The Acre My Father Never Sold

Who the corn was for

I sat on the tractor step. Merle eased himself down on the edge of the shredder deck beside me with a grunt, his knees cracking.

“You remember the packing plant,” he said.

“In town. Sure. It closed when I was in high school.”

“Spring of 2009,” Merle said. “Four hundred some people. Most of them had been there fifteen, twenty years. Half the families in that line worked the kill floor or the boning line. Gloria’s husband was a foreman.”

I looked over at Gloria. She was helping Ana reach an ear high on a stalk, laughing about something.

“He passed,” Merle said quietly, following my look. “Five years ago. Cancer. She cleans at the hospital now. Ana wasn’t even born the first summer she came out here.”

“Dad started this the year the plant closed.”

“That April,” Merle said. “Your dad dropped off a few dozen eggs at the food pantry at the church, and he saw the shelves. Canned corn, Luke. In the middle of the best corn country God ever made, people were lining up for canned corn.”

He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“He came home mad. Never saw him so mad. He went down to the co-op that same week and bought sweet corn seed, and he planted that acre, and in August he went out to that church and told Pastor Jim to tell the families. Come early. Take what you need.”

“Why early?”

“Because nobody wants to be seen getting help,” Merle said. “Your dad knew that. First light, nobody on the road but cows. He set it up so they’d never have to look at anybody.”

I thought of the list. Don’t stand there. Nobody comes to be thanked.

“He never stood out here?”

“Never once that I know of,” Merle said. “He’d put out a sign every August at the end of the rows, so newcomers would know it was all right. Paint on an old board. Then he’d go check his pivots like nothing was happening.”

“And you laughed at him.”

Merle looked at me straight. “I did. For years. I thought he was a soft old fool and I thought that acre would look better squared up in my field. I offered him three hundred every fall partly to needle him.”

“He wrote it down,” I said. “Every year. ‘Merle offered $300. Told him no.'”

Merle laughed then, a wet, short laugh. “Of course he did.”