The Winter We Picked Our Own Heat

Vernon drove by

Vernon drove past every single day. Our road is the only way from his place to town, and he took it slow.

Sometimes he slowed down almost to a stop at the end of our lane and looked at the snow fence rings filling up in the side yard.

He never pulled in. He never rolled down the window. Once, the second Thursday, he passed while I was standing in the bed of the blue pickup throwing ears, and I lifted my hand to him out of habit, because that is what you do on a country road.

He did not lift his back. I stood there with my glove in the air and felt foolish, and then I went back to work, because the corn did not care how foolish I felt.

I prayed about him, if you want to know. Not big prayers. Just in the row, between ears, the way Grandpa taught me to pray when my hands were busy.

Lord, I do not want to hate him. Help me not to hate him.

Some days that prayer worked better than others.

The second week

The time changed that first Sunday in November, and after that the light went before five thirty. That cost us an hour every evening.

We were down to ten or twelve bushels a night among the three of us, and my hands had cracked open across the knuckles.

I wrapped them in medical tape from the hospital before I went to bed.

Maisy watched me do it one night and the next evening she brought me a tube of her own strawberry lip balm and told me to put it on my knuckles.

“It works on lips,” she said, very serious. “Knuckles are probably the same.”

I put it on. My hands smelled like strawberries for two days, and I did not wash them any more than I had to.

By Friday we had picked a little over two hundred and forty bushels by my count. Eight truckloads, give or take.

The snow fence rings were heaped above the top wire, and I had thrown an old tarp over each one against the rain.