Heed the Thunder

by Jim Thompson

  “By God,” said Sherman, “that makes sense!”

  “Do you see it, Sherm? There just ain’t no meat going that’s as cheap as bread. And people always eat bread anyhow. I tell you it’s a chance to clean up!”

  Sherman roughly extended the notes.

  “You really want me to take ’em back, Sherm?”

  “You’re damned right,” the farmer declared firmly. “Now let’s get on up to the house and have dinner.”

  They ate and, afterward, the salesman examined the thresher. He agreed with Sherman that the damned thing used a great deal more oil than it was entitled to, but pointed out that such being its nature, there was nothing to do but humor it. Sherman admitted that it might be so, but objected profanely to the expense. Simpson insisted upon sending out a barrel, free, from their dealer in town.

  He declined the offer of a ride back to town, and set off down the road again on foot. An hour or so later he vaulted the gate at Wilhelm Deutsch’s farm.

  The old German was leisurely plowing a triangular section bordering the farmyard. And Simpson, almost as soon as he had introduced himself, offered to spell him for a few rows.

  He tossed his coat over a post, again, dropped the lines around his neck, and clucked to the horses. The share began moving through the rich brown soil and the furrow was absolutely true, not too shallow, not too deep. From the corner of his eye, Simpson glanced at Deutsch to see the effect that his plowing was having. But the farmer merely plodded along at his side, his face stolid, puffing at his pipe.

  “How’s that for you?” the salesman said at last, a little put out by the farmer’s indifference. “I’ll bet you thought I’d make a mess of it, didn’t you?”

  “Why, no (Vy noo),” said Deutsch. “You would be very foolish to try to plow if you were not able. If you could not do well enough to please me, why should you offer?”

  Simpson laughed, abashed. “You Germans see right through a fellow.”

  “I am an American citizen, Mr. Simpson.”

  “Sure, sure,” said the salesman, hastily. “No offense, Mr. Deutsch.”

  “None taken,” said Deutsch.

  “You’re a little late with your planting, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, my planting is done. This land, I plant nothing here. I only turn this over and let it lie fallow.”

  “Oh?” said Simpson. “You got much wheat in this year?”

  “About the usual amount.”

  They plodded on to the end of the row, and the salesman turned the plow expertly. He wouldn’t say that he didn’t like the Germans, because they were good people and always had the money to buy what they needed. But they were kind of hard to deal with. This old booger was about the funniest he’d run up against.

  “Ever think about getting a riding plow?” he said casually.

  “No. Why should I need a plow to ride on?”

  “Well—well, they save you a lot of work. They save time.”

  “But why should I save work? Who would I save it for? My boys and me, that is what we are here for. We expect to work, and time we have enough of.”

  “I see,” nodded the salesman. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.…Uh, I had a nice long talk with Sherman Fargo today. He thinks it’ll be a big wheat year. He’s going to plant everything he can lay hands on to wheat.”

  Deutsch’s eyebrows went up with interest. He owned a quarter section which he was inclined to sell or lease, and Sherman knew about it. When the latter came around to negotiate, as he undoubtedly would, he (Deutsch) would raise the price on him.

  “But you say you’re not planting much wheat?” insisted the salesman.

  “No, I did not say that,” said the farmer. “Look, Mr. Simpson, let us stop and talk a minute.” He gave the salesman a friendly smile, and Simpson removed the lines from his neck and looped them around the plow handles.

  “Mr. Fargo is a good farmer,” the old man began diplomatically. “All of my friends here in the valley are good farmers. But I did not learn my farming their way, and I can only carry on in the way I know. You understand? I am not criticizing them.”

  “Certainly, certainly. Go right ahead, Mr. Deutsch.”

  “Well, then, it is like this. A little I vary my plans from one year to the next; last year, last winter, I buy corn and cattle and I feed like the others and I make money like the others. But I am not like the others, in this way: I do not make a practice of farming from one year to the next.…Now, you say next year will be good for wheat. Maybe you are right—”

  “It’s my sincere opinion, Mr. Deutsch, that this will be the biggest—”

  “So. And maybe you are right. Maybe next year will be bigger, too, and the next, and so on for ten years. I plant wheat for ten years and every year I make big money and what do I have at the end of it? Nothing.”

  “Nothing? How do you figure—”

  “I would have no farm. The soil would not stand it. Now, you say you are not implying that I should plant wheat for ten years, but there is the principle, you see. The temptation to grab the immediate profit. And I cannot farm that way because I know it is wrong. I have a crop-rotation plan, and that is what I go by. That plan extends one hundred and sixty years into the future.”

  The salesman so far forgot his tact that he guffawed. Or, perhaps, be believed that the farmer was joking with him.

  “A hundred and sixty years!” he laughed. “Why, you won’t even be here then.”

  The farmer nodded, slowly, staring at him. “That is right, Mr. Simpson. I will not be here.”

  Simpson reddened. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It was just kind of—uh—so funny—”

  “Yes, I suppose it is to show any thought for the people of one hundred and sixty years from now—our great grandchildren and their children, shall we say.”

