Pale Harvest. Braden Hepner

said Jack.

      —You’re goddamn right! said Heber, and his body went rigid and stiffened forward and his face suffused with blood. He settled back again in a slouch and smiled and said, You’ve got a good heart, John. A very good heart.

      —I used to have a good heart, said Jack.

      —This change happens to most men, said Heber. But you’ve evolved is all. Like an animal in a circus, you were taught the tricks. But at some point you lost the show. You kept performing for a crowd that wasn’t there, and though your tricks lost their fine edge and you blundered the steps here and there in an ever loosening ritual, you still retained the basic shape of things. The only thing left for you to do was fall, and that was the natural step to your evolution. After the fall you remake yourself.

      Jack said he wasn’t sure what had happened.

      Heber said, As a boy you cursed God, and as a man you wait in the lee.

      —I don’t know what that means, said Jack, but I like the way it sounds. Write that down, I’ll put it on my gravestone.

      Heber said, What happens when a man abandons the religion of his upbringing when he was so close to it, when he asks: Is what I’ve been taught my whole life of God, or is it the contrivance of man? and finds an unfavorable answer? There’s a vacuum to fill, and you have nothing to fill it with. Where do you look for a moral compass? Not society. Only a fool lets the shifting fashions of society teach him how to live. A man must look within himself in order to see beyond himself, and he must look beyond himself in order to see within himself. You’re still holding on to remnants, even if you can’t see them.

      —The death of my parents, bad as it was, was not the beginning of my situation now, said Jack. I’ve lost some things and I don’t know where or when I lost them. But I haven’t lost everything.

      —A man has nothing to lose but his chains, said Heber. They say peace with God requires strict servitude. But why must we be slaves? God frees his people only to enslave them to himself. One slavemaster is traded for another. Who is this despot we give our devotion to? Are we not the progeny of deity? What end does it serve to receive the greatest gift only to give it right back?

      —Belief in religion and belief in God can be two different things, said Jack. It’s hard to say sometimes.

      —You’ve still got a good heart, said Heber. You’ve only buried it, let it shrivel a little. Let it expand with new blood and you’ll be reborn. Your entire life could pass this way if you’re not careful. You know what the Lord said about being lukewarm. He will spue thee out of his mouth.

      —Am I lukewarm? said Jack.

      —Weeds overrun a garden left untended, said Heber. I’ve heard you say you’d like to get back to the way things were before your parents died, and just after. It seems like it was a good place to be, you say. But the past nearly always seems that way. You had a measure of innocence then, but some questions, when asked, cannot be unasked. You have asked those questions. You seem to be encountering the same doubts as your father, those you read penned in his journal after his death, the ones that shook you to the core, the ones that have never left you.

      —Don’t worry about that, said Jack. You didn’t read them. I did.

      —His wonderings were not uncommon, said Heber, and the answers that used to trip off our tongues are insufficient. We had those answers ready once, but they broke down, as they will for anyone once he gives them serious thought. Sunday school answers cannot abide this weight. This plan, this organization of religion, replete with the confusion of a tradeshow with each huckster calling out his brand of ware, in a world of billions of inhabitants, God’s children all—are we to believe that God’s one true way will be known by so few? That this is the plan of a generous and loving God? Look at the world. Things aren’t going well for God, so why does he stay hidden? If he has the ability to manifest himself, why does he allow the world to remain in confusion? He should show himself from time to time in better ways than vague impressions, reward us for our faith. Show your gospel, Friend, don’t puff at it like a poisoned dandelion and watch its dead seeds scatter.

      —Faith, said Jack. There’s something you can think on your whole life and not understand. It’s an abstraction. I guess it has something to do with it, if it’s anything at all. But damned if anyone can say exactly what. They start talking about faith in church and you might as well be listening to a lunatic talk about his pecker.

      He stirred the coals, readjusted the dinners. Heber stared at him, his eyes wide and sober, worried, his expression one of utmost gravity and earnestness. Jack burst out laughing. Heber’s visage softened and he smiled, though his eyes remained wide and his voice intense and prophetic.

      —There are no answers, he said. The more you probe the more elusive the answers become. The more you know the more you realize you don’t know. We’ll just have to wait till we die to see what the big show was all about, and even then we might not know.

      —That ought to be something, said Jack. I’d give my dad’s silver dollar to find out what’s going on over there.

      —Look at me, said Heber. Where have I gone? You remember when I used to be good, don’t you? Who knows what happiness is? Who can define it? But I guess I’m comfortable and content, and there’s a legitimate brand of happiness in that. I’m happy right now, in this moment. I have the river, the grass, the hillside throwing good shade. I have good food cooking and a good drink in my callused hand. I look at you and I only want you to be happy, whatever that is to you. You are the most important person to me. Did you know that? Dad’s gone. That bitch of a mother… You’re it, brother. All right. We’ll find new blood for you, and it will change your life.

      —Already found it, said Jack. It’s up over that hill there.

      —You don’t think I can do that for you? said Heber.

      —It’s not too much to ask, is it? said Jack.

      —No it’s not, said Heber. We’ll get you there, buddy. We’ll get you there. She’s got the blood you need.

      —You going to work some spell that makes a proud city girl fall in love with a stinking dairy farmer? said Jack. I’d owe you. I’d owe anything that made that happen.

      —All good things come at some price, said Heber.

      —I need something, said Jack. I feel like I’m about to go buckwild. If nothing comes, it’ll be buckwild for me.

      —Buckwild’s a good place to go, said Heber. Be the wild man of the woods for a while. I’ve been there a few times myself. You need something. Some expansion, some catalyst for revival.

      —Right now I’m just hungry, said Jack. I need food.

      Heber regarded him evenly from across the fire, looking wise in his tattered clothing, his beard, his holey shirt and frayed pants, like some river guru in the wilderness, ready to take him down to the river for baptism.

      —I am the bread of life, he said.

      —You are a blasphemer.

      —Let’s partake.

      The river moved by. They burned their fingers opening their dinners.

      The dry days passed into late August and what little grain they had was harvested by a hired combine and the stalks spewed out in straight rows. Then the baler did its own work behind the tractor, its rolling teeth gathering the rows, the auger and claw carrying the straw to the press chamber where the plunger shook the whole machine with its motion and created a rectangular bale that was bound with two lengths of orange twine and dropped neatly into the field. The hit of the plunger rocked the tractor and swayed him in his seat in a steady rhythm and his eyes were red and worn from the diesel smoke that escaped prematurely from the broken muffler. He thought he would get a spell from either Blair or Elmer, and he thought one would bring him food and water, for he’d been on the tractor since morning and had broken down twice and had repaired the baler both times with tools and bolts found in the baler’s toolbox, but so far