“I went out, I went to Mom’s grave—sometimes I go out in the morning, just to spend time with her—only I heard something moving in the corn,” Jack says, his words almost running together while tears run down his cheeks. “I went in to see what it was, and a man tried to grab me. A man in a black helmet and a flak jacket, and he had a gun. He tried to grab me, and I hit him in the neck, I . . . I . . .”

Jack produces the blood-sticky trowel in one shaking hand, holds it out for a moment, and lets it drop to the floor.

“I think I killed him, Dad,” Jack says.

His father turns off the water and grabs for a towel.

“Did it say anything on the flak vest?” his father asks.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Jack moans. “I think . . . I think it said ATF? Dad, there’s more of them out there. I saw two other black helmets in the corn, and, Dad, oh, Dad, Beth came to look for me, and I think they got her,” Jack says, all breathless. “I heard her shout.”

His father pushes past him. In the bedroom he grabs his jeans off the floor and steps into them, cinches his belt. The Glock is in its holster as always. Jack put it back after unloading the magazine.

“Dad, I don’t think any of the other men in the corn know about the one I stabbed, I don’t think they’ve found his body yet, but what’s going to happen when they do?” His voice rises to a keening wail, and his whole body is shaking. It isn’t hard to feel sick with grief. His mother is in the dirt, and she’s not even a plant either, just food for plants. His mother is never coming back. Also, Jack’s brain itches. He has been wondering in the last few moments if there might be ants in his head. It’s been itching ever since he finished murdering Beth.

“What’s going to happen,” his father says, “is we’re going to put a hurt on them like they never knew they could be hurt. But first we need the guns in the barn.”

He doesn’t bother with a shirt or shoes but plunges out of the room in nothing more than his jeans, leaving behind a cloud of steam and Ivory soap smell. Ivory soap, not geranium-scented hotel-room soap. Maybe the crazy old thing at the farm stand was just a crazy old thing, not his hundred-year-old witchy grandmother come to give him magic seeds so he could grow a new mum. Maybe there is nothing in the garden but dirt and roots and plants and Beth’s corpse and a piglet Jack himself slaughtered in his sleep.