Back in the barn Thompson hitches the plow to the tractor and roars out. Up and down he goes, matching the furrows. Whenever he plows or combines or tills or fertilizes, he visualizes his field as John Glenn might see it up in space: the neat furrows aligned in a beautiful geometric arrangement.

16

Irene shows up around ten, hitching her thumbs into the front of her overalls and swaying her hips as she steps through the field. The wind has died and left behind a soft residue of manure smell in the air, as rich and fragrant as anything in the world. He takes his Maglite out and slaps it against his palm to get it to burn steady and swings the orb around as if searching for me and then, finally, after looking a while, holds her hand, and he says, Oh shit I must’ve plowed the guy under, I can’t believe it, I decided to neaten up the furrows and I was listening to Bach, I mean you know how I am when I’m tuning into some fine music behind the wheel. It was somewhere around here, for Christ’s sake, he says, kicking the dirt a couple of times for good measure.

17

She doesn’t really believe his story, not exactly, and detects a tremor of dishonesty when he claims he accidentally buried the bog man, plowed him under. He was talking about this bog guy, she’ll tell her best friend June. He kept going on and on about it. Said it was this guy maybe a million years old, maybe a thousand. I just sat there and listened to him, at the store, and then he wanted me to come out and see it and it wasn’t there. Said he buried it, but I’m sure he was fibbing. He scratches his ear when he lies.