He was sitting on his porch. He listened to the whole thing with his thumbs in his bibs and didn’t interrupt once.
When we were done, he said five thousand was exactly what he’d have offered Albert. Then he shook Phil’s hand. Then mine.
“Took the two of you long enough,” he said.
“We had it under the seat of a truck,” Phil told him.
Butch never did ask what that meant.
I won’t tell you that corn was saved. It was nursed.
The co-op sprayed it Monday morning. We put nitrogen on beside the row that same week. And the pivot walked all through July.
In October, the pivot quarter made a hundred and seventy-one bushels to the acre. Dad would have made two hundred fifteen.
The east eighty, which Butch let us harvest one last time, made ninety-four.
Phil rode in the combine with me every single round.
