Good Seed

William began to feel the sun hot on his back, but he did not look up from his work. He felt it beat through his shirt and soak deep into his tired back, but still he did not pause or look up. He was hoeing corn; it seemed like he had never done anything else and never would, but he did not let himself look up until he reached the end of the row. Long ago he had shed the time-consuming habit of pausing to see where he was. After following horse and hoe around the same hills for twenty years, he no longer needed to. His feet felt a subtle change in the slope and he knew he was nearing the end of the row, but he did not quicken his pace; the end of this row only meant the beginning of the next. When he reached the narrow strip of grass that divided the fence and corn, he straightened, resting a minute before plunging into the next row. He looked with satisfaction down the row just finished . A host of fallen green invaders lay scattered in his wake, already wilting in the hot summer sun. They could not be beaten; they would regroup, call for reinforcements, and return stealthily while he slept or turned his eye to other tasks. But for today, at least, his mark was plain upon the face of the earth. William looked at the spindly stalks of corn, comparing them to the tall green saplings on the feedstore calendar hanging in his kitchen. He thought of tall green rows reaching into the distance behind a beaming, sunburned man, their broad blades talking among themselves in scratchy whispers. Once he had been able to buy the good seed, before the children came and needed things. For five or six years his corn had sprung up tall, strong, and plentiful. After that it yielded less and less each year, until its strength was spent in twenty seasons of circling endlessly around a hillside farm. But somehow everything and everyone was fed with enough left over for the 13 next planting. A moment more he rested, standing straight to ease his burning back, then disappointment reached for him over the top strand of wire, and he bent quickly back to his work leaving his dream there on the grass. He would find and savor it again after each slow passage across the broad face of the hill. He had just fallen back into clacking rhythm when he felt a touch at his elbow . Something must be wrong at the house, for dinner was hours away. He turned, thinking to question his darkhaired daughter, but she was not there. He turned again and saw no one, but felt the touch again growing more insistent, shaking him. He opened his eyes. "Wake up, Poppy.' The dark-haired daughter was standing by his bed. Her hair was dusted with gray; her anxious eyes looked at him through bifocals. "Oh, Poppy, you're burning up!" With great care, she wiped sweat from his wrinkled forehead. William knew now where he was. The calendar man smiled through the dust, and William's hand had not felt the plow in twenty years. The farm had been sold to people who neither lived nor made a living there. This daughter made breakfast and busied herself cleaning and straightening things her sister had cleaned and straightened the day before. Then she sat and dozed some; she had not slept last night. She had instead gone with William to the fields or woods all night as he returned time after time in his dreams driving horses whose unclaimed harness had rotted off the wall, shouting to men whose sons were now old and gray. She followed him as her sister had done the night before, as another would do the next night, and she listened trying to guess what business he might undertake clued only by his talk, unable to see the labors whose demands left him as tired in the morning as he had been the night before. Some nights he had worked alone, quiet, and a daughter would doze beside his bed until...