Harvey said, “John, I believe Myrtle’s got something there. You can’t fight with your hands tied.”
“But,” I said, “that clause saying I must buy everything offered, at a designated price, will keep my hands tied.”
Myrtle said, “Think, think, think! Let’s pray that there shall be a way around that. It’s not fair to let Mr. Worthy do all the thinking. It’s only for corn shipped. And you always fill your cribs every winter anyway.”
She was all for the grapes.
As of the moment, Myrtle’s estimate of one-third was correct — but, like a struggling corporation doubling its capital with the induction of new blood, our new set-up raised the buyer’s margin from one cent to two cents a bushel; thus reducing the little man’s share to one-sixth of the gross, with all the expense of handling and shipper’s losses falling on the promoter. And the losses—mostly on account of wet snow-ridden corn being carelessly scooped off the ground into the sheller—were unusually heavy that winter. But Michael, being the man he was, took his medicine without a whimper.
Happily, there was a way around it. An honorable way. Michael said as much himself. Actually, I did not ship one car of corn in the whole six months. But I did spring the market on nearly all the 10,000 bushels of ear-corn cribbed that winter. My crib was 16-foot tall on the high side, with doors or openings well up toward the top, and it took more to get the farmers to bring it to me in the ear. The extra money paid for the shoveling was very generously interpreted by Mr. Worthy as no violation of our contract.
Though I was the loser, a funny incident fits in here. I was bothered some by petty stealing, but never a loss of any consequence. John Irving, commonly called “Nigger John,” head of the only colored family ever living in Wet-more—and, except John, a right good colored family it was — thought it a huge joke on me. He laughed “fit to kill” when he told me that he had climbed up to one of those high doors one night about 10 o’clock, and then dropped down on the inside to the corn, and was filling his sack, “when I gets me some company.” He said a white man, (naming him) with sack in readiness, had dropped down on top of him. He laughed, “That white man, he was sure scared most to def.” Nigger John also told me that he and our deputy town marshal had bumped heads in my corn crib one dark night. “But that’s eber time,” he lied. And John was not what you might call a really bad Nigger. Other men who helped themselves to my corn were not “white” enough to tell me about it.
Also, someone had whittled out a hand-opening, enlarged the crack between two boards on the back side of the crib—with a loss of two or three bushels of corn. When I went down one evening about dusk to close the crib, I saw a very fine old lady—a grandmother—filling her apron with my corn. I sneaked away, praying that she had not seen me.
And again, I had given permission to a crippled man to gather up some shattered corn around the sheller after the day’s run. When I went down late in the evening to close the crib, I saw the man and his wife putting ear-corn in a sack. I didn’t want to humiliate them, so I walked unobserved around to the opposite side of the crib, and made a lot of racket. The sacks contained no ear-corn when I got around to the sheller—and I knew then that they would always be my friends.
Eighty-three dollars was the largest monthly check paid me on that lop-sided contract. With the sixth and last month’s collection in hand, I asked Mr. Worthy if he wished to renew the contract?