Big Wheat (8 page)

Chapter 11

Sanctuary

The white bell tower of the First Unitarian Church loomed above the gently rolling prairie like a lighthouse in a golden sea. The Windmill Man had found it purely by providence, of course. He found everything by providence. His wanderings seemed random at times, but he had no doubt that they were all part of some great cosmic plan, even if he couldn’t always see it. So he was pleased but not surprised when the church turned out to have a library.

In addition to the predictable religious tracts, there were works by Thoreau, Longfellow, and Wordsworth, plus books on modern farming and home medicine and even part of a set of encyclopedias. But most importantly, there were newspapers. Neatly folded and stacked, there were at least two year’s worth of issues of the
Aberdeen Herald
and the
Huron Free Press
and even more copies of the
Minot Optic
, which somewhere in the middle of a stack changed its name to the
Minot Daily News
. Something from Rugby and maybe Devils Lake would have also been nice, but what was there was a treasure trove, anyway.

“I try to minister to the intellectual needs of our parishioners, as well as the spiritual,” said the minister. He had a round face with sagging bulldog jowls and hair just going from brown to gray, but he looked fit and trim for his years, and his black suit coat hung from his shoulders with no major bulges. The Windmill Man shook his hand.

“Father, you are a beacon of knowledge in a dark sea of ignorance.”

“We don’t use the term ‘father.’ Just call me Pastor Ned, please.”

“Well, Pastor Ned, I’m very impressed. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. For my research, you see.”

“Really?”

“Really. You might say it’s a sort of a quest. It’s hard to explain, exactly.” He felt no need to say any more about it. The minister, he was sure, would fill in the rest.

“Well, feel free to spend as much time with our modest collection as you need. You’ll stay to supper, of course?”

“If you’re sure it will be all right with Mrs. Ned.”

“She passed away three years ago, and our only daughter went to Minot to go to the Common School, in accounting. I live alone now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” His heart leapt. The minister lived alone. “Then, I would be honored to break bread with you.”

He had thought about killing the minister the moment he met him. That was normal. It was the first thing he considered about any new acquaintance. If the person was a man, he also thought about taking his identity. That was also normal, though it sometimes puzzled him. He seemed not to have a personality of his own, except when he was doing his holy work. Between the time he had killed his parents, at age sixteen, and the time he had started his holy work, almost fifteen years later, he couldn’t remember who he had been, at all. That entire period was almost a complete blank, including the two years in reform school. But now he had a whole collection of identities he had taken from others, and he carried them with him at all times and could don any of them instantly. They were the invisible counterparts of the physical trophies that he took from his subjects, and he prized them just as highly.

But the minister would live a little while longer, while his guest learned his full persona and finished his research. Providence would tell him when it was time. It always did.

***

It had begun in the early spring of 1914. He had gotten off the train at Enid, Oklahoma, literally in the shadow of the world’s tallest grain elevator. He had joined a crowd of other bindlestiffs, high class hobos who had bought seats on real passenger trains and rode to the start of the spring wheat harvest, along with steam engineers and separator men and here and there a salesman from Minneapolis Steel and Machinery. They came on the AT&SF or the Rock Island Line or the Soo, or any of a dozen lesser known railroads, and they came ready to go to work, eager to claim their share of the enormous wealth that was about to be made from Big Wheat.

Also arriving on the trains were custom threshing contractors and their equipment. They normally owned a steam traction engine and a threshing machine and sometimes a cook shack or a traveling bunkhouse, and they would organize and supervise the coming operation, bankroll the crew, and scout out the advance bookings, so machines and men never sat idle. They never actually got their hands dirty, though they could do any job on the threshing crew, including working somebody else’s horses. They had once done all such jobs, but now they were brokers and organizers, pure and simple, and proud of it. They traveled with a leather satchel, typically, and wore a three-piece suit. The satchel carried contracts, cash, and a large revolver. The vest for the suit would also hold at least one Derringer and probably a knife. And for reasons nobody ever figured out, they all seemed to wear bowler hats, even on the threshing field. By the time the mixed passenger and freight trains got to Enid, they had often already hired the full crew that would be with them for the rest of the summer.

