Big Wheat

by Richard A. Thompson

  “Hey, yourself, mister. I don’t talk to strangers.”

  “Sure you do. There’s four bits in it for you.”

  “I don—for true?”

  “Cross my heart.” Which he did.

  “Okay, maybe. Who do I got to kill?”

  “Nobody. Go over to the window that says general delivery and ask—”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Not the closest one, but the one right after it, okay? Go over there and ask the teller if there’s a letter for Charlie Krueger. Can you remember that?”

  “Sure. I’m a smart kid.”

  “Say it.”

  “A letter for Charlie Krueger.”

  “Okay. You are a smart kid. If the teller asks you to prove it’s for you, say you don’t have anything on paper, but you know the return address on the letter. It’s Ruth Krueger, Rural Route 16, Hazen.”

  “That’s a lot of stuff to remember. How come you don’t just get it yourself?”

  “For fifty cents, what do you care? Think of Ruth in the Bible.”

  “We don’t do much Bible in our house. What’s a turn, um, dress?”

  “Return address. Like you’ve got on that envelope of yours, in the left corner, see?”

  “Oh, the send-it-back.”

  “If that’s what you can remember, fine. So you’ve got three things to remember: You’re Charlie Krueger, the letter will be from Ruth, and she’s at Rural Route 16 in Hazen. Say it back to me.”

  He made the boy repeat it three times and them gave him a quarter.

  “When you get the letter, go straight outside with it. I’ll be sitting on a motorcycle out front, and I’ll give you the other quarter.”

  “Wow, a real motorcycle? Can I have a ride?”

  “Sure.”

  “What if there isn’t any letter?’

  “You still get the two bits, but no ride.”

  “Okay, here I go!”

  Charlie stole a quick glance back to the far teller’s window and saw that the law was still busy dallying. The teller was now idly twisting a lock of her hair around an index finger and smiling as she batted her eyelashes. As quietly as he could, he pulled the flier off the bulletin board and headed for the side exit. He forced himself to walk normally, but he held his breath. The kid was already at the general delivery window, and he wasn’t pointing back at Charlie.

  “Sir?”

  The voice came from behind him, and it sounded like an older woman than the one the sheriff was flirting with. He ignored it and kept walking.

  “Sir? You can’t take things from the bulletin board, sir.”

  He kept walking.

  “You just stop right there, sir!”

  He did not. As soon as the exit door closed behind him, he stuck the flier in his back pocket and ran as fast as he could to the bike. He kicked the engine into life, put his goggles back over his eyes and held his breath again. Nobody was following him yet. On a sudden inspiration, he left the bike up on its stand, motor idling with its signature pop-pop sound, and ran over to the official Mercer County pickup. He lifted the hood on the driver’s side and yanked the main ignition wire off the magneto, stuffing it in a pocket. He closed the hood again, went back to the bike, and rolled it off the stand, ready to go. Then he forced himself to wait.

  After an eternity of white knuckles on the handlebars, he saw the boy come out the main door. He squinted in the bright sunlight for another eternity, then finally spotted Charlie and came trotting over to him. He had a white envelope in his hand.

  “Four bits, mister!”

  “You already got two,” said Charlie. He handed him another quarter and took the envelope.

  “And a ride! You said!”

  “A promise is a promise. Hop on, but be quick about it.”

  The boy eagerly jumped up on the passenger seat, Charlie gunned the motor, and they were off. As they cleared the parking lane, the door of the post office flew open and the lawman came running out, gun drawn.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted, taking a two-handed marksman’s stance.

  “Will he really?” said the kid.

  “Beats me,” said Charlie, and he opened the throttle as far as it would go. Almost immediately, he heard six gunshots behind him. Two of them ricocheted off cobblestones ahead of them. He had no idea where the rest of them went. He kept the throttle open. But there were no more shots and nobody was following him. Half a mile later, he slowed to a more reasonable in-town speed and started obeying traffic signs again.

  “So, where do you want to go, kid?”

  “Um. I think this will do fine right here, mister, if it’s all the same to you.”

  He jumped off the bike without waiting for it to stop. Charlie hit the brakes and looked back. When he could see that the kid was getting up, apparently unharmed, he kept going. He didn’t stop until he was five miles out of town. He took a gravel side road until he was out of sight of the Macadamized highway, parked in a little grove of poplars around a windmill, and allowed himself to breathe normally again.

  Then he read the letter from his sister.

  Dear Charlie,

  I hope your travels have been kind to you and this letter finds you well. I have terrible news, I’m afraid. Or mixed news, anyway.

  First, you don’t have to worry about our father hurting Mother or me. He died two days ago. We think he was beating the horses out in the barn, and one of them, probably old Barney, kicked him to death. He lived for a day or so after that, but there was nothing Dr. Curtin could do. He had too many internal injuries. I know it’s wrong of me, but I did not cry.

  So the farm is yours now, if you want it. But you can’t come home to claim it. Maybe you can’t come home ever again. Somebody has murdered poor Mabel Boysen. I know that you loved her, and I can imagine what a shock that must be to you. But because you left right after she died, everybody thinks you did it. The sheriff is out there somewhere now, hunting for you. If he catches you, I do not believe you will get a fair trial.

