“He’s the one who caused it.”
“I know,” she said. “But I think he’d hate it anyway.”
By the middle of June, the consequences were obvious.
Corn should emerge in neat, even rows.
Dad used to say a properly planted field ought to look like a choir standing in formation.
This one looked terrible.
Some plants were knee-high.
Others were barely four inches tall.
There were long gaps where nothing had emerged.
In some places, several stalks crowded together.
The wet planting conditions had caused the seed trenches to harden.
Roots struggled to grow downward.
Weeds spread between the rows.
And the center-pivot irrigation system hadn’t moved once.
It was still sitting exactly where Dad had parked it the previous September.
One tire was flat.
The control panel wasn’t working.
On the east eighty, the crew had planted corn too densely for dryland conditions.
If summer turned hot, the crop would struggle badly.
