Grow corn
Sherwood. Anderson
Huchensen was a small, articulated old man whose farm about three miles away in his high town was small, but recognized as the best place to care for and cultivate in our entire town. The little wooden house was always painted neatly, and his fields always looked clean and tidy.
Huchensen's father, who used to own the farm, was a Civil War soldier who had returned home seriously wounded. Huchensen, his father's only son, remained at home to take care of the place until his father's death. When Huchensen was nearing the age of 50, he married a 40-year-old elementary school teacher, and after marriage, the two guarded the land tightly.
Their son, Will, was very small, but extremely strong. He came to our town's middle school and worked as a pitcher on our town's baseball team. He was always cheerful and responsive, and all of us liked him. He started drawing comics from an early age, and that was a talent. He painted fish, pigs, cows, and those animals looked like people you knew. Will went to Chicago after graduating from high school in our town, where he became an art school student. Another young man in our town is also in Chicago. In fact, he went two years before Will. His name was Hal and he was a student at the University of Chicago. After graduation, he returned to his hometown and became the principal of our middle school, becoming a good friend of mine.
In Chicago, Hal and Will became good friends. I heard from Hal that Will was like he was in his hometown as a child, and that he was immediately loved in Chicago. He was good looking, so the girls at the art school liked him, and he had a kind of bluntness, which made him popular with the young lads as well.
Hal told me that Will went out to parties almost every night, and soon he was selling some of his funny comics. The paintings were used in advertising, and he made so much money that he even started sending some money home.
When Hal returned to town, he often visited Will's father and mother, and their conversation was always about Will.
You know, by this time the elder Huchensen was almost 70 years old, and his wife was 10 years younger than him. Hal said that whenever he went to their farm, they would stop their work and come to sit with him, and as soon as they saw him on the road, they would run over. They received another letter from Will. He wrote to them every week.
The skinny old mother ran after the father. Huchensen always shouted, "We've got another letter, Mr. Hal." And then his wife would gasp and say the same thing, "Mr. Hal, we've got another letter."
They would immediately take the letter out and have Hal read it aloud. Hal said those letters were always funny. Will is dotted with small sketches in the letter. The paintings show people he meets or spends with, traffic on Miguelgang Avenue in Chicago, a policeman standing at an intersection on the street, and young stenographers hurrying into the office building. Neither of the two old men had ever been to the city, and they were curious and anxious. Hoping Hal would explain the paintings to them, they wanted to know every bit hal could remember about Will's life in that big city.
"You can see it for yourself." Hal said.
"How can we go?" Huchensen said, "We can't go. ”
He had been on that little farm since childhood, and his father was a sick man, so he had to take care of everything, and it was very exciting. You have to constantly fight weeds and take care of the animals on the farm. Huchensen said, "Who's going to milk our cows?" The thought of anyone other than himself or his wife touching his cow made him feel hurt. As long as he was alive, he didn't want anyone to cultivate his land, plant his corn, and take care of things in or around the barn.
It was a spring night, late at night, and Howl came to my house and told me the news of the accident, that Will was dead and killed in the accident, that he was at a party with a few other young people, and they probably had some drinks and their car was ruined....
It was early spring, and I still remember every moment when we walked quietly through that stretch of road, the little leaves that had just grown out of the trees, the little streams we had crossed, and the moonlight seemed to give life to the stream. I heard the barking of a dog coming from somewhere in the distance, and I heard the cries of children in a distant house.
We walked to the front door of the farmhouse. Hal had been trying to come up with something along the way to tell the old couple the news more gently, but by this time he couldn't do it, and he told Hutchenson the whole thing directly.
That's it. Huchensen didn't say a word. The door was open, and he was standing in the moonlight, wearing a ridiculously long white nightgown, and Hal told him that the door slammed shut.
We stood quietly, not knowing what to do, and it could have been ten minutes or half an hour, and we were standing there listening and staring, and after a long time Hal suddenly touched my arm: "Look! " Two figures dressed in white walked from the house toward the barn and immediately came out again. They went into the field, and Hal and I crept through the yard to the barn, standing in the shadows of the barn—a place where we could see what was happening but not see it.
That's an incredible thing. The old man took a hand-held corn grower from the barn, while his wife took a bag of corn seeds, and there, in the moonlight, that night, after learning the news, they were planting corn. They were all wearing nightgowns. They went through the fields and planted rows of seeds to a place close to us, and the whole process took place in silence.
That was the first time in my life that I understood something, and I don't know if I can now write down what I understood that night, I was referring to some of the things that connected certain people to the land. All I knew was that Hal and I stood there for as long as possible, then quietly left and went back into town. Hal told me that when he went to see them the next morning and arranged for their dead son to be transported back home, they were all surprisingly calm, and Hal felt that they were all quite self-controlled. Hal said he thought they understood something. "They have their farms, and they have Will's letter to read." Hal said.
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