A few minutes later, Chet asked Mary Beth what she’d been thinking. “You know, while it was going on.”

Mary Beth uttered a soft bark from the back of her throat. “Summers when I was little, I lived a few weeks with my Grandma May. I loved her so much. She lived in an old farmhouse on the top of a hill. Down the road there was this farmstand where they sold jam and blueberries and sweet corn. The sweet corn was so good. We’d walk down the road and we’d each select an ear. We’d walk back holding our ears. That sounds funny, doesn’t it. Holding our ears. And that evening for supper Grandma and I would each peel our ears. Hey, you know the saying ‘Keep your ears peeled’?”

“I think I’ve heard of that,” Chet said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with corn, but maybe it does.”

“Well actually what Grandma said was ‘Time to do the shucking.’ I thought maybe Grandma had said a naughty word. Shucking. She showed me how to do it. Then there were those hairs. Those silky strands. I think maybe they’re called silks. Grandma said we had to get them all off, otherwise they’d get caught between our teeth and be so annoying. Grandma said her hands were too nervous to get them off properly, but my small hands and little fingers were perfect for the job. She trusted me to remove all the silky hairs. I was so proud to have that job. I remember I wanted to save the hairs. I’m not sure why. Maybe I was thinking someone could knit a blanket out of them.” Mary Beth paused in thought.

“So after we’d shucked the corn and cleaned away the hairs, Grandma said the stem had to be snapped off. You know, the little knob end. I tried but I wasn’t strong enough, so Grandma snapped off the stems. What a nice juicy snapping sound that made. Snap. Snap.”

“So you were thinking about ears of corn?” Chet asked.

“No,” Mary Beth said. “Don’t get impatient. Grandma asked me which one I wanted, and I looked at them carefully. It was so hard to decide. They looked almost the same. One was slightly bigger, and one was slightly yellower, and one had slightly bigger kernels, but really they both looked pretty much the same. They were both so beautiful.

“I asked her why the ends had to be snapped off, and she said so the corn would fit better in the pot. Then she filled the big pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. She shook in some salt. I stood on a stool so I could be high enough to see, and she let me shake in some salt too. Then we waited. Tiny bubbles formed on the bottom of the pot.”

“‘When do we put them in?’ I asked Grandma.

“‘Not til the water’s boiling vigorously,’ Grandma told me. ‘And you know a watched pot never boils. Now you come down from there and help me set the table.’

“So I got off the stool and helped Grandma set the table, and when that was done, the water was boiling, and Grandma put in the corn and boiled it for six minutes. Then after the corn had cooled a minute or two, we added some more salt and lots of butter and ate it. So good! Maybe the best thing I ever tasted.

“Grandma said when eating corn you had a choice, whether to eat around and around or side to side. She said she liked to go side to side but some people preferred to go around and around. She said I should try it each way, and I did, and I couldn’t decide, so I did it both ways, until the corn was all gone.”