When Tobey Fleming was five years old he looked out his bedroom window at six o'clock one summer morning and witnessed an unknown man murdering and eviscerating Rodney his pet sheep.
Tobey ran howling down the stairs to the kitchen where he stood board stiff and howled continuously for one hour and seventeen minutes. His sister made muffins from a Jiffy mix, but that did not deter him. His father lay in bed with his fingers in his ears praying for the strength to not go downstairs and hit poor Tobey hard.
Then his mother got home from work and she picked up Tobey and bent him in the middle and sat on the porch swing with Tobey on her lap and she enfolded him in her arms and she rocked him until he stopped crying. Then she fell asleep, her feet up on the porch rail and Tobey still encircled. She slept as only night shift workers sleep - irretrievably - and soon Tobey also slept.
When he awoke he found himself trapped in his mother's arms. She smelled of perfume and unwashed woman. He tried to free himself, but the prison held. He was stuck. Then he remembered poor Rodney and he wept again. Great hot tears that poured effortlessly out of him. No longer tears of shock and horror. Now they were tears of sorrow and he could not stop them.
The slaughter truck was supposed to come early, before Tobey woke, but the sheep to be slaughtered were in a pen by the barn. The slaughter man had seen poor Rodney standing in the driveway and took him for a victim.
Tobey did not go to school that day. He followed his father, pulling rye grass out of the wheat. Then they went to town to see how the John Deere was coming and Tobey's grandfather had lunch for them.
Tobey's grandfather had post traumatic stress syndrome but not a soul knew. He kept it in a bolted and riveted double walled steel box at the bottom of his mind, but it was heavy to drag around. He made baloney and lettuce sandwiches.
``Its what we do, Tobey,'' he said. ``We care for our animals and we keep them well and happy then we kill them and eat them. Its what we do.''
``But not Rodney!''
``Sheep ain't supposed to get like Rodney.''
In the afternoon Tobey watched TV. Nan, the border collie had been let in the house. She sat by Tobey watching Bugs Bunny. She licked his face a couple of times and Tobey said ``Yuck!''
But he couldn't help laughing.