Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Harvest

The corn came off in the second week of October, bright and heavy, in the best yield my mother's land had given in ten years.

We hauled it on a Wednesday.

At sunrise there were forty-four trucks lined up on the county road outside my gate, with their flashers going.

Birdie stood on the running board of the lead semi with her clipboard and her feed-store cap on backward.

"Fuel accounts are in the glove box," she said. "Nobody speeds, nobody passes, and if you stop for a doughnut, you buy for the whole convoy."

"That's not in the plan," said the man in the next truck.

"It is now."

The sheriff sat in his cruiser at the first intersection with his lights turning, holding up a school bus and a milk tanker for the whole line to pass.

I climbed up into the cab of our truck beside Dean.

He was in a clean flannel shirt, with a thermos between his knees.

He had shaved.

"You look nice," I said.

"I'm hauling corn."

"You look nice hauling corn."

He turned the key, and the diesel caught, and he glanced over at me with a shy half smile that made my stomach drop.

I had stopped pretending my hands didn't want him.

I put one of them on his thigh, high up, and kept it there for the whole drive.

"Gretchen," he said, once, around mile twenty.

"I'm only steadying myself."

"On the highway."

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