Bunch of Crunch

I have seen you, Elijah, casting wayward glances in my direction all morning as we have harvested these fields. And though I express often my desire for pushing through so that we may retire at a decent hour, I must, in this case, call a pause to our work.

I am assuming your looks are seeking thanks, and I am also assuming that you find something reproachful in my own downcast eyes whenever you try to meet them. But know that they possess no such thing. If my uncharacteristically bashful expression is thick with anything today, it is embarrassment.

You see, you discovered a piece of paper, Elijah, one that I should not have left in plain view. On it, I had, after a long night during which I had taken a nip too many off the applejack secreted away in the hay pile at the back of the barn, written my deepest hungers.

And, being an eager young farm hand and new on the job to boot, you saw these two words, scrawled across the paper in capital letters whose misalignment practically reeked of booze–LOVE, CORN–and interpreted it as if I possessed a literal hunger for some snack food carrying that name. And so, you purchased some of said snack food and deposited, conspicuously, on the hood of my tractor this morning.

But, I do not yearn for snack food, Elijah. I, instead, desire those two things separated by a comma: love, and also corn.

You see, Elijah, my heart has not beat in time with another’s since my sweet Libby-Belle left some fifteen years ago, claiming the stalks of corn had begun, for her, to resemble the bars across a jailhouse window. Where she went, I do not know. Mae Willis at the country store says she spears tuna off the coast of Louisiana. Carl Temperton at the post office, meanwhile, has often claimed hers to the ring-adorned hand holding a cup of tea in a magazine ad for a costume jewelry manufacturer. And Gilbert Malden of the butcher shop told me she was on display in a park in Philadelphia, as she has been since 1976, though I believe he misheard me when I said her name.

Really, all that matters is that she is not here.

It is not just a matter of my loneliness that I yearn for a partner, Elijah. I am the fifth generation to tend to these fields. If I do not provide an heir, my father’s work, his father’s work, his father’s work, and his father’s work will be for naught. And I know that Meg Killenany would marry me so that we might merge our adjacent properties, but there would be no love in this union, and I will not bring a child into such a life.

But alas, Elijah, if we have another yield as weak as this year, I shall require no child, as I will no longer possess a farm to hand off to them. Another year with the finances as they are, and I will be forced to sell my land to Dale Cranston so that he might build a noxious factory upon it for the production of his quote-unquote famous strawberry jam. And before you tell me that it doesn’t sound too bad, just know that even a perfumery can off-gas unthinkable stenches, tainting the noses of all within miles and causing them to curse whoever allowed such a thing to happen.

Hence, the second desire on my list: a strong crop of corn.

So, you see, why I am so embarrassed. But I do want to say, thank you for the snacks. They were crunchy and quite satisfying.

Now, we ought to get back to work.