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already have been listening intently, would become even more stilled. Whereas in the beginning each of them had been listening to the sawblade as an individual, there was some unnameable point where they were suddenly listening to it as one, the three of them focused on something no one could see, and which few, if any, could hear, though which many of the men could now sense.
    They might as well have been striving to hear a deity. The way the deity seemed not to be there—in a room, in a building, in a grove of woods—and then the way it
was
there; not instantaneously, but completely.
    There in the clearing, when they heard the higher harmony, the secret pitch and pulse of the round blade having achieved its perfect temper, the children's faces would soften; as if, even though they were children, they had nonetheless been carrying around burdens and tensions, had already absorbed them from the lives of those who surrounded them.
    Some days it might be Jim Ed who first heard the sawblade's release, and other days, Bonnie or Maxine would hear it before the others. But always, once the ringing started, it would be only a second or two before they all three heard it, so that they each became entranced simultaneously.
    Sometimes the children would not hear the sound. Despite the best and most practiced efforts of the saw sharpener, the tempered pitch would not yet be achieved, and the round table's motor would have to be shut off, and the files brought back out, and the blade addressed yet again. And here, too, the children were useful, for they could indicate to the saw sharpener an approximation of how far off-temper the sound had been.
    The eyes of the men watching them, awaiting the verdict. The three children already standing in a line, as if on a stage.
    After the children finally detected the harmony, the spinning blade on the round table would slow to a stop. The relaxation on the children's faces would fade, vanishing with the sound itself, and the children would rise and return to the shadier, cooler forest to resume their duties of being children, unseen by and unknown to the world. Playing their guitars. Singing a little. Pretending they were famous.
    The men remained behind, attached to the machines. With the blades adjusted, the machines would start back up, coughing and blatting slowly at first, burning either too much oil, through heat- and grit-worn pistons, or not enough, with dust-soaked filters starving the motors. The men would tinker with the engines, adjusting throttles, until the deafening race of the engines was saturating the small clearing and spreading into the damaged forest, shaking the ground with the throbbing, and the howl of the timber being planed to foursquare beams, slabs of lumber falling away in bouncing clatter as the men resumed their attempts at making a living. Shouting at each other to be heard over the roar of the sawmill, but unable to make themselves be heard. Shaking their heads and resorting to crude gestures and, when those failed, shaking their heads further in frustration and waving off even the attempts at communication.
Forget it.
Heads down, back to the focus on work. The bright leaves of the lumber falling away from the blade like sheafs of hay being cleaved. A fountain of sawdust pluming from the sawblade, whirring gold dust in the sun.
    The forest shrilled with the shouting chorus of the insects, which seemed to be endeavoring to imitate the roar of the mill. There were catfish to catch in the swimming holes, squirrels and deer and turkeys for Jim Ed to hunt, and rutted clay roads to explore, either on foot or on bicycles, the tires of which were long-ago worn smooth and multi-patched—but as wonderful as the isolated, suspended world of their childhood was, it was far and away secondary to the world they entered when they heard, or created, the tempered harmony.
    The children, with their backs to the mill, walked up the dirt road, talking quietly, conversing