Big Wheat

by Richard A. Thompson

  “You been here long?”

  “I ain’t got any gray hairs yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “You sell your grain here, or just ship it?”

  “Both, I reckon. Pillsbury Company, from over Minnesota, has an agent right here, buys it off you smack dab on the spot.”

  “How do they know what the going rate is?”

  “Oh, they’re real fancy. They got one of them little machines that makes a lot of clickity noises and spits out a skinny paper ribbon with all manner of numbers printed on it. If they’re cheatin’ you, they at least put on a good show about it. You can sell on the futures market, too, if you want, store it at the elevator here and don’t ship ‘til the middle of the winter, when the price is up. Course, then you gotta pay the elevator a bigger fee. Personally, I don’t hold with it. I sell my crop now, I get paid now, and I let somebody else worry about when to put it on the Great Northern R and R.”

  “Can you send a regular message on this Pillsbury machine?”

  “You can’t send anything. It gets numbers, is all. Prices.”

  “So they don’t have a regular telegraph office here, then, just the machine with the prices?”

  “What in tarnation would anybody want with a real telegraph office here?”

  “Law enforcement business.”

  “Oh. Well, we don’t get a lot of that out this way. Law is mostly a Bible and a shotgun. Specially the shotgun. You most probably want to go where there’s a county courthouse and a Western Union, I expect.”

  “You expect right.”

  The farmer said nothing more for a while. Then he clucked at his horses and moved his wagon forward ten yards or so. The Windmill Man considered slapping him alongside the head, but he wasn’t sure if that was how a real sheriff would act. If it came off as just petty anger, that would be no good. Mostly, people who saw him angry had to die. He tried another question.

  “And just exactly where would I find a county office and a Western Union?”

  “Oh, you don’t know? Huh! Some lawman. Well, Fort Thompson would be one, but that’s about sixty miles west and a little south.”

  “How interesting. Try again.”

  “Oh, well, Ithaca is one, I guess. You follow these here train tracks sorta northwest, you’ll get there all right, just so long as nobody shoots you for trespassing along the way.”

  “How far?”

  “How far will they shoot you? All the way until you’re plum dead, I’d s’pose.”

  “How far is Ithaca, you brainless hick?”

  “Oh, that. Twenty miles, tops. Maybe eighteen, if you hurry.”

  “If there is a god, your own horses will step on your head before I get there.” He forced himself to walk calmly back to the Model T.

  “They tried that already. It didn’t work. Nice talking to you, though. Surely was.”

  ***

  Three hours later, he pulled into the town of Ithaca, identifiable by the name painted on the side of a shiny new water tower, the sure mark of a rising metropolis. He guessed it was a town of somewhere between one and two thousand people. There were few buildings more than one story tall, but Main Street was seven blocks long and there were storefronts on side streets as well. It looked prosperous and new.

  Even in the towns, he noticed, the people of the high plains used the land as if there were an unlimited supply of it. In a city that was unlikely to see fifty cars on Main Street on the same day, the streets were sixty feet wide, some with planter islands in the center. He couldn’t decide what was worse, growing wheat or growing unnecessary pavement.

  He ignored the County offices for the time being and went straight to the railroad depot, which also had a Western Union office. With the help of the clerk, he composed the briefest, and therefore cheapest, message possible, to be sent to Tom, whoever he was, back in Beulah:

  SEND BACK PAY THIS ADDRESS STOP HOLLANDER

  “You can tell by the original message where to send it?”

  “I send it to everybody on the line who’s close enough to pick it up, but only the Western operator who hears his call sign will copy it. That’s here on the message, see? If he’s too far away, somebody else will forward it.”

  “Good. And how long will it take to get a reply?”

  “How should I know? They’re your people, not mine.”

  “Let me put that another way. When you get a reply, how soon can I get some money?”

  “On the spot, Sheriff. That’s unless it’s such a big amount that I gotta send somebody to the bank. But even then, real soon.”

  “Excellent.”

