Benny pushed the pickup until it was going seventy-five and vibrating loudly. “Slow down,” Quint said. “We can’t get back before they fill up anyway.”
Benny cut it to sixty-five, saying, “Old Shuggs is a funny lookin’ guy, ain’t he? Did you see how he holds his head?”
“Must have hurt it sometime.”
“Maybe he was in the war. Like my old man got his knuckles screwed up, only it was shrapnel and some hard heads.”
“Did you and him ever fight?”
“Not really. We used to box a lot. The last time was about a year ago. I was feeling mischievous and hit him under the eye, and he said, ‘That wasn’t meant in fun,’ and went in the house. We never boxed any more.”
They came into the depot yard and stopped beside the big brown Chevrolet. Quint got out, and Benny drove away spinning the tires and raking him with gravel and dirt. Quint scraped up some gravel and threw it at the pickup, and Benny saw him in the rearview mirror and laughed warmly.
The field had oil wells interspersed geometrically. The pump jacks’ presence broke the rhythm and flow and made D.W. and Benny cut crooked lines in the long sides of wheat. “Oh, I wish I was a rich old stiff-necked son of a bitch,” Benny sang, “with oil wells in my wheat and a ringer on my teat.” He stopped when to his left he saw smoke that fled up in a wispy wall underlaid with flame. He stared at the fire in the adjoining field, noticing the slow movement of trucks and combines a long way behind the fire, jerked the wheel to the right, lifted and shut off the header and gunned the combine away. D.W. followed in the cut section by the fence. Johnny and Quint had seen the fire and were waiting to move the trucks. Johnny waved the combines on to the gate a quarter-mile away, drove the brown truck and had Quint take the pickup to return for the blue truck. He took Quint back and returned in the pickup to wave and barge through the gate and ditch.
The blaze spread into Shuggs’ field as though fed by gasoline, and in minutes it had the wheat afire from one side to the other. It was all going to burn, the boys saw. They moved the equipment out of the field, kayoing a gatepost, and parked it on the other side of the road. The adjoining field had almost been finished, so the fire had little more than started there, burned some standing wheat and a lot of stubble and spread on a west wind to Shuggs’ uncut wheat. A farmer brought a bulldozer on a flatbed truck and began clearing paths along the southern perimeter of the field, where a weeded pasture separated another wheat field by fifty yards.
Shuggs had six oil wells in the field, and four were enveloped by the fire. D.W., Benny and Quint watched with men and boys whom they could see occasionally through the fire on the northeast end of the field as the flames took the wells one after the other and got them burning. The second one from the far end was the first to quit pumping when the fire shut down the motor. “Is it going to blow?” Benny asked.
“I don’t think so,” shouted Quint. “I don’t think it can get down in ‘em.”
They gaped at the popping, seething field and watched the red and orange flames catch on oil and grease on the nodding mosquito heads and dipping tails of the pump jacks until the fire, smoke and curling stalks were all that moved. Johnny or someone from the other field had summoned fire trucks from Guthrie, but the flames had almost reached the gate. Volunteer firemen unrolled a hose anyway from an old red truck with narrow tires and a cylindrical tank and started down from the fence line with a stream of water arcing into the field. Dry and thick, the wheat was perfect fuel. At least two hundred acres burned with flames six feet high and smoke working out in a rush and dissipating in the heat of the fire and sun. E.K. Shuggs drove up in his new pickup and hurried to Johnny and the boys at the trucks. “What happened?” he asked in a high-pitched voice.
“I understand some fellers in the next field were doin’ some welding,” Johnny said.
“Well, I wish I’d seen ‘em. I had this once before from using a torch in the field, a guy working for me.” He stared at the field. “The pump jacks are not as bad as they look. We didn’t lose any oil. I estimate my loss at forty thousand, counting the wheat. The insurance’ll pay part of it.”
“I’d like to kick their butts,” Johnny said.
“So would I. I’d like to do more than that. Sometimes you have to take a loss, though. Why don’t you move into that field over there?” He pointed to the one south of the fire. “That’s mine, too.”
