Evening Shelling

I marched back from the roadside stand and climbed onto the weathered pine porch table to deal with those four flint corn kernels before calling it a night. Leaving tough, raw grain sitting in a heap is pointless. I grabbed an empty heavy ceramic salt cellar to use as an anvil and wedged an old steel hex nut right between my boots. Using the flat iron edge of the nut, I drove down hard on the ruby kernels one by one. They cracked with crisp, sharp pops, splitting into dense yellow meal ready for tomorrow's griddle. Field rations prepped, workstation cleared, and no daylight wasted.