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."