Blood in the Cornfield

Georgia, 1977.

The sun didn’t rise so much as bleed over the sky, hot and thick and red. It soaked into the earth, into the bones of the boys working the fields, into the peeling white walls of the farmhouse that sat like a ghost at the edge of the corn.

Cal sat barefoot in the dirt, shirt tied around his waist, fingers raw from husking. He licked the sweat off his upper lip and watched Micah through the stalks.

Micah was the boss’s son — clean-cut, pink-lipped, and golden like the wheat they used to grow before his daddy switched to corn. He moved through the rows like he owned them, which, Cal guessed, he kind of did.

They weren’t supposed to talk. Cal was the help, the half-orphaned stray taken in from across the tracks after his mama went cold in her bed last winter. But that didn’t stop the looks. The smirks. The way Micah flicked his cigarette to the dirt, just to watch Cal bend and pick it up.

It started with a punch.

Mid-July, late afternoon. Cal said something stupid about Micah’s girl — a preacher’s daughter with big teeth and a voice like a crow. Micah shoved him hard enough to send dust flying, then grabbed his collar before he could hit back.

“You got a mouth on you,” Micah said. Close. Too close.

Cal smiled. “You gonna do something about it?”

He did.

Behind the shed, where the corn grew high and the air smelled of rust and spit, they kissed like it was a dare. Teeth clacked. Knuckles bruised. Micah gripped Cal’s hair like he wanted to yank him apart, not hold him.

After, they sat in the shade, arms not touching, saying nothing. Cal smoked the rest of Micah’s cigarette and let his legs stretch out into the light.

It kept happening.

Late nights. Scraped knees. Bruises that didn't come from work. Micah would grab him behind the barn, press his mouth to Cal’s neck like a sin he couldn’t spit out. His hands trembled, but he never stopped.

“You ever tell anyone—” he whispered once, voice tight, “I swear I’ll kill you.”

Cal just laughed. “You wish I’d tell. Least then someone’d know what you are.”

Micah hit him for that one. Hard. Then kissed him harder.

Weeks passed. The corn grew taller.

And then: the boss started watching.

Micah’s daddy didn’t say much, just stood near the field’s edge like a dog sniffing smoke. He didn’t trust Cal. Cal knew that. But it was Micah who got strange — eyes too wide, words too sharp, asking questions like, “You think about telling someone?”

Like maybe he would.

A night came with no moon.

They met behind the field, out near the irrigation ditch, where the frogs screamed like they knew something was wrong. Micah’s hands shook. His lip was split.

“My daddy knows,” he said.

Cal didn’t flinch. “You think I care?”

“You should.”

Micah held something behind his back. A crowbar. Old, rusty, worn at the grip.

“You brought me out here to kill me?” Cal asked, half-smiling.

“No.” A beat. “But I thought about it.”

The silence after that was long and hungry.

Cal stepped closer. “Do it then.”

Micah raised the crowbar — just a little. Then dropped it.

They stood there for what felt like hours, two boys carved out of mud and sweat and shame.

“I ain’t gonna let you take me down with you,” Micah whispered, more to himself than to Cal.

Then he turned and ran — through the corn, into the dark.

Cal watched him go. Didn’t chase him. Just stood barefoot in the dirt, letting the stalks shiver around him.

He never saw Micah again.

Next morning, the farmhouse was quiet. The boss said Micah went north for school. The preacher’s daughter cried in church.

But Cal knew better.

Because two weeks later, in the corner of the field where the corn never grew quite right, the earth turned soft. Wet. Like something buried there wouldn’t stay buried.