  The telegraph key rattled, and he strode out of the office to look for someplace to get something to eat. Maybe they would give him a cup of coffee at the County courthouse. Sooner or later he would go there anyway, to ask if anybody had any leads on the Krueger kid.

  But before he found any government offices, he was taken in by the aroma of a small bakery and café. As he got closer, the air was filled with the smells of cinnamon, yeast, bread, and lard-and-sugar frosting. He went in, took a small round table with wrought iron legs by a window, and ordered a frosted long john, two kinds of Danish rolls, and six sugar cookies, which he dipped in strong dark coffee.

  His waistline did not reflect his fondness for sweets. He didn’t apologize for it and certainly never called it a weakness. In fact, he had never understood why so many people referred to their appetites as weaknesses or sins or bad habits.

  He himself had very few appetites, but he respected all of them. Smoking and drinking did not appeal to him. He generally felt comfortable being around other people, but he had never craved either friendship or love, wasn’t even sure what those words meant. Money did not interest him, in and of itself. As for sex, if he wanted a woman, he would wait for the right moment and take one. And the pleasure of throwing her away afterwards was at least as great as the pleasure of sex, which was, after all, just a reflexive body function, like sneezing or letting gas. But power was another matter altogether. To have another human being utterly under your control, desperately seeking your approval, even begging for your mercy, was a pleasure not to be rivaled by anything else he had ever known. Still, a good maple long john was not to be scoffed at, either. As he was paying his bill, he chatted up the teenage girl who was working the cash register.

  “That was a real banquet, darling.”

  She blushed a bit at the “darling” and mumbled something like, “Glad you liked it, sir.”

  “Yes indeed. You know, they say the wild, barren prairies produce the most beautiful flowers ever known. Jewels of the wilderness, so to speak.”

  “Um, I guess I never heard that. Sir.”

  “Did you make the cookies?”

  “Yes, sir. Well, I helped, anyways.”

  “Well, I think they are jewels of the wilderness, too.”

  “Um. Thank you.” She blushed and gave a bit of a nervous giggle.

  “You don’t know what to say to that, do you? You think I’m just a funny old man who’s talking nonsense.”

  “Oh, no, sir.”

  “You’re polite as well as beautiful, I see. It becomes you. It’s Amos, darling. Just Amos, not ‘sir.’ And you are…?” He began to hold her eyes with his, with gentle intensity. It was an old tactic. The reference to being old, which he definitely was not, put them at ease, while the intense and very sexual stare drew them in.

  “I’m Darlene.”

  “What a lovely name. Where are you from, Darlene?”

  “I was born here. My pa owns the shop.”

  “Does he, now? Well, I must say I’m amazed at that, I truly am. I figured you for a transplant from some big, glamorous city like St. Louis or Chicago, you have such genteel and sophisticated beauty.”

  “Oh gosh.” She giggled again. “You shouldn’t say things like that, sir.”

  He continued to hold the eye contact, and when he gave her the coins for
his tab, he made a point of touching her hand longer than necessary. She was obviously embarrassed and a little scared. But just as obviously, she was interested. They always were.

  “Amos, remember?”

  “Oh gosh, yes, I forgot.” She giggled again.

  Wait until I shove you up against the wall in the back room, he thought. After that, it’ll be a long time before you giggle again, and you will never, ever forget my name. Or rather the one I’m using.

  Violence for him was like whiskey to a blackout drunk. The drunk could make a rational and conscious decision to buy a bottle of liquor, could even make a conscious, if hardly unbiased, decision to open it. But once the first of the alcohol was in his blood, all free will disappeared. He was on a road that had only one direction, and he could no more turn back than he could stop breathing.

  The Windmill Man knew he was like that with violence, and the thought did not bother him, any more than did his other appetites. He could make a rational decision to make this silly girl into a senseless, quivering victim, based on a cool assessment of the odds for success. But once he made that decision, he crossed a threshold that could not be uncrossed. The outcome could be delayed and the strategy changed for unforeseen circumstances, but the end of the game was absolutely set. It would enforce itself. And like the drunk, he would go farther and farther into the throes of it until he reached a state where he did things that afterwards could not be remembered at all. He would remember being on the brink of a delicious blackout and loving it, but that was all.

