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Show c2=2. my stomach heaved and emptied. I wiped my fingers on my jeans, wiped my mouth with my bandana, kicked a litde dust over the mess on die ground and, leaving it for fertilizer for the corn, walked on down the row. The ache was gone now. I felt cold and hard. But I felt my good youdi too, life before me so that when I stood at the bottom of the field and looked down and away at Selig, the clump of trees blurring and darkening in the late afternoon shadows, in my resentment and rebellion I knew that highways went out from that town in any direction I wanted to go. At that moment I was free of all but myself, and dimly I realized that such moments would come more often now, and last longer, and I suppose just then I feared and resented that part the most. But something cold and hard in me had set. So now, after the cold rinse, after the shaving lotion, in the bathroom mirror seeing a face which shows its age and can but show more, I have no need to remind myself that I too am only a man. Knowing my own vanity, I can only hope my son will one day forgive me as I have since learned to forgive. But before that day, when we get tangled too deeply in our love and he strikes out to be free, I trust he will have the cold strength and the pitiless faith of youth behind the blow. And I pray that I shall have something left of strength too, sufficient yet to curse him loose and bless him on his way. 238 |