In January the county farm bureau asked me to speak at their annual meeting. I said no twice and then said yes, because Clara told me to and because Ruth Okafor told me it mattered. The meeting was in the Fairview high school gymnasium with a folding table and a podium and a hundred and fifty people from six counties. I stood up there in my good boots and my clean shirt and did not know what to say.
So I said the truth.
The microphone popped once. Somebody in the bleachers coughed. I looked at the back wall instead of at Clara, because if I looked at Clara I would make it a story about her and it was not only a story about her.
I said that six years ago I'd started out with one tractor and a borrowed trailer and a phone that didn't stop ringing, and that I'd thought the work was the har
