Adolphus Cornelius Mahoney carried a name that quite rightly reminded me of an ant. Legend told that the mighty bug could carry something like ten times its body weight. In the same way, my slightly built, eight year-old chum carried his huge name - Adolphus Cornelius Mahoney - like an ant lugs a picnic basket swipe.

Not one kid in the third grade at St Margaret Grade School in Manchester, Iowa, ever actually called Adolphus Cornelius Mahoney by his given name. The Sisters who taught our classes always called him "Adolphus Cornelius," quite like they called me "William Walter." I called my best mate "Dolph" and he called me "Billy."

Dolph lived on the neighboring farm up a quiet dirt road from my family's place. Our fathers were dairy farmers, each also keeping about one-hundred hogs and some chickens. Dolph was the oldest of five children while I was the youngest of eight. My oldest sister, Ginny, was Miss Iowa in 1968. She actually met Spiro Agnew, and married Philip Quimby, the son of the owner of Quimby Motors in Waterloo.

Summers in Iowa were simply paced: chores at dawn, chores at sunset and the whole day in between to play with Dolph. After supper was family time, evenings on the parlor floor playing the Scrabble board game and watching television programs like "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Bonanza," and "Dragnet."

On Monday, the first week of August, Dolph rode his bike over to my family's place at about nine o'clock. I finished up with my chores about an hour earlier and was eating my breakfast when Dolph walked into the kitchen through the back door to our house. Most everyone came in the back door and did so without first knocking. We lived in Iowa and everyone, even a lost stranger misdirected along the dirt road in front of our farm, was a friend. The Clutters were murdered and Truman Capote became famous in Kansas, not Iowa.

"What'cha doin'?" Dolph asked, plopping down on the empty seat at the kitchen table where Ginny used to sit before she went to Atlan tic City, met Spiro Agnew and married Philip Quimby.

"What's it look like, bean-ball?" I replied, poking a forkful of scrambled eggs in Dolph's general direction. He shrugged and Ma told me to be quiet and finish eating.

"Do you want anything?" she asked Dolph. He shrugged, then nodded. I knew, as did Ma, that Dolph already ate a full breakfast.

"For a squirt, you sure eat too much," I said, chewing on a lump of egg.

"Billy, eat. Be quiet," Ma scolded, fixing a plate of eggs, sausage, bacon and toasted bread with rhubarb jam for Dolph.

I scraped my plate clean as Dolph worked on his second morning meal. "Fishing?" I asked. Dolph shrugged.

"Make a hay fort?" Dolph waited a few seconds, then shrugged. Based on the subtle differences between his reactions, I figured we would make a fort out of squares of hay bales in the barn.

"Hurry up," I prodded, everyone else in my family having left the table, Ma at the sink with my sister Thelma cleaning dishes.

"Let him be, Billy," Ma scolded again.

"He already ate once, why's he need to eat again?"

"Billy ... please. Dolph's a growing boy."

I laughed. "Is not."

"I am too," he said.

I laughed more. Dolph finished his plate a couple of minutes later. He handed his plate, juice cup and silverware to Thelma and we headed out of the house to the barn. We ran past my brother, Herbie, who was heading towards the barn himself.

"Twerps," he shouted as we dashed by. We ignored him, eager to get to work on building our hay fort.

Dolph and I spent nearly three hours moving hay bales around, creating a surprisingly sturdy fortress. Just before noon, Pa poked his head into the barn and hollered "Dinner!"

Dolph and I scrambled out of our newly-built fort, tumbled over each other out of the barn and sprinted to the house for dinner. In the Iowa of my youth, the main meal - our dinner - was held at noon and a place was set for anyone who happened to be at our plac e at around twelve o'clock. Dolph retook Ginny's seat as he did that morning.

After grace was said, my brother Herbie picked up on his jibing from earlier that morning by calling Dolph and me "twerps" again.

"Young man," Ma snapped. "Your mouth. Watch it."

"Yeah, watch it, bean-ball."

"You," Ma turned to me, pointing a serving spoon overflowing with whipped potatoes at me as she spoke. "Keep still. Eat. Be still and eat."

When Ma was temporarily distracted serving garden peas onto her plate, I looked to Herbie and mouthed "bean-ball" and he rejoined with a silently lipped "twerp." Dolph seemed oblivious to all, gnawing on a deep-fried chicken leg.

After dinner, Dolph and I returned to our fort but soon lost interest in our hay bale structure.

"What you wanna do now?" I asked. Dolph shrugged.

"I know," I said, thinking of the grain bin, a large circular metal building about a quarter the height and just as wide as the silo. I crawled out of the h ay fort with Dolph at my heels.

"What are we gonna do?" Dolph asked when we walked from the barn.

"Let's play in the corn." I pointed to the grain bin.

"Your Pa says we ain't to go in there."

"Are you a scaredy toad, Dolph?"

"No." Dolph fisted his hands.

"Then come on." I ran to the bin. As the building was half-filled with kernelled corn, the only way inside was found by climbing a metal ladder on the exterior to a hatch on the roof that reminded me of an entry port to a submarine. Another ladder inside led from the hatch downward into the corn.

