Part Fifteen: What Hannah Did
Hannah looked at her grandmother for a long time.
At her blue church dress with the little white flowers. At her bad knees. At the five-dollar bill shaking a little in her hand.
The whole apron was silent. I could hear the flag snapping on the flagpole. A car idling at the four-way stop.
Then Hannah climbed down off her bucket.
She walked to the end of the tailgate. She looked through the crates. She took her time.
She picked out a dozen. Not just any dozen. She held up ears one at a time. She squeezed them. She checked the silk. Brown and dry. She felt for fat kernels all the way to the tip.
Thirteen ears. The best ones in the truck.
She tied them with twine. A double knot, the way Dean had taught her.
She walked back to her grandmother.
She held out the corn with both hands.
Dean held out the five.
Hannah didn’t take it.
“That’s five dollars, Grandma,” Hannah said. “That’s what it costs.”
She looked at the five-dollar bill. Then she looked up at her grandmother.
“But you don’t have to pay me,” she said.
Dean’s face went very still.
“Why not?” she asked quietly.
Hannah thought about it. The way she thinks about everything. With her whole face scrunched up.
“Because you taught us,” she said. “How to pick in the cool. How to check the silk. How to tie a baker’s dozen.”
She held the corn out a little further.
“Caleb read four books,” she said. “But you taught us first.”
Dean didn’t move.
She stood there at the tailgate of my husband’s pickup truck, in front of the whole town, holding a five-dollar bill.
Her chin started to shake.
“Hannah,” she said. “Honey. I took your money.”
The words came out cracked. Barely above a whisper.
“Last summer,” she said. “All of it. I paid my feed bill with it. I told your mother it was mine.”
Hannah nodded.
“I know,” she said. “Caleb kept count. Four hundred and eighty dozen.”
“I was wrong,” Dean said.
It was the first time I’d ever heard her say those words. In twelve years of being married to her son, I had never once heard Dean Lund say she was wrong about anything.
“I was wrong,” she said again. “Your grandpa would’ve been ashamed of me.”
Part Sixteen: The Envelope
Then Dean reached into her purse again.
She took out an envelope. A plain white envelope, the kind you buy at the drugstore. It was thick.
She held it out to Hannah.
“This is yours,” she said. “Yours and your brother’s.”
Hannah didn’t take it. She looked over at me.
I shook my head slightly. Your choice, honey.
She looked at Caleb.
Caleb came around the side of the truck. He stood next to his sister.
“What is it?” Caleb asked.
“Twenty-four hundred dollars,” Dean said. “The whole summer. Every dozen.”
She swallowed.
“I sold Walt’s tractor,” she said. “The old John Deere. The 4020. Sold it to the Brockman boy on Thursday.”
Jeff made a sound beside me.
That tractor had been his father’s pride. Bought new in 1971. Walt had restored it himself three times. It sat in the machine shed at the home place, polished, under a tarp. Dean wouldn’t let anybody touch it after he died.
“Mom,” Jeff said. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes, I did,” Dean said.
She didn’t look at him. She kept looking at her grandchildren.
“Your grandpa paid your dad back,” she said. “When he was fourteen. When I took his lawn money. Did you know that?”
Caleb shook his head.
“Fifty dollars at a time,” Dean said. “For two years. Out of his own pocket. He never told me he was doing it. I found out after he died. In his checkbook.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I’m not going to make anybody else pay my debts,” she said. “Not this time.”
Caleb looked at the envelope.
Then he looked at his sister.
They had one of those silent conversations that siblings have. A whole argument with nothing but their eyebrows.
Then Caleb nodded.
Hannah took the envelope.
She held it for a moment. Then she opened the Folgers coffee can and put the envelope inside. On top of the morning’s fives and tens.
She put the lid back on.
“Thank you, Grandma,” she said.
Then she held out the corn again.
“Now you have to take this,” she said. “Or it’ll go to waste. And you always say wasting corn is a sin.”
Dean laughed.
It came out wet and shaky. Half laugh, half sob.
She took the corn.
She held the thirteen ears against her chest. Against her blue church dress with the little white flowers.
Then she bent down, bad knees and all, and she hugged her granddaughter.
Part Seventeen: The Napkin
Dean stayed at the firehouse until one o’clock.
She sat in a folding chair Chief Barnes brought out from the station. In the shade of the bay door. Next to Engine 1.
She watched her grandchildren sell corn.
She didn’t help. She didn’t give advice. She didn’t tell them they were doing it wrong.
She just watched.
When a customer asked her, “Dean, is this your corn?” she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s theirs. They grew it.”
Around twelve-thirty, the corn ran out.
Every crate empty. Sixty dozen sold. Plus the twenty Jeff picked at ten.
Eighty dozen. Four hundred dollars. In one morning.
Caleb came over and sat down on the apron next to his grandmother’s chair. Cross-legged on the concrete. He was sunburned and sweaty and grinning.
Dean looked down at him.
“Caleb,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Grandma.”
“Would you two run my stand again this summer?” she asked. “In August? When my corn comes in?”
Caleb didn’t answer right away.
He looked at his sister, who was counting money in the coffee can.
He looked at me.
He looked at Chief Barnes, who was standing by the bay door with his coffee, pretending not to listen.
“Only if we write it down,” Caleb said.
Dean looked at him for a long moment.
Then she nodded slowly.
“That’s fair,” she said.
Chief Barnes went into the station. He came back with a paper napkin from the kitchen and a pen.
“Here,” he said. “I’ll witness.”
They wrote it on the napkin.
Caleb wrote it. In his careful handwriting, the same handwriting as the masking tape on the coffee can. Dean read every word over his shoulder.
AGREEMENT — DEAN’S SWEET CORN — AUGUST
Grandma Dean grows the corn. Caleb and Hannah pick it and sell it.
Grandma gets half. Caleb and Hannah get half.
Every day, the money gets counted at 1 o’clock and split right then.
Nobody holds anybody’s money.
Dean signed it. Deanna Lund.
Caleb signed it. Hannah signed it, with a little heart over the i.
Chief Barnes signed at the bottom. Witness: D. Barnes, Fire Chief.
Dean looked at the napkin for a long time.
“I never had anything in writing,” she said quietly. “With my mother. With the egg stand. I never knew you could ask for that.”
She looked at Caleb.
“You’re smarter than I was at twelve,” she said.
“I’m thirteen now, Grandma,” Caleb said.
She laughed.
“Smarter than I was at thirteen too,” she said.
