The Unplowed Sky

by Jeanne Williams

  “Looks like they’re in pig heaven, the three of them,” he said. “Hey, Shaft, I hope that beard of yours don’t give fleas to the cat.”

  “I’ll give ’em to you, young sprout, when I’m in a givin’ mood,” Shaft retorted, but he didn’t even open his eyes.

  “Now, Hallie,” said Rory, “the best way to start you on the engine is when we make a new set. So you watch when it’s time to bring morning and afternoon lunch. If the stacks are just about finished, put on your overalls, and I’ll show you how to haul the separator to the next set and back the engine to where we can belt up.”

  Hallie cringed. She’d had time to regret that, caught between the brothers, she had let herself be pressured into attempting to control that monster of steel and steam. “Rory—” she began faintly. “I—I don’t think—”

  “Well, look who’s got attached to the other end of a dish towel.” Garth filled the door. Even by lamplight, Hallie could see the sardonic curve of his mouth. “Before you start helping out with cookshack chores though, laddie, it would be a fine notion to give your engine a going-over.”

  Rory flushed to the roots of his curly, sweat-damp golden hair. “Baldy takes care of the flues and firebox.”

  “You’re still in charge.”

  “Doesn’t seem much like it with you nosing around!”

  “I’m the one paying the mortgage!”

  The brothers’ eyes clashed. Rory glanced away first. “I was going to check everything over good in the morning.”

  “What if something took a long time to fix and made us late starting?”

  Rory swung around to confront Garth. “When it does—if it does—you can dock my share for what you’re out of pocket.”

  Garth’s tone grew more conciliatory. “No use having it happen in the first place, laddie. If—”

  “Laddie! When are you going to quit treating me like a kid?”

  “When you stop acting like one.” Garth held out a mineral-crusted rubber ring. “You must have noticed this hand-hole gasket was leaking.”

  “Sure, but the boiler had to cool off. I was going to drain it in the morning.”

  “You’d have to be up long before Baldy to drain the boiler, take out the hand-hole plugs, and clean the holes and plate, oil the bolt, cut a new gasket to fit just right, and fill the boiler again before time to start the fire.”

  “I’d of done it!”

  “You’ll just have to pardon me all to blazes, but sleepy-headed as you are of a morning, I reckoned we’d better get it done tonight.” Garth turned on his heel. “Boiler should be drained out by now. I’ve got a lantern rigged.”

  “Oh, for the love of mud!” Rory slung the towel at its hook. Halfway to the door, he paused, turned, shrugged, and laughed. “One of these days! But my brother’s right, drat his hide! Sorry I can’t finish wiping for you, Hallie. Be sure and remember to watch those stacks tomorrow!”

  His whistling floated back, a bit too nonchalant, perhaps. Shaft removed Smoky carefully from beneath his beard and put her in Jackie’s lap, depositing them both on the bench. He washed his hands outside and returned to take over the drying.

  “Rory had that comin’, but I sure thought he was going to punch Garth in the nose. Trouble is, Garth can’t quit peerin’ over Rory’s shoulder, so Rory kind of expects him to do it, even if makes him madder’n a wet hen.”

  “It was mean of Garth to call Rory down in front of us.”

  “Job had to be done, and I reckon Garth wants to get to bed.” Shaft slanted her a quizzical look. “Still, if you ask me, the boss is plumb, pure-dee jealous.”

  Hallie’s cheeks warmed but she scoffed. “Jealous? Jealous of what?”

  “I saw the way he watched you when we took out lunch and you wore that purty blue sunbonnet.”

  “Anytime I looked his direction, he was staring at the separator as if he couldn’t wait to get back to it!”

  “Sure. But his eyes were glued to you till you started to turn your head. ’Course you have that effect on most of the boys.”

  “It’s just their food they’re interested in,” Hallie demurred, though she knew better. All the crew flirted a little, each in his own style, except for married Rusty Wells, and painfully shy Mennonite-reared Henry Lowen. “Mightn’t it be better if Rory got a job with another thresherman?”

  “I get the drift that their mother didn’t want Rory to come to America, too. Garth talked her into it, pointin’ out all the better chances the boy would have. So I guess he feels bound to keep an eye on him, especially now both their parents are gone. Usually the lads get along, but this is the first time they both took a shine to the same young lady.”

