The next morning, Del joined a couple new men he’d not met before at the big house. Thomas Wooten, “Woot” for short, introduced himself as Moe Sutton’s repairman. Any farm equipment broke down, he was the one to fix it. He bragged about how he kept everything repaired, wheels oiled, sheds restored like new, fences mended, anything to do with wood or engines, he was Moe’s man. Hicky Albright rolled his eyes.
He said, “You got it easy. Try working them damn chicken houses. He got near about four hundred birds, and I can’t get the smell off’n me.”
They stood with Del in Moe’s backyard, smoking, flicking ash, getting acquainted. Moe came out the door, biscuit filled with sausage in one hand, cigar in the other.
He pointed at them and said, “Let’s go.” To Woot and Hicky, he said, “Y’all shovel.” To Del, he said, “You, you get to walk down the grain.”
His face, cunning and shrewd, made Del’s innards shrivel. Everyone made their way to the bins, shovels and picks over shoulders, the early morning already warm as the rising sun broke over the horizon. Moe had three circular corrugated steel structures about twenty-four feet tall, with the name BUTLER painted in a faded blue near the top. They appeared harmless, but anybody who’d ever done farm work knew they could be a death trap. Del stared at them. Three bins, one for each woman he’d cheated with here. A door located at the bottom would be opened to allow grain to spill out once he’d loosened up the corn. Woot and Hicky went and stood by the door of the first one. A 1928 Chevy truck with a wood bed built on the back sat nearby to shovel corn into once it was free and flowing. Del’s job was to go inside and as Moe said, walk it down, which sounded simple but wasn’t.
Del picked up a shovel and went to the ladder attached on the side near the door and stared up. He’d farmed in some capacity the past several years. None of it was easy. Most of it was hard. All of it was dangerous, he reckoned, to some degree. This job, though. He’d known a feller who suffocated when he sank in the grain to his chest. It wouldn’t necessarily happen to him, it was only a possibility. With this encouraging thought in mind, he gripped the shovel and began ascending the ladder. Moe followed on his heels.
Del said, “When’s the last time corn got taken from this bin?”
“A while.”
He worried over this. The corn was likely moldy, stuck together. When he got to the top, he had to yank a couple of times to pull the trap door open. He looked inside. The bin was more than half full. By Del’s calculation, there was at least a fifteen-foot depth of hardened corn kernels.
Moe, several rungs below him, said, “Git on in there.”
“You got a rope, or something I can tie off to the ladder?”
“Ain’t got no rope.”
“What if I step somewhere and sink, what am I to grab a hold of?”
Moe was direct. “Best start praying, I reckon. Now move.”
Del stuck a foot into the hole, searching, and finding the top rung of the ladder inside. He lifted his other leg over and in, and then lowered himself so he stood on the last rung still above the corn. After letting his eyes adjust, he noted the grain around the perimeter was higher, with a gradual slope that dipped in the middle, shaping the corn like a cone. He eased one foot onto the surface, then the other, and sank to his ankles. He gripped the rung, afraid to let go.
Moe’s head appeared in the opening above him. “Why’re you standing there, get busy.”
Del took his hand away from the ladder, carefully prodding at the grain with the tip of the shovel. Nothing drastic happened, so he hobbled to the side of the bin, and began stabbing the end of the shovel into the grain one-handed while keeping his other hand on the wall for balance. Despite the moldiness, it came loose easy enough, and he kept walking in a circle around the edge, poking here and there. Eventually, after nothing happened, he got brave enough to go to toward the middle, and after a while, he’d done all he could. He went back to the ladder, climbed it, and stuck his head through the opening like a gopher coming out of a hole, relishing the warm, fresh air.
He yelled to the other two. “Open the door!”
Hicky gave him a thumbs-up and swung the door open.
They took their pick axes and began chopping at the wall of grain, and Woot yelled, “Here it comes!”
Del descended the outside ladder, relieved. He’d been given a pass for the first woman. By the end of the day, they finished emptying the bin. Two to go. The second day went like the first. Del inside, loosening the grain before helping Woot and Hicky shovel for all they were worth, eager to be done. A second forgiveness for another wrongdoing. Moe hung around watching, smoking one of his fat cigars. Third day, Del climbed the ladder and stared inside like he’d done with the other two, gauging the depth. This bin had more in it, about three-quarters full.