The boy looked toward the husk pile.
“I don't know.”
The manager seemed almost irritated.
“You've spent seven years on this.”
“Yes.”
“And you don't know?”
“Not at that scale.”
The manager crossed his arms.
“Could it work?”
“Maybe.”
“Would it save us disposal money?”
“Probably.”
“Would other farms want it?”
“Maybe.”
The manager sighed.
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“Maybe.”
The boy smiled faintly.
“Better than pretending.”
The manager stared at him.
Then, unexpectedly, smiled too.
Not warmly.
Not yet.
But differently.
“What would you need?”
The boy glanced toward the notebook.
“Numbers.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
The manager's smile vanished.
“No.”
The boy shrugged.
“Then I can't answer.”
“Production volumes are company information.”
“Then keep paying to dump it.”
The manager looked at the teenager as if trying to decide whether he was being manipulated.
The boy was already walking toward the barn.
“Seven tomorrow morning.”
The manager called after him.
“For what?”
The boy looked back.
“You wanted to know.”
“Know what?”
“How it works.”
The boy pointed toward the compost piles.
“Wear boots.”
The manager laughed.
“You think I'm coming here to shovel?”
“Yes.”
“I run a mill.”
“Then you'll survive a shovel.”
The manager stared.
The boy walked away.
At seven seventeen the next morning, the manager arrived.
The boy was waiting beside a compost windrow.
He looked at his watch.
“You're late.”
The manager climbed out of his truck.
“I almost didn't come.”
“But you did.”
The manager glanced toward the pitchfork leaning against the pile.
“No.”
The boy smiled.
“Yes.”
“What exactly do you expect me to do?”
“Learn.”
“I can learn without shoveling.”
“You didn't yesterday.”
The manager stopped.
The boy held out the pitchfork.
For a few seconds it looked possible the manager might simply leave.
Then he took it.
The boy's father watched from the barn doorway.
He had said almost nothing about the confrontation the previous afternoon.
His son had told him only the essentials.
Notebook.
Shove.
Soil.
The father wanted to confront the manager.
The boy asked him not to.
“Why?”
“He came back.”
“That doesn't erase it.”
“I know.”
“He put hands on you.”
“I know.”
The father stared at him.
“Then why are you protecting him?”
“I'm not.”
The boy had looked toward the husk piles.
“I want him to understand what he's dumping.”
The father eventually agreed.
But he remained close enough to see everything.
The manager stabbed the pitchfork into the windrow.
It barely entered.
“This is packed.”
“Exactly.”
The boy showed him how to loosen the material.
Steam rose from beneath the surface.
The manager stepped back.
“What the hell?”
“Heat.”
“I know what heat is.”
“Microbes.”
The manager looked skeptical.
The boy pushed a long thermometer into the pile.