“What I’m trying to tell you. That first year, when he was still a pup, Mother took one long look at him and told me. Said, You go to the barns close the door on him. Don’t take him up there with you. Don’t let him in. She didn’t care how much I thought I had him trained or how much attention I’d pay him. Told me, That dog, you let him in the barns, he’ll get in the runs with the birds. It don’t matter what you do or think you’re doing. You open a pen door just that much, he’ll be in there. A dog’s nature, was what she called it. And I did what she said. And he seemed fine with it. I mean, he’d lie outside the barn door, blowing down snow at ten below; he’d just lie there and wait on me. And I thought, Oh he’s a good boy. So one day that next spring after getting him I took him in the barn with me. Thought he’d just follow me or maybe trot up and down the walkway and look at the birds. And I went to change the water in the young birds and just like she said he came right under me through that open door, barking and bouncing, all frenzied. To this day I don’t think he had any idea what to do once he got in there. And of course I set down the waterer and got hold of him and dragged him out of there. Wasn’t but five, maybe ten seconds. But it was enough time for them young birds, eight-week fryers was what they were, to all pile up in a corner on top of each other. Time I got him out of there and got back in to pull the birds apart there was ten or so dead at the bottom of the pile. Just suffocated by the panic. Not a tooth mark on em. And what I did then, I took those dead birds into the horse barn and laid them in a hay manger in an empty stall. And next morning, first light, I slipped out of the house and got a spade and carried them up into the woods and buried them. And I never said one word to anybody. Not anyone. Not that I put it from my mind. I always thought I’d tell it someday. Always thought I’d tell Mother. But Daddy, there just was never that right time. Since when you get right down to it I’m a coward. And now she knows it, knows it and knows I never told her. It’s an awful thing. I feel like I’m found out, all of me. I can’t stand it and don’t know what to do.”

“There’s nothing to do,” he admitted. “You already know the wrong of it, from start to finish.”