How Many Bushels?

EXT. FIELD, DAY
SOUND: The open countryside. Crows cawing in the distance. Wind blowing lazily through corn fields.
JIMMY
Well, sir, I ain’t thought much ‘bout goin’ home, truth be told. Momma been ill going on fifteen years, but that ain’t stopped me ‘til now. 
Daisy keeps finding where I’m at, sending messages to poor folks on the road, you know? She been pestering me since she came out my Momma hollerin’ and yellin’ something dreadful. Ain’t never stopped hollerin’ at me, seems like. You think about that, huh? Think ‘bout someone yellin’ at you “Think of your poor old Pop, Jimmy. What about Momma, Jimmy?” for damn near fifty years. It’d drive any fool to distraction. And so y’all understand I couldn’t just be sittin’ ‘round that house listenin’ to Daisy have her way about her. It ain’t like she had no gentlemen calling on her to take her out the house. She was always there, loiterin’. 
So when I was old enough to be workin’ out, I didn’t even think, I walked out that door down in Tallahassee and I ain’t stopped walkin’ since. Went Tallahassee to Atlanta workin’ corn fields along the way, testing my strength. You gotta understand it was a long time gone now and I was a weedy thing, you know? I looked like I ain’t saw the sun much and I weren’t planted in no fertilizer.
What’d happen was I rock up on your farm and I ask you “How many bushels do y’all normally haul in a day?” and you tell me and I say “Alright. Y’all need help today?” and you might say yes, might say no, but I’ll stick around and pull some corn. Next day comes ‘round and I been sleeping in your barn or something and I gets up and walks on by to another farm further north. Always going north aiming for God above knows where. Got to Atlanta and spent some time in the city there. That was the first time Daisy managed to get a hold of me, told me she was getting married to Bobby May that spring and wouldn’t I like to come down for the wedding. I knew Bobby when we was boys together on the baseball team: Bobby’s a bit time hitter, coulda made the big league if it weren’t for the color of his skin. Not that I got a problem with it, but you know how it was in them days. So she sent a letter to some lodge I was stayin’ at in Atlanta tellin’ me “come home for the wedding, Jimmy. Mom and Pop miss ya Jim.” I didn’t go. I didn’t have a car or no money to get down there and by the time I coulda turned around and walked back I’d’a missed the dang service.
Please don’t take that as some comment on my approval of the match between my Daisy and Bobby May. I’m sure they make a wonderful couple, but I was in a bad place in Atlanta at the time, you know? I decided then and there that the cities weren’t made for me, and since I been keeping to the fields pickin’ corn and the like. I been all around over the years, up as far as Illinois and back down South again; over from the Carolinas to Arizona. Actually it were in Arizona I got a letter from Daisy tellin’ me about her kid: she had a son, you know? Called him Tommy, well Thomas, Thomas May. She wanted me there for the baptism, give my blessin’ to the child and so on. Went on for pages this letter she sent to some poor farmer in Arizona. I never really took much to farming in Arizona. I’d turn up at a place over there and ask “How many bushels?” and their answer’d always be so much lower than the folks back East. By this time I’d been picking corn years and I reckon I’d got quite good at it so it was just a little... I don’t know what, I guess it weren’t a challenge there. But I couldn’t get from some backwater in Arizona to Tallahassee in the time Daisy said, so I guess I never did see Tommy’s baptism. I guess God saw to it though, that boy is sharp as a sickle from what I hear. Could go out of state for College and be some fancy lawyer up North.
Well the years they been passin’ by mostly like that, me wanderin’ and pickin’ up work, Daisy sending me reels of paper keepin’ the loggin’ industry afloat singlehanded like, Tommy growin’ up and my folks growin’ old. But now here I am with the shortest letter I ever got in my hand just tellin’ me Momma ain’t got long and... I ain’t that far from Tallahassee right now. I could be in Florida by tomorrow. But I ain’t seen her in so long I don’t think she’ll know who I am no more: I don’t even think Daisy’ll know me. She just wrote me this:
“Jimmy, How many bushels is it going to take for you to come home? Mother is dying, James. Come home. Your sister, Daisy May.”
Pause.
How many bushels has it been since I walked out that door in Tallahassee when I were sixteen? Thousands, probably. And one day soon, one of those bushels is gonna break the camel’s back and my Momma will be gone and I’ll have been pickin’ corn so long she won’t remember she’s leavin’ me behind.
Pause.
So how many bushels you normally take in a day, sir? I reckon I can help you out.