The Sweet Corn My Son Planted Twice

Noon

By the second day, people were driving out from Decorah. By the third day, a man from Cresco drove twenty-five miles because his sister had told him there was fresh sweet corn in September, and he did not believe her.

There was no other sweet corn. That was the whole thing. Ours was the only sweet corn for fifty miles, and everybody wanted one more batch before the frost.

Colby sold out every day by early afternoon. He would pick at dawn, sell till it was gone, and then go back out and pick again for the next morning. He missed two football practices. His coach drove out himself, bought two dozen, and said he understood.

Across the blacktop, on the Mercer ground, Shane’s crew was chopping silage.

Shane does more than spray. He farms about four hundred acres, and he does custom work for other people, and in September that means chopping silage for the dairies. That year one of his jobs was the field directly across from our corner.

So every day at noon, his crew came across the road to buy sweet corn.

It started with one. A young man who drove a silage truck for Shane walked across on his lunch break the second day and bought a dozen. The next day he brought another one of the crew. By the end of the week, all four of Shane’s hired men were walking across that blacktop every noon.

They would buy a dozen each, pay Colby, and say something like “Good corn, kid,” or “How’d you get it this late?” and Colby would say, “We planted it in June.”

And Shane would be sitting right there in his pickup on the field edge, eating his own lunch, watching his men buy corn from his son.

I saw it twice, because I came by on my route at about that time. He would sit in that pickup with the windows up, not looking at the corner and not looking away from it either.

I want to be clear about something. Those men were not doing it to shame him. I am sure of that. They were working men who liked sweet corn and were glad to find it in September, and they liked the kid who sold it to them.

But every one of them knew. Everybody in the county knew. And every noon, those four men walked across the road in front of their boss and handed his son a five-dollar bill for a dozen ears of corn that should not have been there.

I did not say anything to Shane. Not once. I did not need to. The corn said it.

Saturday

It was the third Saturday in September, a cool morning with the first real fall in the air.

I was home that day. Colby was at the stand, and I was in the field with a wagon, picking ears into it so he could haul a load up to the corner when he ran low. Dad was at the stand with Colby, sitting in a lawn chair, making change and talking to every single person who drove up.

Around ten o’clock, I heard a pickup pull onto the shoulder. I knew which pickup by the sound of it.

I straightened up in the field. I could see the corner from where I was. Shane got out and walked to the tailgate. He stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets.

My dad did not get up out of his lawn chair. He just looked at him.

Colby was in the middle of counting change for a lady from town. He finished, handed it to her, said thank you. Then he looked at his dad.

I could not hear what they said at first. I started walking up out of the field. I did not hurry. I wanted to give them whatever it was going to be.

By the time I got close enough to hear, Shane had his wallet out.

“Four dozen,” he said.

Colby counted out four dozen into a box. He did not say anything. His hands were steady.

Shane handed him a twenty-dollar bill. Colby took it and put it in the coffee can.

Then they just stood there. Neither of them had the first idea what to say next.

My dad looked at the wagon behind me. The wagon was half full and still sitting at the field edge.

“Wagon needs loading,” my dad said, to nobody in particular.