“Might’s well get to it,” said Johnny in a shrill voice. They began moving the equipment, and Shuggs went across the road to talk with the man who had brought the bulldozer. Alice came out at dusk with dinner. Despite the fire and the necessity of discussing it, her visitation was so transient as not to be an interlude at all. The trucks and combines became jostling lights and engine noises in the dark.
Chapter Seven - Alexander
Following the big four-lane highway, the caravan slowed at the first motels and cafes at the outskirts. Bigger than Crow’s Corner or Guthrie, Alexander announced its prominence with a billboard looming at passers-by entering the city limits: “Alexander, Texas, Home of the Alexander Antelopes, State Class AA Football Champions 1961.” It was late afternoon, so the harvesters’ first task was to set up the trailer house. They left the trucks and combines in the wide, flat yard of the railroad depot. Taking the header trailer off the pickup and the trailer house off Johnny’s truck, they proceeded slowly with the pickup and trailer house to the court, making their way through an alley-like street clotted with bicycles, pets and darting children. After an hour of blocking and leveling the trailer and installing the sewer line, the Farnell brothers and Benny and D.W. returned to the depot to chain and lock the headers to the big truck. Then they sat and rested against the stony tires.
“Been up north much?” asked D.W., who had driven the tricky blue truck all day.
“More driving trucks than harvest,” said Johnny. “Most years, the harvest is not worth it for a small operator. One time when I was eighteen or nineteen we were pulling hills through Utah and came up behind this rig that was havin’ a hard time. I hit the gears just right, and we had more speed and went right by them. We stopped to eat about twenty miles up the road, and we were sitting there when these two guys came in. They came over to our table and one said, ‘Was that you that passed us on that hill?’ Uncle Mack said, ‘Yeah, I guess it was.’ And the other guy said, ‘Well, what are you running, a jet engine?’ So Uncle Mack said, ‘Oh, that thing? It’s fifteen years old; wouldn’t pull the hat off your head.’”
Quint had heard the story, but Benny and D.W. laughed. Then Benny said, “That reminds me of something daddy did. This man and his wife were visiting us when we lived over there by the Baptist Church. Daddy was showing his new twenty-two rifle, and this guy asked if it was accurate. So daddy said, ‘Sure, it’s accurate. Hold your cigarette up there and I’ll show you. I’ll clip the ashes off of it.’ The old boy thought he was kidding. He had him lift the cigarette a little higher and a little higher and over till he had it in front of the doorjamb to catch the bullet. He torched it off and hit the ashes, but the guy jumped and yelled like he’d taken it between the eyes.”
The others laughed, and Johnny said, “That’s one to remember if Preacher ever starts talking about his new shotgun.”
He had called for a motel the previous night, so they went to one at the edge of town, The Sunray, and checked in. D.W. lay down as soon as the suitcases and work boots were brought in, worn out because the blue truck’s front end had a tendency to drift when heavily loaded. Quint and Benny sauntered outside and listened in the twilight to harvesters in a nearby room playing Johnny Cash: “Well, I fooled you, I fooled you, I got pig iron, I got pig iron, I got awwwl pig iron!”
Walking one of the motel’s two open corridors, they saw two boys putting on boxing gloves. “I hope you know what you’re getting into,” said a blond-haired youth about six feet tall who weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds.
“I know,” said a shorter, heavier youth, chuckling. “Teach you so
me respect.”
They tried to box in a congenial manner. The heavier boy made a quick shuffle in and half slapped, half punched his friend on the left ear. The blond-haired boy stumbled away and came back with ferocity, hitting the heavier boy four times rapidly in the head, and there was the sound of saliva being forced through the lips and cartilage crunching in the jaw. The heavier boy staggered and went down to a knee. “You okay, Terry?” the taller one asked.
“Yeah,” said Terry. “You popped me pretty good.”
Friendly again, they sparred for a while and quit. Terry took his gloves off, and the blond-haired boy, clad in a cotton short-sleeve shirt, left his on. “Hidy,” he said to Benny and Quint.
“Hidy,” said Benny.
“One of y’all want to box?” He smiled and shrugged. “Just getting a little recreation.” He came over to them, and they saw his ear had been cut and blood was coagulating in it.
