Helen's devotion and loyalty to Henry had seldom failed in the eighteen years they had been married.  She openly - sometimes stridently - objected, however, to Henry's fixed dedication to putting all the profits back into the dairy farm.  Each year it was replace the milking machines, buy new stock, repair fences, paint the barns.  Each year the house went unpainted another year and the red VW that Helen drove sagged dispiritedly by the back porch like an old horse that should be put to pasture.

"I do love Henry, of course.  He's a wonderful man, I don't deny,"  remarked Helen to her sister Laura one day at lunch, "but you can't imagine how maddening it is!  He spends hundreds to put in a sound system so he can bring soft music to his cows and they respond by producing more milk.  But he assumes that a wife will produce house wifery without any more than your basic skeleton attention.  I don't even get a slap on the rump for encouragement.  It's downright humiliating to have to take second place to a herd of dairy cows.  And as for fixing up the house, that, Henry told me, is sheer feminine fantasy and way down the list of priorities - which, of course, means never."

"But you know that Henry is a one-channel man.  His devotion to the dairy farm will pay off eventually and you will realize all this was for you after all."  Laura gave her hand a quick sisterly pat across the table.

Helen, unconvinced, nibbled Melba toast without enthusiasm.

One morning a week later, Henry took the pickup into the city to buy feed and fence posts.  Shortly after he left, Helen telescoped herself into the Reluctant Wagon and urged him, gasping and blowing, into Centertown to the Kut and Kurl where her friend Alicia presided over the beauty problems of the village ladies.

"Hi, Helen - not quite ready," greeted Alicia, "This perm's taking longer than I thought.  Sit down.  I'll be with you for that haircut in a jiff."

Helen waved a greeting and idly picked up one of the tattered magazines that filled the "coffee table" in front of the row of lime green dryers.  It was a January issue of "Marvelous Home".  She flipped slowly through the pages of mouth watering casseroles, the impossibly beautiful ladies advocating shampoos - and then stopped at the first article.  It was titled "How to Put Zest in Your Marriage.

Now zest is something my marriage could use, she thought,and perched on the edge of one of the lime green dryers to read the article.

It was one of those articles that number things giving the reader choices numbered one to ten to accomplish the promised goal.  The first way suggested was "Get your husband to take you to Paris in the Spring."

Helen smiled.  She could hear Henry saying, "In the Spring?  Instead of a new barn?  Are you joking?"

Number 2  "Get your husband to raise a mustache.  It will change his image and encourage a new romantic approach to your relationship.

Number 3.  "Choose one piece of furniture in your house, haul it to the dump, set a match to it and watch it burn."

OK, Helen...Helen!  Hey where were you?  Didn't know we had any magazines that good.  Wanna take it home?"

"No, thanks, I think I got what I needed out of it."

After the haircut, she didn't stop at the Standard Station or the Grocery Emporium as she had planned.  Instead, she and the Reluctant Wagon headed for home.

All the way home she had been debating with herself as to which piece of furniture to choose.  But now, as she stood in the archway between the dining room and the living room, there was no doubt which one it would be.

The chair was crouched in the corner.  It had wide, flat maple arms.  The slats which formed the back of the chair squinted sullenly out over the faded orange cushion.  Underneath, like an aging cow, the springs sagged.

Helen remembered the first summer of their marriage when everything was gauzed with novelty and happiness.  They had stopped at Charlie's Junk Palace because they needed an easy chair and this was all Charlie had to offer in their price range.

Henry had sat in the chair dutifully and read the paper for a few uncomfortable evenings and after that no one sat in it if they could help it.  She couldn't remember anyone using it since Pop's funeral and that was ten years ago.

Since it was too big for the Reluctant Wagon to haul and Henry had the pickup, she decided that the little knoll out by the corn field would have to do instead of the dump.

She dropped her straw purse on the dining room table and approached her victim.  Perhaps I should have a kitchen chair and a whip for the job, she thought.  Grinning, she grabbed hold the wide arms .

"Come with me, my beauteh," she murmured, and then tugged and pulled the chair through the dining room, into the kitchen, out through the milk cans and extra tractor tires that Henry insisted on keeping on the back porch.  Finally, the chair sat on the knoll, glowering at the rolling corn field that stretched to the horizon.

"Now, a little paper, some kerosene, matches..."  she nearly sang it.

Back to the kitchen, out to the shed, everything together and at last the lighted match tossed onto the kerosene soaked cushion.  The dark smoked spiraled into the summer sky and presently a flame licked around the smoke.  Quickly, crackling and blooming into a great flower of flame, the chair began to catch and burn.  Helen leaned against the big maple tree, hugging herself, and watching with growing delight.  Liberation!  It was truly a healing experience.  She was in charge of her life.  She had no idea how much she had wanted to burn that chair.

As she watched, a mental picture of the coffee table began to take shape.  She had called it Early Yukk style.  It was one that her mother-in-law was about to throw in the trash and Helen happened by at just the wrong time.

"Why Helen, I never thought,"  apologized her mother-in-law, licking her finger and applying it to one of the many scratches on the rickety little table, "You don't have a coffee table in your living room, do you?  Now you just take this one.  You're so creative and artistic, I'm sure you can fix this up and it will do until you get one of your own."

