The Unplowed Sky

by Jeanne Williams

  “I believe in the six days,” said Henry earnestly. “It is the Bible.”

  “It’s your right to believe it.” Rich calmed down because he liked Henry. “But you aren’t setting up to be a scientist.”

  “Science cannot make people happy or good.”

  “It doesn’t make them bad or unhappy, either, Henry. It is knowledge, what we can find out about the world we live in.”

  “All we need to know is in the Bible.”

  Steve Hartman, Mondell’s student, started to protest but Rich checked him with a look. “That may be true for a farmer, Henry. But the world is changing fast. In another generation, there’ll be many more people making their livings in cities in jobs created by science.”

  “Yeah, new inventions are sure changing farms,” said Baldy, glancing around at the other men. “These combines coming on the market can cut wheat and thresh it at the same time. Instead of hiring harvest hands and later a threshing outfit, a farmer’ll be able to handle his crop with just a couple of men.”

  “When are we going to buy a combine, Garth?” Rory asked.

  “When the mortgage on the place is paid off and we can pay cash,” Garth replied rather shortly.

  “I would never want such a machine,” Henry said.

  “Mennonites don’t use any power but horses?” Buford asked.

  Henry shrugged. “Some congregations believe that machines are all right. Others don’t. Me, I like horses. They don’t break down like machines—”

  “They can get heatstroke or run away or something,” Rory argued.

  “Of course. But if they are treated and fed well, horses are more reliable than any machine. No machine ever tried harder because it wanted to please you. And horses make more of their own kind, so you are not going to the dealer for a new one about the time the old is paid for. They put strength back into the earth with their manure.” He shrugged and smiled. “Besides, horses are strong and handsome, and I like to see them.”

  “Machines don’t eat their heads off when they aren’t working,” retorted Rory.

  “No,” Henry retorted with perfect good nature. “They just rust in the shed and eat up interest. Anyway, the men who will be put out of work by farm machinery—will they be happier and healthier, do you think, working in a factory?”

  “That’s a question folks have been chewing on since handloom weavers and nail makers lost out to manufacturers,” Rich said. “I don’t know the answers, Henry. But I could go for another slice of your Anna’s cake.”

  “So could I,” Rory said.

  XXI

  Garth checked the wheat every day to see when it was just right for harvest. One evening he came to the house with a head of golden grain. He rubbed it in his palm, then showed Hallie the hard brown kernels, freed of their husks. “It’s ripe and ready!”

  Thrilled that he had come to show her, Hallie wondered whether love would ever ripen for them. But that wistful thought was overwhelmed by wonderment as she looked at the grain, tiny yet so life-givingly important.

  In his hand, Garth held the miracle of seeds that could nourish people and beasts or be planted to bring forth more grain. Without grain, without planting and reaping, humans would go back to a sparse existence of hunting and gathering or roaming with their flocks. Growing food was magic like that of conception and birth.

  O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord … She touched the grain reverently and wished she dare close her hand over his. “It will be a good crop?”

  “Looks that way,” he said with the caution of those whose livlihood depends on the whims of nature. “We’ll start cutting in the morning.”

  Because the MacLeods used the steam engine to pull the header and stacker header barge in tandem, the work needed only Rory on the engine, Garth and Shaft in the stacker wagon, Baldy with the coal, and young Dan Rogers with the water tanker.

  These last two wagons were drawn by horses borrowed from George Halstead, who had already harvested his bundled wheat. “Wheat can be cut by a binder while it’s a little green, several weeks before it’s dry enough for a header,” Shaft explained. “Halstead comes from eastern Kansas, where it rains more and binding’s usual. Out on the plains, most farmers use headers.”

  “Doesn’t waiting several more weeks for the wheat to ripen make it more likely that a crop will be rained or hailed out?” Hallie asked.

  “Sure, but heading works better here in the long run. Get better wheat, more of it, and a stacker wagon like the one Garth rigged up saves a lot work.”