  That was partly why he always had to collect a memento.

  He looked at the foolish girl’s neck and saw no locket or necklace. She had no bracelet or earrings, either. She did have an unusual tortoise-shell comb in her thick blond hair. He considered it.

  But fate was not having it just then. The bell on the front door jingled and a couple of men with stiff collars and ties, probably shopkeepers, walked in, chatting with each other. They looked like the types who would sit down for coffee and stay a long time. The Windmill Man made one last bit of eye contact and spoke very softly, so the newcomers couldn’t hear.

  “I’ll be back to see you later, Darlene, my little prairie flower.”

  Now she had gone from giggling to staring, transfixed, like a chicken looking at a fox. And he knew, absolutely, that he could own her, could do anything he wanted with her. It was almost too easy, really. He would think about it a while longer. Of course he would, just as the drunk would consider whether he really wanted that next bottle of whiskey. He spun on his heel and marched smartly out, tipping his hat to the two interlopers on the way.

  “Gentlemen.”

  “Officer.” They nodded. “Lovely day for a fresh doughnut.”

  You have no idea.

  Out on the street, strolling down one of the boardwalks that were everywhere, it occurred to him that what he had just considered doing was dangerous. Working at breaking down and raping a girl in her father’s own shop in the middle of the business day was sheer madness. Very dangerous indeed. How delicious it would have been. He might go back again, at that, and ravage that little bit of giggly fluff. But it could never again have the same thrill of a completely spontaneous act of great risk, great danger. And that, he admitted, was the fourth appetite that he did not call a weakness or a sin. Danger. Power, danger, violence, and sugar, more or less in that order, were the only things he ever craved. He definitely had enough of the last one for the time being. He wondered if the day might yet bring him one or more of the other three.

  He went back to the Ford, had a last wistful look at the bakery, and cranked up the trusty four-cylinder. Then he got in and took a leisurely cruise through the town. It was the biggest town he had been in since he had started the harvest season just outside of Enid.

  In what looked like the middle of Main Street lay a formal town square featuring a large green area in front of an ornate brick and copper and stone courthouse, a Civil War cannon on a pedestal, a small bandstand gazebo, and a couple of poor-quality statues of people the Windmill Man had never heard of. A crowd had gathered in front of the bandstand where a speaker with a megaphone was standing on a box, shouting and gesturing. The crowd was all made up of men in work clothes, and over by the cannon, there was a bunch of bindles stacked up. The speaker was waving a red card in the air, and now and then somebody in the crowd would wave one, too.

  Wobblies, he thought, honest-to-god, card-carrying members of the International Workers of the World, or IWW. They claimed to be a labor union, and some of their slogans and philosophy actually seemed very practical and reasonable. But underneath all that, they weren’t really unionists at all, they were communists, with the occasional anarchist in the mix as well. They would sometimes pretend to be striking for better wages, but they didn’t really want their demands to be met because at the core, they didn’t believe in wages in the first place. A lot of people thought they didn’t believe in work, either. Shopkeepers, bankers, businessmen, public officials, cops, and even farmers hated them. In fact, just about everybody who didn’t have a red membership card hated them. The Windmill Man found them pathetic. Secret saboteurs who advertised the fact in advance and even carried distinctive red identity cards. What a bunch of complete idiots.

  He took his time, scanning the crowd, looking for a tall young man with a shock of near-white hair. Nobody came close.

  As he watched, a group of three uniformed law officers and four or five men in suits came out of the courthouse and moved purposefully toward the bandstand. They had some kind of armor on their shins and forearms, and they carried sidearms, billy clubs, and stern looks.

  This ought to be good.

