Sweet Corn Conclusion by Wendy Meadows

Author:Wendy Meadows [Meadows, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Majestic Owl Publishing LLC

Rita listened to a hard rain fall onto the diner’s roof. The sound of the rain striking the roof made her feel as if she were sitting inside of a tin can that had been thrown under a waterfall. The rain was falling as if a dam had been split open, hitting the earth with hard, angry fists that seemed to be growing stronger by the second. “I remember back in the summer of 1967,” Mac said, speaking over the rain in his thick Irish accent, “a rain came through that didn’t stop for weeks. The entire county was flooded. We were forced to evacuate. Lots of farms went under water, including the farm Maureen and I live on now.”

“I was just a baby then, but my folks told me about that storm,” Steve explained as he worked down a cup of coffee. Staying awake was proving to be difficult, and the coffee was offering very little help. “I remember the floods of 1991.”

“The floods of 1991 weren’t nearly as bad as the floods of 1967,” Mac argued. He leaned forward on the front counter and stared at the front door of the diner. “We’ve been blessed these many years. What flooding we have had has been minor.”

Steve nodded in agreement. “We surely have been blessed,” he told Mac. “The only problems we face are with the growing regulations the government imposes on farmers. Rising land taxes, increased regulations… it’s getting to the point where I barely break even at times after I sell off all my crop.”

“I run a small farm,” Billy said, jumping into the conversation, sitting at the front counter like a big kid. “I have some fields and some apple orchards and a little old apple house. I do okay for myself. The state of Georgia doesn’t bother us small-time farmers and mostly leaves us alone. I get bothered with an increase in land tax here and there, but not much. I reckon you boys get hit harder than most.”

“Sometimes I wouldn’t mind owning a small farm,” Steve told Billy. “I own two thousand acres of cornfields. Mac owns eighteen hundred acres. Takes a lot of work to plant that much corn.” Steve shook his head. “People who live in the cities… the kids of today… just can’t realize how important farming is and how much money and back-breaking work goes into producing a good crop.”

“Aye,” Mac agreed. “Seed and farming equipment isn’t cheap, and the prices aren’t going down. Back in my daddy’s day, the seed was cheap.”

Rita knew that all three men gathered at the front counter were tired and jabbering just to jabber—at least in the view of a woman who really couldn’t understand how difficult it was to be a farmer. She leaned her head back on the booth she was sitting in and closed her eyes. “I’ll rest my eyes for a few minutes,” she whispered and immediately drifted off into a heavy sleep.

The smell of thick corn came from a run-down wooden shack that looked about ready to fall over.

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