Chapter 20
The Starving Rooster
Annie Wick led the procession past the house and the other farm buildings, straight to the barn, which now had one side bathed in golden morning sunlight. It wasn’t quite the size of a mountain, but it was big. She pulled her own vehicle off to one side, got out, and swung open the twelve-foot high doors.
“You could cut up one of those doors and build three chicken houses,” said Charlie. Looking at the looming gable, he thought of a picture he had seen in one of his Popular Mechanics, of a Zeppelin hanger.
The barn was built in the classic Midwest manner, with a shed-roofed section on either side of a center bay that had double doors on both ends. Above all that rose a hayloft big enough to put most farmers’ houses inside and still have room left over for a flower garden. The open center was a throwback to the pre-machine harvest days, oriented to the prevailing wind.
Before the machines, workers like Charlie and his brother would use the hard floor to flail the wheat, to get it to let go of its wheat berries. Then they would pitch the cleaned straw up into the loft and would open both sets of big doors, letting the wind blow through while they tossed the grain into the air with canvas tarps. Unless it was a dead still day, the chaff would blow away and the clean grain would land back on the tarp, where it could be scooped up and bagged. Then they would bring in a fresh pile of wheat from outside and start all over again. It was backbreaking, unnatural labor, for an output of about a bushel per hour per worker. Charlie had done it many times, and the thought of it made his muscles sore. The changeover to machine threshing made it easy to believe in progress.
“If that barn had a bottom,” said Avery, “it could be a real ark.”
“I think it could be several of them.”
The farmyard was also big, and the maneuvering was smooth and easy. Avery made a wide, shallow turn to straighten out the caravan in the right direction, and then pulled right into the center of the barn and out the other side. He stopped with only the small supply trailer poking out the back end. Completely inside were three other trailers. Jude the Mystic undid some hitches at that point, and the engine and cook shack proceeded to follow Annie Wick around to an open-centered corncrib.
A couple of roustabouts unhitched the small trailer, pushed it by hand into the barn alongside the others, and closed both sets of doors. At the corncrib, they left enough of the cook shack poking out for the smoke stack to clear the building. Then they unhooked the last of the hitches and Jude stowed his bike alongside a sheltered crib of new corn. The Peerless engine was now free to do what it did best: run other big machines. As a long-distance, cross-country vehicle, it was not likely to have a big future.
They followed the pickup back out into the fields, to a pile of unthreshed wheat that was the shape of a loaf of bread, fifty feet long and twenty feet high. A ladder leaned up against one end, for the pitchmen to climb up on top. The next time any of them did so, they would not have to climb back down, as the pile would have all been fed into the thresher before they needed to.
Around the back side of the pile, looking dusty and old and very much in need of a coat of paint stood a threshing machine.
It was one of the early wood-bodied machines with a steel angle-iron frame. Most of the drive mechanisms were chains or belts, rather than gears or shafts, many of them with no guards of any kind. All the transporting runs were canvas conveyor belts. It did not have a Windstacker. The body was painted dark green, or used to be, and on the side was a faded picture of a rooster, the trademark of the company, and the painted legend:
The Starving Rooster
Aultman & Taylor
Number 14
“I think they might have built that to harvest grain for the Civil War,” said Charlie.
“Well, you know,” said Avery, “that’s one of the great things about heavy machinery: you can always fix it. If it was worth a tinker’s damn when it was brand new, it still is. We can make it run, if it doesn’t now. We have power, we have a repair shop, and we have talent and expertise.”
Maggie Mae grabbed his shoulders from behind and did a quick, deep massage, working up to his knotted neck muscles and finally giving him a little kiss on the back of the neck.
“What Maggie Mae is telling me at the moment, though, is that we do not currently have the stamina. And she’s right. God, do I need a rest.”
“Then take one,” said Charlie. “I’ll get the engine secured. I know how. You can’t make an engineer out of me one day and then the next day pretend it never happened.”
“Best offer I’ve had in ages. She’s all yours.”
He and Maggie Mae climbed down the operator’s ladder, and Charlie began to tend to all the simple but terribly important things that an engine needs to have done to keep it from destroying itself. He decided to top off the water in the boiler and let the fire burn itself out for the time being. This could be the last chance they would get for a while to empty out the ash pans.
Once he was satisfied that the engine could be left alone, he climbed down to take a better look at the thresher. Annie Wick came walking across the field to join him.
“You figure she’ll work? It wasn’t new when we bought it, you know.”
“To look at it now, you wouldn’t know it was ever new. Listen, Mrs. Wick…”
“Annie, praise God.”
“Yeah, listen, Annie Praise God, I need some strong coffee and something to eat before I bring this thing back to life.”
“You see, how the Lord provides? I can’t make that machine run, but I can make you a breakfast you’ll remember in your prayers and then you can make it run.”
“Could you bring it out here? I want to get started on this monster.”
“Could Moses lead his people out of Egypt?”
“I guess.”
“Well then, how can we do less? Coffee first, then food?”
“That would be great.”
