Saturday
On Saturday morning I hitched the wagon to our truck, put Zeke in his booster seat, and drove two miles east on County Road 300 North to the end of Quincy Hollander’s lane.
His plank table was set up under the maple, the way it had been every summer of my married life. There was corn stacked on it, some of it from Thursday by the look of the husks. His truck was parked behind it with the tailgate down.
I pulled the wagon onto the shoulder right beside his table and unhitched it and chocked the wheels. I set out my card table at the end of his plank table, so the two of them made one long counter.
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I did not see him at first. Then I saw him coming down the lane from the house, walking fast, in his navy work shirt and his tan cap, and I could see from a hundred yards out that he was not happy.
He stopped at the end of his table and looked at my wagon and then at me.
“What do you think you’re doing,” he said. It was not really a question.
“Selling corn,” I said. “With you.”
“I didn’t ask for you.”
“I know you didn’t.” I took the coffee can off the wagon seat and set it on his plank table, right in the middle, between my corn and his. “Here’s how it works. Everything we take in today goes in this can. At the end of the day, we split it down the middle.”
“Your corn or mine?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Half and half. Six dollars a dozen, same price at both tables. Nobody undercuts anybody.”
He stared at me like I had said it in another language. “I don’t need your charity, Ione.”
“It isn’t charity,” I said. “You’ve got the corner and the shade and thirty years of people who know where to turn off. I’ve got fresh corn and nobody who’s ever heard of me. Neither one of us does as well alone.”
He did not answer that. He looked at the corn on my wagon, which had been picked six hours before, and then at the corn on his own table, which had been picked two days before. He was a farmer. He could see the difference.
“Your boy here?” he said.
“He’s in the truck,” I said. “He wanted to come.”
Quincy looked toward the truck. Zeke had his face pressed against the window glass. He gave his grandpa a small, careful wave. Quincy lifted one hand off his hip and gave a small one back.
Then he went and sat on his tailgate with his arms folded and said nothing at all.