Red Earth White Earth

by Will Weaver

  Flaherty leaned out of the cab. “What the hell’s the matter?” he called. He swung down from the combine.

  Guy was silent. He looked briefly at Helmer, then back to Flaherty. “We . . . can’t combine today.”

  Flaherty stared. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” he said. “The grain is ready. I should know.”

  “No—it’s not that,” Guy began.

  “Well, what then?” Flaherty climbed down.

  “It’s . . . Sunday,” Guy said slowly. “This is my grandfather. This is his land. He doesn’t farm on Sunday. We made a deal.”

  The other drivers swung down and stood behind Flaherty. Flaherty turned his red-rimmed eyes to Helmer. “Sunday? Sunday? Old man, are you crazy or something?” The other drivers laughed. “Your grandson’s got the field of a lifetime, there’s rain no more than a day away, and you’re worried about Sunday?”

  Helmer met Flaherty’s gaze in silence. Finally Flaherty looked down and ran his hand through his hair. “Goddamn,” he muttered, “but I’ve never run into this one before.”

  Flaherty turned to Guy, pulled him aside. “Listen,” he said. “Sunday don’t matter to me. It don’t matter to the flax. And it probably don’t matter to you. So why don’t you take your granddad back to the house. Fix him a cup of coffee. Take him for a drive. Something. You take care of him, we’ll take care of your flax. Half a day and we’ll be on our way. In a few days he’ll forget all about it.”

  But Guy could only shake his head. “I gave my word,” he said.

  Flaherty’s eyes narrowed. “Well, goddammit, look—you hired me. If you want me to wait a day, I’ll wait. But every hour we sit here will cost you same as if we were combining.”

  “I can pay,” Guy said.

  “Bunch of fruitcakes,” one of the other drivers muttered.

  “Get some shut-eye, anyway,” another said as they turned away to shut off the combines.

  Flaherty spun on the heel of his boot, stalked into the motor home, and slammed the door behind. Then there was silence in the field.

  That night Guy lay in his bed under the slope of the roof. It was dark. His eyes were open. He did not listen to the radio. Sometime much later he heard the sound he knew would come. At first the sound was so faint that he mistook it for the slide of his own blood in his ear against the pillow. Then the sound grew. A whispering on the shingles. A steady patter. Finally a drumming. Rain.

  He rose from the bed and went to the window. In the yard below, in the yellow glow of the yard lamp, Flaherty’s combines shone like great, wet blocks of ice.

  The rain continued Monday and Tuesday.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” Flaherty said Wednesday morning. He was clean-shaven now, his face puffy with sleep. “You’re not on our regular route. We’re supposed to be down in Sioux Falls. Maybe somebody else . . .”

  Guy nodded. He felt older. Harder. Like some part of him had turned to wood or stone. “How much do I owe you then?” was all he asked.

  “Just for Sunday,” Flaherty replied.

  Guy wrote out the check and handed it over. Flaherty looked down at the check in his hand, then across to the flax, and, finally, to Helmer’s house.

  “Goddammit,” he said suddenly. In one motion he crumpled the check, flung it down, and ground it into the mud with his boot. Then he turned away and waved his combines down the road.

  Thursday the skies cleared, but only for the afternoon. Friday and Saturday the rain came again.

  The windrows of flax rusted brown. From their new weight the windrows began to crush their supporting stubble and sink. By the following Monday the windrows lay flat and shrunken on the cold wet earth.

  Rain and mist continued for the next two weeks.

  “It’s going to clear up,” Helmer said every day. “It always does. There’s still time.”

  But Guy had few words for him, for Madeline, for anybody. He continued to sit with Helmer awhile in the evenings. He was glad his grandfather spoke no more nor no less than usual.

  In the mornings Guy once again drove to his job at the implement dealership. Often he saw his grandfather walking at sunup among the dark windrows of flax. He carried a fork. He poked at the wet grain, tested its weight. Once when Guy returned at sundown he saw Helmer in the field just as the sky cleared. Orange light slanted harshly across the windrows, whose seeds had begun to sprout. Guy braked the Chevy to a stop. His grandfather stood motionless far out in the field among green rivers of fire.