  The center invader was almost certainly the local sheriff, and as he moved into the crowd, leading the others, he repeated the simple command, “Disperse!” His followers were more elaborate.

  “Get out of here, you red bastards!”

  “We’re good Americans here. We don’t need your kind!”

  “Go back to Bohemia, you worthless bums!”

  “See how your rights are trampled on?” said Mr. Megaphone. “See how they ignore your constitution?”

  But the crowd was, indeed, dispersing, running away from swinging billy clubs, shielding their heads with their arms, scrambling to get their packs and get themselves elsewhere. Only the man with the megaphone stood his ground.

  “I am a native born American!” he proclaimed. “I have the right to free speech. I have the right to organize a peaceful assembly. I have the constitutional right to disagree!”

  He was a forceful speaker, but his audience was running away, and the cops and their suited friends weren’t listening. They stormed the bandstand and pummeled Megaphone, who went down in a defensive fetal posture. They took turns kicking him for a while, and then the sheriff pulled him back up and leaned him against one of the columns of the gazebo. He held out a pair of handcuffs.

  “Put your hands out,” he ordered.

  The man stuck his hands in his pockets and spat at the sheriff. There was more blood than spit, and it stained the crisp uniform shirt with an obscene-looking splotch. The sheriff looked down at it, then back at the agitator, who seemed to have no more spit left, or at least none that he could propel. His face was a bloody mess.

  “You know what a new uniform shirt costs?”

  “Damn right I do. It costs you your soul.”

  “Goddamn commie traitor.”

  “Capitalist goon. Where’s your dog collar and your leash?”

  The sheriff smiled slightly and pulled his straw cowboy hat down a notch on his forehead. Then he drew his sidearm and calmly shot the agitator through the head.

  Jesus H. Assassin. And I thought I was cool and remorseless. I had no idea being a sheriff had so many possibilities. He really would have to meet this man. First, though, he would see about a place to stay, in case the kid at Western Union didn’t come through right away. And even if he did,
the Windmill Man was starting to think he had more than one day’s work in this town.

  Chapter 22

  So Shall Ye Reap

  Something changed in the pattern of sunlight on his eyelids, and Charlie woke with a start. When he opened his eyes, he saw a red-tailed hawk soaring far above him, a stark silhouette against the wispy cirrus clouds. He turned his gaze back down and looked around to find himself utterly alone, floating in the stock tank with a warm and flowing sense of well being. He couldn’t believe he had gone to sleep there, but all things considered, he couldn’t think of a reason in the world to regret it. As the sleep cleared slowly from the corners of his mind, he thought of Emily and her smooth, white body that was soft and firm at the same time, the loins that yielded but enclosed. A thing of many mysteries was a woman. Had he dreamt the whole incident? Unlikely. He had never had a dream in his life that was that fine.

  He pulled himself up to a standing position, flicked water off his chest and belly and legs, and stepped out of the tank. His clothes had been replaced by a stack of different ones, clean and neatly folded, with a couple of towels on top of the stack. He spread one of them out to stand on and dried himself with the other, sitting on the first one when it was time to put on his socks.

  The clothes seemed fairly new, and they were a reasonable fit. He assumed they must have belonged to one of the Wick boys who had gone off to the terrible, tragic foreign war. They were also good quality, for work clothes: the wool union suit that everybody wore, year around, crisply ironed denim trousers, a blue chambray shirt and a leather vest. He liked that vest.

  He wondered fleetingly if their paths might have crossed with that of his own brother, before they all met their solitary rendezvous with death. Why should they have? There were five million men in that war. Because he wanted them to meet, that was why. He wanted some kind of a connection with this fine farm and even with crazy Annie Praise God. He would never, he knew, be part of a loving and settled couple like Annie and Joe, looking out upon their homestead with its memories. But maybe he could be somehow connected, all the same. He could fix their thresher and he could bring in their harvest and he could even wear their son’s clothes. Maybe that was as much as he could hope for. He pulled on his shoes and went off to see how much of the day he had slept away.