Big Wheat (9 page)

“Who?”

“‘Who?’ he says. Mata Hari, that’s who.”

“Wasn’t she some kind of spy?”

“She was a spy,” he said, nodding. “She was also supposed to be one of the most desirable women who ever lived. You probably wouldn’t like her as much as Emily, though.”

“Then why mention her in the first place?”

“Fix that goddamn bevel gear, will you?”

“Listen, Jim, I have to ask you something. Is Emily, um, I mean…?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I did.”

“Then believe what she told you. You should let people be who they say they can be.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Sure I am. I let you, didn’t I?”

“Me? It’s not like I lied to you, you know.”

“You would have. You just didn’t need to.”

He had nothing to say to that. To get the life he had now, he would have been willing to lie, at that. But if that should tell him how to feel about Emily or how to treat her, it did not.

Chapter 13

The Road to Minot

The next day, the café-tent smelled of bacon grease, toast, onions, and coffee. The first nip of real autumn was in the air. Plates of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes steamed on the tables, and cups of coffee cooled too fast. Charlie and Emily had tacitly agreed to avoid topics like scars, sex, and romance, and they were having a cordial if cautious conversation.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters back home, Charlie Bacon?”

“I have a sister, Ruthie, who’s still there. I worry about her sometimes. And I had an older brother, Rob, but he died in France, in the World War.”

“What on earth was he doing over there? I thought farmers were exempt from the draft.”

“They were. But he was dead set on going. He volunteered, and nobody could talk him out of it.”

“Ah.”

“Ah again? What does that mean?”

“Oh, Charlie, you really can’t read people at all, can you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Think about it. Did you leave home because you wanted to go off and kill Germans or contract some horrible disease from a French prostitute?”

“Why are you always talking about prostitutes?”

“Did you, or not?”

“Of course not. I already told you—”

“Then why do you think he did?” She held up a palm in a gesture that said, “Is this obvious, or what?”

“My god, do you seriously mean…?”

“Pull it out, Charlie. Reach deep.”

“You mean he joined the Army just to get away from my father?”

“More, I expect.”

“More?” He had no idea what she was fishing for.

“I’m thinking he also left so you could inherit the farm. Or maybe so your sister could.”

“But surely he wanted it?”

“No, he didn’t. Come on now, you’re almost there.”

“He didn’t want it because my father wanted him to have it?” And he nodded solemnly, as the truth of it began to wash over him.

“Hey, daybreak, after all!”

“And he thought I should feel the same way about it, didn’t he?” Suddenly his dream made perfect sense. His brother wasn’t beckoning to Charlie to come and join the war, he was just telling him to get out of where they had both grown up, no matter what it took. And he had done that, finally. He believed his brother would have approved. But he had also left his sister and mother defenseless.

“See? That wasn’t so far to go, after all, was it?”

“For me, it was. You’re an awfully smart woman, Emily. And you’re right; I really can’t read people at all.” He got up from the table, leaving his breakfast unfinished.

“Where are you going? You’re not mad, are you?”

“No. I have to go find Jim and tell him I need to leave for a few days.”

“
Now
?”

He nodded. “I should have done it sooner, but I forgot for a while. I have to see if there’s a letter waiting for me in Minot.” Silently, he prayed that there was not.

“From your precious twit of a girlfriend? Trust me; there isn’t.”

“No, from my sister.”

“Oh, really? I think I’d like to see that.”

“Okay.”

She got up from the table with him. “I’ll pack you some food to take. Ask Avery if you can borrow the Indian motorcycle. It’ll be faster, and he’ll be wanting you back right away.”

“I’ve never driven a bike.”

“Can you ride a horse?”

“Sure. Everybody who grew up on a farm can ride a horse.”

“Well, a bike is easier. It doesn’t care which way you point it.”

“Unlike some people.”

“Unlike a lot of people. You better not be lying to me about where you’re going, though, Charlie, or you’ll find out where the saying, ‘Hell hath no fury’ comes from.”

“Excuse me? Do I owe you something?”

“Apparently not.”

***

Avery showed him how to work the controls on the Indian motorcycle, where to put the gas and oil, how to set the kickstand, and how to fix it if it threw a chain or a tire.