  September came, and with it a truck from the dealership to take back the grain swather. Now it was a used implement; Guy lost two thousand dollars on it. One thousand he owed to the dealership; that money he could work out against wages. The second thousand he owed to Lyle Price of the Flatwater State Bank. The bank began to call, then send letters. At first the letters came in thin white envelopes, then thicker ones, then with pink receipt-acknowledged cards stapled on their sides. All he threw away unopened.

  Late September brought Indian summer. The skies cleared. The sun shone hotly for a week. The flax windrows dried on top. If the windrows could be lifted and turned to dry their undersides—a hayrake might work—there was still a chance for a partial harvest by a cautious combine. There was a chance at least to pay off the bank.

  Guy stopped working at the dealership. He readied the hayrake. On a Wednesday, along with four neighbors who showed up uninvited with their own tractors and rakes, Guy tried to turn the flax. Helmer watched by the gate.

  Still sodden underneath, still heavier than any hay, the flax wound and webbed itself around the reels of the rakes. Every few yards Guy and the other drivers had to stop, dismount, and cut away the flax with butcher knives. If they drove without stopping, the rake’s reel belt began to slip, then smoke with the smell of burning rubber or twine.

  One by one the neighbors turned away from the flax and drove toward the gate. Guy kept going. He drove fifty yards, leaped down to slash at the flax, then drove again. The rake’s drive chains began to chatter and slip. The tips of the gear teeth began to wear away. Guy kept going. On the tractor’s steering wheel his left hand felt wet, then numb. When he looked down the tan palm of his glove held a rose of blood, blooming even as he watched. The butcher knife. He closed the rose in a fist of leather and kept driving.

  Suddenly the main chain on the rake parted and flopped. The rake was now a plow. Guy turned the steering wheel away from the windrow.

  As he drove toward the gate Helmer waved him off. “Go back—keep going—go back!” he called. He waved his fork at the other drivers. “All of you—go back, go back!” But they looked away. They took off their caps and ran their hands through their hair.

  Guy got down from the tractor and walked toward Helmer. “It won’t turn,” he called. “It won’t work!”

  Helmer shook his head. “It’s got to work. The flax has to be turned. When it’s turned we can get that red-haired man and his combines to come back. Then we can—”

  “No!” Guy shouted close to his grandfather’s face. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “It’s finished! It’s over—over—over—over—can’t you see that?”

  But Helmer could not look at Guy. His blue eyes were frozen to the field.

  Guy awoke sometime after dark. He was uncertain of the time. He had gone to bed without supper, had retreated deep into a sleep that contained no people, no tractors, no fields, no dreams of any kind.

  He stumbled toward the window. He had a brief vision of Flaherty’s combines, wet under the yard light. But the yard was empty. The black sky was clear and moonlit. There was nothing at all to see except, far out in the field of flax, the movement of some night animal.

  Suddenly Guy called out. He raced barefoot downstairs, across the yard, pounded on his parents’ bedroom window, then ran toward the field.

&n
bsp; Far out in the field, Helmer had fallen to his hands and knees.

  “Gramps!” Guy called. As he neared him, Helmer turned his face to look. A black course of blood ran from his nose across his cheek. Beside him lay his fork.

  “Few more hours, maybe,” Helmer whispered, panting. “Few more hours, have it all turned. Then we’ll get that red-haired man . . .”

  Guy saw that Helmer, by hand, had turned a half mile of one windrow. Helmer reached again for his fork.

  “No!” Guy said, kicking away the fork.

  “Yes, have to turn . . .” Helmer breathed. Helmer found the fork and pushed himself to his feet. Guy caught the fork’s handle; he could feel his grandfather through the wood.

  “Please, Guy-boy, let me finish . . . tonight,” Helmer whispered. He pulled on the fork. Suddenly Guy was holding him, feeling his grandfather’s woolen shirt wet with sweat. Feeling his old heart shuddering in his chest.

