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Trucking the carcasses up north is clearly a violation of local food principles, but loyalty trumps all, and the Beagle and I served on the same fire department together for over a decade. Furthermore, he is a good citizen and a fine butcher. And finally, only a shortsighted churl would pass on the opportunity to haul his homegrown pigs from a one-handed butcher with two eyes to a one-eyed butcher with two hands.

After we unload the pigs and see them swaying on their hooks, Beagle gives Amy a tour. She gets to see the knives and saws and the cold steel tables, the massive half-cows hanging. She takes it all in, and turns to look at me with her eyebrows raised when the Beagle gives her three guesses to identify the one carcass different than all the others, before revealing that it is a skinned bear. While the Beagle demonstrates the vacuum sealer, I think how grateful I am for those friends of mine who can do more than just sit and type; these friends who have fundamental skills and trades reflected in the condition of their hands. It is good, I think, that in the hubris of the digital age this little girl be given a look at the more gristly bits of existence.

We’re just nine miles from New Auburn, so I drive up to the farm to visit Mom and Dad. Mom says there is a chance of an early first frost tonight, and their neighbors Roger and Debbie need help getting in the last produce. Mom joins Amy and me in the truck, and we drive the dirt road to where Roger and Debbie have their fields in the pines. We load their Gator with pumpkins and squash and watermelon and gourds, and when it is full, Roger makes the run back to the shed.

Before we leave Roger and Debbie encourage us to take whatever we like. We load up a little bit of everything and then head over to help my brother John and his wife Barbara pick all of their pumpkins and get them under cover. John and Barbara supply our family’s jack-o’-lantern carving party every year, and some of their pumpkins are such monsters that John uses the skid steer to shift them. We’ve picked up Amy’s cousin Sienna on the way over, and the two of them are yakking and scampering through the vines, picking pumpkins small enough for them to lift and carry over to the pile. When all the pumpkins are picked and tarped, we head back to Mom and Dad’s again. We need wood shavings for the chicken coop, so Amy and I go to the lumber shed and fill several bags from the fragrant mound of piney curls beside the planer.

Back in the house, Jed has come for Sienna. We wind up in the living room where we wrassled when we were kids, only now we sit in chairs and just talk, and talk for a long time. A little bit about how he’s getting along, of course, but also a lot about nothing in particular. When I look back at this day—from rising early to prepare for the pig slaughter right up to this easy moment—I wonder at how much can be had when there is no clock in sight, no destination pending. On the drive home it is cold enough that I turn the truck heater on, and by the time we pass Bloomer, Amy is asleep.

CHAPTER 10

Sunday mornings when I was a boy I worshipped the Lord in a white clapboard house. I sat in a straight-backed chair against a hard plaster wall. In the summer the plaster was cool, and in the winter it was cold. The windows were narrow and tall, and the glass was ripply—a distracted little lad could rock in his seat and roll a shimmy through the trees. Sometimes when the snow was heavy on the ground and the living room was radiator warm, the boy got drowsy in his sweater and corduroys. When his head lolled back, it rang soundly on the plaster so that the windowpanes—resting loose in their fractured putty—buzzed like snares, the racket signaling that someone was snoozing along the path of righteousness.

The lady who owned the white clapboard house emigrated to this county in a Conestoga. Having read many cowboy books, I knew Conestogas were for pioneers. I would study the frail woman sunk in the worn chair with her Bible across her knees and