“Look, Lorrie,” Paw would growl, “they don’t hurt much. The trap grabs and holds ’em, that’s all. Those poor critters are gonna die anyhow, out there in the cold and dark. We’re just harvestin’ the surplus.”

“You don’t harvest living creatures,” Mother said. “What a disgusting word. You’re killing them for personal profit.”

“All right, all right. But we need the money and you know it.”

One evening Paw brought one of our Victor single-spring varmint traps up from the cellar. He was going to settle the cruelty argument with Mother once and for all. Carefully, while Mother watched, knitting, our old man squeezed the spring and spread the trap flat on the dinner table. He latched the bait pan to the release trigger and drew back. The trap was ready. “Okay, Lorrie, now watch this.” Paw clenched his big right hand into a fist and smashed it down on the pan. The trap sprang shut. Grinning, he held up his caught right hand and the trap, its tether chain dangling. “See?” he said. “See that, goddamnit? I told you, Lorrie, it hardly hurts a-tall. I hardly feel it. See?” Triumphantly he looked at me, at Will, at Paul. “Ain’t this what I been telling you boys all along?”

Impressed, we looked at Mother to see what she would say. Smiling her ironic smile, needles clicking in her fingers, she said, “You’re not finished, Joe.”

“What’s that mean?”

She paused. “Now we want to see you gnaw your hand off.”

THE FIELD CORN RIPENED, the silk at the tip of each ear turned rusty brown. We picked the dried silk and rolled it with pages from the Monkey Ward mail-order catalog into enormous, evil, sickening stogies. We sat high in the shadowy barn, on the square ax-hewn crossbeams above the granary, lit up and smoked ourselves sick. We were hiding from the old man in a bad place to hide: if he ever caught us smoking in the barn there’d be trouble. We heard him too, hollering for Will and me.

“Will!” he hollered. “Henry! You rascals in there?”

We grinned at each other, holding our breath. Quietly, Will crushed out his cornsilk stogie with his thumb and forefinger.

“Will!” Paw bellowed again. “We got corn to cut.”

Choking back laughter, we froze in silence as he stomped across the planking of the barn floor, heard him swear as he whacked a heavy blade into a post. The corn knife, like a sword, like a machete, swished through the air when he swung it. We heard Paw go out through the hinged door set in the sliding main door and from there down the earthen ramp to the workshop. Then came the rumble of the grindstone gaining speed as he treadled it with one foot, the screech of steel against stone. Sparks would be flying under the drip of water from the cooling can.

Will stirred uneasily, unable to relax while near a man working. Such a sober serious conscientious fellow, he felt what I seldom felt—the urge to help out. To lend a hand. To grab ahold. “Guess we better go.” He made no move to relight his cigar. “Guess we better go, Henry.”