The Unplowed Sky (18 page)

“If you can find anything, I'd sure like to know it.”

“Oh, hell, Garth! You're turning into a regular old grouch!”

“This isn't a game, Rory. Carelessness can get you—and the whole crew—blown sky-high. And everything I own is tied up in these machines. You bet I'm a grouch.”

Rory didn't answer for a minute. When he did, his voice was so low that Hallie could scarcely hear. “Know what I think? That I wouldn't have caught a sermon about smoke or leaky flues if I hadn't asked Hallie to belt up tomorrow.”

They moved down the steps. Hallie heard the crunch of stubble. If Garth made any answer, it was too soft to hear. She looked anxiously at Shaft.

He hunched a shoulder. “Reckon they're both right. And both wrong, too. Shall we wake your brother up or just undress him and put him to bed?”

Hallie's trial came after morning lunch. “Better get into your overalls,” Shaft warned as they made sandwiches. He squinted through the window. “They've worked those stacks right down to the ground and fed in the grain that dropped on the tarp they keep spread in front of the separator. Hey, come look at this! Luke's showing off a little.”

“Good grief!” Hallie stared fearfully at the lithe young man who was running toward the engine with his right arm wrapped around the moving belt. He was tugging at the belt, which, thank goodness, worked slowly. “Why doesn't Garth stop him?”

“Oh, it's a good enough way of getting the belt off the flywheel and it's kind of fun—for them as thinks it is. There! Belt dropped on his head. Generally does.”

Hallie watched with misgiving as two men carried the belt to the belt reel in front of the separator. Surely Rory wouldn't expect her to fit that long, heavy weight of leather on the big flywheel! But somehow, whatever was expected, she would have to do it. To show Garth.

And Meg as well. Hallie was convinced that wooing Meg would earn only contempt. If she could win the girl's respect, liking might follow. Even if it didn't, there had to be respect. Since Meg took Jackie swimming, she had become his “hero,” special because she was nearer to his age than the grown-ups and yet did a grown-up job. After all, he didn't know Hallie very well, and she was too busy to spend any real time with him except on Sundays. If he spent most of that day with Meg—

A twisting pang tightened Hallie's insides. It would only be natural if Jackie came to worship Meg, who could be both playmate and protector. Without trying, just by her attitude, Meg could influence Jackie against his sister.

It's not fair, Hallie thought again. Raford and probably Garth and who knows who else think Jackie's mine. It's not his fault. Not his fault I have to make us a living and can't pay lots of attention to him. But it hurts for him to think Meg's wonderful when she's such a nasty little beast to me.

So drive the engine. Make him think you're wonderful, too.

As soon as lunch was over, Rory opened the dampers and shoveled in an even layer of coal. The steam was quickly up to operating pressure. “It's all yours!” Rory shouted. “Steer over in front of the separator, and then haul it between the next stacks.”

“There isn't room!” The giant stacks loomed sixteen feet high, fifty feet long, and twenty feet wide. The passage between these straw mountains was no more than eight feet, and the engine measured nine and a half feet from one huge front wheel to the other.

“Just keep to the middle. Of course you'll close the ash pan dampers while steering through the stacks. Don't want any sparks landing in the wheat.”

“Oh, heavens, no!” Hallie spoke through her teeth. “Let's not do anything dangerous—just bring a white-hot fire through two straw stacks!”

“I've seen some fires, but none that started that way,” Rory allowed cheerfully. “Hey, that's great! You're right in line with the separator.”

Garth and Baldy swiftly hooked the separator to the engine. All the crew was watching, but Garth's and Meg's intent faces blurred the others. “Check that water glass,” cautioned Rory.

Hallie did and saw the level showed that the water was only an inch above the crown sheet. Calling on her memory, she opened the steam valve on the injector and throttled so that water wouldn't go out the overflow. When the water glass showed almost half full, she shut off the injector.

As the engine crept toward the stacks, sweat dripped from her eyebrows and beaded on her chin. Under the slat bonnet, her hair felt plastered to her scalp. Her gloved hands fumbled as she closed the ash-pan dampers on the firebox. She gritted her teeth, fought the urge to duck and close her eyes, and sent the huge lugged wheels ramming between the stacks.

