The Beet Fields (9 page)

But he didn't mind. He was a fugitive now, had broken out of jail and was safe here and felt close to Hazel and while there wasn't any money to earn there was food and a place to sleep without worry and it all could have lasted forever and maybe would have lasted forever, he thought, except that the county fair came to nearby Clinton.

And so did Ruby.

T
HERE CAME A MORNING WHEN THEY ATE
breakfast and instead of heading out to work on the machines Hazel brought a clean shirt out of the back bedroom and handed it to the boy.

“Here. We're going to town. You need to be cleaner/'

He hesitated. It had been a week, no, ten days that he had been here with the old woman and Robert and he felt it was not long enough to be safe if they were looking for him. “I'll stay here and work on the machines.”

“It's the county fair,” she said. Then, turning
to the picture, she added, “Every year the fair comes. We go to it.”

He washed at the kitchen sink and when he came back outside buttoning his shirt she was at the car. She was still wearing bib overalls—had worn them every day since he'd first met her—but they were clean and she had a clean work shirt on beneath the overalls.

“Here,” she said, handing him a folded piece of paper. He looked down and was surprised to see that it was a twenty-dollar bill. “Man's got to have some money. For spending at the fair.”

“You don't need to give me money….”

“Of course I do—you want it getting out that I don't give my hand money for the fair?”

They drove in complete silence, setting off at thirty miles an hour on the highway for the two miles into Clinton.

The town itself was small—not over a thousand people—and the fair was equally small. It was at the fairgrounds on the edge of town. There was a sideshow banner, a Ferris wheel, a Tilt-A-Whirl, some small car rides for children and a row of game booths. The boy was surprised to see that there were hundreds and hundreds of people
there, all scrubbed cleaii and milling on the short midway. At one end of the fairgrounds there were two large sheds and he could see livestock in the buildings, cages with chickens and rabbits and turkeys, pens with sheep and hogs.

“So many people,” he said to Hazel as they walked from the grassy meadow where the cars were parked. “Where do they come from?”

“Farms,” she said. “There's farms
all
over the place. Town wouldn't even be here except for farmers. 'Sides, it's the last
day of the fair and that
brings them in a little extra—"

At that precise foment the boy saw the sheriffs deputy who had arrested him and taken all his money and made him a fugitive. He thought of it that way. He saw not just the deputy—who was walking away from them at an angle across the midway—but the deputy who had arrested him and taken all his money and made him a runner from the law.

He had to hide. If the lawman saw him it would be over. He'd probably go to prison, being a fugitive.

“I have to go,” he said to Hazel, interrupting. “You know … to the bathroom.”

He left her walking toward the fair and angled off in the opposite direction taken by the deputy. It led him past the draglines and the Ferris wheel and near the Tilt-A-Whirl.

“Hey, kid, you want a job?”

The boy turned and found himself looking at a figure who summed up everything he ever wanted to be in a man. The man wore Levi's so low the crack of his butt showed in the rear and the top edge of pubic hair in the front and a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve, one of which he lit now with a Zippo lighter that he snapped open and flicked in an easy motion with one hand. His hair was combed in a perfect greased-back jet-black ducktail and as a final touch of glory he wore heavy-duty black engineer's boots with straps and buckles that looked freshly oiled and polished.

“Doing what?” the boy asked.

The man looked over the boy's head when he spoke, coolly ignoring him, letting his eyes move up and down the fairgrounds.

“I'll give you thirty-five bucks a week to set up and run the Tilt-A-Whirl for the rest of the summer. We're leaving tonight.”

Thirty-five dollars a week from a job with the glory of the carnival seemed unbelievably rich and absolutely perfect for a man who was on the run and the boy at first nodded, then shook his head. “I can't“

The man shrugged. “The world is full of can'ts—it's a word used by losers.”

“No. I mean I
can.
I want the job. But I have some … trouble. I have to stay out of sight.”

“For how long?”

“Just until I leave… you know, for the day.”

The man studied him, looked up and down slowly, looked away again, dragging deeply on the cigarette. “You're serious.” “Yes.”

“Is it the law?”

The boy hesitated. “Yes.”

“You're wanted?”

“I ran off.”

“Oh, hell. We all did that.” He brought his eyes back to the boy, flicked ash neatly off his cigarette. “Good arms—can you work?”

Can I work? the boy thought—-thought of beets and tractor driving and days so bent over he couldn't stand straight. “Yes. I can work. Hard.”

“Hmmm,” the man said, taking a long drag on the Camel. He thought for a moment more, then shrugged. “All right. I'm Taylor. You screw me and I'll find you and cut you. Deep.” He fished into his pocket with two fingers and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. “Here. From your first week's pay. Get your butt into town and get some boots and a T-shirt. You look like a hick. Get back here about midnight to work the breakdown. The law ought to be gone by then—or he'll be so drunk it doesn't matter.”

The boy took the money and started out in back of the Tilt-A-Whirl, into some low trees that led off to town, and had gone twenty paces before he remembered Hazel. She would worry. He stopped. It wasn't like leaving the Mexicans, somehow. They had themselves, their families. Hazel had nothing. In the short time he'd been with her she had become something for him; someone inside him.

