The Last Corn Elwin Dried

It came yellow and loud, all at once, pouring out the spout into the front of the trailer like it had been waiting all winter for somebody to let it out.

I climbed up the ladder on the side of the trailer in my red insulated vest and looked down into it.

I have done that for twenty-two years, watching the load come up, checking it as it fills. But I never watched one the way I watched that one.

There were no chunks. No crust. No gray dust coming off it, no clumps stuck together, none of that sour smell that hits you when a bin has gone bad.

It was clean, bright corn, hard as gravel, rolling over itself in a pile that grew and spread across the floor of the hopper.

When the front hopper was full, I climbed down and pulled the truck ahead six feet so the spout was over the rear hopper.

Halvor kept the auger running. Nobody in the yard said much. One of the coffee shop men lit a cigarette and then put it out again, like he had forgotten where he was.

That swing auger moves about fifteen hundred bushels an hour when it has a full feed, so it took about forty minutes to put a thousand bushels in that trailer.

I topped it off at the back, watching the peak of the pile come up just under the side boards, and gave Halvor the sign.

He shut the slide and let the auger run empty, then throttled the tractor down and shut off the power take-off.

The yard went quiet. You could hear a meadowlark somewhere out in the stubble, which surprised me, that early in March.

Merritt walked the length of the trailer before he did anything. He looked at the corn. He looked at the spout.

He looked at the pad under the auger where a few kernels had spilled on the snow. Then he climbed the rear ladder of my trailer, while I stayed up on the front one, and pushed the probe straight down into the front of the load.

He did it the way the elevator teaches it, the way they are supposed to. Six spots, front to back, across the middle and near the sides, all the way to the bottom each time.

He would push it down, twist it to open the slots, let the corn fill in, twist it closed, and pull it out.

Each time he poured the sample out along the length of his pan, so he could see what came from the top and what came from the bottom.

Each time he put his nose right down into it and breathed in. Then he poured some into the tester and waited for the number.

Halvor stood at the base of the bin by the auger with his hands in his coverall pockets.

He did not say a word. He did not have to. The only person in that yard who ever talked when the grain was speaking was Elwin, and Elwin was in the cemetery on the hill west of town.

About the fourth sample, I heard a pickup turn off the county road. I knew it before I looked.

Duane drives a newer three-quarter ton with a loud exhaust, and you can hear it a mile off on a cold morning.

It came up the drive faster than anybody should drive into a farmyard with people standing in it.

He parked right behind Merritt’s pickup, nose to the tailgate, and got out. He had on a good jacket, a new one, and town boots.