Last Things Read Online Free PDF Page A

place in the door that always caught. “Sit down. You’re driving everyone crazy,” my mother said.
    My father sat down on the window ledge away from everyone. He tossed a tennis ball back and forth from hand to hand. My uncle stood at the front of the room and introduced the tape. He showed us a picture of him shaking hands with the mayor of New York City. Then one of him kissing a beauty queen. Finally, he sat down and turned on the TV. “Here goes,” he said. “Remember, kids, let Mr. Science know what you think.”
    The theme music came on. There was a picture of the sun and then of an old man walking through a field of corn. The man had on overalls and a hat made of straw. He walked and walked without saying a word. Above him, the sky was a blinding blue. When the man reached the end of the field, he tore off an ear of corn and held it to the light. One side was bright yellow, but the other was spotted black. For a moment, I thought the man might cry, but he just threw the spotted corn back into the field. “Too much sun can be as harmful as too little,” my uncle said.
    Mary came over and sat beside me. “What’s this one about?” she whispered.
    “Corn,” I said.
    “It can’t just be corn. It has to be something educational.”
    “It’s just corn.”
    The question girl came out, carrying a steaming platter. My uncle took an ear of corn and bit into it delicately.
    “See,” I said.
    The question girl smiled and took the platter away. She was about my age and had curly blond hair that she wore piled on top of her head like a queen. Two hundred kids had tried out for her part, but she had been picked because she’d explained the theory of relativity while twirling around on roller skates.
    The question girl stepped forward and began to speak in her smiling way. My uncle stood just outside the spotlight.
    A RE WE THE ONLY ANIMALS THAT GROW OUR OWN FOOD ?
    Humans are the only animals intelligent enough to farm. Until the Neolithic Age, people lived as hunters and gatherers, often traveling great distances to find food. But then, around 8000 B.C ., agriculture was invented. Experts believe that people in the Middle East were the first to discover that seeds from wild grains could be planted and harvested. This probably came about when a woman gathering food noticed that new shoots had grown from spilled grain. If it hadn’t been for the discovery of this sharp-eyed lass,we might still be following our dinner from place to place
.
    The tape stopped. Everyone applauded. “Wait,” my uncle said. “That’s not the end.” He got up and fiddled with the TV; then he turned and saw my father with the remote control. “Okay, kid, what’s the problem?” he asked.
    My father cleared his throat. He rewound the tape a little ways. “Are we the only animals that grow our own food?” the question girl asked. “Humans are the only animals intelligent enough to farm,” my uncle said.
    My father paused the tape on the last word. “It’s just that, strictly speaking, that isn’t true,” he said. “There seems to be a small error in your research here.”
    My uncle got up and poured himself a drink. When he turned around, his face was red. He smiled at my father. “Care to explain what the hell you’re talking about, Jonathan?” he said.
    Aunt Fe put a hand on his arm. She gestured in our direction. Uncle Pete closed his eyes. “What the heck you’re talking about, I mean.”
    My father leapt up from his chair. He went to the bookcase and took down a book called
The Big Book of Ants
.
    “Ants!” my mother said happily.
    My father opened the book. His hands shook a little as he looked for the passage he wanted. “Ah, here it is,” he said and began to read.
    Over one hundred ninety species of ants have been found to grow a kind of fungi which they fertilize, plant, and even prune. Many of them also keep aphids the way we keep cows. They milk them to obtain their sweet honeydew and build shelters for