And so it was loaded onto the pickup and taken to the farm.  It had been in the living room ever since, with a piece of cardboard under one leg to even it up.

Back in the living room, she dumped magazines from the offending coffee table, turned it upside down and tore at one of the legs.  It shattered easily and the three others followed with satisfying cracks.  Helen piled the legs on the table, snatched up a lopsided puce colored throw rug which had been a contribution from her sister's attic, and staggeed happily back to the burning chair.  She arranged the new sacrifices tastefully on the fire, soaking the rug to insure it's total consumption and then watched the whole thing flare heavenward.

She laughed out loud and wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand.  How about those dreadful red mahogany end tables with the drawers that stuck and the weird carving - and the dining room chairs that didn't match - and the strange sideboard with the heavy curved pieces tacked on in irrational places?  They all went.

Finally all that was left were two ornate china lamps sitting forlornly on the floor in a tangle of cords, and the davenport with the prickly upholstery.  Unable to resist a bargain, she had bought it for a dollar out of the parsonage one time when they were changing ministers.  For years, she had intended to refinish it, cut it down and re-upholster it to make a love seat.  In the meantime, it waited in the living room.

"This, too, shall pass!"  shouted Helen and pulled and pushed the heavy thing through the kitchen, past the tires and the milk cans and finally over the bumpy grass and onto the fire.

The sofa had taken some extra time to move, and when she got back to the fire, she noticed that it was beginning to creep out into the summerdry grass.  The corn field was only feet away from the  spreading flames.

The garden hose was nearby and she ran to get it to ring the fire.  The flames were going higher and higher and she began to have real concern about setting the corn field on fire.

Ed and Marty Snow were their nearest neighbors and Helen remembered that Ed carried fire fighting equipment on his big pickup.  He had brought it over once when one of the barns was struck by lightning.  The phone was in the hallway, and Helen's footsteps echoed as she ran through the empty rooms.

Ed answered the phone.

"Ed?  This is Helen.  Say, I've got quite a fire going down here and Henry's gone into town for the day.  I wonder if you would come down and help me put it out."

There was a silence.

Finally, Ed cleared his throat.  "Helen, Henry is my friend. I couldn't do that!"

There was another silence.

"Ed?  I've got a bonfire out of control out in the yard and I'm afraid for the corn field.  Could you bring your fire fighting equipment and give me a hand?"

"Well, why didn't you say?  Get the hose out.  I'll be right there!"

There wasn't much damage to the corn field.

Ed walked around the empty rooms.  He didn't have much to say.  Helen had tried to explain the fire and why she had needed to do it, but, although he was polite, she felt he didn't really understand.

As they went out to the knoll to check the smouldering remains of chair legs, unburned springs, remnants of scorched fabric, Ed said, "Helen, I've been thinking.  I don't believe you should be here when Henry gets home.  I've never known him to be actually violent, but maybe it would be better if you came home with me and had a drink with us and then, after Henry gets home and has a little chance to get used to the idea, I'll bring you back.

Helen was red-faced and exhausted by then and aside from the fact that she had done something dire to her back, she was more than ready to sit down.  She had also developed an unbelievable thirst.

They were seated on the Snow's patio when they saw Henry go by.  A few minutes afterwards, Ed took Helen home.

Henry was sitting at the kitchen table - it was chrome and could not burn.  He was just staring down at the table.  He seemed to be in shock.  Never had she seen him so shaken - not even that time she decided to surprise him by learning to drive the new tractor and had ended up in the pond.

Ed, who had lingered outside, came in then and saw at once that something had to be done.  His suggestion that they all go out to eat at the Prairie Chicken House over by Sunstone was accepted gratefully by Helen.  Henry, still in shock, went quietly and had very little to say at supper.

By the time they got home again, the numbness was beginning to wear off.  Henry's roars reverberated in the empty rooms.

"How can you do these things to me?  When you adopted the family of skunks, I could understand - if not accept.  And the time you made the $600 blouse - "

"Now, Henry, that's not fair.  I was just trying to help. That sewing machine was a real good buy and I couldn't help it if the hospital bills were so high for getting the needle out of my finger.  If it had worked out, I would have saved you - "

"Well - it didn't work out!   And this time was even worse. Just  plain vengeful - destructive - what ever possessed you?"

Since there seemed to be no sensible answer to that question, Helen allowed Henry to run down.  By then, they had gone to bed and in the final exhausted silence, Helen began to have qualms of conscience.  Usually, he came around, given a little time, but this had been longer than usual...

Suddenly into the darkness came a great whoop of laughter.

Helen jumped, joined in tentatively and finally they were both howling with laughter.  The laughed themselves out into the darkness.  Everything would be quiet, finally, and then one of them would start in again and they would be off.

They settled down at last.  Henry reached out and landed an encouraging slap on Helen's rump - as though she were one of the cows.

"All right, old girl," he said, "I guess you've earned it at that.  The new barn can wait another year and you go ahead and fix up the house...never did like that collection of junk we've been living with for 18 years..."

Helen's back hurt but she didn't care.  Her farmer husband had given her preference over a cow and she had added zest to their marriage.