  “You’re a good boy,” Helmer whispered, and kissed him. Kissed him like he used to when Guy was small. Guy tasted his grandfather’s blood.

  But then Helmer pushed him away.

  “Stop him!” Martin shouted. Guy looked back. Martin and Madeline were running toward them.

  “No,” Guy said. Something in his voice drew his parents to a stop and did not let them pass. They all watched. Helmer, one arm clutched across his chest as if to hold in his heart, drove his fork again and again into the grain. Staggering in the moonlight, he slowly worked his way downfield into the dark.

  14

  October 10. Helmer in hospital. Just stares. The doctor said a stroke is when the brain gives up on the rest of the body. October 12. Tried for a full-time job at the dealership, but they said no. You’ve quit twice already, need someone dependable, they said.

  Guy kept up brief notes on the little flax calendar above his bed. But the notes did not mention his flax. Now the flax was only a field of dark green quack grass with black pinstriping, a field that needed plowing.

  But Guy did not plow. Much of the day he lay on his bed upstairs in Helmer’s empty house. He did not read. He did nothing but listen to the radio. Any station. When he thought about anything at all he tried to imagine a stroke. After a stroke you just lay there and stared at some spot on the ceiling. He tried to imagine something different from lying on the bed listening to the radio but couldn’t. He began to understand that there were many kinds of strokes. Some strokes froze the body. Some froze the heart. Some froze ideas. Others froze dreams and love. Everybody had some frozen part to them. But the worst stroke of all was the one that froze time, the stroke that locked in place the present. Forever.

  Once he was startled from half-sleep by a pounding on the door. At Helmer’s door stood a gray-suited young man trying to look old. He was from the Flatwater State Bank.

  “Mr. Price has instructed me to visit with you and make arrangements for a transfer of chattel to the bank sufficient to cover the amount of”—he looked down at his clipboard—“one thousand dollars even.”

  “Mr. Price can fuck himself,” Guy said quietly.

  The young banker looked up and blinked. “I’ll . . . relay your message to Mr. Price,” he said. “In the meantime”—he looked back to his clipboard—“there’s the matter of the chattel.”

  “You can fuck yourself too,” Guy said.

  The banker did not look up from the paper. “You’ve listed as chattel several items, the most valuable of which appears to be a 1957 two-door Chevrolet, license number RMN-349. That must be it there,” the man said, turning to look across the yard to Guy’s Chevy.

  Guy grabbed the man’s lapels and shook him. “Hit the road, mister. You come here again I’m going to pound you into the ground like a fence post.” His voice shook.

  The man’s eyes widened and he swallowed. Guy released his grip and the man walked quickly toward his sedan. Inside, he rolled the window halfway down and called out, “I’m instructing the sheriff to visit you to retrieve the Chevrolet. You have seven days before that time. The next move is up to you.”

  Guy paced the living room for a while, then went back to bed. He lay there.

  Four days later Guy stood deep in a sandy excavation hammering long spikes into lumber. West of the small grove, out of sight from the farmyard, he had taken the tractor and hydraulic loader and dug a hole in the field. The hole was the size of a house basement. In the middle of the hole he had nearly finished building a heavy-timbered, flat-roofed structure. His materials were treated fence posts and old railroad ties. And long spikes.

  On the fifth day he finished the nailing. He walked out of the hole, then stooped to sight across the surface of the field. The roof of the building was two feet below grade. That afternoon he cleaned out his Chevy and drove it into the field. He laid two tracks of planking down the ramp of the excavation. Then he carefully backed the Chevy down the slope and into the underground garage.

  He parked the Chevy, jacked up first one end, then the other. He placed blocks under the axles so the tires turned freely. After that he turned to the engine. With the motor running, he removed one sparkplug at a time and squirted heavy tractor oil into each cylinder. By the eighth plug the Chevy was laboring, chugging like a John Deere, puffing black smoke from its tailpipe. Guy finally shut off the engine and scrambled, coughing, from the hole. When the smoke cleared he returned. From a five-gallon can he poured diesel fuel, itself thin oil, over the Chevy. He poured the fuel into the carburetor. Over the engine block. Over the radiator. Over the hood and fenders. Over the roof and windshield. Last, he laid the keys on the dashboard and closed the door.