  “It’s handy, but I didn’t figure it out,” Garth admitted. “Farmer over by Dodge City named Winifred Jacobs tinkered around and came up with it about ten years ago. What it does is form the stack in the wagon with the help of a couple of men who fork the heads around and tromp them down. When the wagon’s full, they open the rear gate and drop four skids to the ground. Then they drive a stake behind the wagon and tie a rope to it that’s run around and under the load of wheat. The engine pulls ahead, then, and leaves a nice stack that’s piled high in the center to shed rain and that’ll keep well till it can be threshed. The stacker’s a great thing for us. Cuts out the work of pitching off the header barge and building the stack on the ground.”

  The rest of the threshing crew went to help Mike Donnelly and Harry Crutchfield with their harvest. Then they would come help thresh Garth’s crop and start on the summer run. “At least no more of my customers have switched to Raford,” Garth said. “With any luck, we’ll make expenses and a little over, though we’ll have travel a long way to do it.”

  “Yeah,” frowned Rory, “but how long can we tough it out without some real profits? We’re going to need a new engine and separator in a couple of years.”

  “We’ve got to take extra-good care of the ones we’ve got,” said Garth. “And hope Raford gets tired of losing money. Now he can wheel and deal in the legislature, I doubt he’ll care so much about running me out of business.”

  Hallie felt a stab of guilt. Raford’s wanting her must aggravate his rancor against Garth. Would it help if she left? She didn’t think so. By now, the rivalry and hostility between the two was so great that she didn’t think it could be resolved by anything but death or the complete crushing of one or the other.

  “Don’t bet on Raford forgettin’ you, son,” warned Shaft. “He’s not used to men standin’ up to him. An’ when he’s home, that strip of prairie you left along the creek must be like a red flag to a bull.”

  Garth looked weary. Hallie fiercely, protectively, wished she could smooth the furrows knitting his sun-bleached eyebrows together. “We’ll just have to do our work the best we can and try to handle whatever Raford throws at us. So far we’ve managed.”

  “I want to do better than manage,” Rory burst out.

  “You get your engineer’s share,” Garth said quietly.

  He didn’t add what Shaft had told Hallie; that all Garth’s share had gone toward the mortgage. His share from shelling corn had paid her wages and supplied household money till he could send part of his railroad earnings. Rory liked being a partner, but he didn’t assume a partner’s responsibilities. Some of that was Garth’s fault. So much older and charged by their mother with Rory’s well-being, Garth probably indulged Rory more than was good for either of them.

  Now look at the difference, Henry,” Rory said, as all the men ate a hearty breakfast before dawn on the first day of harvest. “Mike Donnelly supplies one-header and two-header barges. Crutchfield does the same. Each outfit needs a header puncher, a driver for each barge, one man in the barge, and a stacker.”

  “Yup.” Henry buttered another biscuit. “Six men for each crew, maybe a scratcher to help the man on the stack.”

  “Well, with the engine and stacker wagon, three of us can do the same work.”

  “Yup. But you got to have water and coal. That takes two more men.”

  Crestfallen, Rory brightened at his next thought. “Then look at the horses!�
�� Rory ticked them off on his fingers. “Six to push each header, and each barge needs two. That’s ten horses for each header outfit, and they have to be fed and curried and rested and watered and harnessed.”

  “Yup.” Henry sloshed catsup over his fried potatoes. “Ten horses.”

  “Coming at it another way,” Rory pursued, “Mary Donnelly’s got to feed twelve to fourteen men for a week while Hallie here cooks for five.”

  “Yup. But that’s two header crews instead of one,” Henry countered. “The main difference I see is that you use your engine instead of horses, and I am not so sure that it takes more time to take care of them than it does to take care of your engine. Anyway, my mother and our sisters all help each other cook at harvest, and they like it—working together to feed their hungry men. There are more than enough men for our family farm’s headers and barges and stacks, so some of us, like me, go away to work for money wages.” He nodded contentedly. “That money is shared by the family, just as Anna and I get our share of grain.”

  “Sounds like what those communists over in Russia are trying,” said Baldy. “Maybe it works with some families, ’specially religious ones like you Mennonites who don’t get too grabby over worldly goods, but I reckon it’s built into human nature to want more and better than your neighbors have got.”