  “If Garth’s taken a shine to me, he’s got a funny way of showing it.” Hallie sniffed.

  “He’s out of practice, and he’s fightin’ it,” said Shaft, setting the last kettle to be filled with picked-over beans that would soak all night. “All the same, I’ve been with Garth nigh onto five years. Seen quite a few women buzzin’ around, but he’s always dodged them like they were mosquitoes.”

  “He won’t have to dodge me,” Hallie vowed. “Not that I wouldn’t like to sting him out of his notions about women!”

  “You’ll sting him pretty deep when you learn to run the engine.”

  Hallie shuddered. “How did I ever get stuck with that?”

  “Just lucky,” Shaft chuckled. “Say, we better get Jack to bed before he falls off that bench.”

  We. How good it was to feel she had help with the child, others who cared. As she washed Jackie’s sleepy face and got him into his night shirt, she knew she was lucky, in spite of Garth’s hostility. Even if the Rafords had been nice, Jackie was much happier with the threshers—and so was she though tomorrow she’d have to get up on the platform of that smoke-belching terror or be disgraced.

  There was no way she would yield Garth that triumph. She would learn to run that beast. And she just hoped that someday that mulish, bullheaded man would have to be grateful that she could.

  V

  To Hallie’s relief, morning lunch found the crew halfway through some stacks. But as afternoon lunch approached, the stacks diminished so swiftly that she set her jaw and went behind the cookshack to change into Ernie Brockett’s shirt and overalls. She’d never had on trousers before. These were shapeless, and she had to roll up the bottoms.

  “You look funny in those overalls, Hallie!” Jackie laughed as he trotted along with a pan of cookies. “Will the men think you’re a boy?”

  She grinned back at him. “Wouldn’t it be fun if they did?” By the time they reached the set she was appreciating the fact that the wind couldn’t whip her skirt around. Still, she was ill at ease in the strange garments and kept her gaze on the sandwiches as she passed them around.

  Meg frowned at her and turned to Garth. “What’s she rigged up like that for?”

  “Ask your uncle.” Garth shrugged.

  “You may ask me.” Hallie looked the girl in the eye and spoke in a firm, pleasant tone.

  Meg’s smooth, creamy brown skin went pink. When neither father nor uncle came to her rescue, she gave a toss of her head that made her brown curls jounce. “All right,” she said with a dangerous sparkle in her gray eyes. “What are you doing in those clothes?”

  “Rory’s going to teach me how to run the engine.”

  Meg’s mouth opened as if she’d been hit in the chest. She squeezed her sandwich till the bread crumbled and bits fell to the ground. She whirled to her uncle. “You wouldn’t teach me! You said a girl’s got no business on an engine!”

  Rory squirmed. “Now, Meggie, lass—”

  “You—you even said it was time Dad found someplace to leave me during threshing season—that I was getting too old to be a water monkey!”

  “Well, you are! What kind of woman are you going to be if you never learn how to act like one?”

  Meg’s voice quivered with outrage as she jerked her chin toward Hallie. “I guess you think I ought
to act like her?”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

  Meg gulped. For an awful moment, Hallie thought she was going to cry, but the girl sucked in a long breath before she spoke in a controlled but withering tone. “You won’t teach me because you think I should start behaving like a woman—but because Hallie is one, you’ll show her how to do a man’s job. Sounds just brilliant, Uncle Rory.”

  “You’ve got your job, girl, and it keeps you busy. Reason I’m teaching Hallie is so she can take my place if we ever get in a fix where she needs to.”

  “The reason,” Meg jeered, “is because you want to show off and have a chance to put your hand over hers while you teach her how to use the throttle!”

  The men all laughed. Rory’s sunburned face turned even redder. “Why, you little dickens!” He turned to his brother. “You going to let her wise off like that?”

  “Sounds like the truth to me,” Garth said with just the suspicion of a grin before he bent a stern gaze on his daughter. “There’s no call to be rude and huffy to Miss Meredith even if you are upset with your uncle, Meg. Don’t you think you ought to say you’re sorry?”

  Then the tears did brim over. Scrubbing them away furiously, Meg jumped to her feet. “I’m not sorry! I wish she wasn’t here! And—and I’d rather die than act like her!”