Faced unexpectedly with a fight, even one ostensibly without anger, they were indecisive. Finally Benny grinned and replied, “I will.”
Putting on Benny’s gloves, Quint said, “You better move when he comes in. He’ll get you like he did that fat boy.”
Taller at six feet two but lighter at a hundred and seventy pounds, Benny decided to be the aggressor, missing with two left jabs and hitting the upper part of the other boy’s nose with the next. As soon as the left glove hit, he crossed his right arm high, leaned out and hit the left cheekbone solidly under the eye. The other was shocked at the suddenness. He didn’t try to counterpunch but blinked his tearing eyes and smiled. He bobbed from side to side, trying to get Benny to move with him, and rushed in hitting straight and high. Notwithstanding Quint’s warning, the youth caught Benny still and hit him on each side of the head and on the chin. A sheet of whiteness flashed in Benny’s eyes. His legs went weak, but he kept his face impassive and managed to stay out of arm’s reach until his vision cleared and the spring returned to his legs. The other came back too late because Benny moved to his left and hooked his right arm over the punches and hit his opponent flush in the face. The blond-haired boy grabbed his mouth but continued with blood dribbling onto the front of his shirt. Benny was maneuvering for full revenge for his now-numb jaw when Quint stepped in. “Let’s go on,” he said.
Benny and the other youth took off their gloves without conversation. “See you,” Benny said after he had handed back the gloves and started away, and the other waved in tacit admission of the damage to his mouth. When they were clear, Benny asked, “Is your old man in town yet?”
“Yeah, he’s here, him and ma,” said Quint.
“Who’s he got with him?”
“Connie Vineyard and Jack Belker.”
“Connie and Jack? Jack knows too much, and Connie don’t know enough.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right. Daddy don’t need much help, really, no more cutting than he does now.”
“Do you know where they’re at?”
“I expect at the Bluebonnet. They always stay there.”
“That guy knocked the fool out of me. I thought I was goin’ down.”
“I couldn’t tell how hard it was.”
“He hits hard, but I got him, too, hunh?”
“It’s always worse to bleed.”
“Bet I can’t open my mouth tomorrow.” Benny rubbed the right side of his jaw near the hinge below the ear.
They walked the gutter of what became Alexander’s main street. That this was harvest time became more evident. Every other vehicle that passed in the moist dark was a pickup truck with a gasoline tank and pump in the back or a car with out of county license plates. The Bluebonnet Motel was a homey establishment with dirt passageways for the vehicles. Quint’s parents were domiciled in one of the two house-like dwellings that stood side by side at the end of the court. A new Ford pickup was outside, but all the windows of the rooms were dark. “They’re asleep,” Quint said. “I knew they would be. Let’s find Connie.”
Halfway around the other corridor, under a bleak light, Jack Belker sat on the steps outside an open door. “Hey, what have we here?” Jack said. “When did you get in?”
“Today,” Quint said.
Jack, a lean, tall man about fifty, walked over. “Where’s Johnny?”
“Over’t the trailer court. We just left him. Y’all done any cuttin’?”
“Just today and yesterday. It’s been green.”
“We should start tomorrow. Our man said his stuff’s ready.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fast and furious.”
Benny had gone inside, and Quint left Jack and went in. “Connie, what’re you doing?” Quint asked.
“About to choke on my own boredom,” said Connie, a slight young man who wore a mischievous expression and the suggestion of a paunch. “I mean, what have I got in common with Jack or Hugh?”
Quint and Benny laughed, and Benny said, “Y’all can always sit around listening to Buddy Holly.”
“Sure. By the way, we got some Coors in the ice box.”
Quint opened the mini-refrigerator and saw four bottles. Opening three, he asked, “Why don’t we drink these and get Jack to go get us some more?”
“Is that where you got this?” Benny asked.
“I bought it off some boys, two dollars for a six pack.”
Benny went where Jack was leaning against a pickup smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Jack, can you help us get some beer?”
“They’d throw my ass in jail, and it’s done been in too many times already,” he said in his clipped California-Texas accent.
