Corn

I was once asked to write a one-page story about corn. Here is my one-page story about corn.

 

“Turn off the TV,” Margaret said. “I need to talk to you. About our daughter.”

“What has she done now?” Carl asked without looking up from the screen.

Without a word, she tossed a magazine into his lap. Then he did look up, and the cold, worried look on her face, and the way her silk hung dryly in front of her eyes, made Carl turn off Starsky & Husk in mid-car chase.

He held up the magazine, and the title said everything he needed to know. Shuckers. He stared at that title, not wanting to let his eyes drift down to what he knew he would find on the cover. But he had to look. And he did.

There she was. His little girl. Husk pulled back to reveal just about everything from silk to stem. The look on her face clearly saying, “Shuck you, Daddy!”

Carl rose from his seat, shaking. Then the magazine was sailing across the room, chased by three suddenly popped kernels from Carl’s own steaming brow.

Margaret stood up, having just dodged the kernels. “Carl, please. Don’t hurt her.”

“Hurt her? I’ll cream her!” Carl raged. “It’s that flake she’s been seeing, squirting his poisonous syrup in her ear about how he would make her a corn star. He’ll be chowder after I find him!”

“Carl,” Margaret said. “It’s no use. She’s lost to us now. If we have even a kernel of love left for her, then we have to just let her go.”

Through his rage, he looked into those eyes that had never lied to him through the whole twisting maize of their life together, and he knew she was right.

“You’re right,” he sighed. “Nothing I could say to her would make any difference. She’s done nothing but turn a deaf ear to us for years.”

Margaret grinned and patted his face. “‘Ear.’ That was very clever, honey.”