“And what about Ralph Kurtz?”

“We’re all part of the same group. It’s only for history.” Danny covered his head again with the towel and leaned over the pot of boiling water on the stove. Steam rolled across his face and billowed out from the edges of the terry cloth. Behind him, at the kitchen table, his father snapped the newspaper.

“You’ll probably have to do all the work,” Mrs. Minton said. She rubbed Danny’s shoulder. She thumped the back of his chest. “How’s it now?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

Mr. Minton snapped the paper.

“I know Ralph is your friend, but remember what happened to his mother,” Mrs. Minton said. “That kind of cuckoo thing runs in the family.”

“He gets the best grades in school.”

“That’s because his father works on the principal’s car for free.”

Danny inhaled the steam coming off the water. He knew why Ralph did well in school. It was because Ralph’s father beat him when he didn’t.

Mr. Minton snapped the page again.

His wife walked over to the kitchen table and took the paper away. “Don’t you care about our son’s future?”

“I already know his future,” Mr. Minton said. “He’s going to work right here, for me.”

When Mr. Minton returned from the war, he had ideas of becoming a poet. But his wife was pregnant and his father was old, and someone had to run the turkey farm. For thirteen years he had fixed fences, hammered together shelters, prepared feed, and cut the fields—sitting behind the tractor with a grimace, the steel blades slicing through the grass like meat. When it was time for the harvest, he packed the birds into crates and hired a truck to take them to the slaughterhouse. A few days later they were plucked and trimmed and in the freezer at the market down the road.

His son, Danny, was allergic to turkeys. This was clear to everyone but Mr. Minton, who was convinced that the boy’s constant illness was due to laziness and a lack of grit. Mr. Minton blamed his wife for spoiling their child, for making him weak, for spending too much on high-powered vacuum cleaners. Mrs. Minton replaced the feather pillows with foam, the down comforters with cotton quilts. She stocked up on Vicks and insisted on getting doctors’ advice. She placed her hand on Danny’s forehead, and all the while Mr. Minton’s disappointment in his son was growing, hidden away inside him like a cyst.