Free The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen

how to eat here, so he waited.
    Hazel took a piece of bread and buttered it in a sure rhythm, as she must have buttered it all her life. He waited until she had taken a piece of summer sausage and put it carefully on half of her buttered bread, watched while she slowly cut the bread in half to make a half sandwich, placed the empty half on top of the other half and then put the sandwich in the exact center of her plate.
    “You make yourself a whole sandwich,” Hazel said softly. “You take two pieces of bread, and butter one side of one piece. Then put meat on it and the other piece of bread …" Her voice was even and carefully enunciated, as if she were talking to a small child. As she spoke she took another piece of bread, buttered half of it, made a half sandwich and put it on the plate beneath the picture.
    He did as she told him, working slowly though hunger was tearing at him now. He'd eaten only the half dozen doughnuts before the accident and they hadn't dented the emptiness in him. The bread was cut thick and he rubbed the butter evenly on one piece, took two slices of sausage and made a sandwich. He started to take a bite but saw that Hazel still had her sandwich on her plate and had now clasped her hands infront of the plate. The boy hesitated but did the same.
    “Heavenly Father,” she began, paused, took a breath and finished, “please bless our food and the three of us we pray in Jesus' na“I'me amen.”
    She ladled stew into the boy's bowl, took up her food and began eating in silence, chewing each bite carefully, looking not quite at the boy, staring past and out the small windows through the lace curtains. Twice Hazel looked up at the picture of the pilot and down at its sandwich with such a look in her eyes that the boy half expected thesandwich on the plate to have a bite taken out of it but when they were done the pilot's plate was untouched.
    Hazel took the dishes away, including the one below the picture, and then came back without speaking and went outside.
    The boy waited a moment and when she didn't come back in followed her out and they left the yard and went to a small shed, where Hazel rummaged around and came up with a bucket full of tools—wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, a grease gun, a hammer and some cold chisels.
    “Got to work on the swatter,” she said. “It needs fixing.”
    She left the shed and walked across the yard to one of the rows of old farm machinery. At one end stood a large implement with a wooden paddle wheel out to the side, on a platform, On the front of the platform was a sickle bar with teeth for cutting grass or hay or grain and at one end of the platform there was a rack with machinery on it and a metal seat with holes in it that led out to a long wooden tongue with places to hook a team of horses.
    “This is a swatter,” Hazel said, putting the bucket of tools on the ground. “It cuts grain and binds it into shocks. It needs tightening and greasing.”
    “I saw one before,” the boy said. “On my uncle's farm. He said he used to pull it with horses but didn't use it once he got a tractor.” He looked around. “Do you have horses here?”
    “No.”:
    “Oh;'
    “We will, though. Come maybe this fall or next when Robert comes home we'll be getting a team and we need all this equipment ready to go.”
    And the boy knew then she was maybe crazy, and he didn't care because it was not the evil kind of crazy like his parents but the soft kind.
    “Help me here. Hold this wrench. While I tighten.”
    The boy took the handle of the wrench and held it and when the nut was tightened they did another and then another and the old woman showed him how to use the grease gun to grease all the certs on the machine and a rag to wipe the grease off and then on to another machine, a corn planter, and then a mower and then supper with Robert again and then to sleep on the porch and breakfast and working on machines another day, then another, until the boy felt like he