  “Meg!” Garth roared.

  She pelted away, climbed up on the tank wagon, and called to the horses. She had been spiteful, but Hallie regretted Meg’s humiliation in front of the men, all the more because it ruined any slim chance that in time the girl would accept her.

  Hallie averted her face as she poured Garth’s coffee. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  He said coldly, “No, I’m sorry. Meg was way out of line.”

  “She was disappointed.”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “That’s life. She’s got to get used to it.” Yet he stared after his daughter with bewildered hurt in his eyes, and Hallie knew that whatever his mind said, in his heart he blamed her for Meg’s behavior.

  Hallie had never had a smidge of enthusiasm for tackling the engine. Now she positively didn’t want to, but she couldn’t retreat without earning Meg’s contempt and probably Garth’s. Rory polished off three sugar cookies at once and got to his feet.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Hallie eyed the enormous wheels, the boiler that held such might and danger. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Come along then, lass. We’ll hitch up to the separator, and you get to haul it to the next set.”

  Hallie restrained a wail. “Wait a minute,” Garth said. He went over to a box that held his oilcan and tools, and fished out a pair of heavy canvas gloves which he almost threw at Hallie. “Put these on and don’t let me see you around the engine without them.”

  Protecting his cook’s fingers? He barely nodded at Hallie’s thanks. His eyes were on his daughter who was almost out of sight with the tank wagon. I don’t want to cause trouble between you. I understand some of the way Meg feels. I’d like to be her friend, but it won’t help to let her walk all over me.

  There was no way to say that to this bitter, suspicious man. As she passed him, Shaft touched her arm. “You can do it,” he whispered. “Show ’em all, Hallie, girl!”

  Hallie tied her bonnet more snugly, pulled on her gloves, and approached the monster.

  An hour later, drenched with sweat caused by terror as much as the scorching sun, Hallie climbed down from the platform, her mind a whirl of Rory’s commands: “Easy with the throttle! The gears are cast iron, but they’re breakable as glass.… Keep an eye on that water glass—remember, the crown sheet’s got to keep covered.… Right-hand lever is your clutch, left one’s the reversing gear.… Turn on the injector!”

  But she had steered the engine to where it could hook up the separator and had hauled it between the next stacks facing the prevailing south wind. Under Rory’s guidance, she maneuvered the engine away from the unhitched separator and circled back to face it. “You’re swinging too wide!” he shouted above the racket. “Reverse and cut in sharper!”

  “You do it!” she begged.

  “You do it.”

  On the third try, she lined the engine up with the separator. The men had already leveled the separator, taking a spadeful of earth here and there from beneath the wheels. Rusty Wells and Henry Lowen were stretching the belt from the drive pulley of the separator. The other men pulled the extension feeder around to the south end of the machine. The feeder was perhaps twenty feet long, the same as the separator.

  “You did fine,” Rory said in her ear as he took over the wheel. “Now watch how we belt up.”

  The engine crawled toward the belt. Rusty shoved the belt over the big wheel on the right side of the engine. Then he moved the reverse gear ever so lightly, backing away as the forty-foot canvas belt slipped and drew tight.

  Rusty blocked one of the engine wheels and flashed Hallie a grin that was both surprised and admiring. Garth didn’t glance her way at all. Busy squirting oil all over his precious separator, of course!

  As she hurried to the cookshack, the searing wind parched the moisture from her clothes and skin. The tense lesson had drained her energy. She felt like collapsing in the shade rather than working over a hot stove.

  Jackie ran to meet her, followed at a more leisurely pace by a yawning Laird while Smoky watched from the porch. “You drove it, Hallie!” Jackie hugged her legs tight and gazed up at her as if she had turned into somebody strange and wonderful. “You drove that big ole engine!”

  “Well, sort of, honey.” She bent to give him a hug. “At least nothing blew up or got mangled, but I’m a long shot from knowing how to run it.”

  “Can I run it when I get big?”

  She ruffled his hair, black and curly like their father’s. “That depends on if you decide to be an engineer.” She wondered, with a twinge, where they would be when he was that old. For the first time, it struck her fully that she didn’t just have the care of a small Jackie, but would be responsible for him as he grew up, as he became a man. She doubted whether she could handle that much better than Garth dealt with Meg’s emerging femininity.

