Part 5

Hannah looked up at him.

“I know,” she said. “This is ours.”

We planted on a Saturday.

The last week of April. Cool and bright. The four of us on our knees down the rows.

Jeff marked the rows with string and stakes, thirty inches apart, just like Caleb’s map. Caleb dug the furrows with a hoe. Hannah dropped the seeds, two at a time, eight inches apart. I came behind and covered them, patting the soil down with my hands.

It took all day.

By late afternoon, my knees were black with dirt. Hannah had mud on her face. Caleb had blisters on both palms from the hoe.

We stood at the end of the half acre and looked at it. Twenty-four rows of bare brown dirt. Nothing to see yet.

“Now what?” Hannah asked.

“Now we wait,” Jeff said.

Part Ten: The Sign The corn came up in nine days.

Little green spears poking through the dirt in perfect rows. Hannah ran out every morning before school to count them.

They hoed weeds in May. They side-dressed with nitrogen in June. When July came in hot and dry, they dragged garden hoses from the house and watered by hand, row by row, in the evenings.

By the middle of July, the corn was taller than Jeff.

Jeff would not buy a sign.

I offered. There’s a sign shop in Celina that makes vinyl banners. Fifty dollars for a big one, bright colors, professional.

“No,” Jeff said. “I’ll make it.”

He lettered one himself on cardboard.

He took a big flat box from the appliance store in Minster. The box a refrigerator came in. He cut out one side, four feet wide and three feet tall. He painted it white with leftover house paint from the garage.

Then he sat at the kitchen table one night with a can of green paint and a brush and lettered it by hand.

It took him three hours.

SWEET CORN

The letters were a foot tall. Green. A little crooked. The R leaned to the right.

And under it, in smaller letters, he painted their names.

Grown by Caleb & Hannah Lund.

When he was done, he held it up for the kids to see.

Hannah clapped. Caleb just looked at it for a long time.

“Your names go on it,” Jeff said quietly. “Nobody else’s. Ever.”

Jeff didn’t want to sell on the county blacktop.

That’s where Dean’s stand was. Two miles south. People drove past it on their way to the lake. It would have looked like we were competing with her. Trying to steal her customers.

“Not the blacktop,” Jeff said. “Somewhere else.”

He thought about it for a week.

Then he called Chief Barnes.

Part Eleven: The Firehouse The New Bremen Volunteer Fire Department sits right at the one four-way stop in town. Corner of Main and Monroe. Everybody in town drives past it at least once a day.

It’s a red brick building with two big bay doors. An engine, a tanker, and an old brush truck. A flagpole out front. A sign that says PANCAKE BREAKFAST 2ND SAT. ALL YOU CAN EAT $8.

Chief Dave Barnes has run the department for nineteen years. He’s sixty-two, a retired lineman from the electric co-op, with a gray buzz cut and forearms like Christmas hams.

He’s also Jeff’s old Little League coach.

Jeff called him on a Sunday night.

“Dave,” he said. “My kids grew sweet corn this summer. They need somewhere to sell it. Could they set up on your apron on Saturdays? Out of the truck?”

Chief Barnes was quiet on the phone for a moment.

“Your kids grew it?” he asked.

“Every ear,” Jeff said.

“Your mom’s still got her stand out on Kuether Road?”

Jeff paused.

“She does,” he said.

Another long pause.

“I heard something,” Chief Barnes said slowly. “Last fall. At the co-op. About the money from your mom’s stand. About the kids.”

Jeff didn’t say anything.

“Bring ’em Saturday,” Chief Barnes said. “Seven o’clock. Park right on the apron. I’ll move the brush truck.”

Part Twelve: Saturday Morning We picked Friday night and Saturday morning at five, in the cool.

Caleb and Hannah, in their headlamps, out in the half acre with five-gallon buckets. Squeezing ears. Checking silks. Pulling down and twisting, the way their grandmother taught them.

They stacked them in baker’s dozens in old apple crates Jeff found at a farm sale. Thirteen to a bundle. Just like Dean always did.

By six-thirty, we had sixty dozen in the bed of the pickup.

We pulled onto the apron at a quarter to seven.

The big red bay door was standing open. Engine 1 sat inside, shining, freshly washed. The firefighters had come early for some reason. I counted five cars in the lot.

Jeff backed the truck onto the apron. He dropped the tailgate. He leaned the cardboard sign against the back bumper.