The Summer We Walked Forty Acres

But corn does not come on all at once. The plants that were short the first time had grown, and new tassels were coming up out of the tops of them.

So we went through again. That is the second pass. It is easier in one way because there are fewer tassels, and harder in another, because you have to look at every plant just as close to find the few that are there.

That is where you get docked. The missed ones are the late ones.

That was where Jaycee was made for the work. A girl who checks every plant does not miss the late ones.

On the second Sunday at church, a woman I know named Zelda, who works the counter at the farm store, caught me in the aisle after the benediction. She had heard. Everybody had heard by then.

“Is it true you and that girl are walking Merlyn’s seed corn by yourselves?” she said.

“It’s true.”

She did not say anything else. She just patted my arm twice, and when we came out of the corn on Monday there was a sack of zucchini bread on Merlyn’s tailgate with Zelda’s handwriting on it: For the detasselers.

That was how it went. Nobody made a speech about it. A thermos on a post. A sack of zucchini bread.

A man at the feed store who would not let Nolan pay for the coffee. It was just small things, and it was the small things that kept us going back.

On the second Saturday, Nolan came out with us. The elevator was closed that morning, and he did not say he was coming.

He was just up at a quarter to five with his long sleeves on, sitting at the kitchen table when Jaycee came downstairs.

He walked the row next to hers all morning. He did not say a single word to her the whole time, and I know because I was in the row on her other side. He just walked even with her. When she stopped to check a plant, he stopped. When she said, “Got you,” he did not laugh.

At the end of the morning he came out of the row, took his cap off, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He looked at Jaycee sitting in the grass with her Popsicle.

“I missed two,” he said. “You got them both. I saw you go back for them.”

“I know,” she said. “I saw you miss them.”

He laughed then, for the first time in a long time. It was a real laugh, the kind you only hear out of a man when something has gotten through to him.

I want to say something about Nolan here, because I know how it might look, that he let his brother cut his daughter and then said nothing.

That is not what happened. My husband is a man who does not talk when talking will not change a thing.

He did not call Darrin. He did not go over there. He knew it would not help Jaycee one bit, and it might hurt her.

But he bought the tape, and he bought the safety glasses, and on his one morning off he walked a row of seed corn with his girl. That is how Nolan talks.