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lamp was suspended from the ceiling above the table, and two more were in brackets on opposite walls of the room.
    At supper that night, Harold’s grandfather, a lean and hawklike man of eighty, skin tough and brown as leather, his humor sharp — mischievous and cantankerous by turn — bent forward, eyes glinting from Harold to his father and back, and demanded: “What in the goddam Sam Hill is all this about a fifty-dollar calf?”
    Harold’s father frowned. “Where’d you hear ’bout that?”
    “Ha!” The old man chewed furiously at an ear of corn. “At the barbershop! Not in this house! Nobody around here tells me a goddam thing!”
    “Now Granddad,” said Harold’s mother, “it’s not that we don’t tell, it’s just that your hearin’ is beginnin’ to fail you.”
    The old man cupped one hand to his ear in an exaggerated manner. “What say?” he almost shouted.
    Harold’s mother sighed. “I said —”
    He interrupted her by slapping the table triumphantly. “I heard ye! It’s a joke, you silly goose!” He wiped his mouth on the back of his cuff, excited at having tricked her.
    Harold had to laugh; so did his father.
    “He can hear awright,” said Harold’s father, “when he’s a mind to — it’s just when he don’t want to hear that he’s suddenly struck post-deaf.”
    His wife nodded. “I could of told you that much all along.”
    The old man ignored them both. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “There ain’t a man livin’ or dead who ever broke even raisin’ a fifty-dollar calf — and that is a natural fack!”
    “It ain’t for the money, Granddad,” Harold explained. “This here is for a Four-H project.”
    His granddad scoffed. “Four-H! Well, I told you what that ‘H’ stands for, didn’t I? ‘Horse’s Ass’! Ha!”
    “Aw, they been pretty good,” said Harold loyally, and turned to his father. “Ain’t they, Dad?”
    “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ Son,” said his mother.
    “Yep, they have,” said Harold’s father, “and that’s a fact. Saved us a breech-born heifer a while back. One of their fellers was here to look at our feedlot setup, when that young black-and-white’s time come on her right sudden — three days early by the calendar — and I was over to Farney with Les, nobody here but Son and C.K....Hell, they hadn’t never worked no breech — we’d of lost the calf for sure, maybe both.”
    “Aw, we could of done it,” muttered Hal. “C.K. seen it done once.”
    “Well now, Son, that’s as may be — but the plain fact is, that Four-H guy stepped in there and did it, and I feel obliged to him.”
    The old man scoffed. “Wal, I’m glad to hear they’re good for somethin’. Last time I talked to one of ’em, he didn’t know his ass from a posthole!”
    “Granddad,” said Harold’s mother, “I do wish you wouldn’t talk like that — in front of the boy.”
    “Boy?” exclaimed the old man, grimacing. “Why I bet he can cuss up a blue norther he’s a mind to!” He peered at Harold. “Ain’t you ’bout thirteen now?”
    “Yessir — goin’ on.”
    “He’s twelve, ” said his mother firmly, “and he’s still a child.”
    “Why hell, woman, time I was his age I’d been to ever cathouse — ‘sportin’-house,’ we called ’em then — in this county...and a few over the line to boot!”
    “Well now that’s a big lie, and you know it,” said Harold’s mother.
    “You been yet, boy?” demanded his grandfather.
    “Aw, they done closed all them places down,” said Harold, without thinking, then glanced at his father. “Leastways I reckon they have.”
    His mother stood up, looking at him, as she started clearing things away. “Well, now what on earth would you know about that kind of thing anyway?”
    Harold was slightly flustered. “No, what I meant was that I heard...”
    As his voice began to trail away, old Granddad, eyes bright, ignored her remark and leaned forward, one talon-finger raised