The Unplowed Sky Read online

  “Never saw you so shiny-bright, boss,” teased Shaft. “Got a purty widder-woman tucked away in town?”

  Even Garth’s ears turned red. “I’m taking Meg to the movie. Gave Brockett a dollar to borrow his flivver.” His eyes touched Hallie, then veered away. “Maybe you’d—”

  Jackie burst in at that moment and grabbed Hallie’s apron. “Hallie! Can we go to the movie? Can we? Rory asked us!”

  “Clever cuss!” Shaft muttered with a wink and grin.

  Hallie didn’t think it was so funny. How could she disappoint Jackie? But, for pity’s sake, why had Jackie hurtled in just when it seemed Garth was going to invite her? He said gruffly now, “If you and your brother would like to ride in the truck—”

  And crowd in by Meg, who would be sulky as an out-of-patience mule? Anyway, crowded into Jim’s flivver with half the crew and with Jackie along at the movie, there was no way even brash Rory could consider this a courting occasion.

  “Thanks,” she told Garth, “but we’d better ride with Jim.”

  “And Rory!” said that young man, entering. Like his brother, he wore khakis and fairly sparkled from his ablutions. He shot her a look of laughing triumph. “Hop into some clean clothes, Jack. Wash up good, and I’ll part your hair and lend you some of my Brilliantine.”

  Shaft wrinkled his nose. “That what it is? Thought a mouse had crawled into a corner and died.”

  Rory gave the cook’s shoulder a playful jab. “You’re just getting a whiff of yourself, you old polecat. When’s the last time you had a bath?”

  “Last time I fell in the creek.” Shaft turned to Garth. “Reckon I’ll stay here and enjoy my pipe and an early night, boss. Would you buy me a coupla bags of Bull Durham and a sack of Mail Pouch chewin’ terbaccer and charge it against my pay?”

  Garth frowned. “You starting to chew as well as smoke?”

  “Naw.” Shaft’s tone was virtuous. “Chewin’s a nasty habit. But nothin’ cleans out your insides like eatin’ half a sack of ole Mail Pouch once a month.”

  “You swallow that stuff?” Rory’s eyes widened. “I’d think it’d kill you.”

  “Ain’t done it yet.” Shaft gave them a benign smile. “Keeps the breath sweet, hair from turnin’ gray, cures the rheumatiz, and keeps me in a sweet and gentle mood no matter how aggravatin’ you boys are.” He gave a pull at Hallie’s apron that undid the strings. “I’ll finish up, girl. You get yourself ready. Jim’s slow-movin’ and soft-spoke, but when he climbs under that wheel, ever’body better be packed in solid and keep their heads down.”

  Hallie concealed clean underwear in her best cream-colored sprigged muslin, then recklessly added her silk stockings. No debate over shoes; she had only her best patent leather and her sturdy everyday ones. No time to use the curling iron. Anyway, she could scarcely heat it at the lamp and wield it in front of the men. Adding comb, hairbrush, towel, and washcloth to her things, she carried them to the rear of the shack, filled a washbasin, and did the best she could at getting fresh and presentable in the dark.

  It was interesting to listen to the men as they came in for their wages. Cotton and young Pat O’Malley drew all their money. “Still of a mind to quit, Pat?” asked Garth.

  “It just don’t make any manner of sense to lose a big customer like Mr. Raford.” Pat managed to sound belligerent and apologetic at the same time. “I want to work where I can make the money. It don’t look like that’ll be with you.”

  “Good luck,” Garth said.

  He counted out Pat’s share. Cotton must have been watching because he demanded, “How come I didn’t get the same as Pat?”

  “Because you borrowed for gloves, a hat, and tobacco.” Garth’s tone was even. “See here? It’s written down.”

  “Quite a bookkeeper, ain’t you?”

  “Do my best.”

  Cotton gave a disgusted grunt. “C’mon, Pat. Let’s have a smoke. Buford won’t let us light up in his car.”

  “Good for Buford,” Garth said. “Remember, boys—don’t toss away a stub till you can mash it to little pieces in your hand. This stubble would burn like crazy.” As the acrid smell of cheap tobacco prickled Hallie’s nose, the door opened and shut gently and Garth’s voice warmed. “What’ll you have, Rusty?”