  “I want to!”

  “Then, if you want to hard enough, there’ll be a way to do it.”

  “I’ll want to real, real, real hard!” Jackie raced Laird to the cottonwood and resumed building a fortification out of sticks and long strips of bark. Hallie changed clothes, scrubbed her hands, and went inside where the shade of the roof was canceled out by the heat of the stove.

  “You wrestled the durn contraption around like a reg’lar engineer,” Shaft greeted her. “Bet Garth’s steamin’ more’n the engine. How’d you like it?” Nodding at a pan of boiled eggs and another of boiled potatoes, he added, “Want to put together some tater salad? The boys like plenty of sour cream, pickles, and onions.”

  Hallie started peeling eggs. “I’m all mixed up about that engine, Shaft. I halfway wish I’d never let myself get trapped into running it, but—well”—she took a deep breath—“it was really a thrill to turn the wheel or move the throttle and control all that power.”

  “Yeah. Must of felt kind of like Delilah did when she got Samson to help her spin.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Garth say you done good?”

  “He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look, as far as I could tell.”

  “He looked, you bet. Nothin’ goes on around that rig that Garth don’t see. So, if he wasn’t bellerin’ at you, you must of done all right.”

  “He’d be the last to say so. Probably blames me because he had to call Meg down for being such a brat!”

  “She was, war’n’t she?” Shaft heaved a sigh. “She used to be a sweet little gal, but now she’s turnin’ into a woman while her daddy wants to pretend she’s a boy.”

  Hallie made a baffled gesture. “That’s not all of it, Shaft. I think she plain hates me.”

  He started to protest, then nodded slowly. “Maybe so. But
even if she don’t know it, she’s got a mighty big need for a mama or big sister. Keep a steady hand on the throttle, Hallie. Don’t crowd Meg, and I’m guessin’ she’ll come around.”

  Would Garth? Hallie doubted it. She vented her frustration on innocent potatoes by whacking them into cubes, two at time.

  The crew finished at the Brockett place so late Saturday afternoon that Garth let the men decide whether to move on to the next farm that evening or move on Sunday in order to start threshing early Monday.

  “I say let’s move tomorrow and go to town tonight,” Rory said. “I’ll buy gas, Jim, if we can go in your flivver.”

  “I’m ready for town myself,” said Jim. “Need a haircut and new gloves. Many as can squeeze in can ride free.”

  “I’ll take the spillover,” Buford Redding offered. “I’m ready for some bright lights and ice cream myself.”

  “Lights better not get too bright for a married man,” said Rusty. “But I sure would like a banana split with lots of hot fudge and nuts.”

  Into the chorus of agreement, Garth said, “All right, lads, I’ve settled up with Brockett. Won’t take too long to figure out shares. You can take it all or however much you want.”

  “I want all of mine,” Cotton said. He rubbed peeling skin off his splotched nose. His pale blue eyes flickered past Hallie. “Gonna hunt up a bootlegger and—”

  “What you do when you’re off is your business.” Garth gave the Texan a hard look. “Just be sure come morning that you’re sober and able to hold up your end of the work.” He glanced around at the crew. “In case anybody’s forgot, no beer or liquor’s allowed while we’re threshing—no bottles in the barn or haystack. If you need a toot, have it in town.”

  Cotton’s bleached eyebrows furrowed. “It’s plumb unreasonable that a man can’t have a beer or two after work.”

  “That’s how we voted at the start of the season; no drinking at all while we’re on a job.” Jim Wyatt touched the steam burns on his cheek and neck. “Enough can happen when a man’s stone sober.”

  After supper the men disappeared to get cleaned up. While Hallie and Shaft did dishes, Garth came in with a battered notebook and sat down at the cleared table. A khaki shirt and trousers showed how the breadth of his shoulders narrowed to waist and hard-muscled thighs. Freshly shaved, he smelled of bay rum and pine soap. His hair, that strange blend of silver and gold, was darkened by the water with which he’d made a vain effort to slick it down. Nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his pencil while he worked at his sums, he had a scrubbed boyish look that tugged at an unguarded corner of Hallie’s heart.