The first man laughed before Emily Walker had finished unloading the seed.
It was not a cruel laugh at first.
More like disbelief.
The kind of laugh farmers made when somebody announced that a machine older than all of them had started on the first turn of the key.
Emily ignored it.
She stood beside the tailgate of her father’s faded Ford pickup on a bright April morning in 1982, cutting open the first paper sack with a pocketknife while three men leaned against the feed store wall behind her.
Thirty-six acres.
That was how much ground she intended to plant.
Thirty-six acres that everybody in Webster County expected to see planted in corn or soybeans.
Thirty-six acres that Emily Walker was about to cover with sunflower seed.
Ed Larson finally spoke.
“You serious?”
Emily emptied the seed into a metal hopper.
“Yes.”
He glanced toward the other men.
One smiled.
Another shook his head.
Ed stepped closer.
“Sunflowers?”
“Yes.”
“In Iowa?”
Emily stopped pouring and looked at him.
“That is where we are.”
The men laughed.
Ed raised both hands.
“I’m asking because people usually plant something they can sell.”
“I can sell them.”
“To who?”
“A buyer.”
“What buyer?”
“A buyer who buys sunflowers.”
“That clears everything up.”
More laughter.
Emily carried the empty sack back to the truck.
She was twenty-nine years old, with chestnut-brown hair she usually wore in a long braid, green eyes, and the strong, balanced build of someone who had spent most of adulthood lifting things she had once been told were too heavy.
Her denim overalls were faded.
Her boots were muddy.
Her plaid shirt had a tear near one elbow.
Nothing about her suggested a person making a daring agricultural experiment.
That was partly why the men found it funny.
The Walker farm was not a place with money available for experiments.
Everybody knew that.
Her father had died eleven months earlier.
Everybody knew that too.
What most people did not know was how close the farm actually was to disappearing.
Emily had become very good at keeping those numbers private.
She picked up another sack.
Ed followed.
“How much did you buy?”
“Enough.”
“How much is enough?”
“Thirty-six acres.”