30. The Corn ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

In the spring, Robert was privileged to help his father plant corn, as well as soybeans. If the disking were finished, Robert waited beside the Chevrolet pickup until it was time to restock the four-row planter. From a bag, he poured corn—coated pink with captan—into the hoppers, which were covered with neat lids. When a bag was empty, he dropped it behind the planter and placed a heavy clod on the bag to hold it against the wind and not have to go chasing it across the field. He opened bags of fertilizer, which had a lightly acrid scent. Robert thought that, if a rock could rot, it would smell like that. The fertilizer was poured into the receptacles behind the corn hoppers.

Joe would start back through the field. He would pull the string that tripped the arm that dropped with a pleasant metallic sound to one side, so that the small disk at the end of the arm could spin and send up a little cloud of dust while it laid down a groove that would enable Joe to know exactly where the nose of his tractor should go for the return trip through the field.

The warm sky was bright azure. White clouds like cotton balls sailed along. Birds sang in the narrow thickets beside the field. The sunlight was vigorous. To be outdoors and breathing such fresh air was a joy. Spring planting days afforded pure contentment!

Next came the cultivating, which Robert tolerated—especially after he “got on the wrong rows” the first time and eradicated corn for a distance the length of two tractors before he managed to stop. Robert learned to cultivate. He had to! But cultivating corn was an acquired skill, analogous to an acquired taste. He had to be ever vigilant so as not to wipe out corn plants, and such attention to detail interfered with his preference for exercising his imagination while daydreaming.

In the fall—sometimes as late as Thanksgiving—Joe picked corn. On a cool day, wearing his boots—each with four buckles that looked like miniature furnace grates—his blue denim coat, and his warm corduroy cap with ear flaps, he first strode into the field among the cornstalks, pale yellow, tan, and dry. The stalks were spaced a few inches from one another, and the rows were fairly widely spaced—enough for Joe to pass between two rows without having to brush the leaves aside. Selecting an ear, he pulled back the husks to examine the corn. Through experience, he could detect whether the corn might be ready for harvesting. He tried another ear and another, holding between his elbow and his ribs those ears that he had already examined. Later, he broke the ears into thirds and gave the pieces as treats to the cows.

The skies already hinted at the winter to come; it was a pale Turkish hue with cold-looking, vague streaks of cloud lacing them. The daylight seemed strained through thin silk. Joe tramped back to the barn and set down the ears of corn he had collected. He backed a tractor up to his two-row pull-type corn picker parked under the leafless hedge apples. After hitching up, Joe had returned to the seat of his tractor in a jiffy. All that remained was to hitch the tractor and picker to a wagon. Joe was excellent at backing up and often tried to explain the intricacies to Robert, who could not comprehend where the tongue of, say, a corn picker would go while the tractor reversed.

Then Joe went to the field with his tractor, corn picker, and wagon in procession.

With the air just cold enough to turn his cheeks rosy, Joe started into the field. Ears of corn began falling from the elevator of the corn picker into the wagon. Two rows at a time, Joe slowly passed through the field. The corn harvest was underway: the reward for the hard work and the expense of planting and cultivating.

Picking corn was a one-farmer job, so Joe picked corn alone. Robert could not help. Besides, corn picking was considered too dangerous for Robert. Although he could not help, Robert enjoyed coming to the field to watch his father and to chat with him for a few minutes. Robert thought the corn picker resembled a weird rocket with three noses.

As evening drew in, the sky turned yellow with a touch of chartreuse. Near the horizon, orange with traces of rose spread into pink haze above a mauve tree line far away. Indistinct gray masses of cloud hung motionless just above the distant farmhouses and barns.

Joe pulled the last wagon of the day toward the barn, where he would store it temporarily.

For the rest of his life, Robert would cherish the memory of his father picking corn as if Robert were looking at an old snapshot in a picture frame.