The Bones of Plenty (66 page)

“Well, I’ve done some figuring,” said George, “and I think we’re just going to have to work out something different for this year.”

He plunged in before Vick could stop him. “I’ve got some extra expenses coming up—doctor bills and the like—and I’ve got to be able to count on at least three hundred dollars clear after the crop is in next fall. I just can’t get through the winter and get the crop in a year from now without that much. So, I propose that for this one year we work out some sort of flexible deal that will get me through till next spring.”

Vick said nothing at all; he just sat and looked sympathetic. He said nothing about what he owed George Custer, morally if not legally, for taking over that farm ten years ago and making it worth twice what it was worth when he moved on to it. Worth twice as much, anyway, if the bottom hadn’t fallen out of farm real estate. Worth twice as much, surely, if it had a good dependable well.

“And there’s another thing, too,” George said. “The well might give out on me this summer. I don’t think we’d have too much trouble finding water on the place. I know
one
spot where there
used to
be a well—I damn near lost a good mare in it! We could try around there again. But I don’t have the cash to dig a well. That’s one of the things I think
you
ought to be responsible for anyway. I want some assurance from you that you’ll dig a well if I need one.”

“Just a minute, Custer. I’m not responsible for
any well.
Your water is
your
problem.
I
lease you the
land
and
I
pay the
taxes
on it.”

George hung on to himself. He
had
to hang on. “Look, Mr. Vick. None of these troubles may come up. I may not need a well; the doctor might decide the kid’s tonsils can wait; the dentist might decide her teeth can wait; there’s still time to get some moisture before summer comes; the grasshoppers and smut might not be so bad this year—the only thing I’m getting at is that I have to know there’ll be some place I can lay my hands on a reasonable loan if I have to
get
a loan at all. I figured we could write up some kind of terms this spring that would get me through this year, and if that means you take less than your usual share this fall, we can make it up when things get better.”

“What makes you think things are going to get better?” Vick asked.

“Why … they’ve just got to, that’s all.”

“Maybe they’ll get worse.”

“How could they? It just isn’t in the cards. Sooner or later we’ve got to get some rain again.”

“So we get rain. So the crops get better and prices go way down again. Looks to me like you’re going to make about the same every year, whether the crops are good or bad. Good crops, no price. Bad crops, fair price. Either way, you’ve made about the same for the last few years, haven’t you, Custer?” The way he said “Custer” made it sound as though he thought another farmer could have done better on that farm.

Still George hung on. He mustn’t lose his temper again, the way he had before. This was not the time to start the big fight. He’d only end up in jail, along with the other farmers here and there around the country who’d been walking into city men’s offices and blowing heads off landlords and bankers.

“Look at the prices we got before the war,” George said. “The parity years, when a man could buy a pair of overalls for a bushel of wheat. When those times come back again, we’ll be on our feet in a year or so.”

“Custer, you know as well as I do that those ‘parity years’ are nothing but politicians’ ballyhoo.
Those
years are
never
coming back for the farmer. They didn’t have
unions
back in those days, for
one
thing. The people that worked in the mills and made the denim for your overalls—why, they got paid the price of two or three bushels of wheat for working a seventy-hour week. I
know
something about this kind of stuff. This is my
business.
Those strikers are fighting this out right now and they’re going to
win,
because
Roosevelt
is on their side. And you’re not ever going to buy a pair of overalls with a bushel of wheat again! And a lot of other things have changed, too. But there’s
one
thing that’s been the same for a long time. I was born in eighteen seventy-seven, and ever since I can remember, every so often there’d be talk about a wheat surplus.

“Back around the time
you
were born, Custer, I remember a year when they couldn’t move it out of Kansas fast enough. They had a bumper crop that filled all the elevators and all the railroad cars, and finally they had to just dump it in piles alongside the tracks.
You
want me to
hope
the parity years are going to come back—the way
you
hope they will. A man doesn’t do
business
on hope. There’s no reason to expect wheat to be a bonanza kind of deal again. There’s never going to be the kind of export market again that we had before the war. I have to look at things the way they
are.”

“All right,” George said, “Look at things the way they
are.
If I can’t count on three hundred dollars clear from this crop, I just can’t make it, that’s all.”

“Go on relief.”

“There are a lot of things I’ll do before I’ll go on relief!”

“Suit yourself. I can’t guarantee you any such thing as three hundred dollars cash. That’s no way to do business. Put up or get out, that’s all. I can’t afford to carry you without getting a decent share of the crop money.”

“Carry
me! You paid twenty-seven cents an acre taxes on that land last year. All right, I’ll pay that big forty-three-dollar tax bill, how’s that? It won’t cost you a cent to own that land next year.”

“What do you mean, it won’t cost me to own that land? I have to have a return on my investment. That’s the only way to do business!”

“What kind of a return do you think I’m getting on
my
investment, Mr. Vick? On
my sweat?
I’ve got to get a return on
my
investment, too!”

“I can find people to lease that farm on my terms.”

