Big Wheat Read Online Free PDF

into the dim predawn light. The sky was mercilessly clear and there was no wind. He walked over to the well pump and filled his canteen, plus a two-quart Mason jar the farmer’s wife had loaned him, with cool water. He made sure the jar had a tight-fitting lid, to keep out the dust. Then he put on three bandanas, one on his head, one rolled tightly under the collar of his shirt, and one tied more loosely around his neck, from where it could be pulled up to cover his nose and mouth. He buttoned all the buttons on his chambray shirt and kept the sleeves rolled down, protecting as much of his flesh as possible from the irritating chaff and dust. It would be hot, but he would be working in the dirtiest area of the whole site, and he knew from hard experience that nobody but a complete fool took his shirt off there.
    Finally, he put on a pair of soft leather gloves. That was a tradeoff. His grip on the pitchfork wouldn’t be as good as with bare hands, so his arm muscles were more likely to cramp up, but he would also be less prone to single or multi-layer blisters. He had worked with blisters so deep they bled, both on his hands and on his feet, and he never wanted to do it again.
    He walked over to the apron of the threshing machine, passing another stiff, who looked up at the sky and said, “She’s going to be a bitch.” There was nothing to be said to that.
    As the sun was still barely edging above the horizon, the steam engineer set the big belt in motion, and the work of the day began.
    The fields in that county were uneven and rocky, so the sheaf-binding attachments on the McCormick reapers didn’t work reliably. Instead, the farmers used the “headering” method. Huge wagons with high frames on one side only were heaped as high as possible with the new mown wheat, straight from the reaper. When the threshing machine arrived, two men on each wagon pitched the load into a pile next to it, called a header. The spike pitcher, Charlie, would fork it up from there and throw it into the feed belts. He made it a point of pride never to let the belts get empty.
    After half an hour, his shirt was plastered to his back, and his own sweat would have poured in his eyes and blinded him, but for the bandana on his head. But then he slipped into the peculiar mental and physical state that he expected and welcomed but could not have easily described. Sometimes he thought of it simply as “getting oiled up.” It was a form of intense concentration and indifference to discomfort. He saw the piles of wheat, and his hands and arms found exactly the best way to pick them up and move them, but nothing passed through his conscious mind at all. Everything was reflex and instinct, blind speed and easy power. He became a machine, an automated spike pitcher that never tired or slowed down. Now and then he would pause to pour some water on the bandana around his neck and to take a carefully measured drink from his canteen, but most of the time, he was locked in an unbroken rhythm. His mind, not being needed for the task at hand, drifted.
    He thought about that first, endless field that he had scythed. The handle of the scythe was cleverly curved so the blade balanced from side to side. But it was still very heavy for his young muscles to hold up. So after the first day, he thought he would try putting a counterbalance on the end of the handle away from the blade. He rummaged around in his father’s tool shed and found a big monkey wrench that seemed about the right weight, and he fastened it to the scythe handle with wrappings of heavy twine.
    It did exactly what he wanted it to. He finished mowing the rest of the field with far less effort than the first half. But when his father saw what he had done, he accused him of stealing tools he didn’t need. He broke the scythe handle, saying it was ruined, stuck the blade in a tree trunk, and beat Charlie within an inch of his life. The following year, he bought a McCormick reaper, so a scythe