IIIiiiiiiiii

VICKY & BENJAMIN

ANDREAH & DALEN

VICKY & ETHAN

ANDREAH & MAXWELL

The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects,having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they
thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed
monsters raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country,
across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight
lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and
gulches, water courses, houses.
The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust
mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The
thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the
earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not
control it—straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight
back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat', but the driver's hands could not
twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out,
had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him
and muzzled him—goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception,
muzzled his protest., He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as
it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He
sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or
encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip
or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a
seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered in
drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor.
He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor
its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was
not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades—
not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks
cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And
pulled behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke
up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders—twelve curved iron
penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without
passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not
will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his
fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted
for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread.
The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it
had no prayers or curses.