“Yeah, and whoever you find might just put it right in the hole for you the first year they’re there, too! What if the well goes dry this summer?”

“My terms don’t include well-digging. Maybe I’ll lease it to somebody that won’t even live there. Then they won’t need a well at all.”

“Look, Mr. Vick, you can certainly afford to risk a return on your investment for
one
year, after the returns you’ve been getting.”

“How do
I
know it’ll be for one year? How do
I
know you won’t be back here begging for the same deal next year?”

“Mr. Vick, I did not come here to beg! I’m here to offer you a deal that you ought to be able to see is to your advantage. If
I
don’t farm it,
you
won’t make anything at
all
from it this year.”

“I don’t see that you have a
thing
to offer me, Mr. Custer, besides signing a lease on our usual terms.”

George managed to remind himself once again that the stakes were higher than they had ever been before. “Mr. Vick, I’ve put enough improvements on that farm in the last ten years to pay you two or three years’ rent, and you know it!”

“That’s
your
business, Custer. I never told you to do them, did I?”

“But the place was unlivable without them! I couldn’t keep stock in a barn like that! It could have collapsed on them in a high wind.
You
know that!”

Vick shrugged again. “
You
knew it too, when you rented it. So you fixed up the place because you thought you’d be able to buy it from me. Your option is still good.”

“But it’s worth so much more now than it was!”

“All the more reason it seems to me you’d want to hang on to your lease, Mr. Custer.”

“All the more reason it seems to
me,
Mr. Vick, that I ought to
wring your neck!
Right now!”

“Sit down, Custer! Don’t make a fool of yourself again!”

“What if I just sit there on your half section and don’t pay you a god-damned thing next fall? The Supreme Court says Langer’s moratorium is legal, you know. No forced chattel sale to collect your god-damned rent if I don’t want to pay it!”

Vick laughed. “Langer’s got other things to worry about, I’d say! I reckon he’s a little too busy with the Federal grand jury to worry about
you,
wouldn’t you say? Besides, there are some other people a lot closer to home to worry about
me!
Dick Press would just love to have a little sale over at your place. He’d just
love
it!”

“
You
stinking storekeeper! You think you can always get a crooked potbellied sheriff to do your dirty work for you!
You
can’t bluff
me
with that big bag of wind!”

“Well, wouldn’t he just love a sale at your place?” Vick held up his lease. “Sit
down,
Custer! You’re making a
fool
of yourself! You
know
you’re going to wind up signing this paper here, because you always do, don’t you? There’s no place else for you to go, is there? This is no way to do business. You’re making it tough for yourself.”

“There are
lots
of other places for me to go, Mr. Vick. In fact, I’d just as soon go to
Hell,
so long as I took
you
there with me!”

“Oh, cut it out, Custer! I’m not a
bit
worried by
you!
You’re not crazy enough to lift a finger to me, and I
know
it.
I
know you walked out of Press’s office just like a little red-haired lamb. And that’s the way you’re going to walk out of
this
office, too. You’re going to sign this lease or I’ll come up there on the first of June and throw you off the property. And you better sign it quick, too, because I’m a busy man and I’m losing my patience.”

He was holding the paper up to George. “There’s no place else for you to go, is there, Custer?”

George’s fingertips began to act without any orders from him. They tightened on the sheets of stiff paper he had accepted from the hands of his landlord and shredded them with rending salvos that reverberated over the clackings of the little cash carriers coming home to Mr. Vick….

The clacking was still inside his head—the little cash carriers were still shuttling back and forth in there, always thumping out the same message from a spot above his right eyebrow. He reached up and felt a great knot hardening on his forehead. He must have finally forgotten to duck when he went out that little low door. It must have almost knocked him out because here he was on the street without any memory of the last trip he would ever make between those disgusting counters.

Rachel did not look up from the pan she was stirring over the stove. “Did you get the glass?” she asked.

“What
glass!”

She nodded toward the round-bodied patch clinging to the kitchen window with its adhesive-tape legs.

“The United States
Treasury
hasn’t got enough money to pay me to pound down another loose
shingle
nail on
this place!”

She looked from the window to him and saw his head. “George! What happened! Were you in a fight? Oh my God! What did you do? Did you kill him?”

“No I didn’t hit him! I didn’t
touch
him! Because if I’d ever once started on him, there wouldn’t have been anything left of him at all—just a grease-spot here and there.”

“George, what did you
do!”
He had gone off to sign the lease, the way he always did in the spring. He had come back with a purple lump on his head—out of his mind. “What did you do!”

“I gave him back his lease. I gave back his jacked-up barn and his new chicken house and his new fences and his wheat fields with the rocks hauled out of them and his soil full of manure I spread on it for nine years and his granary with new bins and a new roof on it and his pasture I reseeded for him after the way it was all wore out by
sheep
when I came here and his new trees I planted in the windbreaks and
his god-damned house with a broken window in it!”

Lucy hid in the bedroom while they talked, still hardly able to believe that she had done something so bad when she had never in this world meant to do it at all.