He trotted back to the midway, stopped in back of the Ferris wheel where the machinery hid him and looked for her. And for the deputy. He saw the deputy first, talking to two young women near the draglines. He stood with his back
straight and his stomach sucked in and the boy thought, You bastard, you've got my money, you son-of-a-bitch of a thief.

He looked away and at length saw Hazel in her bibs moving toward the livestock barn. He gave one more glance at the deputy, who was still by the draglines with the girls, and moved to intercept Hazel, keeping the sideshow tents between him and the lawman.

“Oh, there you are,” she said as he came up. “We've got to see the workhorses. There might be some I'd want to buy. For when Robert comes back…”

“I have to leave,” the boy said because he did not yet know a way to say things smoothly. “I have to go.”

She stopped and turned and he was surprised to see a tear in the corner of her eye. “Is it the talk about Robert? Because I just talk, you know. I know he isn't coming back. If I talk about it, it eases the pain of knowing. But if that's it I can—“

“No. I have some other things in my life. Some things I've done. I have to leave,” he repeated. Damn, he thought, why does it hurt this way? Goddamn! I don't even
know
her. Jeez. “I'm sorry.
Here.” He dug into his pocket and held out the twenty-dollar bill she'd given him. “You take this back.”

“No. You go now. Take the money. You'll need it.” She took his hand and with surprising strength folded his fingers back on the bill and pushed the hand back toward his pocket. “Go. Now.”

And she turned and went into the stock barn, leaving him. He felt some loss he didn't understand, a loss he would always feel and never understand, started after her and stopped, remembered the deputy, his new job, and turned, jogging off toward town, his eyes burning and his feet heavy.

I
N TOWN HE FOUND A DRY-GOODS STORE AND
they had engineer's boots—black with black straps and a buckle and thick leather soles. He bought them for seven ninety-five and a pair of Levi's for four dollars and two T-shirts for two dollars each and a set of three pairs of gray work socks"

The jeans he had on were almost falling apart and he went into a back room of the store and changed clothes, ripping the labels off the new Levi's and pulling them down a bit on his hips. He also took off the work shirt and put one of the T-shirts on. In the front again he bought a pack of
Old Golds—not cork-tips but straight—and wrapped the package in the sleeve of his T-shirt and rolled the other sleeve up to show his shoulder. He then looked for a Zippo lighter but they didn't have one, so he took a book of matches and bought a nylon unbreakable pocket comb and stuck it in his back pocket.

In front of the store at one corner there was a faucet and he wet his hair and combed it back into a ducktail. He was light-haired, almost blond, and his hair did not make a good ducktail but he worked at it and looked in the front window of the store and thought that the Levi's looked too new and his hair too blond but it wasn't bad— much better than he'd looked before—and he liked the way the boots made him taller. He had filled out from all the hard work he'd been doing and felt more like a man now than he had before; felt that he was truly a man on the run from the law taking off with a carnival.

Nearby there was a grocery store. He didn't have a plan except to do as he'd been told and avoid running into that son-of-a-bitch crooked deputy until the carnival packed and left, and he went into the store and bought a box of crackers
and three cans of sardines with key openers and two Cokes and two bags of peanuts.

There was a narrow stream running through town, winding in back of the stores, and he walked out along the brook a mile and a half, where he found an isolated grassy flat place under some cot-tonwoods. He sat there with the sound of the running water and ate two cans of sardines and crackers and for dessert had a Coke with a bag of peanuts poured into it and thought it wasn't bad now, had not been bad for sonae time and in fact the death of the man with the car and the deputy's taking all his money were the only bad things that had happened since he'd run off. He lit a cigarette but only smoked half before throwing it away and then he just lay back on the grass.

He tried to remember his parents, his home, all of it" but he could not picture exactly how his mother looked, though he could recall a little more of his father, their apar“I'ment. Instead he remembered the Mexicans and the beets—he could close his eyes and see beet plants still—and the sardines mixed with the crackers and Coke and peanuts made him feel full and he opened his eyes once, closed them, opened them again in a blink and was asleep.

When he awakened it was just into darkness and he would have slept more—the night was warm and soft—except that the end of the sunlight brought out mosquitoes and their buzzing and biting killed sleep.

He had fished and hunted for as long as he could remember and he knew about mosquitoes and how to get rid of them. He made a small fire with bits of dead cottonwood and added green grass and leaves to it to make a smudge. This took away the mosquitoes and he ate the last can of sardines and drank the remaining Coke and peanuts and decided to hell with it, he'd head back for the carnival. It was after ten and by the time he got back it would be eleven. The deputy should be gone and he could help pack the ride or whatever it was he was supposed to do.

There was no moon and it was slow walking in the dim light from the stars. He tripped several times and swore each time and was smudged and dirty when he came back into the lights of town.

The carnival was winding down when he came back to the fairgrounds. Small groups of diehards were still there but the rides were closing and some of the workers were already breaking down.
He hung back for a moment, looking for the deputy, and when he didn't see him went to the - Tilt-A-Whirl.

Taylor was disconnecting the shaft that ran from the engine to the drive mechanism and glanced up when the boy approached.