the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Stop the car," Greg said. "Turn off the lights. This is where we're going to let you go."

  Jimmy Smith turned and looked at Karl Hettinger, who was sitting knees up, hands hanging limply over his knees.

  "I just started lookin at him then. I don't know why. He seemed to have big hands, the way they was hangin over his knees, and I noticed that, and I noticed the other officer was a pretty big man because I couldn't see around him out the side window on the driver's side. And I don't know, I just noticed little things about them ever since I got the bad feelin. Ever since Greg said he didn't wanna tie them up. And now I was breathin funny again. Couldn't get enough air, seemed like. And I could hear wind screechin through. Screamin like. I hated that goddamn wind. And I just saw the big ditch there where they was fixin to bury that big silver pipe. All the dirt was piled up beside it and I thought, I hope he don't drive off into that ditch. And then for the first time I started feelin cold. Cold!"

  Then the car was stopped. The lights were turned off. Greg wanted the lights off.

  "Get out, Jim," Greg said.

  Then a hand picked up Ian Campbells Smith and Wesson which was on the seat between them.

  Jimmy alighted and walked around the back of the car. Then Greg backed across the seat, still covering them with his Colt.

  "Get out," Greg said to Ian, and now Greg was standing beside the door on the passenger side. Ian got out and faced toward the rear, toward Jimmy Smith, and Ian put his hands in the air.

  "Get out," Greg said to Karl.

  "Do you want me to climb over the seat?"

  "What've you got in yoyr hands?" Greg said unexpectedly.

  "Nothing. See, I'm going to keep my hands in sight," said Karl, crawling over the little seat in the darkness, using only his elbows.

  "You're doing it just right," said Greg.

  Then Karl was standing beside the driver's door of the little coupe on Ian's left. He put his hands in the air and the two policemen faced Jimmy Smith, who stood several feet from the rear fender of the car, pointing his automatic at them, more in front of Ian than in front of Karl. It was just past midnight.

  The silence rang in their ears during those seconds. There was no sound. No crickets. Only the wind howling.

  But there was something. And then Ian recognized it. It was onion. They were between two sections of onions just beginning to sprout now in the month of March, already pungent. And it may have been the onion or the wind or something else, but Ian Campbell wiped his eyes quickly and then raised his hands high again. It may have been the landscape, so endlessly flat, so desolate at night, the earth so dusty beneath the crust, that the wind was blowing powdery choking dust balls all around them. The eye craved mountains, the heart shrank from the vast solitude, but the soaring ranges were far to the east and north, as far as the horizon. It looked to Karl like pictures of the moon, gray and desolate. Under a black sky like this, and except for the wind, the moon would be exactly like this, terrible in the darkness.

  Now it seemed bitterly cold to Ian Campbell as he stood to the right of Karl Hettinger, and once, with their hands upraised their fingers touched for an instant. Though Karl's fingers were icy, the touch of a hand of a friend helped calm Ian, and until they were safe at last, it would be better to think of other things, of anything, perhaps of the pipes, as he'd done all his life in troubled moments, as he'd done in Korea or in frightening moments as a policeman.

  Though it was not the clearest of nights-now sporadically cloudy as puffy specters scudded past the moon-still one could feel the stars all around. It was on such nights many years ago that Ian loved to march by the tarpits. Perhaps Ian deliberately thought of the pibroch, of playing "MacCrimmon Will Never Return" and vowed that when this was over, when he was home again, he would master the great pibroch.

  The silence was broken by the sound of Gregory Powell's footsteps, scraping on the crust of earth as he rounded the back of the car in the darkness. Karl could not see his face in the moonlight, just the hair, short and dark blond, and the triangle of the face. Now he and Ian were looking at Gregory Powell, at the long neck and the shadowy face and the gun in his hand, the hand in deep shadows, and Gregory Powell walked over to Jimmy Smith and leaned close and appeared to whisper, but no man except these two would ever learn the words he whispered, and then Gregory Powell moved to his right so that he was in front of Karl Hettinger. Jimmy Smith moved slightly to his right, just as he did on the desert that day in Henderson, Nevada, and he stood almost behind Gregory Powell. Jimmy held a gun in his right hand, the hand with L-O-V-E tattooed across the fingers. And though Gregory Powell was more directly in front of Karl Hettinger, he continued to look at Ian Campbell, at the big man, his gun pointed toward the policeman's feet.

