A Good Year

The crops came up thick and fast and wrong. Edwin's mother stood at the field edge and wept with relief, and would not tell me what she had been afraid of. I am a town girl. I do not know corn the way these people know corn, but even I could see that it was growing too well, the stalks already past head height in early summer, the green of them so dark it was nearly black. The whole village relaxed at once, as though a held breath had been let out. There was a feast. There was singing I did not know the words to and nobody offered to teach me. And all evening the older people kept touching my hair, my shoulders, my hands, gently, the way you might check that fruit is ripe, and Edwin watched them do it and said nothing, and would not meet my eyes.