They recalled how they'd all bought in, started growing the company corn, and could no longer keep the seeds they produced -- because of genetic copyright and patent laws. How they sold their seeds to agents in unmarked cars, and then, in a revolving door transaction, purchased back those very same seeds to start again, how they all managed to just about scrape by on poverty level income, never seeing profit, only shepherding blandly the exchange of object and finance, unseen stewards of a specialized nothing, producers and consumers of their own endlessly cycling hardship and blood.
It sucked.
And what about their union? Ha! Mitigating pennies and percentage rates, they were "an extended arm of the company, a greased right hand, or at least the short stubby cock of the firm, lubed and silently fucking farmers, saying it was supposed to feel good."
How could they resist? What is one farm in a sea of thousands? Nothing. "We could have been anywhere and anyone, replaceable and unnecessary." But this finally was the solution: the cracks that break the stone are nowhere else but the stone.
Soriano and McElroy asked Francis to commit to grow a new type of corn, a secret corn, a special seed, open sourced and home grown, designed to withstand the pesticide as potently as Colavec's. They wanted him to do it undercover, breaking every contract binding him -- because "if this is a new agricultural revolution, the winner remains undecided."
It was a fifty stalk commitment.
The usual silence, the obligatory mention of Colavec cameras in crop-duster landing gear, men with vials of acids and bases and packs of sniffing hounds, but in the end, as always, Francis committed. When McElroy asked his new partner to join the ‘orchestra’ too, Francis replied, “Well I don’t play an instrument,” and McElroy tried not to laugh, while Francis added, “That’s great, I,” but then started crying. There in the kitchen, he held a piece of toast over his mouth to obscure the whale-like whimpers bursting through the back of his throat and nose. After a few minutes of this, McElroy and Soriano started moving toward the door.
“My wife left me,” Francis said.
McElroy tried to speak, but just kind of moved his lips around, thoughts of seeds racing outward from his head.
“My wife left me. She said I’m too fat.”
“You’re not fat,” Soriano said. Francis must've been three hundred pounds if he was ten.
“That’s what I thought,” Francis said, “until I looked and, turns out, I am. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t remember going from one to the other.”
“From skinny to fat?”
Francis pinched his nose. “From anything to anything. Skinny to fat. Old to young. Loved to unloved. Kid to farmer.” He sort of wiggled around, almost as if he were trying to hula hoop into the air, which should have be funny, really, but wasn't, and instead was horrible. “She’s taking everything, too. The kids. The money.” He managed to simultaneously yell and whisper: “Jesus, how the hell did I end up a goddamn fat farmer, broke and alone in the middle of a shithole state without a damn thing to show for it except all this fucking corn?” He looked at Soriano, then McElroy who was stunned and silent. “Did you know I wanted to be a dancer? But I haven't seen my penis in years. I couldn't even tell you the color of my own dick let alone do a dance. Yet I can tell you almost anything about corn.” He held up his cell phone. “Look, I just got a text message from my son before you got here. It says: Dad, what’s wrong with you? You suck. WTF.”
McElroy wanted to say something comforting. He considered, for example, the Steve Reich recording his brother brought back from NY when they were both still in their twenties. To McElroy, it sounded like nonsense, like garbage, like a joke, but by now he found it soothing, like bath water, enjoyed getting lost in it the same way he enjoyed fishing with childhood friends. He didn't believe the change of opinion had anything to do with his brother's early death from ALS, but maybe with the incongruity between his brother’s end and the brother he’d always known, the way one became the other without anyone noticing, as if trading a crushed watch for a freed dove, the uninhabitable exchange between ‘is’ and ‘was,’ love and loss, skinny and fat.
Or maybe it was just that strange ringing sound? What was that?
He didn't mention his brother or bathwater, but instead, “Hey, do you guys hear a ringing or wooshing? Like every few seconds?”
“What?”
“A ringing? In your ear. Do you hear that? Every few seconds. Or a whooshing?”
“No.”
Then McElroy, watching everything tilt upward and to the left, fell like a jostled deck chair headfirst into the tiled kitchen floor. To him, Soriano and Francis appeared ready to tumble across the deck of a storm-bound ship. Vertigo. He held tight to a chair-leg for fear of careening across the kitchen and into unseen and non-existent oceans.
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Francis said, sniffling.
He went that afternoon, hobbling like a drunk. "Technically it's called Superior Canal Dihescence Syndrome," the doctor told him, at which McElroy laughed, then thought: dihescence: that’s what it’s called when plants, like corn, violently rip open to spread pollen! -- and imagined his own head doing the same. "It's not as scary as it sounds,” the doctor continued, “nor as complicated. Compared to others, you've grown up with less bone tissue in your ears.” Ears, Corn. “That is, less tissue covering the opening to the vestibular system, a system that helps you hear and, incidentally, to stay balanced.”
To McElroy, his doctor had a voice like a bassoon and a tire losing air, or drums and undersea radars. The white office seemed to echo unnaturally.
“With time, that temporal bone has worn away, and now the semicircular canal is exposed. Interestingly, there is no accepted explanation for the cause of the erosion. It just goes from being one way to being another, though of course not really. Picture, if you want, an emptiness surfacing from deep underwater. In this case, it's not just emptiness, though, but you, and not water but your body. It's not a very good analogy, maybe. There is an operation, but with your insurance? Nathan, it'd run you about $15,000. Your provider takes the stance that being dizzy sometimes isn't so bad, and in your case I'd have to agree.”
McElroy didn't have that kind of money -- but he did have Francis, the final recruit needed to take back his farm and his pride. He could handle some dizziness, at least until they'd raised their revolutionary crop. After heading home to rest, losing another Oldsmobile along the way, he found three voice messages, one from his daughter, another from his cable company, and another from Cribbler, the headhunter at Colavec. “Mr. McElroy,” Cribbler said, “I’ve been trying to reach you. I’d love to speak to you about some, uh…part time work. If you just give me your schedule, I can see where to fit you in. What do you do on Sundays for example? Our insurance plan might be of particular interest to you. Give me a call back at…”
Damnit, had they gotten to his doctor? What about the Hippocratic Oath? Doctor/patient confidentiality? No matter, McElroy thought, we move ahead with the plans either way. Any hesitation could mean Colavec fished us from the water before we emerge with limbs of our own.