“Nah, they’ll never know anything about it. We’ll drink it right here and leave what we don’t drink in the ice box.”
Jack took a long puff and exhaled heavily. “One time.”
“Okay, just once.”
“I been meaning to make a phone call anyway. Why don’t you walk down with me?”
Benny pitched his empty into brush around a road sign as they turned out of the courtyard. “Who are you calling, Jack? I don’t mean to be nosy.”
“My daughter.”
After a dozen strides, Benny said, “I didn’t know you had one.”
“I was a regular family man for a long time. I got three kids. This one’s married and lives in Stoneham, Massachusetts. She’s got kids. I send ‘em presents at Christmas.”
“You’re a granpaw.”
“We get along fine. I don’t see my boy. He’s in Alaska somewhere. My daughters, though, we get along real good.”
Jack’s profile was almost clean in the light of a streetlamp. He outlined his straight nose by lighting a cigarette as they entered the darkness again. “Their mother and I, we lost track of each other, she lost track of me, a long time ago. She remarried.”
“Hunh.”
“So here I am.”
“It goes to show you never know everything about anybody,” Benny said, holding Jack’s open-eyed gaze for a second.
“Sometimes you don’t know anything,” Jack said.
They approached an all-night convenience store. Benny stopped by a tree and gave Jack the money for two six-packs. He waited, leaning on the tree, until Jack returned, put the sack behind the tree and said, “I want to leave it here till I call my daughter.”
“Kind of late to be calling, ain’t it? It’s almost eleven.”
“Even later on the East Coast, but she’s expecting me to call. I wrote her I’ve been working late and said I’d call tonight. I got to call.”
“No big rush.”
Benny went to the store with Jack and sat on the curb while Jack arranged coins on the metal shelf in the phone booth. Jack’s low, mumbling talk was audible but unintelligible, and it was a while before he came out.
“Did you get her talked to?”
“Not yet. The operator’s gonna call back when she gets her.”
They waited until the mosquitoes were getting bad and a patrol car had gone by twice with the cop staring pointedly at them. Finally, without saying anything,
they started up the street. Jack reached wearily behind the tree for the sack.
The sun was hotter in Alexander than Crow’s Corner, where they had occasionally been forced to stop the combines to avoid overheating them. The mid-June heat was not the ferocious, metal-softening kind they had experienced before; it was a moister, more enveloping type that pulled sweat from them all day and left them panting and almost dehydrated when they lay down to sleep.
South of Alexander, fifteen miles toward Amarillo, there was a long, high hill down which they came whining in their burdened trucks many times a day. The trick was to reach a top speed of seventy-five at the bottom of the mile-long descent. If this was done, D.W. learned one day when Johnny was on a combine, he could coast down from there or hold the truck at its maximum speed. He found that reaching the shiver point earlier created the problem of the truck’s speeding beyond its best maximum while generating too much force for the mechanical brakes to slow it. So following Quint’s lead, D.W. topped the hill at fifty-five and let the speed gradually grow until the steering wheel trembled wildly, the front end lightened and the tires sent a wild “yee-yee-yee” through the open cab and forced his mouth into a grin. Then he rushed on to the elevator, pushing ahead of rival harvesters if he could, and raced back empty to the field to top the hill once more, gathering momentum down its length and barreling through the bottom.
They had more work around Alexander than they had had at the other towns. The big job was on a ranch southwest of town, but there were other landowners who had two or three sections or square miles in wheat. Benny and D.W. saw that the Farnells’ background was at least as valuable as their equipment. Although there was a plethora of other crews, there was limited time to get the crop in, and the Farnells returned from work each day to messages from farmers and ranchers. Because the time was short and Johnny’s crew could cut only about four hundred acres a day and the barrel-chested Hugh Farnell was interested only in making his customary amount here and going home, they had more work offered than could be accepted in the two weeks from the wheat’s ripening till it was all cut, threshed and in the grain elevators ready for loading into railroad cars and shipping to the mills. The weather was clear, and Johnny took advantage by starting early and working till ten or eleven at night. On the ninth day, he came in at midnight with about five hundred acres left.
The Byrds of Victory Page 14