time, I'd say. Waited
any longer, it wouldn't have done any good. Another few years, a farmer
wouldn't mean anything."

The woman watched him, her eyes frightened as though he might suddenly
gnash his teeth or leap in the air.

"Pretty soon," the farmer said, "they'd have it all mechanical. Couldn't
stop anything. Now," he said, smiling at his wife, "we can stop it all."

"Henry, go out to the fields," the woman said.

"No," Henry said, standing, stretching his thin, hard body. "I won't go
out to the fields. Neither will August Brown nor Clyde Briggs nor Alfred
Swanson. None of us. Anywhere. Not until the food's been stopped long
enough for people to wake up."

The farmer looked out of the kitchen window, beyond his tractor and the
cow barn and the windmill. He looked at rows of strong corn, shivering
their soft silk in the morning breeze. "We'll stop the corn. Stop the
wheat. Stop the cattle, the hogs, the chickens."

"You can't."

"_I_ can't. But all of us together can."

"No sense," the woman said, wagging her head. "No sense."

"It's sense, all right. Best sense we've ever had. Can't use an army
with no stomach. Old as the earth. Can't fight without food. Takes food
to run a war."

"You'll starve the two of us, that's all you'll do. Nobody else will
stop work."

The farmer turned to his wife. "Yes, they will. Everywhere a farmer is
the same. He works the land. He reads the papers. He votes. He listens
to the radio. He watches the television. Mostly, he works the land.
Alone, with his own thoughts and ideas. He isn't any different in Maine
than he is in Oregon. We've all stopped work. Now. This morning."

"How about those across the ocean? Are they stopping, too? They're not
going to feed up their soldiers? To kill us if we don't starve first?
To--"

"They stopped, too. A farmer is a farmer. Like a leaf on a tree. No
matter on what tree in what country on whose land. A leaf is a leaf. A
farmer's the same. A farmer is a farmer."

"It won't work," the woman said dully.

"Yes, it will."

"They'll _make_ you work."

"How? It's our own property."

"They'll take it away from you."

"Who'll work it then?"

The woman rocked in her chair, her mouth quivering. "They'll get
somebody."

The farmer shook his head. "Too many people doing other things, like
making shells and guns, like sitting in fox-holes or flying planes."

The woman sat rocking, her hands together in her lap. "It won't work,"
she