  Despite the cold wind, sweat poured down Ian's ribs and chest and burned his eyes, so he closed them, and perhaps it-made it easier to imagine the pipes, to hear them wailing far back in the funnel of the wind. Perhaps it calmed him.

  Jimmy Smith said later, "The big cop seemed relaxed, you know?"

  Gregory Powell said to Ian Campbell, "We told you we were going to let you guys go, but have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh Law?"

  Ian said, "Yes."

  And Gregory Powell raised his arm and shot him in the mouth.

  For a few white-hot seconds the three watched him being lifted up by the blinding fireball and slammed down on his back, eyes open, watching the stars, moaning quietly, a long plaintive moan, and he was not dead nor even beginning to die during these seconds -only shocked, and half conscious. Perhaps his heart thundered in his ears almost drowning out the skirl of bagpipes. Perhaps he was confused because instead of tar he smelled onions at the last. He probably never saw the shadow in the leather jacket looming over him, and never really felt the four bullets flaming down into his chest.

  Jimmy Smith was to say later: "I can only remember his arm and hand. His hand! Each time a bullet hit him, his hand would jerk and jump up. Like he was grabbin for you. Like he was grabbin for your leg in the dark there! I'll never forget that arm."

  Jimmy Smith shouted in horror, "He's still movn!"

  But if Ian Campbell did not hear the voice, nor the staccato explosions, nor feel the four bullets bursting his heart, perhaps he believed that the bagpipes screamed and screamed..

  Karl screamed and screamed. He didn't know that he screamed. The scream tore from his throat a second after the first bullet crashed into Ian's mouth, when Karl's mind actually comprehended that they were killing Ian Campbell. When the two men heard him they turned and saw Karl screaming and running, stumbling and running a zigzag course down the road, terror leaping from his face white in the moonlight, yet with presence of mind to zigzag, change directions. Compulsively he turned and heard the explosions and saw the flashes-four oblong red and yellow fireballs blasting down into the chest of Ian Campbell. Then Gregory Powell ran after Karl and Karl heard more explosions and saw more fireballs, round this time, burning through the night, coming for him. Coming for him. He sobbed and cut to his left and his right, his coat flapping in the wind, and heard shouts and dived head-first to his left through a row of tumbleweed packed hard against the barbed wire farm fence, ripping his hands and face on the wire. For a long second he was clawing through the wall of tumbleweed and was caught on the wire while he heard the padded footsteps running on the dirt road. Coming for him. As in a dream he was caught. Trapped. Weeping. Thrashing. And the footsteps were coming closer. He could hear the panting.

  Then Karl was free. On his feet, stumbling over the torn trouser leg. He fell in the darkness still sobbing, then got up and balled up the ripped fabric and pulled it up to his thigh and ran, one bare leg flashing in the moonlight.

  Jimmy Smith did not hear Gregory Powell running back toward him. He did not hear the distant echoes of the shots reverberating off the peaks of Wheeler Ridge. He no longer heard Karl's screams, nor the moan from Ian Campbell. He was only aware of pain, a burning sensation behind his e
yes, and the first sound he heard was Greg's voice, breathless, frantic.

  "What the hell is the matter with you? The son of a bitch is getting away!"

  Jimmy nodded dumbly and Greg said, "We gotta catch him! Where's the flashlight? Goddamnit, where's the big flashlight?"

  "It's on the floor," Jimmy said. "It's on the floor of the car where I left it."

  Then Greg took Karl's flashlight and ran back to the barbed wire with the almost inpenetrable tangle of tumbleweed blown against it.

  Greg got up on a fence post and flashed his light out into the field. Back and forth went the light while Karl lay burrowed into the ground not far from Jimmy Smith and the corpse of Ian Campbell.