“Retard the spark at least three degrees to start it. Kick it over slow once or twice, with the ignition off, and listen to the tailpipe. When you can hear that you’re in an exhaust stroke, fire it up for real. If you don’t wait for that, it can backfire and break your leg.”

“Emily was right; it’s not like a horse. It’s like a mule.”

“It’s just as temperamental, anyway. This gizmo here,” he pointed to a handle near the front of the tank, “is the manual oil pump. Give it a shot every now and then.”

“Every now and then?”

“If you’re blowing blue smoke out the pipe, you’re doing it too often. That doesn’t hurt anything; it just uses a lot of oil. If the motor starts to sound like somebody is shaking a tin can with rocks in it, you aren’t doing it often enough. Do that long enough, and you’ll burn up the bearings. You’ll get a feel for it quick enough.

“This is Indian’s Powerplus V-twin model. Sixty-one cubic inches. She’s five years old now, but she’ll still do an honest sixty miles an hour on a hard road. Don’t try it in soft dirt, though, or she’ll get real unforgiving, real fast. It’s a good idea to take it out in some grassy field or soft sand and deliberately dump it at low speed a couple of times, just to teach yourself what it feels like when you’re on the verge of losing control. You can get a hell of a lot of speed out of this baby if you learn how to keep it just below that point. You want a demonstration?”

“Thanks Jim, but I think I can handle it.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? You always did prefer to learn by doing, didn’t you?”

“Seems to be the only way I know, yes.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what it is you have to do in Minot?”

“Not really.”

“Fine, then. Just remember how to find your way back.”

“Thank you for saying that. I will.”

“There’s a snap-brim hat and a pair of goggles in the saddle bag. You’ll want to wear them. You’ll get bugs in your teeth anyway, but at least you won’t go blind. Wear the hat backwards, like Barney Oldfield, or it’ll blow off.”

He put on hat and goggles, kicked the starter pedal five or six times, and drove off the stand. As Avery stood and watched him fade into the distance, Stump came up beside him and watched, as well.

“You figure he’ll come back, or just take the bike and keep on going?”

“He’s one of us now. He’ll be back.”

***

Some forty miles to the north and west, Amos Hollander read the telegram from his deputy, back in Beulah.

He was impressed. All those years, he had seriously believed Tom was a hopeless idiot. He obviously still hadn’t grasped the art of composing messages for a sender who charged by the letter, but he had done a good enough job of investigating that Hollander forgave him that minor shortcoming. He composed a reply on a Western Union form and gave it to the telegraph operator:
GOOD WORK DON’T STOP.

“But that doesn’t make sense, sir. See, the way it works is—”

“Your trouble, boy, is that you have no sense of humor.”

“No, sir. But still—”

“Just send it.” He walked out of the office humming a little tune.

***

Charlie got the hang of riding easily enough. As Avery had suggested, he took the Indian out in an unfenced pasture and deliberately skidded it out a few times. He also taught himself to do a crude power slide, which he had read about in a
Popular Mechanics
but had never seen. He found that the Indian had an amazing amount of accelerating power, as long as he paid attention to his spark setting. But on the rough and rutted country roads, it still took him over four hours to get to Highway 83, a raised, Macadamized highway that ran straight into the heart of Minot. Darkness was falling before he had the city in sight, and he went off on a side road and made camp for the night at the edge of a cornfield. He picked the ears off three cornstalks and laid them in a neat pile for the unknown farmer to find. Then he made a campfire with the dried stalks and leaves. It wasn’t as good as the wood in the Turtle Mountains, but it was enough to heat a can of beans and roast a coarse sausage link. He pitched his tent and went to bed. He slept fitfully, dreaming of riding the Indian at breakneck speed, pursued by a strange, black, swirling cloud.

Chapter 14

Mail

A sign at the outskirts of Minot proclaimed that it now boasted a population of over nine thousand souls, making it the biggest city Charlie had ever seen. As he got near the center of town, he saw buildings of four and even five stories, and he felt that he was riding through a man made canyon. He found the effect strangely exhilarating. Downtown, he found a Red Crown service station on a corner next to a Ford dealership, and he filled up the gas and oil tanks on the Indian and asked directions to the main post office.

