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had the sickle bar slid into the front of the header and bolted in place so that the sharp section blades, set between iron spikes called guards, would move back and forth, slicing the wheat off close to the ground, Lyman walked six horses up to the back of the header, where Royharnessed them, three at each side, alongside a heavy iron pole. Then Edith hitched two more horses to the wagon, to the header barge, and they drove rattling out of the yard towards the wheat field. When they entered the field they could see John Roscoe standing on the stack far over there in the corner, waiting for the first load. They stopped the horses so that the header would be ready to begin cutting where they had left off the night before at the near end of the field.
    “I suppose Roscoe’s been waiting there for a hour,” Roy said, “without a goddamn thing in the world to do except wait on us.”
    “He doesn’t have his shirt off yet,” Edith said.
    “It ain’t hot enough. He wants to get burned. He thinks fried skin looks pretty.”
    “I don’t think he’ll burn,” Edith said. “He’s too brown.”
    “That’s the Indian in him.”
    “Daddy,” Edith said.
    “What?” he said. “You know it well as anybody.” “Just the same, I don’t care—”
    “You damn God better learn to,” Roy said. “Get the barge in place.”
    Roy engaged the gears and chains on the bull wheel, and then he climbed up into the seat at the back of the header, between his two teams of horses.
    “Giddup,” he said. “Go on now.”
    The six horses moved, lunged forward, pushing the heavy rattling header. The engaged gears and chains turned the reel at the front that came around and laid the wheat down onto the sickle bar, to be cut off by the slicing knife-sharp sections. As the wheat was cut it fell onto a platform beneath the rotating reel, and then it was carried by a canvas belt off to the side and up another canvas belt through a chute and out, falling into the header barge thatEdith drove alongside. Lyman was in the back of the barge where the cut wheat on its dusty stalks fell around him and on him, made him itch and sweat and scratch, while he forked the stuff around in the barge to level it off. Edith could hear him cussing miserably, insanely, behind her, but not so loud that Roy would hear.
    “By Jesus,” he was saying. “Oh, you dirty son of a bitch. Get over there. Hog shit in a bucket.”
    They finished that first swath through the length of the field, then Roy disengaged the gears on the bull wheel, pulled the lever to the tiller wheel, and the header made its neat square turn, with three of the horses walking slow, almost backing around, while the other three horses walked out fast at an angle, to point the header back up the field. The gears were engaged again, and the Goodnoughs started another swath.
    When the header barge was full, so that Lyman stood up higher now on top of the cut wheat with his high-topped shoes full of bits of chaff, Roy stopped his six horses.
    “Well,” he said, “go pitch it off. And don’t take all day jabbering.”
    Lyman crawled up onto the front seat of the barge, and he and Edith drove over to the corner to John Roscoe, where the stack was. On the way Lyman took his shoes off and dumped the chaff out. When they stopped at the stack both of them got into the back to pitch the wheat off with their three-tined wheat forks.
    “Shoes bothering you again?” John Roscoe said.
    “Son of a bitch,” Lyman said. “Trade with me. I’ll stack this stuff.”
    “Can’t. Your old man wants you right where he can see you, getting your nose full of it.” “Son of a bitch,” Lyman said.
    “Why don’t you ask Edith? Edith, whyn’t you crawl back there and relieve your little brother? Be good for you to do some real work for a change.”
    “You should have heard him,” Edith said. “My, my.”
    “Needs his mouth washed out with soap.”
    “Lye soap this time,” Edith said.
    “Oh, dirty