  “It’s an exciting thing they’re trying in Russia after centuries of all-powerful czars whose will was backed completely by the church,” Rich said. “And there’s China with Chiang Kai-shek, still trying to forge a republic after the revolution.” His eagerness faded and he shook his head. “Going the other way, there’s Mussolini in Italy and President Hindenburg of Germany favoring a monarchy though I’ll bet that beer-hall rabble-rouser, Adolf Hitler, who just got out of jail, is going to cause a lot of woe before he’s locked up for good.”

  “Wars and rumors of wars,” said Henry. “Thank the good God there is peace now for our country and we can harvest the fine ripe wheat.” He chuckled. “However it is we do it.”

  Hallie wasn’t cooking for a regular harvest crew; but the men still needed three big meals a day, as well as morning and afternoon lunch which she and Jackie took to them in the field. Thus she was grateful for Meg’s help with peeling potatoes, picking over beans, and all the other tasks that could be done while sitting. Shaft designed a special wide board that clamped over the wheelchair arms to make a table at a convenient height for working.

  Meg made no open complaint, but it wrenched Hallie’s heart to see the girl pause by the railings sometimes to gaze across the fields toward the smoke of the engine. “I expect Dan’s a better water monkey than me,” Hallie heard her tell Jackie. “He’s bigger and can pump faster. But oh, I wish—”

  Busy as she was, three times a day Hallie pumped and heated water to fill the tub. “I don’t like you going to all this work,” Meg said ungraciously. “It makes me feel like—like I’ll owe you too much.”

  “You help me a lot,” Hallie reminded her. “Anyway, doesn’t the soaking make you move easier?”

  “My back doesn’t hurt as much,” Meg admitted. She rubbed at the tears gleaming in her eyes. “But when I try to put weight on my legs and walk, they just go out from under me like rotten old sticks!”

  “It’s something not to hurt as much.”

  Meg glared. “It’s not enough!”

  “Meg—”

  “Don’t! Don’t tell me it could be worse!” The fury in Meg’s eyes and voice hardened to a calm that was much more alarming. “If I know—when I know—I’ll never walk, I’ll just fall down the stairs or do something Daddy will think was an accident.”

  “Oh, Meg, don’t even think that. Didn’t you say that if Luke would stay your friend, you could stand this better?”

  “I don’t want him feeling sorry for me, hanging around a cripple in a wheelchair when he could be having fun.”

  Meg was still a child but wasn’t it possible that she was dreaming of when she wouldn’t be? And that dream, now, must often turn into despairing questions: Could she marry? Could she have babies? And if she could, would it be fair to a man she loved?

  Hallie asked briskly, “If Luke were in the chair, wouldn’t you still want to be with him?”

  “Of course I would, but—”

  “Remember that. Try to give him—and other people—credit for feeling the way you would if things were the other way around.”

  Meg stared at Hallie, half-gratefully, half-resentfully. “I almost wish you were crippled for a while!” As Hallie gasped, Meg hurried on, “So you’d know how I feel—and so I could take care of you—heat your soak water, massage you, and think up things like the railings.”

  Hallie stifled a sigh and saw with bitter clarity that, even leaving Garth out of it, until Meg could pay the debt she thought she owed, there was no chance of friendship between them.

  “I’ll try not to break a leg till you can take care of me,” Hallie tried to joke. “Now, could you make sandwiches for the men’s afternoon lunch while I finish baking?”

  Stacks of headed golden grain awaited threshing as soon as the full crew assembled at the MacLeod farm. Mike Donnelly and Harry Crutchfield would bring their teams and wagons to receive the wheat and haul it to the elevators in Hollister. Garth went over the separator again, checking, tightening, greasing, oiling.

  “You need to give the engine a good going-over,” he said to Rory at dinner. “I noticed one of the hand holes is leaking. You need to drain the boiler and replace that hand-hole gasket. And if you don’t chip off those clinkers that are building up on the grate, you’ll not only have a slow, smoky fire but you’ll burn out the grates—”

  Rory went red to the tips of his ears. “I’ll take care of it, for Pete’s sake! If you weren’t always poking around, trying to find something to gripe about—”

  “That’s not hard to do. You’re going to ruin the frogs on the hand-hole bolts if you don’t quit forcing them. You let the ash pan fill up and touch the grates. You—”

  Rory shoved back his chair. “To cut a long song to a chorus, big brother, you don’t think I’m much of an engineer!”

