The corn ears weren’t fully ripe and wouldn’t be until later in the summer, or early fall, when they would be chopped for silage and stored in a silage pit. But they had developed enough to make almost perfect missiles of nearly a pound and when thrown correctly, with a flick of the wrist, if they hit you in the head they’d put you down.
“It’s this way,” Harris explained to me. “You go in the corn first and be the commie jap and I’ll give you a head start and then come after you.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m GI Joe.”
“Why do I have to be the commie jap? I want to be GI Joe.”
Harris studied me and sighed. “Look, who made the game up—me or you?”
“Well, you...”
“And who knows the rules?”
“I didn’t know there were any rules...”
“Me, that’s who. So I have to be the one to hang back and make sure it’s all working right and that makes you the commie jap and me GI Joe. It just figures.”
It didn’t actually figure that way to me but it was clear that if we were going to play I would have to be the commie jap, and so I at length nodded and moved into the corn.
It was like stepping into another world. Light filtered down through the plants and cast a green glow that made me want to walk softly and whisper, and I crouched and moved forward carefully.
I hadn’t gone eight feet when something hit me in the back of the head so hard my eyes crossed.
“Got you, you gooner commie jap!”
I wheeled and there was nothing. Just the rustling green corn. I took two steps, started the third, and took another cob in the back of the head.
“Dammit, Harris—quit that!”
“...commie jap gooner...”
And he was gone again. But this time I heard him and thinking I was about to be hit again dropped to my stomach and found the clear area.
There he was, or his legs. Two rows over and slightly toward the road. I smiled, pulled an ear of corn off the nearest plant, slithered on my belly two rows over, rose suddenly, and threw the cob as hard as I could where he had been standing.
And missed.
“Fell for it, you commie jap gooner!”
And another cob caught me in the back of the head. Somehow as I rose he had dropped and gone around in back of me for a rear attack. This time the cob caught me hard enough to make my ears ring, and rage took over any thought and I went for him.
From that point on it disintegrated into a catch-me-if-you-can brawl with me chasing him through the corn until I couldn’t run and both of us, finally, falling to the ground, laughing inside the corn near the edge of the driveway.
“You make a miserable commie jap,” Harris said, lying back in the dirt.
“That’s because I was supposed to be GI Joe...”
The sound of a car engine stopped me and we peeped out of the corn just in time to see the deputy’s car go by, headed for the house.
“It’s the same guy who brought me,” I said. “I wonder what he wants?”
“You, likely. He’s come to take you home...”
I knew instantly that Harris was right, that the summer was done, and everything in me rebelled. I had come to belong here, wanted to be here, thought of this as home, Harris as a brother and Glennis as a sister and Knute as a pa and Clair as a mother, and didn’t, didn’t ever want to leave.
“You don’t got to go.” Harris had read my expression. “You can stay here in the corn. I’ll bring you food and a blanket and they’ll never find you in a hundred years.” His face had a worried, almost frightened look to it and he seemed on the edge of tears.
It was all too sudden. A part of me nodded, wanted to do it, hide, hide, but I knew it wouldn’t work. I could hear Clair calling from the house now, calling my name and Harris’s name, and fighting it every inch of the way I stood and walked out of the corn and back to the house while Harris stayed in the corn.
Glennis had my box from the room waiting by the deputy’s car and she smiled and handed it to me.
“Isn’t this nice?” Clair said. “You’re going home at last...”
But she didn’t look happy about it and neither did Knute, who came from near the granary, walking with his hands in his bib pockets, balled into fists, looking at the ground. Louie was nowhere to be seen.
Knute said nothing but stood next to Clair and Glennis was crying silently and I got in the car, all in moments, and the deputy turned around and we went down the driveway and away from the farm. Or tried to. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards when I saw Harris come boiling out of the corn, his bibs all over mud and his hands waving to stop the car.
He came to my side and I rolled the window down.
“You don’t got to stay gone, you know,” he said, and he was crying so naturally I started to cry too. “You can talk to them gooners and tell them you got to come back here.”
“I will.”
“You make them bring you back.”
“I will.”
And the deputy pulled away and we left Harris standing there by the side of the driveway. I looked back out the rear window and he was waving one hand so I waved back but soon he was lost from view and the rest of the farm was gone and we were on the road heading back to town.
The deputy spat out the window. “Nice people, the Larsons. You have a good summer?”
And it was all there. The horses and the pigs and Ernie and the pictures and Louie and swimming and going to see the Gene Autry movie—all there at once, filling me so that