  Karl checked his watch and saw that it was 12:15 a. M., and he put his glasses in his coat pocket and waited. He was thinking now. He was weakened, dreadfully weakened by the shock. Unable to run without falling to the ground like a clumsy child. Still, his mind had not forsaken him and he was thinking rightly that the killers would believe he would run north toward the farmhouse. Toward the highway. So Karl had cut back south, doubled back toward the great ditch with the silver pipe, toward the coupe and the killers, toward the body of his partner. He was huddled there on the ground in the darkness and the cold, gasping erratically, fighting the shock and the agonizing stomach spasms. Fighting the terror. Waiting for his strength so that he could get up with a man's legs under him and run. But for now he just lay there watching the light sweep over the fields. Back and forth. Then it disappeared for a moment.

  Jimmy handed Greg the automatic and sat in the driver's side of the car and Greg began the confounding job of reloading the weapons that had been fired. Jimmy handed Greg six rounds and the automatic, and Greg began fumbling and dropping shells and finally he got one revolver loaded and gave back two rounds to Jimmy Smith.

  Jimmy sat in the dark and bullets and guns were clumsily exchanged by the two frantic men in the darkness, and finally Jimmy Smith said, "I'm gonna drive down the road and stop and wait for you and work back."

  Greg decided to use the automatic since Jimmy could never be trusted to know how to fire it alone in the darkness and excitement. So Greg took only Karl's flashlight and the .32 automatic. "All you gotta do is fire the .38, Jimmy. Just pull the trigger. And don't waste bullets."

  And Jimmy Smith drove north on the dirt road while Greg ran to the fence line choked by tumbleweeds and swept the beam across the field, back and forth. As Jimmy was driving off, he called for his last order from Gregory Powell: "Do you want me to go down this way? And turn around?"

  "Yeah," said Greg.

  While Greg passed the beam over the field, Karl Hettinger ran south and west and finally north, ran through the black night, falling often in the plowed ground, catching glimpses of light to the east and then of moving light to the south. He ran toward the ridge away from the lights.

  Karl was afraid of the farmhouse to the north, the one which Gregory Powell had pointed to. He began running westerly, toward some other lights twinkling in the distance, another farmhouse. But distances were deceiving in the solitary blackness and his breath was ripping through his lungs and he was exhausted long before he began getting close to the lights. Then he heard a sound and for a moment he doubted his ears. He listened and reached for his glasses in his pocket but they were gone, lost. He peered through the darkness and saw it. A Caterpillar tractor!

  Emmanuel McFadden had been working an especially long shift. He was supposed to work twelve hours from noon to midnight with a forty-five minute break at 6:00 p. M. It was a hard day and his khakis were sweat soaked. But somehow he was preoccupied when midnight came, and it was twenty past midnight when he unhooked the disc and drove the tractor back toward the barn so that it could be gassed up and taken over by his brother James. Sometimes he got caught up in the sound of the Cat's engine, and the hiss of the disc slicing furrows, and he would dream that it was his farm, and he would plow his earth gladly at midnight.

  He thought of the little Arkansas farm, the forty acres his grandfather owned, and how it would be if he and James owned this farm here in the San Joaquin Valley, of how he would plant onions and garlic and cotton and cantaloupe and it wouldn't matter then, the twelve hours on the big Cat, nor the cold wet feet from placing the sprinklers, nor even the poor drafty barn where farm workers slept. None of it would matter if it was their land.

  He was not a big man but he was young, twenty-five, and Mr. Archie, the overseer, said he was a good worker, better than men twice his size. When he heard this, Emmanuel's mahogany face broke in two, in a prideful grin. His nose was scarred across the bridge and under the ball just over the lip, and it was off center, so that the face broke into two off-centered sections when he smiled. The dream had kept him working that night, past the hour when he could stop. He had thought several minutes before that he saw lights off to the east, and that was passing strange because who would be out there in those fields at this time of night except himself? When he looked at his watch and saw it was twenty past twelve he unhooked the disc, and was riding home, feeling the ache, feeling the exhaustion. Then he saw the apparition in the beam from the rear light. In the distance he saw it, and it was coming toward him, tottering crazily, ghostly weird, falling and crawling like an animal.

