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.