Some workers who showed themselves to be prone to drinking or gambling or fighting during the train trip would be fired before the work of the year even began. Those who survived the scrutiny of the watchful broker would be given a ten dollar gold piece as earnest money, to seal their unwritten contracts. And any who thought to take the gold and then run off to join another crew would find themselves seriously regretting it. Machines weren’t the only things that could injure or maim.

The Windmill Man had taken the gold on his first trip from Topeka. And he had looked at the three-piece suit and the bowler hat of the man who gave it to him and thought that the wearer was a fool, because he didn’t make any effort to hide his power or his wealth. At that point in his career, the Windmill Man was fairly new at killing, and he hadn’t yet discovered his true vocation, but he was an old hand at power games. He wore a slouch hat and a razor on a shoestring around his neck and rough work clothes that nobody would envy or even notice. And he found some large or small way to manipulate every single person he met, including the threshing contractor.

Every year, the start of the harvest was the start of a new world and a new life. The hobos and entrepreneurs getting off the train in Enid could just as well have come from another continent or another planet, for all the traceable past any of them had. They told stories of being from Alaska or Montreal or Spain or the North Pole, and their credentials were their straight faces and stories that didn’t contradict themselves. They were from everywhere. They were from nowhere. They were chaff from last years harvest, and at the end of the season, they would become chaff again. The Windmill Man couldn’t remember a life before the life of the moving harvest. In any way that mattered, there hadn’t been one.

Early in that first season, he saw two bindlestiffs get into a fight over who got which job. One of them took a pitchfork and stabbed the other man several times in the belly, killing him. The killer ran away, and nobody chased him. That night, after the work was over, they buried the dead man in the farmer’s field, “just deep enough so the plows won’t disturb him.” Nobody knew if he had any family, and there were no words said over the grave. The next day, it rained all day. And though he couldn’t quite put it in words yet, the Windmill Man thought the whole incident, including the rain, was some kind of divine omen. He began to have intimations of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to achieve something great, something that would last forever. He began to feel his value.

He worked the entire harvest that year and killed and buried six people, including the contractor who had originally hired him. The following year, he had enough money to be able to follow the harvest without actually doing any of the work, and his body count went up considerably.

He couldn’t remember what he did in the winter.

***

The Windmill Man sat in the church reading room with his much-folded and wrinkled survey map of the Dakota territories and his pens and bottles of ink. As he reviewed the summer’s issues of the newspapers, he made notes on the map, alternately in red or black ink.

M
AN
F
ALLS
I
NTO
B
UNDLE
C
UTTER,
B
LEEDS
T
O
D
EATH
. That was around the town of Norwich. That was good. Death by bleeding was good for at least a fifty-mile circle.

E
STRANGED
H
USBAND
S
TRANGLES
W
IFE
. Not as good as bleeding, but still maybe valid, if the warring couple farmed the land. But no such luck. It turned out he was a shoe salesman and she was a seamstress, both from Minot. No good. The land around Minot still needed redeeming.

E
XPLODING
S
TEAM
E
NGINE
K
ILLS
T
HREE
. Now he was getting somewhere. He dipped his pen in the red ink and drew a large circle with the town of Sawyer at its center.

He worked through the afternoon and into the evening. But he found his usual concentration flagging. Again and again, his eyes would drift away from the newspaper article he was reading and over to his map, where he had drawn a red circle around Hazen. Things were just not right in Hazen. He had done some of his best work there, had found a perfect subject. But the more he thought about the young man with the shock of light hair, the more he found the memory intolerable. It had been a huge mistake, letting the man live. He was sure of it. It was nothing less than a blot on his map, a stain on the log of his vocation. It was an ulcer on his soul. The man simply had to die.

But the man had a pack and looked like he was dressed for travel. He probably wouldn’t still be in Mercer County any more than was the Windmill Man. So what was the best way to find him? Much as he hated it, he would have to wait for providence to show him. Meanwhile, there was other work to do. And more and more, the town of Minot seemed to beckon to him. Soon it would be time to kill the minister and go there.

