Two in the Field Read Online Free PDF Page B

spirals, so I packed mud on my arms and face before curling up beneath the tree.
    When I awoke again the sun was high overhead. My face was puffed from bites—the mud hadn’t worked—and my throat was parched. I risked a few handfuls of water from the pond, then set out around it. I made it to a clump of scraggly cottonwoods on the opposite side. The ground was higher there and as far as I could see stretched a rolling prairie dotted with wildflowers. No trees. No houses. No people.
    Where was I?
When
was I?
    Ravenous, I gobbled down a handful of berries and some roots that tasted vaguely like onions. I felt better. The throbbing in my head was nearly gone, but there was no way I would venture out on the baking prairie. The mosquitoes weren’t so thick here. I settled down in the warm shade of the cottonwoods and lost myself in a meadowlark’s song that trilled above the insect drone.
    “Wha—” My shoulder was being shaken.
    A man’s creased, leathery face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. “I asked if ye’re sloughed down, feller.”
    “Sloughed …?”
    “Don’t see your rig.” He waved toward the pond. “If it’s down under, I got a length of wire rope.” The words came out in thick, yawly accents, barely understandable. And once I understood, it didn’t help much.
    “Rig?” I asked.
    He squatted beside me, ducked his head and spat a brown tobacco stream between his knees. “Ain’t likely you rode shank’s mare out here.”
    “I had a car.”
    He spat again and fixed his squinted eyes on me. “Nearest cars are ten miles off.”
    “A blue Olds Alero.” Was he really as clueless as he seemed? Had I made it back? “Rental. Sank it here last night in the storm. Thought I was a goner. Air bag must have kept me from getting banged up, but I don’t even remember it going off.”
    He nudged his hat back and scratched where the brim had been, the skin there pale above his weathered face.
    “I’ll let the insurance guys handle it,” I went on breezily, giving in to a welling joy within me.
    A boy’s freckled face materialized from behind the man’s shoulder, a cotton baseball cap snugged over his sandy hair. The cap had a button on top. It belonged to another era. He wasn’t wearing it backward. I laughed out loud and they both backed away warily.
    “Who’s he, Paw?” the boy said in twangy tones.
    The older man shrugged and spat, as if to signify it probably didn’t much matter. The boy promptly turned and loosed a brown stream of his own into the cattails.
    “Sam Fowler,” I said, climbing to my feet. I felt more or less normal again. We shook but Paw didn’t offer his name. His callused hand was as hard as a ridged shell. “Any chance of catching a ride?”
    “Where you headed?”
    Good question. “I guess it depends,” I said slowly, “on where we are.”
    “This here’s Cooley’s Slough,” Paw said.
    “Twelve mile out of Keokuk,” the boy prompted when I showed no recognition. “Iowa.” He said it I-o-way.
    “Are you going to Keokuk?”
    They nodded.
    “I’d appreciate a ride.”
    Paw checked out my mud-caked clothing and seemed to consider it. I took closer note of his homespun hickory shirt and shapeless pants. I was definitely in the deep boondocks. The boy was staring at my running shoe.
    “Ever seen one of these?”
    He shook his head.
    Please, don’t let them be Amish or something
.
    “You say your ‘car’ got sunk?” Paw said.
    “Right. During the thunderstorm. I was about to hit something.…” I paused. “That wasn’t you on the tractor, was it?”
    “Tractor?” His eyes narrowed. “One of them Yankee contraptions you pull across your skin for rheumatiz?”
    We stared at each other, foreheads furrowed.
    “You a tramp?” the boy demanded.
    “Nope.”
    “Aeronaut?” The out-of-context word alarmed me until he added, “Balloonist?”
    “No, why?”
    “Well, you said “air bag” and ‘car’—”
    “Twister got him, that’s the sum of it.”