  “You’re good when you’re not careless.” Garth paused, met Rory’s glare steadily, and said more gently, “Probably this shouldn’t have come up at the table, laddie. But”—he floundered—“you don’t seem to hear me unless I make you mad.”

  Shaft interposed, “The wheat looks good to me. Fullest, fattest heads I’ve ever seen. What do you think, Garth?”

  Both brothers relaxed. “Looks like forty bushels to an acre.” Garth spoke cautiously, but his smile betrayed his satisfaction.

  “Forty! Make it fifty—even sixty in the south field,” Rory exulted. “If half the farmers we thresh have wheat as good, I’m going to have enough money at the end of the run to—to—”

  His shining blue eyes swung to Hallie as if he couldn’t help himself. Garth’s face closed. “Guess I’ll get back to work,” he said, rising.

  “Don’t you want your pie?” called Hallie.

  “Thanks, don’t feel like I could stomach anything sweet.”

  Baldy and Dan Rogers divided the rejected peach pie blissfully, but Hallie still felt slapped. As standoffish as Garth was, he had no business sulking because Rory persisted in his foolishness, eyeing them grimly when Rory dried dishes for her after supper.

  For heaven’s sake, young Dan Rogers dried, too, and at the end of the day, very glad she had been for their help! Apart from wistful glances and an occasional brush of hands that might have been accidental, Rory hadn’t flirted. She’d even begun to hope that his infatuation was subsiding. His half-voiced thought and the way he had looked at her just now forced Hallie to realize—painfully, for who would not be fond of Rory—that he hadn’t gotten over his crush.

  After dinner, he took over Hallie’s chore of pumping and heating water for Meg’s tub and then dried the dishes. After Meg was ensconced in the fragrant-smelling water, Hallie came back to the kitchen to finish
the dishes.

  Through the window, Meg saw Dan helping Baldy fix a wheel on the coal wagon. Jackie must have gone out with Shaft to inspect the cookshack. Uneasy at being alone with Rory, Hallie hurried with the dishes and talked rather desperately to avoid a silence.

  “The elderflower soak does seem to be easing Meg’s back pain. And Meg’s taking the idea of helping in the cook shack instead of driving the water wagon a whole lot better than I thought she would, thanks to Luke’s promising to find places they can swim. I think—”

  Rory tossed the dish towel over the rack. He turned to Hallie. “What do you think about us?”

  She prayed he would not touch her. She didn’t want to get into a struggle, repulse him physically, or hurt his young male pride. They were friends. They had shared last summer’s run. He had patiently taught her how to run the engine. He was so handsome, strong, and likable that she might well have cared for him—if it hadn’t been for Garth.

  “Rory,” she stumbled. “I—I wish you were my brother.”

  His eyes dilated. Pulses throbbed in his throat and temples. He reached for her, then locked his hands into fists at his sides. “You wish I was my brother, don’t you?” he said in a tight hard voice. “Even if he’s twelve years older than you, can’t trust women, and has a bratty daughter who may be on his hands for the rest of his life?”

  “Rory!”

  “You think I’m just a kid! Well, there are women who know better! I’m going to town and find one of them!”

  Before she could say anything—and what was there to say?—he stalked out. The door banged. In a few minutes, she heard Garth’s angry voice, Rory’s furious retort, and then the truck started.

  Henry, Luke, Rich, and Steve drove up in time for supper. They said Mike Donnelly and Harry Crutchfield would be there with their wagons in the morning.

  “Where’s Rory?” Henry asked with a blue-eyed twinkle. “Is he ready to fire up in the morning and show me how much better his engine is than horses?”

  “He had to run into town.” Garth’s tone was careless, but Hallie saw the tightening of his lips. “Must’ve had trouble with the truck or something.”