  Then he draped the garage with black plastic. He wound the dark sheet around and over and around again. He felt like the artist who covered buildings and ships and islands.

  Finally, with the tractor and loader, he backfilled the hole. Soon he was dumping dirt atop the roof. The excess earth he hauled away and dumped in a field washout. When the field was once again smooth he broke open several bales of hay and shook them over the fresh digging. When he walked away the hay was the same color as the field. The Chevy was gone. On ice. In suspended animation. A woolly mammoth dreaming underground.

  Like Helmer.

  Like himself.

  On the sixth morning his parents did not wake up as he stood by their bed. Madeline lay close to her edge of the mattress and breathed softly with her mouth closed. He touched her hair, then turned away. He left the farm, walking, in the purple light before dawn.

  He carried a pack and sleeping bag on his back. Around him the fields were dark and silent except for the twitter of nighthawks.

  He walked south toward the highway. Slowly the sky pinked up like color coming into skin. Meadowlarks began to call from atop fence posts. Their breasts drew light from the air and stood out atop the fence posts like pale, heart-shaped flowers blooming from the wood.

  Ahead was a car in the ditch, a battered Oldsmobile without window glass. He stopped to look inside. An old Indian man and younger Indian girl lay sleeping in the back seat. Two empty Ripple bottles lay between them. The old man’s pants were half down and there were goose bumps on his gray skin.

  Guy walked on.

  He reached the highway, #10 West. Just as the sun came up a farm pickup pulled over. His first ride. A woman about his mother’s age drove. She wore her hair up in a kerchief, a man’s jacket, jeans, and boots. Her hands on the steering wheel were chapped and calloused. On the seat beside her was a flat, round pan that rattled with fragments from some kind of bearing.

  “Told him to watch that seal,” the woman said. Guy stared at the shrapnel in the pan. “‘The seal goes, the bearing goes,’ I told him. He knows that. But he’s always in such a goddamn hurry,” she said.

  Guy nodded. They talked briefly. Then they drove for a long while in silence. Later she turned to look at him again. S
he glanced at his pack in the rear of the pickup. “Detroit Lakes, you said. Looks like you’re going farther than Detroit Lakes.”

  “Want to pick up the freeway there,” Guy answered. He looked out the window. He didn’t feel much like talking. He didn’t know what he felt.

  “West?”

  Guy nodded.

  The woman smiled and squinted as she lit a cigarette. She offered one to Guy.

  Guy shook his head no.

  She exhaled. “Out West is where I’m from. Idaho Falls. Every year I tell the old man we ought to sell the place and move back. The winters aren’t so bad there. ‘Next year,’ he says. I say to him, ‘Sometime there ain’t gonna be a next year. Sometime your tractor will come driving through the yard without you and it’ll be me who has to go and find you out in the field and it’ll just be your boots sticking up from the ground.’ But he don’t listen.”

  She fell silent for a long time. Guy watched the trees. Detroit Lakes approached.

  “There at the stoplight will do,” Guy said.

  She nodded and slowed.

  “Thanks,” Guy said.

  The woman waved briefly and drove on.

  Guy was walking toward the freeway ramp when he heard her brake and begin to back up.

  She rolled down the truck window. “They’ll be finishing the fruit harvest out there about now,” she called. “Peaches. You get through Idaho Falls, eat a peach for me, okay?”

  Guy held up his thumb to her. He watched her drive off. As she went out of sight around a gas station, he thought of crying. But cars began to pass. He turned his thumb west.

  15

  North Dakota was western Minnesota with fewer trees. Only when the Badlands began, pinkish mountains hidden in great holes, did Guy feel distance between himself and the farm. At a freeway rest stop he slept an hour stretched out atop a picnic table. He awoke in sunlight. A shiny black grackle was perched on his table, eyeing his pack.