The Number He Crossed Out at Seventeen
The first time was at seventeen. He had finished forty rows in a single day, the kind of number people in the basin talk about for weeks. He sat down with the tally notebook on his knee, wrote his own and stayed a moment looking at it. Then he crossed it out with two lines and put Solofo's over it, his cousin, who pollinates in the same crew and goes slower. Solofo was three meters away and saw him do it; he said nothing. Stan told the foreman he had gone slow that day.