Chapter 12

Ararat

After the incident at the creek, Jim Avery allowed Stringbean Moe to get his arm splinted and put in a sling by Jude the Mystic, but then he told him to clear out and not come back.

“But I can’t work!”

“You were never too partial to it in the first place, as I recall. Anyway, you should have thought of that before you attacked my people.”

“It was them attacked me! That little Limey bitch is crazy. I didn’t do nothing, I tell you.”

“Tell it to the marines, Stringbean. If I still see you here tomorrow, I’ll personally break your other arm for you.”

Moe spat, but not on Avery, kicked at the dirt, and sullenly walked away. Half under his breath, he said, “When I come back, somebody’s going to be damn sorry.”

“That’s the second bad idea you’ve had today. Keep walking.”

He did.

***

Despite Charlie’s initial failure as a bodyguard, Emily continued to let him stand watch while she took her morning bath. And if she was aware that he occasionally stole a guilty peek at her, she chose to ignore it. That and sharing breakfast soon turned into a daily ritual, though the conversation was often a bit on the edgy side. Charlie thought she felt safe with him because she knew he owed her for the incident with Stringbean. Whatever the reason, he was glad to have her to talk to.

One morning the breakfast was sausages, scrambled eggs, and cornbread with butter and honey. Charlie had never had real honey before, and he managed to make a sticky mess of his hands. Emily gave him her cornbread, saying that only in America did people think corn was fit for making bread.

“So why are you here, instead of someplace more civilized?”

“I don’t know that you’re ready for that story yet.” She got a faraway look for a moment, then visibly shook it off. “What about you? What brings you out to the wild and lawless plains?”

“I guess you’d say I’m a voluntary orphan.”

She gave him a raised eyebrow and cocked her head.

“My father is a mean drunk and a bully. I told him off, stabbed him in the hand with a carving knife, and left. I can’t ever go back there.” He wiped his hands on a wet napkin, but when he picked up his knife, his hand got sticky all over again. He decided the honey must be able to spread of its own volition.

“Well, don’t let it bother you too much. Sometimes an orphan is not the worst thing in the world to be. In fact, sometimes it’s the only thing.”

“Are you one?”

She nodded. “Also voluntary.” She got the faraway look again and sighed. “It was my father gave me the scar.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I was fourteen at the time. He said if I wouldn’t give him and a few of his friends my crumpet, he’d fix me so nobody else would ever want me, either.”

“Your crumpet? You can’t mean…”

She nodded.

“Oh, my dear, sweet God.”

“See, Charlie? I was right; you weren’t ready for that. You’re turning pale.”

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing to hear. I’m so sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because it’s a terrible thing to do to somebody, especially your own child. And you could have been really pretty, too.”

“Well, thank you so bloody much! You can tell that, can you, even looking at my bad side? I hope looking at me doesn’t hurt your eyes too much.”

“I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I mean, you’re something other than pretty, you’re, um… Oh, hell, I guess I don’t know what I mean. You’re a fine person, even if—”

“Right; even if I’m ugly as a festering sore. Well, look on the bright side. It’s kept me from a life of whoring, hasn’t it? Paying customers want tip top goods.”

“They do?”

“Well, you do, don’t you?”

“Me? No. I mean, sure, but I don’t go to, um…”

“God, you blush easily, too. Are you a virgin, Charlie?”

“Hell, no! I’ll have you know I’m going to be a father.”

“Really? When?”

“I’m not sure. Sometime in the spring, I think.”

“So are we finally getting the real reason you left home? Did you knock up your girl and then panic and run away? Is that the kind of man you are, Charlie? Did you break her heart?”

“To tell the truth, she broke mine.” He looked down at the table and spoke very quietly.

“Oh.” Her expression suddenly softened. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“She threw me over for a rich farmer.”

“Ah. She likes the rich ones, does she? Well, then you don’t want her. You only think you do.”

