The Beet Fields Read online

  He looked out across the field again, chewed and swallowed. It was a meat loaf sandwich and tasted so good he didn't want to swallow but keep chewing. “No. Just men.”

  Alice looked intently at him for a moment, then nodded. “Good. I've put on weight these last two years and I worry that he'll go to wanting skinny women. I read about it in a magazine, that men want skinny women with big breasts. Is that right? Is that what men want?”

  Talking like this made him uncomfortable, made his stomach tighten, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye and saw that she had been pretty before the weight, and wasn't that fat and was still pretty, and he thought, I have never talked with a woman about breasts before and I am not a man to know what men want, but he remained silent and she kept talking.

  Of course you read all these things and they don't mean Shinola but I did want to know if he bad a woman at the bar. Especially if she was a skinny woman…” She let it hang and he realized that he was expected to answer again.

  “No No woman. Just men.” And he had to turn away because she was leaning forward and down from the cab and he could see the swell of her breasts above her dress and there was a little perspiration on them where they came together and he couldn't stop staring at them, at the dampness of them.

  'Well, that's all for the good.” She straightened. “Are you done eating? I'd better get back to the house and start cooking dinner.”

  She took the bucket and the Thermos of coffee and drove off and he went back to the tractor and started it and began to disc. He worked all afternoon up to dark when he saw Bill coming for him and if he didn't force his mind to think of other things it stuck on the way Alice's breasts had looked with the faint sheen of sweat on them when she'd leaned down and asked if men liked skinny women with large breasts.

  They drove into the yard just as it turned dark and the boy was so tired he'd fallen asleep in the truck. Because he was dozing it took him seconds to realize what Bill said as they turned into the driveway.

  “Damn,” Bill mumbled. “A sheriff's car is here. I'll bet Oleson was pissed about losing that money and wants the law to get it back for him!“

  Bill parked and they got out just as a deputy came from the house with Alice.

  “He wants to talk to the boy,” Alice said to Bill, and the boy thought, Shit, the Mexicans were right. They have been looking for me.

  “I got a report on a runaway and I heard you have a new hired kid out here,” the deputy said. He was tall and had a stomach that hung over his gun belt but his shoulders were wide and he looked strong. And mean, the boy thought— something about him had an edge.

  “What's your name, boy?” the deputy asked, and the boy gave him a phony name.

  “You got some paper with your name on it? A license or something?”

  “No.”

  “I think you're lying, boy. About the name. You come with me and we'll straighten it out.”

  “Hell, Jacobsen, he's a good worker. There ain't nothing wrong with him.” Bill stopped him with a wave. “He busts his balls for me.”

  “Fine. If he ain't the runaway I'll bring him back hère. But there's a poster and I've got to tell you he looks close to the picture. Get in the car, boy. The front seat.”

  The inside of the squad car smelled like booze and puke and he setded into the seat with his knees near the shotgun bolted in the floor bracket and thought of how it would be to go home. He no longer had a home, in his mind, and if the sheriff had the right picture they would send him back and he didn't think he could stand it.

  The deputy drove in silence—breaking it only to make a report on the radio—until they came to a town, the boy fighting sleep all the way so that he missed the sign that said the name of the village.

  “We get out here," the deputy said, parking by a two-story brick building and pointing to a side door. “Wait by that door. Don't run.”

  “I won't,” the boy said, and for the first time actually thought of it. Maybe he could do that, if could run.

  The deputy locked the car and then came to the door, jmshed it open and made the boy go up a set of stairs inside. They were cement steps with steel pipe for handrails, dimly lit by a bulb hanging at the top.

  At the head of the stairs there was a steel door and on it was stenciled the word:

  JAIL

  “Inside,” the deputy said. The boy pushed at the door and then pulled when it didn't open and went into a fifteen-foot-square room with a metal desk and a table with a hot plate and a coffeepot on top of it and some file cabinets along a wall to the right. On the left wall there were three steel-barred cell doors. Two stood open and one was closed with an old man sleeping inside on a metal-frame bed that folded down from the wall and hung on chains.

  “Empty your pockets,” the deputy said. “There, on the fable. Everything, and I do mean everything or I'll kick your ass until. it's a ring around your neck.”

  The boy had a dilemma about the money. He had an old pocketknife he'd picked up somewhere and some change and that was it except for all the money he'd made and what Bill had given him from the poker game, which he had kept with him stuffed down tight into every pocket. He thought of holding the money back but the deputy sounded like he meant the ass-kicking thing and if he searched the boy and found the money it might go worse for him.

  He took the money out and put it on the table.

  “What's this?” The deputy had been watching while he drank a cup of coffee from the pot on the hot plate. “You've got a lot of money there, kid—-how much is it?”

  The boy said nothing, stood looking at the money lying in a rumpled pile on the table.

  “Come on, boy, save me counting it.”

  “I don't know for sure. I earned it hoeing beets and working for Bill. It's all mine.”

  “Well, yes, that's one way of looking at it….” He scooped the money up, folded it neatly and put it in his pocket.

  “That's my money,” the boy repeated.

