Butterflies have returned to our oak tree four years running. Usually, they’re here and long gone by now and Schooney’s back to normal. Not this year. He backs my pick-up toward the barn and ignores my hand signals. He whips the tailgate inside and slams the truck in park, barely hitting the brakes. I let down the tailgate, the truck bed filled with fifty-pound feed sacks. He hops out and puts on his gloves. He’s only twelve but he’s been behind the wheel of everything on this farm and knows better. He hasn’t said more than a couple words to me for a month or so, and when I ask him about his first little-league game, he just stacks the sacks next to the back wall of the barn like he doesn't hear me. He does this shit every year before the butterflies show up. He doesn’t listen to me anymore and has stopped listening to my wife Rhonda long ago, and even if he did listen, all he’d hear is her bitching at me for drinking. He stacks like we’re racing—three sacks to my one.

“Are you helping or not?” he says. He slams down a sack and wipes his forehead.

“I said I’d help and I’m helping.” My back has been out for a week and I’ve been sleeping on a sheet of plywood.

I hear him mumble the word shotgun. He picks up another sack.

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