  Hallie could almost see the husky freckled man squinting as he did some calculations in his head. “Reckon a dollar’ll cover tobacco and that banana split I been cravin’. Will you make my wife out a check for the rest, boss, so’s I can just stick it in this envelope and get it mailed?”

  “Your family in kind of a tight?”

  “Well, our baby’s had such bad earaches, he got mastoid and needed the doctor and lots of medicine. ’Course we run up a bill at the store durin’ the winter in spite of tradin’ in our butter and eggs. And we’re still payin’ on my daddy-in-law’s funeral and hospital bill.”

  “Would it help if you drew some wages in advance?”

  Rusty’s breath sucked in. “Garth, you can’t imagine how it’d ease my wife’s mind if we could pay everybody a good hunk of what we owe. If you’ll lend me a week’s pay, I’d be tickled to pay some interest.”

  “No use in that.” There was a pause while Garth must have made out a check and handed over a dollar. “You enjoy that ice cream, Rusty.”

  “It’ll taste a sight better now.” Rusty clumped across the floor, must have paused in the door and glanced back. “Garth, I sure am much obliged.”

  “Got to keep my best hands happy,” Garth said with a chuckle. He could be nice, Hallie thought. But not to her.

  She winced as she worked at a stubborn tangle. How would she look with bobbed hair? It certainly would be easier to take care of what with all the dust and chaff of threshing. She was afraid to lop it off herself, though, and no beauty parlors were open on Sunday, the threshers’ day off.

  Jim Wyatt drew a few dollars and said, “Not that I don’t like working for you, Garth, but I sure hope I’ll have enough saved by the end of this season to get my own outfit next year.”

  “I hope you do, too, Jim, though I’ll hate to lose a good man.”

  “Give me five dollars, Garth,” came Rich Mondell’s pleasant, educated voice. “I’m going to get my raven locks shorn, buy Harper’s and that new Time magazine if I can find them, have a chocolate soda, see the movie, and finish off with a strawberry soda.”

  “And a stomachache,” Garth predicted. “Now, Henry, what’ll you have?”

  Henry Lowen was the only hand other than Garth and Rich who didn’t either smoke, chew, or dip snuff, and Shaft had told her his religion forbade worldly amusements like movies. Back on the family farm in a Mennonite community, those strictures would be simple to abide by, but it must be hard for the serious, hardworking young man to go his lone way while his companions frolicked.

  “I would like,” he said in his careful English, for his family spoke German at home, “fifteen cents for licorice root and a tenth of my share to send home to our church.”

  “No ice cream for you, Henry?”

  “I’m saving. I—I”—his voice dropped.—“a young lady there is I want to marry.”

  “She’ll be lucky to get you. All right, Buford. What’s your pleasure?”

  Buford took ten dollars and didn’t share his evening’s plans. Baldy, too, drew all his pay and volunteered no information. The Fords were loading up when Hallie came around the shack. She still had some money, so she called to Garth that she wouldn’t take any wages. Cotton and Pat stripped their cigarettes ostentatiously and swaggered to Buford’s car. Pat stowed his cardboard suitcase on the floor so that Rich Mondell had to squeeze in.

  In Jim Wyatt’s flivver, the heftiest men on the crew, Rusty Wells and Henry, crammed the backseat. Rory helped Hallie climb into the front and settled an excited washed and combed Jackie on his scrunched-up knees.

  Just then, the Brockett Model T chugged into sight. “Well, look who’s driving!” breathed Rory. “I’m sure glad Sophie’s after my big brot
her and not me! That is one determined woman.”

  Garth had come outside as Meg appeared from behind the rear of the shack. What a shame! Her denim overalls and shirt were clean but she should have had a dress for this gala excursion, and there must be some way to improve on her cropped hair, taper it so that it followed the shape of her head and framed her face with its broad forehead and pointed chin. As if she guessed and resented Hallie’s dismay, Meg glared at her before turning the same scowl on Sophie.