  “Shut up, kid.” The deputy hit the boy in the shoulder. It was a straight jab and not nearly as hard as it could have been but the boy felt as if he'd been struck with an iron hammer. He slammed sideways into the wall and fell down on one knee and thought, Jesus, I hope he never cuts loose on me.

  “Way I see it, your folks want you back and there's no mention of money—“

  There was a phone on the desk and it chose that second to ring.

  “Damn.” The deputy picked the receiver up and held it to his ear. “Sheriffs office. Yeah. Yeah. No.” Here his voice changed, softened. “Well, I can't leave just now, I've got me a fugitive.” He paused, listening. “How long is he going to be gone?” Another silence, then he took a deep breath. “I'll be there in ten minutes.” He turned to the boy. “Get your ass in that middle cell.”

  The boy moved from the wall to the cell, hesitated and was pushed through by the deputy. The door slammed shut behind him and the lawman left without speaking.

  The jail was quiet except for the rasping breath of die old man in the next cell, and the boy sat on the cot that hung off the wall. He breathed in deeply, then let it out and thought, Shit, he took my money. Maybe if I talk nice he'll give it back to me.…

  “You get your butt out of here.”

  The voice startled him and he jumped and looked across at the old man. He was still on his back, still had his eyes closed and appeared to be sleeping soundly.

  “What?”

  “Leave. Now. Jacobsen'll be gone an hour at least while he gets sweaty-belly with Beverly Dalton. You can cover a lot of ground in an hour.” The old man still lay with his eyes closed, talking softly. “Get to the highway and start hitchhiking. Head west. Beverly and her husband, Clyde, live east. You get a ride quick and you'll be sixty miles away before that deputy gets back.”

  The boy leaned against the wall. “Maybe you haven't noticed, but I'm in a cell.”

  “Push on the door. It ain't locked.”

  The boy stood, pushed and the
door swung open easily.

  “It's all for show. The locks don't work and they haven't had them fixed—going on two years and more. Now leave, I'm sick of talking.”

  “But I'll be a fugitive—-a jailbreaker. He'll come after me. I'll go to prison.”

  “Like hell you will.”

  “Well then, why don't you run?”

  “Because I am a studier of jails. It's how I live. You're young and there are other things for you to do…. You're also using up your hour by talking.”

  The old man became silent then and the boy walked to the door without quite meaning to and opened it without quite meaning to and walked down the stairs and out the door and broke out of jail without quite meaning to and kept walking until he was at the edge of town and he stuck his thumb out when he saw headlights coming.

  The car passed, and the next, and the boy felt that he should be worried but he wasn't. He thought, That big son of a bitch took my money and I'm pissed. And it became a force that made breaking jail and running the right thing to do, a litany that helped him to keep his thumb out, and the next car stopped.

  He almost didn't get in. The car was a '49 Plymouth and seemed on the edge of falling apart. That didn't worry him as much as the driver did. He was a small round man with black hair so long it hung over his collar and over his thick glasses that shone so brightly in the light reflected from the dashboard that they seemed to glow in the dark. He did not look weird so much as like a stranger, like he didn't belong anywhere. But it was the only car to stop and the boy felt there wouldn't be another, so he climbed in and setded back into the passenger seat.

  The man did not stop talking.

  "I am American not yet but I will someday to be citizen. Enclish already I am knowing and nearly enough for testing: if you to ask what President with which date, I know, and how the Congress works" and already I have a fine car and a license to operate. Is this not a fine car?” Before the boy could say anything he continued. “In Hungary such a car would not be possible. It is a Plymouth and has a wonderful sufficiency of controls and handles. More than any car I have seen in Hungary. In Hungary such a man to have this car would be a very high official. Here I bought this car with just four months' wages working at the Algonquin Hotel in the city of New York. So many dirty dishes I have never seen. Dishes they have for every little thing and they put dishes on the tables that are not even used. And still they must be washed….”

  After a word or ten or fifteen the boy did not hear them any longer except in groups or if the man said something that caught his interest. “…many fine women,” or “… the tanks used machine guns to shoot into windows.”

  I am now really a fugitive, he thought. He was still exhausted and should have slept but fear kept him awake and his thoughts ran together. I have escaped jail and I am on the run and the son of a bitch took all my money so I can't even eat, hundreds and hundreds of dollars more than I've ever had, more than I'll maybe ever have again. The bastard took it all and they're probably searching for me now and setting up roadblocks or something—

  “Portland.”

  The boy snapped back. His eyes had started to close and sleep was like a heavy quilt on his thoughts, coming down until the single word struck him. “What did you say?”

  “I am going to Portland. That is in the state of Oregon. Where is it that you are to be?”

  “Oh. Sure. Well, I have an uncle in Portland“—the lie came easily—“and he wants me to come out. I was working on a farm but the work ended so now I'll go visit him for a while. Sure. Portland is fine. I'll go out there and visit my uncle“—Shut up, he said to himself, you're talking too much-—“for a while.”

