Big Wheat Read Online Free PDF Page B

was never needed again. As far as Charley knew, the blade was still stuck in the tree trunk.
    “What a horse’s ass,” he said aloud. Then he laughed, out of pure joy at being able to say it. In the roar of the machines, nobody heard him. His body continued to pitch wheat while his mind floated. He pondered over what his mother had ever seen in that man. Had they once been a loving couple? It was hard to imagine.
    The popular story was that his mother, Hanna Clayton, had gone on a date with young Bob Krueger to the Mercer County Fair, one Saturday night in September. Knowing that when it came to demon rum, he could resist anything but temptation, she had taken a pint of whiskey along, hidden in her purse. As the night wore on, she freely plied him with the liquor. Late in the evening, when he was so drunk he couldn’t find his head with both hands, she pulled him up onto the stage of a carnival sideshow, where the barker offered a ten dollar gold piece to any couple who would get married as part of the show. It was a common stunt, and a guaranteed crowd pleaser. A minister, by prior arrangement, was recruited from the crowd, the notary public who traveled with the carnival produced a license, and after three or four prompts, Bob Krueger said, “I do.” And Hanna Clayton Krueger was a married woman with a mortgage-free quarter-section farm. The only problem was that her new husband never sobered up. And even that would not have been so much of a problem, but about twelve years later, he turned into a mean drunk. Charlie couldn’t remember if he had been a decent human being before that.
    The day wore on. At the morning coffee break, Charlie was too tired to eat, so he stretched out on a feed belt and grabbed a short nap. He had found, many times, that he didn’t have the endurance of the older men, but a short rest let him almost completely regain his energy. An old man, he knew, could work much, much longer, but when he finally got tired, there was no quick or easy recovery. He wondered if there was a crossover age, when he would have the best of both abilities. Or the worst. He was sure he would find out.
    Finally, after fourteen hours of gleaning the wheat berries, the threshing machine emptied its storage bin for the last time. The steam engineer blew a long blast on his whistle to signal the end of the day, and people all around began laying down their tools. Horses and mules still had to be watered and fed and put away, and the threshing machine made ready to travel, but that wasn’t Charlie’s problem. He pulled his filthy bandana down from his nose, stuck his gloves in his back pocket, and went back over to the pump where he had started the day. He bent down and ran water over his head and hands for a long time, then rinsed out his bandanas, blew his nose, and went to look for the farmer, to get paid.
    But instead of paying him, the fat, moonfaced farmer got a funny smirk on his face, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his new bib overalls, and stared off into space. Charlie knew that look. As poor as he was at reading people, he knew all the looks that led up to some kind of meanness. That was the look his father used to wear when he was thinking up some excuse to beat him or take something away from him.
    “I said, ‘sir, you owe me five-fifty.’ Now would be a good time to settle up, I think.”
    “How was that lunch, boy? That roast beef was straight from heaven, wasn’t it?”
    “The lunch was fine, but it doesn’t spend at the general store, sir.”
    “And that cherry pie? You have more than one piece of that pie? Somebody did, because we run all out of it.”
    “Are you going to pay me what I honestly earned, or not?”
    The farmer drew himself up to his full height and hooked his thumbs in the straps of his overalls, as if he were about to deliver a sermon. He jutted his several chins out aggressively and scowled.
    “What the hell are you accusing me of, boy? You better watch your tongue,