Annie Wick went scurrying off toward the farmhouse, and Charlie walked the rest of the way to the threshing machine. He pulled a small Crescent wrench out of his back pocket and took off the lug nuts that held on the main side panel. Inside, there were nests from small animals, cracked and frayed canvas belts that had holes eaten in them, and quite literally a ton of old straw that could be fossilized by now, for all he knew.
“Rooster, you and I have got a lot of work to do.”
He found a pitchfork leaning against the nearest wheat header, and he used it to pull the dried, brittle straw out of the maw of the Rooster. He got as much out as he could from the outside and then lifted one leg to climb inside the main drum. He stopped when he felt a tug at his sleeve. When he turned his head to look, Annie Wick was pushing the biggest coffee mug he had ever seen into his hand.
“Praise God,” she said, beaming at him.
He took a sip of the steaming brew. It was hot enough to scald his tonsils, and it contained thick cream, a lot of sugar, and quite probably some brandy. It went down his pipes like liquid fire and blew the cobwebs out of his soul.
“Praise God,” he said. “Absolutely too damn right.”
He was still looking over the inside of the machine, organizing his plan of attack, when Annie Wick brought him ham and eggs and fried potatoes on a blue and white china plate, with utensils he thought must be the good family silver. He stuffed his mouth shamelessly, savoring the flavors that mixed on his tongue. Quite a lot of the food simply seemed to evaporate, though. He had been awake for about twenty-six hours, a lot of it spent working, and he was at a point where food and drink didn’t go to his stomach at all. They were simply absorbed somewhere south of the esophagus. But as tired as he was, after another cup of coffee and the short rest that eating gave him, his interest in making the machine work overcame his need for sleep. He had slept many times. He had never before been inside the guts of a Aultman & Taylor threshing machine.
He went to the machine shop trailer an
d got canvas, heavy thread and a sail maker’s needle, a grease gun, an oil can, and some assorted wrenches and screwdrivers. He threw the tools in a bucket, took everything back to the Aultman & Taylor, and went to work.
There were a lot of grease zerks inside the machine, which didn’t seem like a very good idea, and they were all totally dry. The outside ones were dry, too. But generally, the machine was not in bad shape. He cleaned out the rest of the straw and the leaves and animal nests, greased everything that had a zerk and oiled everything that didn’t. Then he went over to the two-foot pulley that would take the belt from the steam engine, put a wrench on its center hub, and twisted. And gasped. It moved! With the clutches all engaged, he was actually running the internal machinery of the whole thresher with nothing but his own muscle power and a little leverage. Furthermore, he found it really not very hard to do. This is one hell of a well-designed machine, he decided. He thought of all the seemingly unnecessary counterweights and over-center pivot points he had seen on the interior, and he vowed to remember them, for some day when he might be designing machines. Whoever Aultman and Taylor were, they were some damned smart cookies.
He turned his attention to fixing the canvas belts. The sail maker’s needle was an unfamiliar tool for him, and he found that he was clumsy and slow with it. The internal belts took him two hours to patch and mend He didn’t want to think about how long the main feed belts would take. He remembered an itinerant master carpenter telling him once, “You never, never count the number of boards in the pile that you still have to nail up.” That seemed like good advice.
He bolted the main side panel back on, stood up, and stretched his aching back muscles. He suddenly felt tired almost to the point of delirium.
“How are you getting on, Charlie?” Emily. Maybe he was delirious, at that.
“Hello, Emily. How come you aren’t sleeping, with the others?”
“I’m slept out. I slept some on the trip, and besides, it’s dark and stuffy in that big barn. So I thought I’d go out and take a chance on finding you.”
“Take a chance?”
“Mmm. I’ve been thinking a lot about that.”
“I’m not sure I know what that means.”
“It means I’m a little scared, but don’t worry about it. How’s the work going?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got the machinery in pretty good shape, but some of the canvas still needs to be mended. I don’t know if I can get that done before Jim wakes up.”
“He won’t expect you to. If you’ve got the metal guts basically ready to run, you’ve done quite enough.”
“How would you know that?”
“I heard him say so before he and the Silent Princess went off to hibernate. He’ll be surprised. In fact, he’ll be delighted. Leave the canvas and the needle and thread out where anybody can see it, and he’ll know that part still needs to be done. You go have a bit of a lie down. You’ve earned it, as much as anybody here.”
“A bit of a lie down? I’ve never heard it called that before.”
“That’s my mother tongue sneaking up on me, actually.”
“That’s an English way of saying ‘nap?’ You know, I’ve never known an Englishwoman before. It’s a pretty accent for a woman, sort of soft but ringing.”
“Hah. And you must be Irish, from the way you dish out the blarney.”
“I don’t think so. My mother’s people were Poles, and my father’s were German and Danish, I think.”
“It was a joke, Charlie.”
“Oh. I’m not very good with those, I guess.”
“Jokes?”
“With women, anyway.” He looked away and set to work cleaning the grease from his hands with a rag.
“You’re a mess, Charlie. Dirty, I mean, not any other way.”
“Yeah, well, greasing machines will do that to you. And I don’t think we have a creek here to wash in.”
