“I’m not some fucking stray you lured in,” Claude said, during one particularly acrimonious exchange over his casual adherence to the pups’ schedules.

“Of course not,” Edgar’s father replied. “You know me. I’d shoot you if you were.”

When things were easiest between them, it was his mother’s doing: she mocked their arguments, laughingly, or interposed herself and flirted; when a discussion threatened to slide from fervent to angry, she’d lay a hand on Edgar’s father’s wrist and he’d look at her, startled, as if he had just remembered something. Then, days of amicable banter, visits from Doctor Papineau, evenings watching television. But Edgar knew the moment he walked in the door when there had been another incident. He’d find his father at the kitchen table, shoulders hunched, glowering at his paperwork. If one of them walked into a room, the other found a reason to leave, and Edgar’s mother would sigh in exasperation. And yet, two mornings later, they would be talking again at breakfast and that would be that.

One morning, his father announced that they’d better collect firewood before they got a snow that stuck. This was work they did each fall, cutting the aspen and birch cordwood they’d stacked in the spring alongside the old logging road that cut though their woods.

Can I drive? Edgar asked.

He meant Alice, their old orange Allis-Chalmers C tractor, with its curved fenders and half-moon drawbar. In place of a bucket seat, Alice had a flat padded bench upon which two could ride, though the passenger had to put his arm around the driver and hold one of the uprights. Over the years, Edgar had graduated from running the throttle to steering with his father’s hand resting on the wheel, to shifting, and lately, to clutching and braking.

He met his father behind the barn and they walked to Alice together. Edgar settled himself behind the wheel and his father took the crank to the front and slotted it into the hole beneath the radiator grill and hauled the crank over. There was a muffled pop from inside the engine and a belch of sooty smoke escaped the stack, but afterward the engine sat inert. He tried again. Then he walked to the milk house and returned with a can of starter fluid in his hand and he tipped up a hinged plate inside Alice’s carburetor and emptied a long spray into its gullet. He walked to the front of the tractor again. He touched the bill of his cap and rubbed his hands together and hauled the crank over. There was a gunshot sound and the handle bucked wildly backward. “Ho!” he said. “We’ve got her attention now. Give it another notch.” Edgar nodded and ratcheted up the throttle lever. This time Alice gave out a roar and from her stack poured a black cloud of exhaust.

The day was warm. A gray cloud ceiling stretched from horizon to horizon and the light coming through cast no shadows on the ground. Edgar backed the tractor up to the ancient iron-wheeled wagon parked at the edge of the south field. His father swung the yoke into place and dropped the hitch pin through and slid onto the seat beside him. They chugged around to the front of the barn, where Claude set the chainsaw and gasoline in the wagon and stepped onto the yoke.

“Haw!” he shouted, and they set off. At the bottom of the slope behind the barn his father reached over and goosed the throttle lever three notches. Edgar gulped and gripped the steering wheel and they shot past the woodchucks in the rock pile, all standing in a line, hands prayerful against fat bellies. His father tipped his hat to each animal in turn, shouting, “Ma’am. Ma’am. Ladies.” Then Claude snagged a passing clod of dirt and pitched it overhand, sending the matrons scampering into the rocky crevices.

They crossed the field. Two tremendous birches marked the entrance to the logging road at the edge of the woods. Their leaves blanketed the ground brown and yellow, and their white trunks were decorated with speckled curls of paper. Edgar throttled back, ready to turn the driving over to his father, but his father motioned Edgar ahead. Claude hung out from behind the seat and looked up the trail. When he saw what was coming, he hopped off the yoke and walked alongside. Edgar notched the throttle down and guided Alice through the pools of frost-brown fern cascading over the path. He jackknifed the wagon trying to back it up to the first eight-foot cordwood stack. Then he killed the engine trying to straighten it out.

You do it, Edgar signed.

“Try again,” his father said. He walked to Alice’s front end and cranked it back to life. Edgar ground the shift level into reverse and sweated and listened as his father and uncle shouted instructions.

“Left. Go left and it’ll straighten out.”

“Not left, right.”

“His left, not mine.”

“Far enough. Whoa. Whoa there.”

“Okay, a little more. Stop. Little more. Stop. Good.”

Edgar flipped the toggle to kill the engine and hopped down. Claude reached into the wagon and pulled out the chainsaw and the red gasoline can. They began to work their way through the pile. The work was monotonous but pleasant. Edgar heaved a log out and Claude sawed off a fireplace-size chunk and Edgar heaved the log again. Sawdust sweetened the air. Edgar daydreamed and looked around and wondered if Schultz had ever cut wood in that part of the forest, and what part of the house or barn might be built from it. Whenever the cut wood piled up, Claude stood with the saw idling while Edgar and his father tossed the chunks into the wagon.

Halfway through the first pile, light rain began to fall, hardly more than a tickle on the back of their necks. When it didn’t let up, his father shouted to Claude. Claude glanced over, then returned to cutting while Edgar advanced the log. When he stopped again, the air was filled with a fine, cool mist cut by drops of condensation falling from the skyward branches.

“Let’s load and head back,” Edgar’s father said. He began to loft cut pieces into the wagon, making it rattle and boom. Edgar and Claude joined him, but when they had finished, Claude looked up through the treetops and wiped his face with his shirtsleeve.

“It’s letting up,” he said. “We don’t need to stop.”

And all at once, the lightheartedness that had made them joke and wave at the woodchucks vanished. His father’s jaw was set. When he spoke next, it was as though some argument had already taken place, with positions staked out and a deadlock reached, all in some sphere invisible to Edgar. “This wood is wet and slippery,” his father said. “So is that saw. We can come back tomorrow when it’s dry and we won’t have to worry about anybody getting hurt.”

For a moment the three of them gazed at the stacked cordwood, shiny with moisture. Claude shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said and he braced the chainsaw against a log and yanked the rope starter. The engine sputtered for a moment and caught.

His father shouted something at Claude, who mouthed, “What?” and revved the chainsaw until it was impossible to hear his father’s reply. Then he shouted, “What?” again. When his father took the bait, Claude squeezed the throttle until the chainsaw howled in his hands. His father paled with anger. A grin spread across Claude’s face and he turned and dropped the chain bar into a log and a wake of wet wood chips sprayed onto the ground.

His father stalked over to Edgar and cupped his mouth by his ear.

“Get up on the tractor.”

Edgar clambered into the tractor seat and flipped the ignition switch up. His father cranked the starter, swung up onto the driver’s side of the seat, gunned the engine, and they bounced their way out of the woods, logs rattling and flying off the back of the wagon. At the house, they stacked the wood in the inside corner by the porch while the whine of the chainsaw pierced the drizzle, reduced by distance to an insect sound. When they finished, Edgar parked Alice beside the barn. Almondine greeted him at the door and chaperoned him up the stairs. He listened to his mother and father talk while he changed out of his wet clothes.