  So keep moving, wherever you are, and don’t talk to any law officers. Remember that we love you, and if you never come back, we will understand. Maybe I will try to send another letter to you, at general delivery in Winnipeg, if they have post offices there. You might think about turning Canadian.

  Be brave and be well.

  Your loving sister

  Ruth

  He read the letter three times, feeling waves of sorrow, relief, fear, and shock wash over him. The only easy item to take in was about his father. He felt nothing at all about his father’s death, and unlike his sister, he did not feel ashamed of that fact. He had heard it said that a boy never really comes into his manhood until his father dies. If that was true, he should be feeling liberated and empowered, but he didn’t even feel that. He didn’t feel anything. Maybe that’s because I never really had a father in the first place, he thought.

  His beloved Mabel, even if she wasn’t his anymore, was a different matter. He had a lot of feelings about her death, most of them very confused. I’ve lost her twice now, he thought, and this time, it’s permanent. Who would do such a thing? Killing a beautiful young woman who was also pregnant was beyond evil. It was unthinkable. It was a huge tragedy and a personal hurt, and it made him angry and sad at the same time. But at some level, he also began to think that it meant the end, finally, of an entire chapter of his life. There would be no more waiting for her to have a change of heart, no more agonizing over what he ought to do differently. The disaster of his first love affair was over, through no fault of his. Did he dare call that a relief?

  And he was wanted by the law. Oh my, oh my, oh my.

  He kicked over the motor on the Indian and headed back south and east, toward the Ark. He kept to the gravel roads and country lanes, avoiding all other traffic. As he rode, he thought about the possibly endless trip ahead of him. There was not only no reason to go back to the farm near Hazen now,
there was also no possibility that he could, ever. And if he told Jim Avery the truth, he probably couldn’t stay at his newfound second home, either. After he returned the borrowed Indian, he would surely be told to leave. And what the hell did he know about being a fugitive? He had only just learned how to be a bindlestiff. And as footloose as that role was, somehow the law had found him anyway.

  He didn’t know what to do about any of it. But he just bet he knew someone who would. If his choices were bitter, she wouldn’t sugarcoat them, but she would know what to do. He decided not to stop for the dark.

  Chapter 15

  Sanctuary

  Charlie rode all night. But the single headlight on the Indian was about as effective on the dark road as a candle lantern, and he didn’t dare go very fast. It was past dawn when he found the Ark again and parked beside the machine shop. He put the goggles and hat back in the saddlebag and headed for the mess tent, where he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down to read the letter again. He was still trying to grasp the enormity of it when Jim Avery came up behind him.

  “So how’d the Indian treat you?”

  “Didn’t see him,” he said, not looking up.

  “Huh?”

  He looked up, his concentration broken. “Oh, you mean the bike. Fine; no problem. She’s a real thoroughbred.”

  “That she is. But you seem to have left your wits on the far side of nowhere. Is there anything you want to tell me about?”

  “Something I have to show you, anyway.” He sighed deeply and scratched the back of his head, feeling as if he were about to deliver his own execution order. Then he handed Avery both the letter and the flier. “Read the letter first, I think.”

  “Why don’t you read them to me? There’s nobody else around to hear.” He handed the papers back, and Charlie read both of them aloud. When he read his sister’s letter, his voice faltered at several points, but he pushed on to the end. When he read the flier, he sounded more astonished than upset. And when he finished both, he looked up to see that Avery had been studying him intently.

  “Well,” said Avery. “Not your average trip to the big city, was it? Anybody following you?”

  “No. At the post office, I ran into the sheriff from back home, but his pickup wouldn’t start, and I got away from him, clean. No way he could tell which way I was headed. And on the way back, I stayed off the main roads.”

  “His pickup didn’t start, huh? I don’t suppose it was missing a shear pin, or something?”

  “Could have been something like that, yes.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The girl, Mabel whatever. I have to know. Did you kill her?”

  “No. I swear—”

  “Don’t swear, just say it.”

  “All right. The first I knew she was dead was”—he paused to get control of his voice—“when I read my sister’s letter. I have no idea who killed her.”

  “But somebody did. She didn’t just walk off a cliff. And whoever did her in must be real happy, about now, that this sheriff is after you.”

  “I would say that’s true.”

  Avery went and got himself a cup of coffee, then sat down across from Charlie, put an elbow on the table, and buried his chin in his hand for a while. When he spoke again, it was with a different tone.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. First—”

  “I expect you want me to leave. I won’t argue with you. But I should go right away. That pickup isn’t going to stay broke down forever.”

  “You talk like a fish, Charlie. You’re my people now, and I don’t give my people up.”

  “What else can you do?”

  “You ever hear the saying, ‘hide in plain sight’?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re about to do it. Come with me. And bring a folding chair.”

  Outside, Stump was checking over the Indian, and Avery asked him if he had seen Emily.

