A father tells his son about something that happened suddenly when he was around twenty years old, the same age the son is now. The father was bullied as a young man for his hairless face, including by a village horse trader who often visited the farm with his daughter in a wagon. The father did not like the collar he had to wear for sabbath, and one night, when he sat in the same room he did every night since his wife had died, he showed the son a photograph of him in the collar and laughed that he had looked like a fool. He says that even though he was the son's age, he was much younger in some regards, otherwise he would not be telling the son this story. That day many years ago, the father, then a young man, was in the fields. After he worked, the young man lay down on the warm wheat and listened to the sound of the horses chomping. Suddenly, another sound came; the sound of wheels creaking and grinding on the road. The sound set the young man's teeth on edge. The sound was familiar, because every day for many days those wheels had rolled by his fields towards the village. He resented the sound of them, and the sound would echo in his ears at night. He wanted to shout at the wheels. This day, the wheels squeaked to a stop instead of continuing to the village. The young man wanted to run, but he stayed in the wheat. His father and the horse-trader got out of the wagon and walked towards the field. They were chuckling as though they had agreed on something. The young man's father called out to him, and he stayed still in the wheat. When the two men were very close to him, he had no choice but to jump up. The young man's father soberly told him that they were making for town, and the horse trader winked at him and called him a rascal, and told him to come along with them. The men walked back to the wagon with the young man, and the horse trader said that the young man could not sit in the front with the married men just yet. The young man sat in the back with the horse-trader's daughter, a young girl of sixteen. He nodded awkwardly at her with his eyes lowered. The horse trader whipped the horses and the wagon jolted forward. The young man watched the road through a hole in the floor, and yearned for his fields. He thought about the young girl, and the spring day that they had spent in the wheat. She was the only girl that he had ever been alone with in the wheat, and he wished that she would speak to him like she did then. Twilight came, and the father and horse-trader talked quietly about horses and the harvest in the front of the wagon. The young man imagined that he would throw himself out of the wagon, but he could not do it. He finally got enough courage to look at the young girl. Her head was bowed, and he could tell she was crying. The young man began to cry too. He started to inch towards the girl, but was afraid that she would resent his approach. The wagon stopped suddenly, and their sobs stopped. The voices of the horse-trader and the young man's father drifted towards the young man. His father was somber, and the young man heard snippets of the conversation, such as "It'll make him responsible," "She's got stuff. You know how it is," "Too much dreaming around is bad" and "I got plenty horses. I'll take him in with me." The young man looked at the girl intently for the first time of the ride, and her eyes glimmered back at him. He held her hand, and they leaned against each other. The horse-trader's voice came again, and said that it was the best all around. The wheels of the wagon squeaked. The young man, now a father, tells his son that that winter, when the snow was still high around the horse-traders house, the son was born.