from STORIES OF OURSELVES Read this extract from The Taste of Watermelon (by Borden Deal), and then answer the question that follows it: Mr Wills was tearing up and down the melon patch, and I was puzzled by his actions. Then I saw; he was destroying every melon in the patch. He was breaking them open with his feet, silent now, concentrating on his frantic destruction. I was horrified by the awful sight, and my stomach moved sickly. 5 My father stood for a moment, watching him, then he jumped off the porch and ran toward Mr Wills. I followed him. I saw Mrs Wills and Willadean huddled together in the kitchen doorway. My father ran into the melon patch and caught Mr Wills by the arm. 'What's come over you?' he said. 'What's the matter, man?' 10 Mr Wills struck his grip away. 'They've stolen my seed melon,' he yelled. 'They took it right out from under me.' My father grabbed him with both arms. He was a brave man, for he was smaller than Mr Wills, and Mr Wills looked insane with anger, his teeth gripped over his lower lip, his eyes gleaming furiously. Mr Wills shoved my father away, striking at him with his fist. My father went down into the dirt. Mr Wills didn't seem to notice. He went back to his task of destruction, raging up and down the field, stamping melons large and small. 15 20 My father got up and began to chase him. But he didn't have a chance. Every time he got close, Mr Wills would sweep his great arm and knock him away again. At last Mr Wills stopped of his own accord. He was standing on the place where the great melon had grown. His chest was heaving with great sobs of breath. He gazed about him at the destruction he had wrought, but I don't think he saw it. 25 'They stole my seed melon,' he said. His voice was quieter now than I had ever heard it. I had not believed such quietness was in him. 'They got it away, and now it's gone.' I saw that tears stood on his cheeks, and I couldn't look at him any more. I'd never seen a grown man cry, crying in such strength. 30 'I had two plans for that melon,' he told my father. 'Mrs Wills has been poorly all the spring, and she dearly loves the taste of melon. It was her melon for eating, and my melon for planting. She would eat the meat, and next spring I would plant the seeds for the greatest melon crop in the world. Every day she would ask me if the great seed melon was ready yet.' 35 I looked toward the house. I saw the two women, the mother and the daughter, standing there. I couldn't bear any more. I fled out of the field towards the sanctuary of my house. I ran past my mother, standing on the porch, and went into my room. 40 I didn't sleep that night. I heard my father come in, heard the low-voiced conversation with my mother, heard them go to bed. I lay wide-eyed and watched the moon through the window as it slid slowly down the sky and at last brought a welcome darkness into the world. 45 I don't know all the things I thought that night. Mostly it was about the terrible thing I had committed so lightly, out of pride and out of being sixteen years old and out of wanting to challenge the older man, the man with the beautiful daughter. 50 That was the worst of all, that I had done it so lightly, with so little thought of its meaning. In that country and in that time, watermelon stealing was not a crime. It was tolerated, laughed about. The men told great tales of their own watermelon-stealing days, how they'd been set on by dogs and peppered with salt-loaded shotgun shells. Watermelon raiding was a game, a ritual of defiance and rebellion by young males. I could remember my own father saying, 'No melon tastes as sweet as a stolen one,' and my mother laughing and agreeing. 55 How does Deal make this such a dramatic moment in the story?