The Last Corn Elwin Dried

Tuesday came up bright and cold. There was patchy snow on the brown ground, the kind March leaves in the low spots and along the fence rows, and the sky was that hard blue you only get after a front comes through. It was eighteen degrees when I went out to start the semi.

Halvor was already at the base of the bin. He had his tan cap pulled low and his brown coveralls zipped to the chin, and he was checking the auger hookup one more time.

His breath came out in clouds. He gave me a nod, and I knew he had been out there since before sunrise.

I backed the hopper-bottom under the spout of the swing auger. I have backed that trailer a thousand times, but I took it slow that morning and got out twice to look.

I wanted the spout dead center over the front hopper, so the corn would pile there first and I could pull ahead without spilling.

Arlette walked over from the house a little after seven-thirty. She had on Elwin’s old canvas barn coat over her church sweater, the sleeves rolled twice, and a stocking cap.

She had a thermos of coffee and a stack of foam cups. She would not let anybody carry them for her.

At a quarter to eight, the neighbors started coming. I had not asked anybody. But Doris, who has been Arlette’s friend since they were girls at the country school, pulled in first in her Buick.

Then two of the men from the coffee shop in town came in a pickup, and then another, and then another.

Somebody had told somebody. That is how it goes. By eight o’clock there were five pickups parked along the fence line and nine or ten people standing in the cold by the bin, men with their hands in their pockets and a couple of farm wives with their arms crossed, all of them pretending they just happened to be driving by.

Doris walked straight to Arlette and took her arm. She did not say anything. She just stood there with her, two old women in the cold, the way Doris had stood by her at the graveside in November when the wind came across the cemetery hard enough to tip the flowers over.

Merritt Bauer pulled in at five till eight. He got out with his white cap on and his green quarter-zip, and he took a long metal probe out of the bed of his pickup, the kind that is about six feet long with slots along the side.

He had a moisture tester in a case and a stack of sample pans.

He looked at all those pickups along the fence and shook his head a little. Then he walked over to Arlette, took his cap off, and shook her hand.

“Mrs. Ostlund,” he said, “I’m sorry for your loss. Elwin hauled to us for thirty years and he never once brought me a bad load.”

“Thank you, Merritt,” Arlette said. “I’d like you to tell me the truth about this one. Whatever it is.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That’s the only kind I’ve got.”

Halvor climbed up on the tractor and engaged the power take-off. The swing auger came up to speed with that low steady hum.

Then he reached over and opened the slide on the unload auger under the bin floor, and for a second there was nothing but the sound of metal turning on metal.

Then the corn came.