“Tough luck for you. You won’t get to steal any peeks at my naked bum anymore. I found something else, though, just as good.”
“Really?” What else could be as good as your naked bum?
“Come.” She held out her hand, and he took it and followed. She led him behind the barn, where a windmill ran a well pump and dumped water into a cascading series of big galvanized metal tanks.
“This one’s for cooling down the cans of milk, you see,” she said, pointing. “And this big one is for watering the horses. The last one is just overflow, for when somebody forgets to shut down the windmill. It’s been sitting here, full of water, soaking up heat from the sun all morning.”
“Nice,” he said.
“Nice for you. Get your dirty clothes off and get in.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I already asked Mrs. Wick about it. She gave me a bar of soap and a towel for you. You’ve made a pretty big impression on her, somehow or other.”
“I called her Annie Praise God. That was probably it.”
“Well, that would do it, wouldn’t it? This time, I stand guard for you. Strip and get in there, before I start tearing your clothes off.”
He was way too tired to argue with her and didn’t want to, in any case. He looked to be sure her back was turned and then took off everything, laying it in a neat pile on a spot where he thought he wouldn’t be likely to splash on it. Then he vaulted over the side of the tank, making a huge splash. It wasn’t exactly hot, but it was a lot warmer than the creek.
“You said something about soap, as I recall.”
“Just relax there a bit, and I’ll bring it to you.”
He put one hand on each side of the tank and lowered his torso into the water, as far down as he could get, willing his fatigue to flow out into the water. It felt like floating to paradise. He closed his eyes. Soon he felt Emily’s hands soaping his neck and shoulders, and he sat back up. Then her hands were smearing soapsuds down his chest and around his torso and farther down still. He was amazed at his own lack of shyness, and he made no effort to hide his nakedness from her. She rinsed him with a big cooking pot and then, to his utter astonishment, he felt her mouth on the back of his neck, just the way he had seen Maggie Mae kissing Avery.
“My God, Emily, are you—?” Her small hand closed his mouth.
And suddenly she was in the tank with him, first with her clothes still on and then as naked as he was. She rubbed and soaped him some more from behind, then stood up in the tank and walked around to his front. She let him have a long look at the body he had once “guarded,” then wrapped her legs around his waist, sat back on his thighs, and put her arms around his neck. Their mouths found each other, hungry, yearning, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him greedily, feeling her single erect nipple against his chest.
“I can’t possibly be doing this,” he said. “I’m way too tired.”
“Your body doesn’t seem to know that, does it? It looks to me like it wants my crumpet.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it? Do you think Annie Praise God would approve?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve not a doubt that’s why she gave me the soap and told me about the tank. You can’t tell me the Bible lovers don’t screw. They just can’t bring themselves to call it that.”
“I don’t think I care what we call it.”
“Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“Just shut up and fuck me, all right?”
Chapter 21
Side Tracked
Sheriff Amos Hollander had kept his vehicle in good repair; the Windmill Man had to give him that. It would do almost forty miles an hour on a flat grade, and it only burned about a pint of oil for every tankful of gas. It also had the new-fangled No-Skid tires that looked hardly worn. But that was the end of the good news. By the time he saw the spire of the Unitarian church off in the distance to his right again, the Windmill Man had to admit that he had lost the trail of the traveling machine shop. He didn’t approve of profanity
, as a rule—it showed a terrible lack of self-control—but he uttered some, under his breath.
He stopped in the middle of the single-track lane he had been following and opened Hollander’s leather satchel, hoping it might contain some kind of notes about the hunt for the fleeing Krueger kid.
The first thing he came to was a telegram from somebody named Tom.
COUNTY BOARD AUTHORIZES BACK PAY AND TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR YOU STOP SEND NAME OF FIRST WESTERN UNION OFFICE YOU FIND TO THIS SENDER STOP MONEY WIRED AT ONCE STOP
He had no experience with telegrams, and he puzzled over it for a while. Could they really send money over a telegraph wire? Maybe they just sent authorization, and the office paid cash out of their own till. Even so, it was a remarkable innovation. But the message implied that it had to be a Western Union office. And even he knew that there were a lot of places with telegraphs that were not Western Union.
The message was dated two days earlier, and it was printed by hand on a lined yellow form. Not a Western Union form. That probably meant that Hollander had not yet collected this marvelous over-the-wire money. Should he? Was providence again guiding his steps? It had been the first piece of paper he pulled out of the satchel, after all. And while he didn’t need the money all that badly, it gave him a new direction. And new directions were never to be ignored.
So where would he find the right kind of telegraph office? He would find somebody to ask.
“But not at the church,” he said out loud. And he chuckled at his own joke.
He started the pickup again and continued west. Five miles later the road got a little wider and was paralleled by a set of railroad tracks. He stayed with it. Some fifteen miles later, he came to a grain elevator on a short spur line. There were a few other buildings around it, but he couldn’t tell if they were offices.
Several wagons were lined up at the elevator, waiting to unload. There were two lines, one for farmers who had their grain in bags and a longer, slower one for those whose crop was in bulk, in high-sided wagons. He picked a farmer at the back end of the slow line to chat with.
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