Chapter 61

For it was the corn burning that made the roaring noise. It was the harvest, all of it, the whole garnering of all those years of work, the very stuff of Gideon’s soul, and our future. It was no great comet nor flaming star raging across the sky to herald in the end of all, no trumpet of an archangel pealing and whining along the black night betwixt the trembling worlds. It was only the corn. Only all we had! Only that which was to make a kindly man, a loving man, of our Gideon, since having it he would leave slavi…