  “Well, uh—”

  “But look at it this way, Mr. Simpson. Suppose I merely plan to exhaust my land during my own and my children’s lifetime. It will be getting worse and worse all the time we are living from it, will it not? It will not go bad all at once. When we have lived half our lives, we shall only be able to take half as much from it as we could at the beginning.”

  “I guess you’re right about that.”

  “Do you ever read any of the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Simpson?”

  “Well, sure,” lied the salesman, “I’ve read some of ’em.”

  “There is one on dry-land farming in the United States—you should get hold of it. According to this bulletin, the farmer in this country can expect to receive a return on his investment of about 3 per cent a year. That is from crops, livestock, everything.…”

  Simpson laughed again. He saw no possibility of making a sale, and he was getting tired.

  “Three per cent!” he scoffed. “Why, Mr. Deutsch, I can show you farmers right in my territory that cleaned up—”

  “But this is for every year,” the German interrupted, gently. “The average for the bad and the good years. And I think it is a little bit high. It does not sound like a great deal, but over a period of forty years it amounts to about sixty thousand dollars on an investment such as mine. And in one hundred and sixty years it amounts to almost one quarter of a million dollars—and this land will still be earning its 3 per cent one hundred and sixty years from now.…But I am getting away from my point. If my land, at its flush, earns only 3 per cent, what will its earnings be over a period of forty years if its life is only that? About 1 per cent, eh—less than enough to exist on. And what will be the position of my children and theirs in this valley?”

  Simpson put the lines back around his neck and laid his hands to the plow handles.

  “I’ve certainly enjoyed this talk,” he declared. “I think it’s about time I was getting back to town, though.”

  Deutsch smiled, then laughed openly. “You are a very patient man, Mr. Simpson. Does your company sell haystackers and balers?”

  “We certainly
do! Our dealer here doesn’t show them because he ain’t got the—the room, but—”

  “Good. I will buy a stacker from you, also a baler. The best grade you have, please.”

  “Well, say!” beamed the salesman. “I’m certainly glad to get your order. And you’re getting it in at just the right time, too. A month or so from now I might not be able to handle it for you.”

  “So?”

  “Yup. It looks like we’re about to have a strike on our hands. A bunch of these radicals have got together and are asking for a ten-hour day, and an hour for lunch, and a lot of fancy stuff like rest rooms and doctors to look after ’em when they hurt their little fingers or get a backache.…Oh, it’s a sight, Mr. Deutsch! You just couldn’t believe the nerve of some of them birds.…”

  His voice trailed off into silence, and his heavy face fell ludicrously. For he had become suddenly conscious that his usually adaptable personality had again struck a discord with the old man.

  “I guess I’d better keep my mouth shut,” he said babyishly. “I seem to put my foot in it, everything I say.”

  “Noo,” said the old man mildly, “I was just going to ask why the company didn’t give the men what they wanted.”

  “Well—but—but why should they! They don’t have to! There’s plenty of other men that’ll be darned glad to have their jobs!”

  Deutsch shook his head and looked away, seemingly absorbed in a flight of crows hovering over a distant haystack. He was thinking that the cities, perhaps, needed to look into the future even more than the country did. They should look ahead for forty, eighty, one hundred and sixty years, to a strong and healthy plain of population—or to an overworked, weakened, underfed, and infertile desert.

  The salesman smiled patronizingly. “You just don’t understand how it is with these unions, Mr. Deutsch. You’ve lived on a farm all your life.”

  “I have not,” said the farmer. “In the old country, in Mecklenberg, I worked in a factory for a number of years. It was a firebrick factory, and we had a very good union there. We had rest rooms, and medical attention, and a ten-hour day—although we could work longer for extra pay—and twice a day we had periods in which to rest and eat. Vendors were admitted at those times with sandwiches, cakes, coffee, beer…”

  “Haw, haw!” Simpson guffawed, making one last effort to get himself in Deutsch’s good graces. “I’ll bet you didn’t get much work done, did you?”

  The farmer sighed. Stooping, he picked up a brown clod and crumbled it between his fingers. “Perhaps,” he said, “we had better be moving along.”

  14

  Courtland had hurt the Czerny boy more terribly than he ever knew, and when the boy reached home, he was beaten again by his father and locked in the stable for punishment. This was right, of course, for young Czerny had endangered the living of the whole family by his misconduct.…That night he began to howl with pain, and his mother slipped out to him and pushed a saucer of grease beneath the locked door. His fingers stiff with cold, he dropped it to the floor of the stable, and when he anointed his swollen and broken face in the darkness, there was manure on his fingers.…By morning he was raving, by that evening his head was puffed to twice its normal size; he was a festering, bleeding, sightless mess. They could not get a doctor up there, and a doctor could have done him no good; and, too, they loved him and did not want him taken away. When his insanity became uncontrollable, they chained him in the cellar, and there he remained for three months. By fall, he seemed completely normal again—except for his looks. His face looked as though it had been branded with a running-iron; his mouth had been chewed and clawed until it was almost twice its original size, and there were only a few stumps of teeth in his rotted gums. He was almost wholly blind, but he could see enough to know what they saw, and he could hear. He was a monster; and a monster could not go back to school, he could not visit a sweetheart, he could never even as much as ride into town. He could only be kept out of sight, be hidden and given work to do. And so he was. And the other hunkys who knew the secret kept it with the Czernys. So the days, the weeks, the months passed for the boy, the monster that was Mike Czerny. Gradually he gained more freedom for himself. He could not leave the place, but he was not watched so closely. And sometimes he would slip away from his drudgery and lie concealed near the road, peering at the infrequent passers-by out of his almost-blind eyes. Waiting.…

