Every broken machine.
Every envelope.
Every whispered conversation after he went upstairs.
He heard all of it.
Ruth continued.
“If this crop fails, you did not lose the farm.”
“But—”
“No.”
She squeezed his hand.
“If we lose this farm, that will be because of years of things larger than one field.”
Ethan looked at her.
She smiled.
“Which is my way of saying yes.”
He stared.
“To the sunflowers?”
“To thirty-six acres.”
“Really?”
“Do not make me repeat it before I regain judgment.”
Ethan stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
He hugged her.
Ruth laughed.
Then she started crying.
Ethan did too.
Neither mentioned it afterward.
By Friday, everyone in the county knew.
Ethan never learned exactly how.
He suspected Howard Bennett.
Not because Howard gossiped.
Because banks spoke to suppliers, suppliers spoke to farmers, farmers spoke to wives, wives spoke to sisters, and within forty-eight hours agricultural confidentiality no longer existed.
At Peterson Feed & Seed, Ethan carried two bags of mineral supplement toward the counter when he heard his name.
“Walker boy.”
He stopped.
Ray Mercer leaned beside the seed display.
Fifty-eight.
Six hundred acres.
Friend of Ethan’s father since high school.
Ray had carried Daniel’s coffin.
That gave him privileges Ethan would not have granted many men.
Ray smiled.
“I hear you’re planting flowers.”
Ethan placed the bags down.
“Sunflowers.”
“That is generally what flowers means.”
Two men laughed.
Walter Dean sat on a feed sack nearby.
He removed his cap.
“Thirty-six acres?”
“Yes.”
“Valentine’s business?”
More laughter.
Ethan said nothing.
Ray continued.
“Pretty flowers won’t pay a mortgage.”
The laughter became quieter.
That word did not belong in jokes.
Ethan looked directly at him.
“Neither did last year’s corn.”
Ray’s smile disappeared.
One man coughed.
Walter muttered:
“Kid’s got you there.”
Ray folded his arms.
“You think your father would plant thirty-six acres of bird food?”
Ethan felt anger rise.
“Dad kept the advertisement.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Ethan lifted the mineral bags.
“But he taught me to read before I planted.”
He walked toward the register.
Behind him, Walter said:
“Still bird food.”
Ethan did not turn.
The phrase followed him all summer.
Bird food.
At church.
Feed store.
Gas station.
Hardware store.
Men leaning from pickup windows.
They rarely meant cruelty.
That almost made it worse.
Cruelty could be dismissed.
Concern disguised as humor entered deeper.
Ethan prepared Field Seven in late May.
The soil was dark enough to make the possibility feel real.
His father’s old four-row planter could handle the seed with modified plates.
Ethan spent three nights experimenting in the machine shed.
First setting dropped too many.
Second skipped.
Third nearly worked.
His uncle David drove over after work.
He found Ethan lying beneath the planter with two wrenches and a flashlight.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
David looked at the removed seed mechanism.
“That nothing appears expensive.”
Ethan slid out.
“Plate holes are wrong.”
“For sunflowers?”
“Yes.”
David shook his head.
“You really are doing this.”