“Ain’t got but one’” said the attendant, and he directed him down a wide street called Central Avenue. It paralleled a set of several railroad tracks that neatly divided the city into a north and south side, and it was easy to see that the north side was the “wrong side of the tracks.” Crooked, often unpaved streets were lined with saloons, gambling halls, and seedy-looking two-story hotels. Behind them were as many tarpaper shacks as real houses, and the people on the streets looked dirty and tough. The south side of Central Avenue could have been a different country. Streets were paved with granite cobblestones, buildings were stately and large, and both the place and the people looked prosperous and respectable. Charlie went five more blocks west, turned left, and crossed Main Street. Two blocks later, he was at the building he sought.

The post office was a large, important-looking building of smooth gray stone, in the Federal style, with fluted columns on the façade and a grand staircase up to the main entry, which was half a level above the street. There was a real concrete sidewalk leading to it and real curbstones along the street, something Charlie had never seen in Hazen or even Beulah. He nosed the bike into the curb, then turned it around, facing out, and put it up on the kickstand. He pulled his goggles down around his neck but left the hat where it was.

Parked next to the bike was a Model T pickup, which caught his eye because it was painted brown. He had never seen a Model T painted anything but black before. Henry Ford himself had supposedly once said, “People can have them any color they want, as long as it’s black.” When he looked closer, he saw a gold star painted on the door, and the title M
ERCER
C
OUNTY
S
HERIFF
.

He had never met the sheriff back home, but he was intrigued that someone else had come all the way from there to the big city of Minot. If the man was inside, he thought he would introduce himself and see if there was any news from Hazen.

Inside, the building looked like a big bank, except that half of the back wall was covered entirely with locked brass letterboxes with tiny glass windows in them. The other half had a high marble counter with tellers’ windows, each with its own polished brass security grille. At the one farthest from the entry, a square, solidly built man with a tan uniform and a pistol in a holster was busy chatting up a pretty redheaded teller with thick glasses. If that was the Mercer Sheriff, Charlie guessed he didn’t want to be bothered just then.

Opposite the tellers, along the wall with the main entry, were raised writing stands. At one of them, a boy of about ten was carefully placing a stamp on a big brown envelope. On the wall behind him, a big cork bulletin board displayed various postal regulations and public service announcements. It also displayed the flier with Charlie’s picture and the bold headline H
AVE
Y
OU
S
EEN
T
HIS
M
AN?

His jaw dropped. As he got closer and could read the finer print, it dropped farther. He was a wanted man! At a quick scan of the text, though, he couldn’t quite figure out for what. He turned his back to the lawman and the teller in the far corner and leaned over to talk quietly to the boy with the envelope.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hey, yourself, mister. I don’t talk to strangers.”

“Sure you do. There’s four bits in it for you.”

“I don—for true?”

“Cross my heart.” Which he did.

“Okay, maybe. Who do I got to kill?”

“Nobody. Go over to the window that says general delivery and ask—”

“Which one is that?”

“Not the closest one, but the one right after it, okay? Go over there and ask the teller if there’s a letter for Charlie Krueger. Can you remember that?”

“Sure. I’m a smart kid.”

“Say it.”

“A letter for Charlie Krueger.”

“Okay. You are a smart kid. If the teller asks you to prove it’s for you, say you don’t have anything on paper, but you know the return address on the letter. It’s Ruth Krueger, Rural Route 16, Hazen.”

“That’s a lot of stuff to remember. How come you don’t just get it yourself?”

“For fifty cents, what do you care? Think of Ruth in the Bible.”

“We don’t do much Bible in our house. What’s a turn, um, dress?”

“Return address. Like you’ve got on that envelope of yours, in the left corner, see?”

“Oh, the send-it-back.”

“If that’s what you can remember, fine. So you’ve got three things to remember: You’re Charlie Krueger, the letter will be from Ruth, and she’s at Rural Route 16 in Hazen. Say it back to me.”

He made the boy repeat it three times and them gave him a quarter.

“When you get the letter, go straight outside with it. I’ll be sitting on a motorcycle out front, and I’ll give you the other quarter.”

“Wow, a real motorcycle? Can I have a ride?”

“Sure.”

“What if there isn’t any letter?’

“You still get the two bits, but no ride.”

“Okay, here I go!”

Charlie stole a quick glance back to the far teller’s window and saw that the law was still busy dallying. The teller was now idly twisting a lock of her hair around an index finger and smiling as she batted her eyelashes. As quietly as he could, he pulled the flier off the bulletin board and headed for the side exit. He forced himself to walk normally, but he held his breath. The kid was already at the general delivery window, and he wasn’t pointing back at Charlie.

