you can’t run away on harvest day 235denly felt like sticking very close to home, with a hand on my family’s
production, even when it wasn’t all that easy or fun—like today.
Analysts of current events were mostly looking to blame administra-
tors. Fair enough, but there were also, it seemed, obvious vulnerabilities
here—whole populations depending on everyday, long- distance lifelines,
supplies of food and water and fuel and everything else that are acutely
centralized. That’s what we consider normal life. Now nature had written
a hugely abnormal question across the bottom of our map. I wondered
what our answers might be.
/
Our mood stayed solemn until Eli introduced the comedy show of
poultry parts. He applied his artistry and grossout- proof ingenuity to raw
materials retrieved from the gut bucket. While the rest of us merely la-
bored, Eli acted, directed, and produced. He invented the turkey- foot
backscratcher, the infl ated turkey- crop balloon. Children—even when
they have endured the unthinkable—have a gift for divining the moment
when the grown- ups really need to lighten up. We got a little slap- happy
egging on the two turkey heads that moved their mouths to Eli’s words,
starring in a mock TV talk show. As I gutted the last bird of the day, I be-
gan thinking twice about what props I was tossing into the gut bucket. I
was not sure I wanted to see what an eight- year- old boy could do with
twelve feet of intestine.
The good news was that we were nearly done. I encouraged the rest of
the adults to go ahead and wash up, I had things in hand. They changed
out of the T-shirts that made them look like Braveheart extras. The girls
persuaded Eli to retire the talking heads and submit to a hosing- down.
Our conversation finally relaxed fully into personal news, the trivial gripes
and celebrations for which friends count on one another: what was im-
possible these days at work. How the children were faring with various
teachers and 4-H projects. How I felt about having been put on the list.
That question referred to a book that had been released that summer,
alerting our nation to the dangers of one hundred people who are De-
stroying America. It was popular for nearly a week and a half, so I’d re-
ceived a heads- up about my being the seventy- fourth most dangerous