Picture a south central farmhouse at night: the porch is painted white and beyond there is the darkness, and within the darkness, there is corn, acres and acres and acres of corn wandering out until the yellow fields become the stars and the stars become the fields once more. Watch the moon wander through the silent clouds.
Picture a boy standing on the wooden veranda. He is young, perhaps 7, and the chill night wind tickles his youthful face. It is seldom cloudy during the day, and the thick darkness offers rare solace from the oppressive heat, but he is restless, and drifts up and down along the dirt track and up the stairs towards the house. He lives at the end of a rocky path that traces its way from the highway out into the prairies, but the wildness of that grand western dream rarely permeates the tiny farm and the yellow farmland. When he has had enough and his breath has slowed to a steady rhythm, he turns on his heel and opens the creaking wooden door to cross the darkened threshold.
Skip forward a few years: he is maybe 12, maybe older, and he watches the swallows rise on the late thermals that climb upwards above the field and then turn, and fall freely back into the ripening corn, and he stands still, his left hand leafing slowly through his golden hair. He has grown since you saw him last – he is taller, stronger, broader, and his unshaven face is marked with the first signs of youth. You hear shouts and the smashing of glass from within.
It is twilight, and the birds are just beginning to sing in the woods. He steps forwards onto the grass, and kneels, his hands grasped around his heart as he watches the moon climb through the clouds. Then he leans forward and collapses into the soil.
Envisage the world when he is sixteen and his cheeks are glistening with the remnants of dried tears. Once again, he is on the porch, his hands are in his pockets, and his knees are shaking. It is dark, fully dark now, and the windows only reflect the face of the full moon, staring out from the cloudless, summer night. The old diesel tractor lies desolate in a fallen barn.
He turns and enters the house through an open door, passing the smashed visage of a boy and two parents, and he hears shouts from a room deeper within, but he pauses, and turns to look outside. He sees nothing. So he takes three short steps into the old dining room that faces west, now illuminated by the last light of the sunset, and he raises a hand to wipe away one final tear.
Then he walks slowly into the kitchen, and reaches his hand into a draw, from which he takes a small object. A man towers over a cowering woman, and she tries to smile when she sees her son, but can’t, because of the contortions of her features.  Then the man reaches forward and strikes her, but the last moonlight glances in through a window and enlightens the metal in the boy’s hand, making it gleam like an ember. The boy walks towards the man, his steps slow, and the man laughs, but the laughs soon subside when a look of shock and pain absorbs his face, and he falls, bent double, his white shirt slowly turning red.
Picture the mother when she sees in her son the aching ire of a boy who kills his father.