“Sir?”

The voice came from behind him, and it sounded like an older woman than the one the sheriff was flirting with. He ignored it and kept walking.

“Sir? You can’t take things from the bulletin board, sir.”

He kept walking.

“You just stop right there, sir!”

He did not. As soon as the exit door closed behind him, he stuck the flier in his back pocket and ran as fast as he could to the bike. He kicked the engine into life, put his goggles back over his eyes and held his breath again. Nobody was following him yet. On a sudden inspiration, he left the bike up on its stand, motor idling with its signature pop-pop sound, and ran over to the official Mercer County pickup. He lifted the hood on the driver’s side and yanked the main ignition wire off the magneto, stuffing it in a pocket. He closed the hood again, went back to the bike, and rolled it off the stand, ready to go. Then he forced himself to wait.

After an eternity of white knuckles on the handlebars, he saw the boy come out the main door. He squinted in the bright sunlight for another eternity, then finally spotted Charlie and came trotting over to him. He had a white envelope in his hand.

“Four bits, mister!”

“You already got two,” said Charlie. He handed him another quarter and took the envelope.

“And a ride! You said!”

“A promise is a promise. Hop on, but be quick about it.”

The boy eagerly jumped up on the passenger seat, Charlie gunned the motor, and they were off. As they cleared the parking lane, the door of the post office flew open and the lawman came running out, gun drawn.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted, taking a two-handed marksman’s stance.

“Will he really?” said the kid.

“Beats me,” said Charlie, and he opened the throttle as far as it would go. Almost immediately, he heard six gunshots behind him. Two of them ricocheted off cobblestones ahead of them. He had no idea where the rest of them went. He kept the throttle open. But there were no more shots and nobody was following him. Half a mile later, he slowed to a more reasonable in-town speed and started obeying traffic signs again.

“So, where do you want to go, kid?”

“Um. I think this will do fine right here, mister, if it’s all the same to you.”

He jumped off the bike without waiting for it to stop. Charlie hit the brakes and looked back. When he could see that the kid was getting up, apparently unharmed, he kept going. He didn’t stop until he was five miles out of town. He took a gravel side road until he was out of sight of the Macadamized highway, parked in a little grove of poplars around a windmill, and allowed himself to breathe normally again.

Then he read the letter from his sister.

He read the letter three times, feeling waves of sorrow, relief, fear, and shock wash over him. The only easy item to take in was about his father. He felt nothing at all about his father’s death, and unlike his sister, he did not feel ashamed of that fact. He had heard it said that a boy never really comes into his manhood until his father dies. If that was true, he should be feeling liberated and empowered, but he didn’t even feel that. He didn’t feel anything.
Maybe that’s because I never really had a father in the first place
, he thought.

His beloved Mabel, even if she wasn’t his anymore, was a different matter. He had a lot of feelings about her death, most of them very confused.
I’ve lost her twice now
, he thought,
and this time, it’s permanent
. Who would do such a thing? Killing a beautiful young woman who was also pregnant was beyond evil. It was unthinkable. It was a huge tragedy and a personal hurt, and it made him angry and sad at the same time. But at some level, he also began to think that it meant the end, finally, of an entire chapter of his life. There would be no more waiting for her to have a change of heart, no more agonizing over what he ought to do differently. The disaster of his first love affair was over, through no fault of his. Did he dare call that a relief?

And he was wanted by the law. Oh my, oh my, oh my.

He kicked over the motor on the Indian and headed back south and east, toward the Ark. He kept to the gravel roads and country lanes, avoiding all other traffic. As he rode, he thought about the possibly endless trip ahead of him. There was not only no reason to go back to the farm near Hazen now, there was also no possibility that he could, ever. And if he told Jim Avery the truth, he probably couldn’t stay at his newfound second home, either. After he returned the borrowed Indian, he would surely be told to leave. And what the hell did he know about being a fugitive? He had only just learned how to be a bindlestiff. And as footloose as that role was, somehow the law had found him anyway.

He didn’t know what to do about any of it. But he just bet he knew someone who would. If his choices were bitter, she wouldn’t sugarcoat them, but she would know what to do. He decided not to stop for the dark.