she screamed and the force of her cry seemed to break the room apart , to let in darkness , and she was mother abagail again one hundred and eight years old , too old , my lord , too old ( but let thy will be done ) , and she was walking in the corn , the mystic corn that was rooted shallow in the earth but wide , lost in the corn that was silver with moonglow and black with shadow ; she could hear the summer nightwind rustling gently through it , she could smell its growing , wholly alive smell as she had smelled it all her long , long life ( and she had thought many times that this was the plant closest to all life , the corn , and its smell was the smell of life itself , the start of life , oh she had married and buried three husbands , david trotts , henry hardesty , and nate brooks , and she had had three men in bed , had welcomed them as a woman must welcome a man , by giving way before him , and there had always been the yearning pleasure , the thought oh my god how i love to be sexy with my man and how i love him to be sexy with me when he gets me what he gets me what he shoots in me and sometimes at the instant of her climax she would think of the corn , the bland corn with its roots planted not deep but wide , she would think of flesh and then the corn , when it was all over and her husband lay beside her the sex smell would be in the room , the smell of the spunk the man had shot into her , the smell of the juices she made to smooth his way , and it was a smell like husked corn , mild and sweet , a goodish smell ) .