  By now Karl had covered more than two miles at top speed, in the darkness, through the fields, with a body drained of energy from two hours of sustained fear and twenty-five minutes of overwhelming horror and shock. It was a terrible apparition to the tractor driver who saw Karl clearly now, struggling through the darkness like a drowning man, mouth agape, eyes round with terror, hands outstretched, lunging at the air as he staggered forward to catch the tractor.

  "I was so scared. At first I thought it was a animal comin like that and I picked up a shovel I carried on the Cat and I was gettin ready to hit it when he come up on me and I see it was a white man with his clothes half tore off. He's puffin and sayin, 'Help me, help me.' And I see a empty gun holster there whappin against him and I thought, Lord, he's fixin to shoot me off the Cat. And at first I jist try to ignore him. Pretend like I didn't see him. And he say, 'Help me. I'm a PO-lice. Help me! They killed my partner and two men is comin to kill me!' I got scared. I jist can't hardly tell it, and I stopped and I took him on back of the Cat and turned it around and headed for the house at the Coberly West farmin camp, to those clapboard shacks where there was a phone. And he's tellin me, puffin and tellin me that he was kidnapped, and about the killin, and the two men.

  "And when we get close to the farm I saw a light and I say, 'It's them. It's them!'

  "And the officer say, 'Is there a car?' and I don't know if they was in a car, but I think they was on foot there. So I turn and I look and the lights is a ways off in the distance, but the lights is gettin closer and closer and the Cat can't go fast as we can run, so I say, 'Let's go!' And we jumps off the Cat and leaves the motor goin and starts to run. Through the fields we runs. And it's dark and we jist runs. And runs. . . ."

  And at that time, running for his life, Emmanuel McFadden turned back and saw that the policeman could not possibly keep up. That he was caving in, staggering like a drunken man, hardly able to breathe, falling. Emmanuel McFadden became angry. White men! This was white man's trouble. Police trouble. It had nothing to do with him. Nothing. And yet they were drawing him into it. Drawing him into a thing he could not understand. They were going to kill him now, those men, those two killers who had already murdered a policeman. And why should he die? He'd done nothing. Why should he die with this white man behind him, lurching across broken ground and falling in the dirt, fingers digging into the earth, retching. So Emmanuel McFadden ran away, far ahead, until he could no longer hear the wheezing rattling breath of the policeman behind him. Hoping he could outrun them. All of them. The policeman and the killers.

  But when he got closer to the highway, to the Robert Mettler ranch, he stopped and looked at the house, so still and foreboding in the moonlight. He stop
ped and reconsidered, and lay down in the fields. It was bad. It was very bad. Because those lights he had seen near the place where he abandoned the tractor, those lights had circled the tractor and the killers now knew the policeman had a helper, and if they were car lights, it would mean the killers could easily have reached this same farmhouse by now. In fact, it was the logical place for them to come. There by the highway. This is where they would have to come. And there was an open field and a dirt road to cross before getting to the house. And if the killers were lurking in the dark . . .

  So Emmanuel McFadden realized that he could not escape this policeman. That if he were to survive this night he would himself need a helper, one to watch and warn while the other one crept close to the house. But not this house. This looked like a trap. So he returned angry and scared to Karl Hettinger, who was still stumbling across the plowed ground.

  "Look, man," said Emmanuel McFadden, "we gotta change directions. This ain't no good here. They could easy be there in the dark waitin. This is where I would wait if I was them. It jist ain't no good."

  "Whatever you say," Karl gasped, sawing at the air, mouth hanging slack, eyes rolling back every few seconds, down on one knee, willing to follow anyone who could lead him away from his pursuers.

  The farmhand made the decision and they headed due west toward the Opal Fry ranch. Once they saw a flashlight off to the east, far off, and the farmhand thought they were safe and he could slow down and rest. Then he saw car lights coming north toward the dirt road where they could almost reach the Cat. "Oh my Lord!" said Emmanuel McFadden. "My Lord!" And they were up and running as hard as they were able. The car lights continued north and disappeared.

  "I ain't never gonna forget that car. Never. It was a li'l ol round car. I heard that one killer say in court he never came lookin for us in the car, but it's a lie. I seen that car, li'l ol roundy car it was. I ain't never gonna forget that ol roundy car."