“I nearly went crazy. I hired teams of lawyers, poured ungodly sums of money into stopping it. Oh, the government offered to pay for having my parents disinterred and transferred to a cemetery of my choice, but that circumvented the whole point. There’s a special, unbreakable bond that grows up between farmers and their piece of the earth. My folks’ land was precious to them. I was determined to find a way they could stay on it.

“Eventually, I negotiated a compromise. The two hundred acres around the farmhouse was forfeit. I couldn’t change that. My lawyers found a way of forcing the government to give me the option of leasing the house and immediate grounds. Of course, the government put the rental fee at what it considered to be a prohibitively high level.

“It was a real dilemma for me. I had been considering quitting football. I didn’t like the brutality, I especially didn’t like the killing. But football was the only way I could make enough money to afford to lease that house. So I made my choice.

“Now I devote almost half of my income to it.

“Ironic, isn’t it? I bust my butt to lease something I can’t even get to. The government doesn’t let anybody travel through their agricultural empire. Afraid someone might trample a cornstalk or crush a soybean.

“Doesn’t matter. I know the house, the fir tree, the graves. I know they’re out there.”

He hunches across the steering wheel, peering down over the hood and out the shed door. Abruptly he straightens up. “It’s not much of an accomplishment for twelve years of getting my brains beaten out.”

Gently, understandingly, she touches his forearm. “It’s something you had to do, and you did it with honor. There’s nothing disgraceful in that. If you really want to, you’re still young enough to start a new career.”

“There’s damned little market in industry for a professional savage.”

“Surely you can do something.”

“Not and earn this kind of money, I can’t.”

“Have you ever tried looking? Honestly, now.”

He tells her the truth. “No.”

“Then maybe, subconsciously, you like playing football more than you’re willing to admit. Maybe the sport’s a form of sublimation for you, a means of proving your masculinity.”

“Don’t give me that cut-rate psychoanalytic crap. Don’t peek inside my head. If I could get out of football, I would. Football’s a murderous business, and there’s nothing good about dying.”

“Oh, but there is. It releases you from all your obligations. Dead men don’t have to keep up appearances.”

“Let’s just drop this whole thing right here.” He chops his hand down, symbolically cutting off her assault on his motivations, and, simultaneously, stemming the rise of his temper. “I didn’t tell you all this for publication. I told it to you as a friend. Agreed?”