Free The Fall of Alice K. by Jim Heynen

to shoulder, two stalky figures approaching the wounded cornfield. The battered ears of corn drooped from the naked stalks. When her father squeezed one in his large hand, milk from the kernels oozed through his fingers.
    â€œThis corn is too damaged to mature,” he said. His demeanor was flat and emotionless. It may have been resolute acceptance of what God had given them. The gift of trial. God was seeing if her father could be a Job. He nodded deliberately. “We can harvest it all for silage,” he said. “That will at least be something.”
    Alice looked at the pathetic field of battered corn. Her father’s solution would not be that easy. Too much rain had come with the hail, and dark puddles of water glowed between the shattered rows of corn. The dark puddles looked like blood. Which made Alice think of sacrifice. Useless bloodshed of the innocent. Even if the Almighty wasn’t thinking of their well-being, why wouldn’t He think of the innocent corn, those
gorgeous fields that one week ago were an endless celebration of green leaves? Didn’t those thousands of stalks declare His glory? Couldn’t He have looked down and said, “They are good,” and spared them? Alice turned toward her father where he stood majestic and calm. He looked better than the corn. How could anyone accept anything this terrible, just look at it, sigh, and go on? Whatever faith her father had, Alice knew she did not have it. Not yet, anyhow.
    The first and only relief of the morning came when Alice went to the cattle feedlot to discover that the steers were unblemished by the hail. They must have found shelter, but they also must have known something was wrong because they took only a couple of nibbles and backed away. It might have been an air pressure thing that made their stomachs feel full. She didn’t know. Maybe they needed time to recover the way she did.
    In the house, her mother looked shell shocked. Alice tried to impose the image she had of her mother when she had thought of her as a hardened guardian angel, but this was the real thing. Her actual mother looked as if she was “letting herself go,” a favorite expression of people from Dutch Center applied to those who were on the skids for one reason or another. Seeing her drooping appearance reminded Alice that nothing looks sadder than a sagging tall woman. She wore the same clothes that she had on the night before, and she had let her hair hang in clumps over her ears and neck. Fists of hair against her narrow face. She still moved like a robot, but she moved more heavily, like a robot with low batteries. Her dark mood made its way into her cooking. She must have been preparing food for the rest of the day so that she wouldn’t have to think about cooking again. She was boiling beans, boiling potatoes, boiling cabbage—three pans on the stove at one time.
    â€œSoup,” she said when she saw Alice watching her. “We’ll be eating lots of soup.”
    Alice left her alone to do whatever she had to do. She was trying to boil something out of herself. She thought the bubbles on the surfaces of the boiling pots would release her troubles into the air.
    When she finished her boiling of vegetables, she brought another pan of water to a boil and dumped in four small packets of instant oatmeal. This was breakfast. Alice wanted to ask her which recipe book she was using, but didn’t.

    â€œMerciful Father, we come unto thee with thankful hearts, thanking thee for the abundance thou hast bestowed upon us . . . ,” her father prayed.
    â€œDad,” Alice said when he finished, “I’m sorry, but what was that all about? Abundance? You thought, like, maybe God would find that funny?”
    â€œDon’t talk like that,” said her mother. “If you’re going to open your mouth, open it to eat.”
    Her mother was reprimanding her because commenting on a person’s communication