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back into place, knowing there was more work ahead: the well would have to be filled in. Ah, but that was long overdue, anyway. It was a danger, which was why I had planted the circle of stakes around it. Lets go in the house and have breakfast.
    I couldnt eat a single bite!
    But he did. We both did. I fried eggs, bacon, and potatoes, and we ate every bite. Hard work makes a person hungry. Everyone knows that.
    Henry slept until late afternoon. I stayed awake. Some of those hours I spent at the kitchen table, drinking cup after cup of black coffee. Some of them I spent walking in the corn, up one row and down another, listening to the swordlike leaves rattle in a light breeze. When its June and corns on the come, it seems almost to talk. This disquiets some people (and there are the foolish ones who say its the sound of the corn actually growing), but I had always found that quiet rustling a comfort. It cleared my mind. Now, sitting in this city hotel room, I miss it. City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.
    Confessing, I find, is also hard work.
    I walked, I listened to the corn, I tried to plan, and at last I did plan. I had to, and not just for myself.
    There had been a time not 20 years before, when a man in my position neednt have worried; in those days, a mans business was his own, especially if he happened to be a respected farmer: a fellow who paid his taxes, went to church on Sundays, supported the Hemingford Stars baseball team, and voted the straight Republican ticket. I think that in those days, all sorts of things happened on farms out in what we called the middle. Things that went unremarked, let alone reported. In those days, a mans wife was considered a mans business, and if she disappeared, there was an end to it.
    But those days were gone, and even if they hadnt been there was the land. The 100 acres. The Farrington Company wanted those acres for their God damned hog butchery, and Arlette had led them to believe they were going to get them. That meant danger, and danger meant that daydreams and half-plans would no longer suffice.
    When I went back to the house at midafternoon, I was tired but clear-headed and calm at last. Our few cows were bellowing, their morning milking hours overdue. I did that chore, then put them to pasture where Id let them stay until sunset, instead of herding them back in for their second milking just after supper. They didnt care; cows accept what is. If Arlette had been more like one of our bossies, I reflected, she would still be alive and nagging me for a new washing machine out of the Monkey Ward catalogue. I probably would have bought it for her, too. She could always talk me around. Except when it came to the land. About that she should have known better. Land is a mans business.
    Henry was still sleeping. In the weeks that followed, he slept a great deal, and I let him, although in an ordinary summer I would have filled his days with chores once school let out. And he would have filled his evenings either visiting over at Cotteries or walking up and down our dirt road with Shannon, the two of them holding hands and watching the moon rise. When they werent kissing, that was. I hoped what wed done had not spoiled such sweet pastimes for him, but believed it had. That I had. And of course I was right.
    I cleared my mind of such thoughts, telling myself it was enough for now that he was sleeping. I had to make another visit to the well, and it would be best to do it alone. Our stripped bed seemed to shout murder. I went to the closet and studied her clothes. Women have so many, dont they? Skirts and dresses and blouses and sweaters and underthings-some of the latter so complicated and strange a man cant even tell which side is the front. To take them all would be a mistake, because the truck was still parked in the barn and the Model T under the elm. She had left on foot and taken only what she could carry. Why hadnt she