  All pink ruffles and flounces, Sophie smiled at Garth. “Papa forgot that he’d promised to take me to the movie,” she bubbled, sliding over to give him the wheel. “I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came along.”

  “It’s your family’s car,” Garth said. “Let’s stop back at your house and see if Ernie doesn’t want to go.”

  “He—he doesn’t have any money.”

  “I’ll pay his way. Meg, you slide in the middle so I won’t be bumping into Miss Sophie when I move the clutch.”

  “Didn’t know Garth could think so fast,” Rory murmured as Garth turned the Brockett car around and chugged away, followed by Buford. “Putting Meg between them so Sophie can’t get her legs in the way of his hand, and picking up her kid brother. You bet Sophie’s gettin’ up steam. Garth’ll be lucky if her crown sheet don’t blow.”

  “She’s real pretty.” Henry’s tone was wistful.

  “Take another look at that jaw,” Rory said. He settled back and grinned at Jim. “To the town’s finest cinema palace, my good man. Say, there’s not much room up here, Hallie. Mind if I rest my arm along the back of the seat?”

  “Not at all. I’ll lean forward to give you all the space I can.” She did, and the men chortled at Rory, who joined in the laugh and withdrew his arm.

  Wonder how they made the lightning flash like that,” mused Jim. The usher had seated the threshers by scattered twos and threes in the crowded theater, but now they had collected at several marble-topped round tables at the rear of the drugstore near the soda fountain. Garth and Sophie had come in last, trailed by a pouting Meg and euphoric Ernie.

  “Wouldn’t it be something to hear the thunder?” Baldy Tennant asked. “Hear the dance music while them purty women prance around the Golden Calf and listen to Moses yellin’ at them backslidin’ Children of Israel?”

  “They’ll figger it out someday.” Rusty savored a banana split that had hot fudge cascading over three kinds of ice cream. “Just like they figgered out automobiles and steam engines and radios.”

  “No end to inventions,” Jim Wyatt agreed. “Some’s good, but there’s plenty we’d be better off without.”

  Cotton said derisively, “You want to go back to reapin’ with a scythe and threshin’ with a flail?”

  Jim sighed. “No, but I can’t help but wonder what it’s goin’ to be like when there’s hundreds of thousands more people, most of ’em with cars, roads crisscrossin’ the whole country, airplanes zoomin’ over it, and several times the hurry-flurry-scurry than we got now which is sure more’n I like.”

  The debate continued, but Hallie was straining her ears to pick up Sophie’s indignant voice. “—what’s more, I’m a lot better cook than Hallie Meredith!”

  “I believe in letting Shaft pick his help. Miss Meredith seems to suit him fine.”

  “And having that brat around a threshing outfit! If you ask me, it’s mighty dangerous!”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “If you think he’s really her brother—”

  A white-hot blaze exploded in Hallie’s brain. Was that what everybody thought, what everybody was always going to whisper? If she hadn’t been trapped against the wall with Rory on one side and Jackie on the other, she’d have grabbed Sophie and called her a liar. Hallie clenched her fists under the table ran through the alphabet backward till she was calmer.

  “Miss Sophie,” Garth cut in. “Jackie’s a dandy little boy. I don’t care if Hallie found him under a cucumber vine.”

  “But—”

  Garth stood up. “If your dad doesn’t like the way I thresh, I reckon he’ll say so. How I run my outfit is none of your business. Now I’ve heard what a tongue you’ve got, I wouldn’t hire you if you were the last cook on the whole damn plains. Finish your sundae, Meg. Let’s see if we can’t crowd in some way with the others.”

  “You’ll be sorry!” Sophie’s voice shrilled. The men broke off their arguing and stared as she sprang to her feet and hissed at Garth, “Quent Raford wants me to manage his hotel, so there won’t be any use your trying to hire me later!”

  “I hope you’ll like the job,” Garth said.

  The hushed crew watched as he strode up to pay at the cash register.

  Then Quentin Raford strolled in.

