The HP can see a man sitting in a tractor that drags a thresher across Jackson’s field. He has donated his labour and machinery in exchange for the use of Jackson’s combine. This man lost his combine back in ’67 after dishing out huge sums of money to lawyers. It seems that his son had come down with meningitis, and the man had the bright idea that he’d treat him at home with massive injections from the same needle and medicine that he uses on newborn calves. He has kept his son at home ever since, locked in a room that has to be boarded against his freakish strength and mindless outbursts. His wife, who died in ’73, was supposed to have been torn limb from limb by her son one Christmas morning. No one can completely recall this terrible secret, and when the weather’s clear for a stretch in early August they slap their friend gratefully on the back as he mounts his tractor in their fields.
The engine clanks off and the man dismounts his tiny metal seat. In the quiet the HP hears another motor start up inside the barn. Jackson appears on top of a green tractor followed by the baler. They head toward a field that has already been cut. The HP runs toward Jackson, swinging his bottle of water and holding his cap down with his free hand. He has to sprint to catch up with the back of the baler. After two attempts he manages to clear the three heavy bars that drag on the ground. He steps onto the platform that also drags, bumpily, held by chains to the baling chute. The HP barely has time to pull the crisp leather of his gloves over his hands before the first bale rises shaking in the chute. The HP reaches down, forcing his fingers under the twine, and tests the integrity of the bale with a sharp pull. Too sharp. The bale springs into the air. He uses this momentum to assist in tossing the surprisingly heavy bale behind him, into position between the first and second bars. He succeeds in getting the bale in place but can’t recover his centre of gravity and flies headlong over the long block of hay onto the ground behind it.
He shakes the dullness from his face and leaps to his feet. The second bale is already wagging at the sky and getting further away. It falls free of the chute and tumbles sideways. The ground grabs at it, pulling it off the platform. By the time the third bale appears the HP is standing behind it, reaching back again to the first twine. But this time he gives it only a respectful yank to encourage it along in the machine that, he knows now, is fully capable of doing most of the work. He slams the bale down beside the first, shifting his own position twice in order to preserve balance. He looks back at the second bale, now a hundred metres away, and knows that come the end of the day it will look lost and wasted in a field of neatly spaced, perfectly stacked triangles. The next bale is even less of a struggle. With these three forming the foundation of the structure, the HP slaps his full biceps optimistically and reaches over to swing out the fourth bale and begin the critical second tier. It falls on its heavy edge in the v-shape of the bales turned toward each other beneath it. The weight of the compressed hay binds their faces, pulling them towards each other, strengthening the structure. The HP heaves the last yellow obelisk into its slot. This forms an apex from which fall, on either side, the perfect sheer walls of a triangle. The last heavy bale makes the other tiers powerful. The HP kicks a heavy drop-forged pedal at the front of the platform, dropping the bars into the ground. The three edges at the base grip the earth, floating the A-frame off into the field behind the baler.
An optical effect is emerging. An illusion, one whose fidelity grows on the HP, as he creates second and third arrowheads. The field begins to flow outward in waves from the suddenly motionless platform, carrying buoys on waves that roll back from the distance. A hollow sky pulls at this figure, as he leans, in his fantasy, against the bailing chute. He raises the gloved fingers of his hand and traces an imagined coastline, as far away as the white morning moon, now a perfect pressure, light against his palm. The HP feels that he may die for seeing the field this way, and he very nearly cries. There is consciousness breaking in the soil, other people’s consciousness. A curl falling across Greg’s cheek appears in a quick spindrift of dust coming off a stone in the mud. As long as I can see the moment everything changes. As long as the HP can see the moment when everything changes, then everything in its vying is as good as home. And eventually, in an infinite cross-current of sadness and longing, every weak, blinking kindness is restored. And then, seconds later, lost. The HP feels for the first time in his short life, the millions of years it takes to produce a single, brief moment of passion.
At noon the tractor drops into neutral and Jackson jumps down. He turns off the baler and the HP realizes that in some way he has been sustained all morning by its roar. His arms throb, and his abdomen twitches. He looks down to make sure his body isn’t as huge as it feels. He feels like a perfect giant, gleaming and hard, with fingers too strong to move. Jackson stands beside the platform and removes his cap. He squats and presses a palm through the short grass.
“Ah-yeh. Don’t want it wet.”
The table is laid out with oversized plates and bowls steaming with multiple helpings of a variety of foods. A dozen steaks are bleeding down on each other beside a serving tray of ribs so tender that meat falls from the bones when the HP pulls back his chair. He fills his plate with slick, hot carrots and ice-cold beets. Harley, who has been cleaning the mow all morning, is watching television with his sister. Jackson stands, straddling the metal strip dividing the kitchen from the living room, watching the small black-and-white set. A young woman is holding a microphone under the chin of a man in a naval uniform.
“Ah-yeh. Ah-yeh. Don’t want rain.”
After lunch Harley helps Jackson on the baler and the HP is sent to the mow to wait for them to return from the field with the first load of hay. A neighbour was busy stacking bales on the truck while they ate lunch. The HP watches Harley trailing after Jackson across the field. He feels a drain of energy caused by the task of digestion. The HP walks slowly toward the barn. The younger man is picking up stones that his father kicks from the ground. He sails them through the air to bounce off an island of rocks in the middle of the field. The HP can see Jackson’s shyness even from this distance: his resignation and defiance. He’s a tightly packed, complex man who frowns when people laugh and seems never to have exhaled in his life.
The barn is dark inside, with shafts of white sunlight turning orange on the floor. The HP climbs a ladder of planks nailed across six-by-twelve uprights. At the top he has to jump across an opening of a metre and a half onto a loft. A window at the peak of the roof opens out onto the field where Jackson and Harley are working. The black rubber of a conveyor belt obscures the view. The HP sits on a bale of hay and waits. The mow is a trap of nearly unbreathable air, where waves of heat rise, cooking the atmosphere through stale hay into a gas that holds the oxygen near the roof in a dark poison. The HP is having difficulty breathing, and when the conveyor rattles to life it takes him three attempts before he can stand without support. He can see the first bale climbing towards him, and he lays his shaking hands on the edge of the conveyor belt, taking its vibrations up his arms.