Behold, a Great Red Dragon (Cumberland Saga)

"Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?” Sig asked, not expecting Blain to have anything more to discuss.

“Yes. I wanna talk about fertilizing the corn, too” Blain said.

Sig recoiled as if he had touched an electric wire.

“Fertilizing the corn is completely off the table. There is nothing to discuss” Sig declared with a steely note of finality in his voice.

“Sarah and I agreed to abide your your decisions. You are our leader” Blain said.

Sig picked up on the fact that Blain included himself in the decision and noticed that Blain didn’t turn around and leave.

“What?” Sig said. Clearly Blain had more he intended to say.

“I really feel a need to share what I have seen and what I heard. I have an obligation to share that with you” Blain said.

“What “obligation” do you have here?” Sig scoffed.

Blain shrugged. “You are my people. I don’t want to starve. I don’t want to see Sarah or Mary or Lliam go hungry.”

“It is possible that I saw or heard something you didn’t, something that might change your thinking for next year or the year after” he finished.

“Whatever” Sig said dismissively and flounced back down into his rocking chair and picked up his pipe. He was clearly agitated and didn't like the push-back.

Blain said “The corn is planted right up to the edge on some of those fields. Just like the potatoes, it was an accidental experiment. That corn was growing on fertilized ground and did not blow down” Blain pointed out.

“We don't plant corn on the edge, we plant punkins” Sig refuted him.

“I saw that. I walked the fields. But the dirt is black past where the punkins were planted. Some of the corn was planted in the black-dirt” Blain insisted.

“So why didn’t it blow over?” Sig demanded.

“I met Sister Shannon the day I was helping Sally fix roofs. She gave me some cornfield beans and some squash seeds for Sarah. She told me something when she gave them to me that stuck in my head” Blain said.

Sig was interested in spite of himself. He had incredible respect for Sister Shannon’s green-thumb. “What did she say?” Sig asked.

“She said that the heirloom varieties of corn we grow are much taller than hybrids and if we don’t plant them with beans and squash they are likely to blow over” Blain said.

“And what does that have to do with anything?” Sig asked.

“I was thinking that the people who used the fertilizer might have left out the beans and squash” Blain said, lamely.

“Why would they do that?” Sig asked. "Don't make no sense."

“All the books say the Indians planted the beans with the corn to fix-nitrogen. I thought that if the new people were using nitrogen fertilizer, they might have left out the beans just like they do on commercial farms and planted more corn” Blain said, his voice tapering off. “I asked Sarah if they had, but she was too young to remember.”

Sig realized that he could not remember either. The influx of new people had caused a lot of friction and as the community’s preacher he was fully occupied sorting out conflicts. He just couldn’t remember.

“Anything else you wanna say” Sig said in a tone that was slightly less confrontational then earlier.

“No. I hadda chance to say my piece. Time for me to head home. Tomorrow is going to be another long day” Blain said. And he walked off, into the darkness.

Sig was relighting his pipe to think over what Blain had said when he heard-the-whisper-that-he-dare-not-ignore.

“Your Sunday Sermon will be on the Sin of Pride” the whisper said.

The one time he had dared to delay answering the whisper he had been afflicted with a migraine headache that felt like his skull was being cleaved with an axe. Years had gone by since God had whispered directly to him but there was absolutely no doubt in Sig's mind what had just happened.

“Yes, my Lord” Sig whispered back.

He found the small oil-lamp and lit it. He opened his Concordance and started looking up Bible verses. He expected to be up for most of the night.