The wheels knocked loose masses of straw. Some fell to the ground, but other clumps came within inches of the firebox. It seemed an eternity before the feeder was even with the end of the stacks and Garth signaled for her to stop.

“Wasn't that fun?” Rory yelled.

Hallie couldn't answer. She hadn't knocked down the stacks or started a blaze, but only half the job of making a set was done. Steering away from the unhitched separator, she circled back to face it, swung too wide, and had to reverse and cut in sharper.

On the second try, she lined the engine up with the already leveled separator. Jim spread a tarp under the cylinder to catch and save the shattered grain. Henry and Rich pulled the extension feeder into place and got it ready. Rusty and Luke stretched the belt from the drive pulley of the separator, and Garth smeared it with his own belt dressing; pine tar mixed with linseed oil.

“Let's belt up,” Rory called.

Hallie sent the engine crawling toward the belt as Rusty and Luke came forward. Rory tossed down the chocking block and Baldy wedged it in front of the drive wheel to keep the engine from moving forward.

“Get out there on the drive wheel,” Rory directed. “Take hold of the outside of the belt with your right hand. Hang onto the brace support of the cab with your left hand and put the belt in place on the flywheel. Good! Now reverse real slow and easy so the belt will wrap itself around the wheel.”

Hallie obeyed. Would the belt slip? Would it break? To her boundless relief, the canvas belt, guided by Luke and Rusty, tightened.

“Perfect! Stop!” Rory knew how nervous she had been. His eyes were admiring. “You lined the flywheel straight as could be with the separator pulley. Not only are you the prettiest engineer from Canada to Texas, you can be a darned good one!”

He gave her a hand down as Baldy blocked an engine wheel. The crew cheered lustily. Except for Garth and Meg. Garth raised the blower tube and quickly turned two crank wheels to swing it to the rear of the engine. The pitchers selected their pitchforks—each had a favorite to use through the season—and made running jumps at the stacks, using pitchforks to work their way up. Luke bounded up and stretched down his pitchfork handle to Rusty. The heaviest, oldest man on the crew, Rusty was a powerhouse on top of the stack, but it wasn't easy for him to get there.

Rory gave two long toots and pulled back on the throttle. The first grain spikes landed on the feeder. Chaff flew from the cylinder. Straw belched from the blower to begin a new mountain. Grain poured into the wagon Mike Donnelly would drive to his granary. Hallie walked to the shack, stripping off her gloves.

She had done it! Hauled the separator between the stacks, lined the engine up with the separator, and actually helped belt up! Of course she didn't know how to fire the engine or clean the flues or keep the steam at the right pressure. There was much she didn't know and would probably never learn.

But she
could
drive the engine; she
could
make a set. She was surprised at herself, and proud, no matter what Garth thought. Bridget and Kathleen, equipped with apples and oatmeal cookies, had already come to play with Jackie.

Blue eyes admiring, Kathleen said, “Mama drives the grain wagon. But she can't drive a steam engine. I don't even think my daddy can.”

“They could if they needed to,” Hallie said, but her heart swelled at the wondering pride in Jackie's face.

“You helped put on that big old long belt, Hallie! You drove the engine! Shaft says the engine man is the boss of the outfit!”

She gave him a hug. “I'm not the engineer, honey. And I'm sure not the boss!”

“Can I drive the engine when I get big?”

“I don't know about this engine but if you want to be an engineer, there's nothing to stop you.”

“I'm going to have my own engine. And a separator! And Shaft will cook for us! He said he would.”

“Well, then, all you have to do is grow up.” Hallie took off her overalls and started cleaning husks and silk off the corn Mike Donnelly had dropped off that morning.

“Hallie, you done real good,” Shaft said, putting six loaves of bread in the oven.

“Garth thinks it's all foolishness.”

“Then he's a fool! When you stop to think about it, outside of driving the water or coal wagons, running the engine is the one threshing job a boy or woman can do. It takes a lot of strength to pitch spikes or bundles. I won't say a woman couldn't learn how to run the separator, but it's a job for an expert. Get someone on the separator who doesn't know what they're doing, and you wind up with grain in the straw stack. If Rory got hurt or sick, it could come in real handy for you to drive and help make a set.” Shaft grinned at her. “So you just keep practicin'. One of these days old Garth may bless his stars you did.”

