Vance,” I said.

I folded the printed pages in half and put them in my canvas work bag.

By one o’clock, the heat in row four of my father’s sweet corn patch was thick enough to taste.

The green stalks stood seven feet tall, blocking what little breeze came off the south county road.

My father, Carl, lifted a thirty-pound wooden crate of morning corn and slid it onto the flatbed wagon.

The pine scraped hard against the rusted iron bed.