“Henry!” yelled the old man. “You come back here. Pick up your corn-cutter, don’t leave it on the ground to get all rusty from the dew, Jesus jumping blue Christ.”

Okay, I thought, okay. Minutes later I was in the kitchen. The warm and comforting kitchen: red coals glowed through cracks in the cast-iron cookstove. My mother stood by the stove under the amber glow of a lamp bracketed to the wall. She was stirring a pot of stew. She looked tired. The two kids and the baby sat at the oilcloth-covered table, rosy faces smeared with food. I smelled potato soup, stew meat, gravy. I started to wash my hands in the tin basin of soapy water on the stand beside the door.

“Henry,” says Mother, “where’s Will and your father?”

“They’re a-comin’. Got one more row to cut.”

“Bring us a pail of water before you wash up?”

I took the bucket from the nail on the wall, stepped outside to the pump. There was a coffee can on the planks, full of water and drowned insects. I hung the bucket on the lip of the spout, primed the pump and cranked the handle, long as a baseball bat, up and down. The pump gasped and croaked, leather suckers four years old. A column of water rose by imperfect suction to the spout and gushed into my bucket.

One shoulder sagging, I lugged the water into the kitchen and hoisted it to the washstand.

Paw and Will came in. Will displayed the dead rabbit to Mother and the kids. They seemed impressed. Will hung the rabbit outside in the cold air, under the porch roof, out of reach of the dogs.

Sitting at the table finally, we watched as Mother bowed her head and clasped hands together prayerwise. “Dear God…bless this house and all who dwell in it. Bless this food we are about to receive, for which we thank thee. For thy many gifts we are humbly grateful, Lord. Amen.”

Grace would normally be said by the head of the household. But our father would not pray to anybody.

Mother raised her head and little Paul, age six, blurted out, “Pass the taters, pass the meat, thank our Lord and let’s eat.”

Mother looked at him. Paul blushed and lowered his face. Paw smiled. After a brief silence, Mother dished out thick potato soup, filling first Paw’s bowl, then Will’s, then mine and her own. The children had already eaten. Paw sliced four chunks from the round loaf of homemade bread in the middle of the table. We ate fast, Will and me.

“Take your time, boys,” Mother said. “Elbows off the table, please.”

“Goin’ to Houser’s,” I said between gulps. We played basketball in Ernie’s barn; he lived in Stump Creek and had electric lights in the barn. Four miles by bicycle.

Paw looked at Will. “You too?”

“I figured on it. You settin’ out more traps tonight?”

Paw pulled the watch from the bib pocket of his overalls, studied it. “Coal train’s comin’ up the grade in about fifty-five minutes.”