“I hope so,” Hallie said. “I don't want Rory to get sick, but I certainly hope his brother has to eat a good big wedge of humble pie.”

“I guarantee he will. Later or sooner. Say, Hallie, do you know how to make corn fritters? They'd sure taste good with ham.”

IX

Jackie patted his tire swing goodbye and let Shaft boost him up on the tank wagon. Rusty had yielded his place in Jim's flivver to Hallie, so he climbed onto the separator with Garth. Rory gave the two short and two long whistles that signaled they were moving on.

The Donnellys waved farewell. “See you next year!” Mike called. Bridget and Kathleen echoed, “Next year! Next year, Jackie!”

“Next year!” he shouted back.

The procession rumbled away. The Model Ts took the lead. The threshing had finished before dinner, and it was now early afternoon. “It'll take the outfit a couple of hours to get to Crutchfield's,” Jim said. “But we should thresh a set before supper.” He grinned at Hallie, and she hoped any woman he might care for would look at his warm hazel eyes and not care about the stiff white scars. “Did I see Miz Donnelly give you some roasting ears?”

“And green beans, radishes, and green onions,” Hallie said. “She was afraid watermelons would jar to pieces but she packed half a dozen cantaloupes in wadded-up newspapers.”

“They are very kind people,” Henry said.

Jim nodded. “I sure hope they never need a loan from the Hollister bank.”

“Or any bank,” said Hallie. She and Mary had both been too busy to visit but she had liked Mary immensely and enjoyed the little girls. Jackie would miss them, but already he was counting on seeing them next year.

Would he? Would Garth manage to survive Raford's underhanded attack? And if he did, would he hire Hallie again? For that matter, what was she going to do that winter? She cringed inwardly at the thought of how her small brother would miss Shaft and Smoky and Laird and the crew. And so would she.

Fresh vegetables, milk, and eggs were not to be had at the Crutchfields. Mrs. Crutchfield was an invalid, and the young woman who took care of her and the housework had no time for gardens, chickens, and cows. Harry Crutchfield, a gaunt, graying man with a surprisingly warm smile, drove one grain wagon, his hired man the other.

“Must be hard for Mr. Crutchfield to keep going,” Shaft mused one morning as he and Hallie prepared dinner. “Only child they have is a daughter who married and moved to Oregon. There's no one to take over the farm and care about it the way he has. But I reckon he keeps planting and hoping and harvesting 'cause that's what he's always done.”

When Sunday came at the Crutchfields, the threshers got their steam bath as the boiler drained. They had to do their own laundry here, so there was much shaving of bars of Ivory and plunging up and down of the stompers till the fence was spread with overalls, khakis, socks, bandannas, and BVDs covered modestly by shirts.

While they waited their turn at tub and stomper, the men shaved or patronized Shaft, who snipped and clipped his best for the men who either weren't going to town or were saving their money, like Rusty and Henry. After Jackie, wide-eyed, had watched all the men shave, Meg took him and Laird to splash in the creek that curved around the field. As water monkey, it was part of her job to know where the cleanest water was. If there was a swimming hole, she found it, too.

They were now closer to Blackwater than Hollister, so that was the day's destination for most of the crew. Luke gazed wistfully as the men scrambled into the Model Ts but shook his head when invited by both Buford and Jim.

“Rusty is writing to my sister, and I had better do that, too, so she can read it to our mother.”

The older, heavier man rested a hand on his slim young brother-in-law's shoulder. “Luke's never been away from home before. His mama wouldn't turn him loose till he promised to write every week. And, as far as I'm concerned, the best way to keep my money saved for that team of good mules I need is not to go to town.”

“‘When I was single, my pockets did jingle …,'” Rory caroled.

“They don't jingle long,” Rusty retorted. “If you bachelor boys can't get rid of your money in town, you lose it shootin' craps or playin' cards.”

“To each his own,” said Baldy, piling in Buford's backseat. The towngoers departed, and quiet reigned except for the distant whining creak of the windmill. Henry, Luke, and Rusty spread out at the table to wrestle with their letters.