Wyeth Tarn: a novel sidelight, Profit/Prophet's diligent and ignorant help.

"It hurts when I pull on it."  The early wheat danced like firework sparkle sticks.

"Well, then, Chud, don't pull on it."

Chud spat and looked stoically in the distance.  "But its there; that be mostly why I pull on it."

"I know" said, Seaver.  One could imagine, a civilized man, get into the diseased mind of a bad sort, kind of float over the waters or something, and get a sense, skim the surface, maybe easier than a less civilized man could understand his better; but mockery and emulation was different, a vice versa.

"Wouldn't pull on it if I won't there, is the way" said Chud, feeling over his appendix and lower intestines.  Kind of an ambiguity of a Foghat Zepplin Skynyrd Friend, that was Chud, to be a rock and not roll, shadows taller than his soul: The Manchild Chud.

Sawgrass and feverfew whispered in the interminable silence, and Chud might have been thinking of anything; but a carton of frozen foodstuff waiting at home, and bread.

Good bread.

The best modern chemistry could mass-produce at least cost, and put at a price point that made it, not luxury, but needful and available enough at once.

A thing Americans call dinner.

I've seen them do that sh*t, too.

"Once" said Seaver.  "When I was little." He looked down, then looked away, over to the side, towards the furrows near the hedgerow where the grasses were intermingling.  "I had a pimple on my neck.  Mummie said it would hurt if I touched it, might even take the heat, but I couldn't keep my curious little mitts off it."

"heh heh" chuckled Chud.  He had marked Seaver looking around, like O'radfaldt said, headshrinkers indicated that marked when an orator was coming with lies.  It was like Nancy Pelosi's blank stare during comments, but something much less practiced, unconscious.

"Purple and red: 'livid' as the poet says" said Seaver.

An engine came to life in the distance, one of the negroes who drove the tractors for the crew, "put fire in it".  It had a stupid sluggish rhythm: the engine, that is.  It was that unique something of a groan that only diesel engines could do, and of that, unintelligible, but perfectly indicative to a practiced ear, few that those were, like Paul talking about the spirit making groans and utterances in the good book.

"My problem ain't a wound" said Chud.  "You could be someone's grandmother, having that selfsame turn of mind, a kind of sin in the briar patch, bitter tea kind of rank nonsense that don't help me, and at best, makes me feel evermore like I did something despicable."

"Being about problems you observe" said Seaver, "I would venture right and wrong don't enter into it, but maybe the sin of convenience."

"Maybe I was bored" said Chud, his eyes narrowing, something like a cloud coming over his countenance.  "Maybe she was in a red dress.  Maybe it was Paris."

"You are the gayest farmhand of all time" said Seaver.  "One of these others could be doing three guys at once, and you're still gayer than all that."

Chud turned to leave.  He stopped after a step and said, "was it Paris?  Was it the ability to imagine a red dress?"  One never knew where such accusations(j'ccuse) came from, a turd placed here or there, or date rape or something.  It was precipitous among strangers, and there were no more desperate strangers than the celebrity class, while the B and C tier were all philosophers and orators, "entrepreneurs" and authors.  The obligatory fashion line, and even for some, the least imaginative, a branded barbecue sauce.

"You were in the wrong to begin with, before all that Nancy stuff" said Seaver.  "Because you play with your penis.  Straight guys have women for that stuff."  Sometimes, in the grand scheme, a nugget of truth hurt more than a thousand vicious lies, like if I wrote from the perspective of the devil, but did it so very good that no one could tell the difference, without checking the tag on my underwear that is, no one knew; no one would care, Cheever.

"Oh" said Chud.  "Well.  Drown me in the crick and bury my pocket knife in the orchard.  I'm done for the day."

Seaver spat again, stared at it spreading across the sandy drive for about a millisecond, then stared at the front of the acreage where the access road came in.  He was counting time, waiting abominably, a kind of dubious ticking of some mechanism in the spirit, letting seconds stretch and fly across the face of his Casio wristwatch, even though that was digital, but those seconds butterflied and gelled and spread like butter on bread, covered the distance between arrival and exodus, the daily mileau, the daily thing where he counted his time because he didn't quite trust his boss to count his time.

Never mind Seaver never got his own time right, he never could master the knack of figuring the exact minute, but instead indeterminate, randomly placed glances at the dot matrix display, the little green screen on his wrist.  He had that, and the landowner, Prophet/Profit was the sorry ass boy of a good old farmer that built the thing good, and Prophet/Profit had a smartwatch that was like some Robocop bullsh*t that monitored egress, elapsed work hours and a myriad other things, including the daily tally of his own footsteps: to and from the 2500, that and nothing more.

To only himself, Chud said, watching one of the negro equipment operators cross between two outbuildings, the tractor houses, "he tasks me with the impossible".