“That’s funny.”

“Oh, I’m a riot when I get started, besides being
almost
pretty. You should hear me sing ‘The Frozen Logger.’” The edge was back in her voice now, and she pushed on the table, as if she were about to leave.

“No, I meant it’s odd. You’re the second person who’s told me that.”

“Well, that’s probably because it’s obvious to everyone but you. They can tell that she’s shallow and selfish. Vain, too, I’d bet.”

“You don’t even know her.”

“Oh yes I do. But you don’t.” Her voice was much louder now, almost strident, and he wondered why.

“I think she just never realized how much I love her.”

“
Still
? Why? Just because she’s
pretty
?”

“Just listen, can’t you? When she figures it out, and when she sees what an idiot her new husband is, she’ll take the child and come looking for me.”

“If you believe that, you’re either round the bloody bend or just plain stupid.”

“Now you sound like my father. She’s—”

“She’s a velvet nut cracker, you idiot. She probably kicks dogs when nobody’s looking, too.” She was practically shouting now, and people in the tent turned to stare. “And I’ll tell you something else, mister wronged lover: the difference between you and me is that my scars show. But you let some mindless bit of fluff cut a huge piece out of your soul, and you’re still trying to stuff the same failed hopes back in the same spot. It won’t work.” She slammed her coffee cup down on the table and got up to leave.

“Are you done now?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I thank you for the corn bread, anyway.”

“Choke on it.”

As she turned away, he thought he could see tears running down her cheeks.

***

Besides Maggie Mae the mute and Emily of the secret last name, there was one other woman attached to the Ark, a tall, willowy thirtyish slip of a thing with a sharp nose and blond hair that she cut short. She didn’t look like a farmwoman, exactly, but she looked strong, if not too bright. She was called Nadine, and she seemed to do less of the work than the others and spent a lot of time going off into the bushes with the customers who were waiting for their repairs. Sometimes she went off with them in their trucks or cars. He didn’t know for a fact that she was whoring, and he didn’t figure it was any of his business anyway. But that was certainly what it looked like. He tried not to think about that, not caring much for the idea of living with a bunch of moral reprobates. And he couldn’t stand the idea that Emily might also be selling herself, even though she had just told him otherwise. If she traveled with one, mightn’t she also become one? It was all very troubling, and realizing that it was none of his business in the first place didn’t help in the slightest.

Maggie Mae seemed to be a bookkeeper of sorts, and the keeper of the communal money. And there was no doubt that the Ark, whatever else it might be, was a commune. Whoever went into some town for groceries or supplies, she always went along. Charlie had heard somewhere that people with disabilities often had heightened talents in other areas, sort of by way of God making up for his own mistakes. He wondered if she might be a secret financial genius.

Whether she was or not, it was obvious that she was Avery’s woman, completely. She lit up in his presence, and she hung on him shamelessly when he returned from some errand. The two of them lived together in one end of the biggest trailer. The other end of it was more a sort of bunkhouse, with a changing set of occupants. Jude the Mystic, the almost-vet, with wild hair and bottle-thick glasses slept there, as did Stump, the general roustabout whose name was also his description, and one or two other hangers on. Nadine seemed to sleep in a small tent, at least some of the time.

“I’m never sure how many I’ve got at any given time,” said Avery. “Some of them help with the heavy repairs and the tents and such and some are just hanging around until they find a slot on one of the regular threshing crews. If they’re not customers and they’re here at mealtime, we mostly feed them, is all I know. As long as they do some kind of useful work and don’t molest the women, I let them drift along. They’re not really part of the family, though.”

“The family?”

“That’s right. Make no mistake about it, the Ark is my family in every way that matters.”

Charlie wondered what he would have to do to be adopted by this strange family. But he kept his thoughts to himself, and Avery said no more about it.

“And food is cheap here in the farm country, of course. If you can’t get rich fixing steam engines, you can at least eat good.”

Hearing that, Charlie thought maybe he should have taken a couple of hams, as well as the side of bacon, from the farmer who tried to cheat him. He hadn’t realized he was letting the man off easy. But he had other things to think about.

