “Violet, my dear, I think we have finally found something we can agree on.”
    It had never occurred to Charlie that he might live long enough to see the passing of an entire era. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He turned to the photographer.
    “Can you promise delivery of one of your pictures by Christmas?”
    “Sure. Everybody always wants that.”
    “Then I would like you to send one to my sister. Could you also put in a note saying, ‘Merry Christmas from your loving brother?’”
    “Easiest thing in the world.” He produced a notebook from inside his coat and flipped to a clear page. “You don’t figure you’ll be making it home for Christmas?”
    “Maybe not for a lot of them.” He paid the man his three dollars, gave him the name and address, and got up to go to the barn to make his bed.
    “Breakfast at dawn,” said Walter.
    “I’ll make you some lunch to carry, too,” said his wife.
    Charlie hoped Walter was right about the best way to farm. He really wanted him and his wife to prosper.

Chapter 4
    Bringing in the Bacon
    Charlie’s next job didn’t go so well. After a day and a half of walking, he caught up with the same Nichols and Shepard Red River Special machine that had done his own family’s threshing, and he hired on for the following day. He agreed to work as a spike pitcher, feeding forkfuls of grain from the constant line of hayrack wagons into the vee-shaped conveyor belts of the separator apron. It was the hardest job on the crew, the job that nobody else wanted, and the only job where there was never a moment’s letup. The farmer agreed to pay him five and a half dollars plus his meals. The pay was to come directly from the farmer, since the custom thresher operator, who owned the machines, had only a fireman, steam engineer, and separator man for a crew. It was a common enough arrangement.
    For Charlie, the worst part of any heavy labor was the anticipation of it. He had never been afraid of hard work, but he always wondered if this would be the day when his body betrayed him with muscle spasms or cramps or heat exhaustion. He didn’t worry about pain or even injury, but he would rather die than look as if he wasn’t holding up his end of the work. He never had, even in that autumn of his thirteenth year, when he had wielded a scythe for twelve hours. But he always thought it was possible.
    He ate breakfast with the other hired help at 5:00 and then filed out