In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Reliance
  • Catherine Reid (bio)

I back the tractor out of the barn, get down on my hands and knees, and study the way the mower is attached. Two familiar messages sound equally loud in my head: I can do this. And, Can I do this? One of the blades had come off earlier in the week, when Holly was mowing, in a terrible grinding and strewing of metal parts. And now, though I’d rather be at the river or working in the garden, I kneel instead in gravel, remove the cotter pins, and free the bolts holding the main pulley in place. After dragging out the mower, I flip it over, a turtle on its back, missing one of its legs.

The other is badly bent, and both it and the one still attached are so dull and pitted it’s hard to tell how the edges sliced grass. I take off the second blade and rue that I don’t have an anvil or large vise. I make do with a maul and a concrete block, slamming the heavy hammer against the bent blade a few times. Then I push a block of wood into the shade for a stool, sit down with the blade clamped between my feet and start filing, diagonal strokes toward the edge, black metal slow to yield silver. As sweat gathers on my back, I think how much easier it would be to borrow a truck, take the tractor to a repair shop, and let someone else deal with grease and scraped skin. But something insists that I do this myself, something that won’t relax its hold on me, and while often I like the stance such independence affords, it’s a trait that has also gotten me into trouble.

An hour or so later, the pieces back together, I start the tractor, engage the mower, and shift into gear. The tractor bucks and shudders, and I know I didn’t reshape the blade quite right, but this time nothing flies off and I can see cut grass in my wake. I circle the lower field and head home for a beer. [End Page 17]Why did you learn how to do that?” the horse whisperer asks. We’re eating pieces of yellow sheet cake in a room full of prisoners, and the best I can manage is a shrug. He deserved something better. We were, after all, the team that won at Pairs for Chairs, our arms linked together as we raced for a seat each time the music stopped. Elbow to elbow, we had had to find the right balance between caution and roughness—yank too hard and it might be misconstrued; don’t yank hard enough and you might miss a chair. We kept from getting tangled in each other’s legs and were the only ones left sitting when the game came to an end. But finding a better answer than “because I’m a dyke” or “self-reliance is in my genes” or “I drink of the same waters as did Emerson and Thoreau” requires too much explaining. I’m still not even sure why I’m spending a weekend in prison with men convicted of violent crimes.

I do know it’s a good program—the Alternatives to Violence Project—co-led by outside facilitators and inmates who have already gone through the training. My role is similar to that of the twenty-odd prisoners, except that I get to go home to my lover at night. Like the men, however, I had much to surrender at the main entrance, including autonomy and a driver’s license; unlike them, I didn’t have to strip or get orifices checked, and the metal detector’s sweep around my body was brief.

When the first session finally began—some of the men having waited months for this—we sat in a circle and learned about the games we would play, the exercises we would do, the times we would pair up or talk as a whole group. Then we were off at a pace that seemed edgy and fast, the inmates white and black and Hispanic, teenaged and...

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