The Cornstalks I Tied Down Main

When The Fingers Quit

By two-thirty I had done twenty-six posts, and my hands had gone past cold to stupid.

That is the only word for it. The wire would not turn right.

I dropped a whole spool and it rolled under a parked car, and I got down on the brick on my hands and knees in the dark feeling for it and found a quarter and a bottle cap first.

When I stood up the street swam. I had been on my feet since the four a.m. bake the morning before, going on twenty-three hours.

I had fifteen posts left and ribbon for maybe eleven of them.

I rationed. I started giving the posts down by the depot end a smaller bundle and one length of ribbon instead of two, telling myself nobody looks as hard down by the depot.

And knowing Dad would have said a place either looks loved or it does not, you cannot half-love the depot end.

I kept going anyway, because half-loved beats bare.

Somewhere in there the sky over the courthouse clock went from black to the kind of blue that is not light yet but is the promise of it.

The clock said five-forty. I had nine posts to go and my ribbon was gone and my sunflowers were down to the bent ones, and I was wiring bare cornstalk bundles on by feel.

I thought, this is where it ends. I will get eight on and the depot corner will stand there naked and the whole town will see exactly how far one stubborn woman got before she ran out.

And then down at the bank end, where it had all started, a light came on in a storefront. The hardware.

A shape came out onto the sidewalk and stood looking up the street at what I had done. Then it came walking down the middle of Main toward me carrying two cups that steamed in the cold blue air.