  “Cook shack, last I saw. Looks like this machine’s been through some mighty rough and dirty country.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  At the cook shack, Emily was washing up the last of the breakfast dishes.

  “Let somebody else do that,” said Avery. “You go get your bottles and brushes. We need to make Mister Bacon, here, into a different man.”

  “He been a bad boy, has he?”

  “No, but somebody thinks so. We need to make him hard to see.”

  “I can handle that, right enough.” To Charlie, she said, “Take that chair down by the creek and find us a nice sheltered spot to work. I’ll meet you there. Here, take a couple of dishtowels with you, too.”

  He had no idea what they were doing, but he did as told. He picked out a spot by the biggest tree he could find, set up the chair, and sat down to wait. Soon Emily joined him, carrying a small wicker hamper. She seemed to be suppressing a smile, like a poker player who can’t quite hide the fact that he had just filled his inside straight.

  “I need to talk to you, Emily.”

  She put down the basket, tied a dishtowel around his neck, like a bib, and began circling around him, peering intently at his hair.

  “First the length, then the color.”

  “What are you talking about? Didn’t you hear what I said?” He started to get back up, but she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down again. He realized with some surprise that it was the first time she had ever touched him, and he found the touch oddly exciting.

  “That shock of hair on your forehead is like a white flag. We change that, and nobody looking for Charlie Bacon will glance twice at you.” She produced a comb and scissors from her basket and went to work. “Hold still, will you?”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “I am.”

  “Do you really know what you’re doing? I mean, where—”

  “I worked in the theater for a while.”

  “Really? I thought—”

  “You’ve already made it very clear what you thought, Charlie. I didn’t go on stage. I was what they call a dresser. I worked with costumes and makeup and hairdos. You’d be amazed what you can do with stage makeup. You can even make somebody like me look like a real woman.”

  “I never thought you looked like anything else.”

  “Than what, a dresser?”

  “No, a real woman.”

  “Oh, really? Well, you certainly took your sweet time saying so.”

  “Well, you said it first: I’m no good at reading people. I guess that means I’m no good at knowing what I should say to them, either.”

  “Hmm. Well maybe that’s not such a bad thing, at that.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “If you don’t know any guile, then you’re stuck with honesty. Sometimes honesty works, you know.”

  “Unless you’re talking to the law.”

  “Too bloody right. Or unless I’m trying to tell you I’m not a whore, yes?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Being honest didn’t help me a bit there, did it?”

  “What are you saying? I never called you a liar.”

  “I could tell you wanted to.”

  “You could not tell, because it wasn’t true!”

  “I’m the one who can read people, remember? At the very least, you weren’t sure about me.”

  “I might have had a small doubt somewhere, but that’s not—”

  “Right. So small that you just had to tell somebody else about it?”

  “Oh, my God. How did you—”

  “Just forget it, Charlie. You had your chance to give me your trust. And fool that I am, I might give you another one. But not today. Will you please hold still?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She spent a long time cutting his hair, not merely getting rid of the forelock but making the entire style different. “Your neck and shoulders are one big, tense knot,” she sai
d as she worked. “Did you get in some trouble in Minot?”

  “More like I found out about some trouble I was already in.”

  “You promised me I could see a letter, I believe.”

  He wouldn’t exactly have called it a promise, but he pulled the letter out of his pocket and handed it over his shoulder to her, all the same. She made no comment on it and he couldn’t see her face, so he didn’t know what her reaction was. She passed it back to him and went back to her clipping. After a while, she started humming a little tune as she worked.

  “That’ll do for a first cut,” she said, finally. “Now get down on your hands and knees by the creek, with your head hanging over the water.”

  He did as she said, and she hunkered down next to him and poured creek water on his head with a big enameled saucepan. Her knee and shin pushed up against his ribcage, and she made no effort to move farther away. Her shin felt hot, even through his flannel shirt. She put down the pan, picked up a bar of soap, and worked thick lather into his hair with both hands. She took her time, stroking the strands almost sensually. Or was that his imagination? She let her fingers wander over his neck and the backs of his ears.

  “I’m about to transform you completely, Charlie. Have you ever been so totally in a woman’s hands before?”

  “Not that I can decently talk about.”

  She gave a surprised little laugh, high-pitched and lilting. “Aren’t we the racy one, though?”

  “We? You’re the one who can’t keep her hands to herself.” He grinned. He could no longer tell if she was just lathering his hair or was deliberately kneading the back of his neck, working out the knots of tension with skilled, soap-slick hands. But if she was doing more than necessary, he didn’t worry about it. It was surprisingly easy, being touched by this woman. In fact, everything was suddenly easy with her. It was as if she made him real. He had never felt that with Mabel Boysen.

  “Close your eyes tight.”

  He did. She poured a deluge of cold rinse water on his head, and the soapsuds disappeared downstream. She lathered him up a second time, more slowly than the first, and the feel of her hands was again charged and faintly erotic. She rinsed again and then let him sit back on his haunches to dry his eyes while she toweled his hair off and applied some kind of dye from an evil-looking dark glass bottle.