  VI

  Hallie’s heart stopped, then turned to a crushing weight that made it hard to breathe. Since joining the crew, she had been too busy to spend energy getting indignant about Raford’s outrageous offer and had almost succeeded in banishing him from her thoughts. Now here he was, and she felt as threatened as if a dangerous beast had stalked in.

  A trick of light made his eyes glow more yellow than green. Hallie fought to keep from shrinking visibly from their impact. He can’t do anything to you, she told herself. But he could cause Garth trouble. And that, she realized unwillingly, meant trouble for her, ridiculous as it was to care about a man who treated her as if she harbored some deadly infectious disease.

  It seemed a long time that Raford stared at her though it could have been only a few seconds. He smiled, then, gave her a slight nod, and swung back to Garth.

  Even on that hot, sultry night Raford wore a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, starched shirt, and tie. “Ain’t he the dude!” Rusty murmured. “Looks like a parson gettin’ set to do the honors at a banker’s funeral.”

  “More like a high-flyin’ gambler,” Jim Wyatt said. “Wonder what his game is.”

  Raford didn’t speak loudly, but his voice was pitched so deep that it carried to the hushed threshermen. “I hear you’re finished at Brockett’s, MacLeod.”

  “You heard right.”

  “Then you can start on my farms.”

  “George Halstead’s next.”

  “This is your last chance, MacLeod.”

  “What’s the matter? Couldn’t find another thresher?”

  “MacLeod, it doesn’t make any kind of sense to lose out on threshing my grain. I’ve got more than all the rest of the farmers on this run.”

  “I’ll thresh it when your turn comes.”

  Raford gave a metallic laugh. “What you need to get through your head is that my turn is first. Always.”

  “Not with me.”

  The men stared at each other for a heartbeat. Then Raford said meditatively, “This is about more than turns. Isn’t it, MacLeod?”

  “What it comes down to is you’re a suitcase farmer.”

  “What?”

  Even Hallie echoed Raford’s shock. Suitcase farmers bought or leased abandoned farms cheaply, came for a few days to plant wheat or had that done, and if the crop was worth harvesting, they came back for that. They didn’t live on the land or take care of it by letting it rest or by planting cover crops like clover and alfalfa to hold the soil and restore nutrients. When their ruthless pillaging had exhausted the earth, they left it naked and barren to blow away.

  “You don’t live out of a suitcase,” said Garth, “but that’s how you operate. You came in here for quick profits, bought up land for next to nothing from folks who’ve gone broke. You’ve plowed up land that should never be plowed, that should stay in grass. You’ll hope to make a killing as long as you can, and when bad years come, you’ll clear out and let the dust blow. Dust is all you’ll leave.”

  “You’re crazy! Farming is for profit, just like any business.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Garth hesitated. “It’s being careful with the land,” he said after he’d thought it out.
“Careful, so it will feed the next generation and the ones after that—and the birds and animals, too. No matter what folks invent or how smart they get, they have to eat. In the long run, except for what we get from the ocean and rivers, all our food comes from the earth.”

  “‘Mother Earth’!” Raford mocked.

  “You bet.”

  Raford turned away sharply. To Hallie’s consternation, he strode toward her. “Good evening, Miss Meredith.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Now that you’ve found out what it’s like to cook in that hot little shack all day I thought you might be more interested in that hotel job I offered you. It’s still open.”

  “What hotel job?” Sophie demanded, her eyes narrowing.

  Raford ignored her. “Well, Miss Meredith?”

  “No.”

  “You should think of your brother. The heat, that dangerous machinery—”

  Rory shoved back his chair and stood up. He was a hand taller than Raford, though not as broad. “Miss Meredith gave you an answer.”

  Raford gazed at the younger man and smiled. “Put a boy on an engine, and he thinks he’s a man.”

  “Let’s go outside and find out.”

  Raford shrugged, “I don’t tumble around in the dust.” His eyes rested again on Hallie. She felt her whole body tighten. “If you change your mind, Miss Meredith, I’ll find a place for you.”

  “How about me?” Sophie cried, catching his arm. “You said I could manage your hotel! You said—”

  “If you want the job, be there Monday morning for an interview.”

  “Interview?”

  “I don’t hire people without learning about their—abilities.”