Our first concern is looking after the cattle, Mrs. Stevenson says to the funeral agent, sitting at the entrance of her farm, with its 60 head of cattle, its 2 tractors, 2 combine harvesters, and hundreds of cultivated acres, where they also make honeys, jams, and meats for their own consumption. There’s the old tin smelter next door, also belonging to the family, which the day it went up was so large that it was clearly destined to fail. Mrs. Stevenson, seeing as your farm is situated in the middle of the state, the agent says, and seeing as there are only 10 cremation ovens in all of Nevada, we thought this smelting facility would be the ideal place for our furnace. She looks unconvinced. And if we were to discuss it with your husband? No, the farm is mine, the smelting plant, too, and anyway he won’t be back until very late today. On go the negotiations. The offers go up. She carries on saying no. Until, wearily, she says, Okay, sir, there’s something I have to confess. And she shows him through to the old plant. She points at the wall, at the open door to one of the ovens, the shape of an abandoned pipe, inside which, in among all the wrought iron, a tree has sprouted: its branches have molded in against the top and sides of the cylinder, with just one or two making it up and out through the chimney. You see it, that tree? Yes, ma’am, I see it. Well, this is the problem: in this oven, one winter when we were snowbound, we incinerated Grandmother (she had died suddenly), and there’s nothing in the world we’d destroy this tree for now.