After we made certain the coast was clear - Pa out of sight and Herbie monkeying around with a John Deere tractor engine - Dolph and I hurried up the ladder, opened the latch and crawled inside.

The interior of the grain bin was stifling hot in the summer heat despite a series of opened vents that kept air circulating slightly.

"We shouldn't do this."

I replied to Dolph's admonition with another snotty sounding "scaredy toad."

"Am not." Dolph firmly motioned for me to move down the ladder and into the corn.

The countless golden kernels were uneven inside the bin, making the chamber look like it contained a golden wave at high tide. Every day Pa would draw down corn from the bin using an electric auger at the base of the building. The corn was used to slop the pigs, sometimes thrown about so the hens could peck a meal.

Pa all but pinched my head off that Spring when he caught Dolph and me playing in the corn bin.

"What if the hatch locked up on you? What if the vents shut up on you? You boys'd suffocate and we'd never hear you." Pa's face turned as red as his Ford pickup as he hollered at Dolph and me after finding us in the corn bin. "And what if I needed some corn? What if I turned on the auger? What then? You boys get ground up to bits."

Later that day I overheard Pa talking to Herbie, explaining about how he scolded Dolph and me about being in the corn bin by making up a tale about us getting chewed up by the auger. "That should keep 'em outta there," Pa said to Herbie.

On the afternoon of our second sneaky visit into the corn crib, when I reached the point at where the ladder touched the corn, I jumped from the metal perch into the slick golden nuggets. I slid down the auger-formed wave of corn, reaching the bottom of the rise with a splash and spray of gold bits. Dozens of kernels flew into the air and tinkled against the metallic wall of the bin.

A matter of seconds behind me, Dolph tumbled down into the sea of pebblish grain, the corn spraying about like some sort of magically golden ocean water.

Half an hour passed with Dolph and me taking turns scrambling up the wave of corn and happily tumbling back down. At first we tried to keep out boyish laughter under control for fear Pa or my brother Herbie might hear us. Before long, our concerns regarding being caught and punished for sneaking into the grain bin washed away in ou r play in the sea of kernelled corn.

Eventually our laughter, or perhaps the rattle of corn kernels pinging against the side of the grain bin, apparently snared Herbie's attention. With both Dolph and me on the crest of our golden wave, Herbie started to whack the, outside of the grain bin with a two-by-four plank and hollered at us at the same time.

Startled by Herbie, both Dolph and I flayed forward, Dolph teetering face-first down the sloping corn pile. Perhaps because of Herbie hitting the side of the building with the wooden plank, perhaps because both Dolph and I pitched unsteadily together, the seemingly benign pile of corn shifted drastically, the entire corn bin seeming to groan under the weight of the suddenly moving kernels.

Within a flash, within no more than a flutter of my eyelashes, a pulse of the sliding corn buried my chum. Dolph vanished from my sight. Just as soon as the rush began, the corn was still, Dolph was gone.

Herbie carried on with his yelling and b anging on the side of the bin. For the moment, my voice was lost. I frantically started pawing through the corn, more like a puppy trying to paddle in a pond than one attempting to uncover a buried bone. As fast as I pushed handfuls of kernels away, other golden bits of grain filled in to cover my slight indentation I happened to etch.

I did not immediately notice that tears were flooding my eyes. I tried to call out for Herbie, only accomplishing a raspy croak. Trying to clear my fear - clogged throat, I heard the sound of Herbie boots begin to clamber on the metal ladder on the outside of the bin. He was heading to the hatch on top. Herbie would help me; Herbie would save Dolph.

I continued to dig at the corn kernels, my ears clang of Herbie's boots on the ladder. After what seemed like an incredibly long passage of time, Herbie was above me, looking down inside from the open hatch.

"What are you doing in there?' Herbie snapped. I looked up, tears streaming down my corn-dusty cheeks . Seeing my face, my expression, the tears, Herbie hurried through the hatch and down the inside ladder. As Herbie made his way towards me, I managed a feeble "Dolph" and kept pawing and pulling at the corn kernels. Herbie understood.

In a matter of seconds, Herbie joined me on the grain pile, hopelessly searching for my friend.

Nearly a dozen years have passed since that August afternoon. Returning to Manchester and my family's farm on spring break from my studies at Iowa State University, I realized nearly nothing had changed.

The same dirt road still ran in front of the farm. Ginny was still married to Philip Quimby. Dolph's family still lived on the farm next door to our place.

On my first full day back home, a pleasant April day complete with warm temperature and gentle breeze, I decided to drive out to the small cemetery outside of town, the evergreen enclosed space where Adolphus Cornelius Mahoney was laid to rest.

I made irregular trips out to Mount Hope in the years since Dolph's death. Reaching the cemetery, I parked near the gate and walked the thirty some odd yards to Dolph's grave.

Drawing near, I spied a crow perched on Dolph's shiny, polished black granite headstone. The bird was facing away from me and, I guessed, the sound of my footsteps scrunching on the tender Spring lawn startled the crow. I noticed something fall from the bird's beak as the startled flyer took to the air. Something small fell from the crow's grasp and onto the top of Dolph's headstone.

Reaching my friend's grave, I saw what fell from the crow's beak, what the frightened crow left behind: a solitary kernel of golden corn.

The End

Mike Broemmel © 2004