  15

  From his seat in the smoker Alfred Courtland looked out at the browning landscape with none of the gladness which a man who is about to make his fortune should feel. In his grip of good English leather, which rested between his feet, there were two packets of bills amounting to a total of twenty-five thousand dollars; and that money he intended to keep entirely for his own. Barkley had had to give it to him without strings, and there was no legal measure he could take to recover it. There had been no reason, even, for him to leave town once it was in his hands. He wondered why he was bothering to go to Omaha at all. He wondered and he knew why. He knew why he felt depressed.

  Reaching into the breast pocket of his stylish but ancient suit, he drew out an envelope and took out the papers therein. One was a long document covering three pages, inscribed on both sides, and consisting of instructions as to the method and type of trades he was to make on the Omaha exchange. The other was a single sheet of the bank stationery, signed by Barkley and saying that the bearer was a man of repute who had recently been paid by him, Barkley, the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars in settlement of a debt of long standing.

  After a few moments of study, Courtland tore the instructions into fine pieces and pushed them through the slightly opened window. The second paper he put in his grip with the money.

  Smiling a little scornfully, Courtland gazed again at the landscape. It had been stupid of the banker to put himself so completely in his hands, and yet, since he wanted to gamble without involving his own name, there was no other way that it could be done. Well, it would break him, too, for it was his own money and not the bank’s. The bank kept very little cash on hand. It was unprofitable, and it did not need to. Then, through the years, a good portion of the community’s capital had concentrated in Barkley’s hands. It was his own private bank, virtually uncontrolled. He had lent other people’s money, taken the lion’s share of the profits, and secreted them for his own. And he had wound up in the end by taking the accumulation of years and turning them over to an English remittance man.

  Courtland estimated that the money just about represented the banker’s entire fortune. He was so positive of the quality of his own ideas, so sure that he was in the right always, that he would have held little back.

  Well, Courtland thought wryly, it would do Bark good to get out and work a while. Perhaps he himself could figure out a menial job of some kind for him—something, of course, where he would not come into contact with money. He would enjoy having him around, watching him try to struggle along on ten or twelve dollars a week. And, yes, he would figure out ways of keeping him on needles and pins. Frowning at him, reasonlessly, when he made some innocent remark. Making him wait, without fidgeting, while he, Courtland, decided which task he should tackle next and how he should tackle it.

  Yes, that would be all right. It would be almost payment enough for all that he had suffered during these past eight years. Perhaps, if Edie took over the hotel, she could figure out some good job for Bark. He was dull enough to make a good porter, and he was so damned stingy he could live on the scraps he picked up.

  As for Bella, it was time she began working professionally at the career she was cut out for. He knew pretty well what was up between her and Grant, and he knew the latter’s financial condition. It would be a shame for such a nice piece to go on working for nothing, even though she was not forced to make a living. Why…

  A sick expression suddenly crossed the bank clerk’s face, and he leaned forward and massaged his head in his hands. Arising, he washed his face at the porcelain sink and stood staring at his re
flection in the nickel-framed mirror.

  God! he thought, trying to see beneath the impassive mask. What has happened to me? Why I am getting as bad, I have got as bad, as they are! Bark has never been mean to me intentionally. He has looked upon me as a father looks upon a son. He has trusted me with his life’s savings and I am going to take them away from him—I am going to—but I don’t hate him and I hope he does not hate me. I don’t think I’m being shrewd, nor that he deserves to be trimmed—as they would think. I’m not proud of myself. God help me never to be proud of such things, as they are proud.…Bella, his daughter, I know nothing about except that I’m sure she is a lady. I would knock a man down who said otherwise of her, even though I knew…

  He was still staring at himself, his hands braced against the sink, when the news butcher brushed aside the curtains and obtruded his head.

  “Havin’ yourself a time there, skipper?”

  “Skipper?” Courtland turned and looked him up and down. “You were speaking to me?”

  “Well, now, no offense,” said the news butcher, considerably abashed by the crisp voice and steady eyes. “I just seen you leaning over the sink and I thought maybe you was sick.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain! I’m on my way!” He began a hasty withdrawal, backing out into the aisle with his great basket. But Courtland stopped him with a gesture.

  “Just a minute. I am a little upset. What have you got there to drink?”

  “I’ll show you! I’ll show you, General!” The salesman beamed. “You just sit down there and I’ll take care of you.”