***

The Ark had no shortage of work. Charlie found that he could weld reasonably well but not very fast and could use a lathe or a milling machine quite adequately. But he had an absolute gift for braising. He knew instinctively and unerringly when the metal was hot enough to draw the molten braise, and he never used too much or too little. It wasn’t teaching him anything about steam engines, of course, but it was good to feel the new competence, all the same.

The work went on through most days and often into the night. Brass valves or regulators on steam engines got smashed or jammed, drive belts had to be re-spliced because they no longer ran true and would wander off the pulley, reapers tried to mow rocks and ruined their cutting teeth or their drive gears, and separators broke their concaves or their drums when something other than wheat was thrown into the works. And there were also farmers or steam engineers who wanted to modify their machines, to make them better or more specialized or just more personal. They paid premium price when the customizing machinist made house calls.

Charlie made a lot of house calls. He loved not being tied full time to one machine or one operation and he loved the challenge of figuring out why a machine did not do what it was supposed to or did not do anything at all. He didn’t usually know what the man thought of him, but he was determined not to make Avery sorry he had taken him on. And at some level, he was starting to know his own worth. He mattered. Machines spoke to him. They told him all their problems, even the problems that had not emerged yet.

And like the preachers of the Wheat Belt evangelist circuit, he healed them by the laying on of hands.

His ongoing challenge was a cast iron bevel gear for a Pitman driver, from one of the many reapers that were everywhere on the prairie. It had several teeth broken off it.

“Defective casting,” Avery had said. “So tell me, mister apprentice, how would you go about fixing it?”

“Do we have the pieces of the teeth?”

“No, but if we did, we probably wouldn’t want to put them back on. If they broke once, they’re most likely faulty iron, and they’d break again.”

“Well, then, if we have the right setup, the best thing would be to make a mold, using this one for a pattern, and cast a whole new gear.”

“You’re right, that would be the best thing. The closest places you could get the right kind of crucible steel and a big enough retort to melt it in would be Kansas City or St. Paul. And if you were there, you could just go to a McCormick dealer and buy a new gear.”

“Oh.”

“So, what else can you think of?”

“Nothing. I can’t think of another thing to try.”

“Well, let me know when you figure it out.” He tossed the broken gear into a drawer on the workbench and turned to some other job. “There’s no customer waiting for that one. Take it as a training challenge. When you get it fixed, we’ll call you a real machinist.” The gear gleamed dully from its home in the drawer. Charlie had the distinct feeling that it was mocking him.

***

And always, his thoughts drifted back to the question of Emily, the who and the what of her, the mysterious foreign roots and the troubled past. And the short temper. Why was he always saying things that got her upset? He could read crooked farmers easily, but he surely couldn’t read her. In fact, he couldn’t even read his own feelings about her.

Like most young men, he found the whole business of sex and love highly confusing. “Nice” young women weren’t supposed to want sex unless they were in love. Young men, on the other hand, were expected to want sex almost constantly but not to take it too seriously. But in his own experience, it had been Mabel who had seduced him, not the other way around, and she was as “nice” and respectable as any woman he could imagine. And he had taken the experience very seriously indeed, while she seemed to be almost casual about it. Was there something wrong with both of them? And now, if he secretly lusted after Emily, did that mean he was being unfaithful to Mabel, even though she had said she didn’t love him?

He realized with some surprise that he did want Emily, scars and all. At some level, he even thought he wanted her
because
of her scars, though the idea seemed crazy. Sometimes he imagined he could taste the salt on her skin, could feel her soft touch and the press of her firm thighs and belly. Then he would snap out of his reverie and feel slightly ashamed of himself. But if she really was a whore, despite her denial, or maybe just a “loose woman,” whatever that meant, he did not want casual sex with her. He wanted something different, and he wasn’t even sure if he could give it a name.

“Why don’t you just get her name tattooed on your forehead,” said Avery, one day in the machine shop, “so there’s no chance she’ll miss what’s on your mind?”