  But the driver didn't think it strange that the boy spoke so long and he merely nodded. “Company will be good to have.” If he thought it odd that a boy was hitchhiking at night across North Dakota he didn't show it and went back to his incessant stream of words. He spoke now of New York City and how gray it was and how green the fields in the prairies were and how farmers in Hungary would not believe the farms in America, which he pronounced “Ammarreeca,” and the boy put his head back against the door and let the warm night air blow on his face and closed his eyes and went to sleep and there was not the slightest sign that the next day the man sitting next to him would be dead.

  • • •

  The sun was coming through the back window of the car and cooking the back of his head. The boy had not had a haircut for weeks now and his hair was thick and shaggy and the sun heated the hair and seemed to bake his head and it was this which awakened him.

  His thoughts came back slowly. He saw the fields going by the car and felt the stiffness in his neck and the heat on his head and saw that he had drooled on his shoulder. He wiped the side of his mouth and remembered at the same time that he was a fugitive and then he turned to see the driver glance at him and smile.

  “You are awake. So hard you slept I thought you were dead. I stopped at a place that was open for food and you slept without knowing.” He took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and nodded to a bag between them on the seat. “There is coffee for you there and some of the round pastries….”

  The boy opened the bag and found a paper cup of coffee, which he drank. It was cold and too strong, bitter, but it cleaned his mouth and made him niore alert. He looked in the bag again and saw at least a dozen doughnuts, the kind dipped in sugar with the granules sticking to the sides. And he was so hungry, starving, that he ate six of them without thinking, as a dog or wolf would eat, cramming them into his mouth and barely tasting or chewing them.

  “An appetite is good,” the driver said. “But do not make yourself ill—.“

  And he died.

  Later the boy would try to place the sequence of it all in his thinking, the way it happened, and by doing 50 he hoped to find outin some manner why it would happen. But at the mqment, the Hungarian's death came so fast that there was no time tp think.

  There were pheasants all over North Dakota, Somebody had told the boy that they were imported from China years before for hunters and they had increased until it was hard to drive a mile without seeing two or three on the road. In the mornings they came from the brushy fencerows where they lived to the shoulders of the roads to gather small pellets of gravel for their gizzards.

  Normally when cars roared past the pheasants simply crouched and froze. Now and then they would jump into flight away from the shoulder and sometimes they would jump up and fly in front of the vehicle. Usually, when they hit a car, they rose slowly enough so they hit only the bumper or grille, though such an impact could cave in a grille or actually dent a fender or smash a headlight.

  But if everything went wrong they would jump a little early, fly a bit higher and hit in the middle of the windshield.

  The Plymouth had a two-piece windshield with a brace down the middle, and a large cock pheasant timed it precisely right to leave the ground and strike the windshield in front of the driver's face.

  At slower speeds the damage might have been a cracked windshield and a dead bird. But the Hungarian was happy with the car and the morning and sipping coffee while he drove and he had accelerated to nearly eighty miles an hour. At eighty miles an hour a four-pound bird hitting a windshield exerts enormous force. Still, had the bird hit the windshield to the side it might have only broken the glass a bit and bounced off.

  But when the pheasant saw the car coming, it turned directly away from the vehicle at the last instant and so was in line with the car when it struck, presenting a much smaller area for impact.

  The pheasant blew through the windshield like a cannonball. The car was immediately filled with feathers, and a spray of blood and pheasant guts covered the boy. The shards of glass stripped off the skin and outer surface of the bird but the piece remaining weighed almost three pounds and this chunk of gore, filled with bone, hit the exact center of the Hungarian's face at effectively eighty miles an hour.

  It did not kill him instantly. The force of t
he bird snapped his head back and broke his neck and cut off all motor responses to his body. His right foot had been directly on the accelerator but he had turned it slighdy just before the impact so when his leg jammed down, the foot slid off the pedal and the accelerator popped up and the car began to decelerate.

  All this in less than a second.

  The boy looked up, saw the feathers and splatter across the windshield, turned to see the bird hit the man's face and felt the car begin to slow. All in a second.

  For another second, a little more, the car stayed in the same path. The driver's arms had not moved and did not move for several beats and the car held its course down the highway.

  But it was just for a moment. Then the body relaxed, the left hand let go and the right pulled slowly, released, pulled down and steered the car—still doing close to sixty—off the road.

  In this part of North Dakota there were no ditches. That was all that saved the boy. The road went to shoulder and then to prairie and the car hit the tall grass, then crossed that into a plowed field, slamming into the furrows and ruts so hard the boy was thrown against the ceiling.

  “Goddamn!“

  He was thrown up and down, from side to side amid flying doughnuts, coffee, feathers and pheasant guts and blood as the car slammed through the plowed furrows in flying dirt and dust to finally, finally come to a stop.

  The boy realized he had closed his eyes and he opened them now. The inside of the car was a mess and he wanted more than anything to get out but the driver was leaning back against the doorjamb, his face a pulp.

  “Goddamn goddamn goddamn…” It was a whisper and he didn't know he was saying it, knew only that he had to do something and didn't know what or how or anything.

  He reached across the car and touched the Hungarian's arm, pushed with his finger, but there was no response and he saw now that the driver wasn't breathing anymore and knew that he was dead.