The Beet Fields Read online

  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.

  SEVEN

  IN 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.

  “Took your time, didn't you?”

  “I didn't want the deputy to see me.”

  “He's gone. Ipaid the bastard off and he left hours ago. Wanted a little tip on the side with Ruby and I
told him to blow it out his ass unless he paid. Here, get to work. All those panels need to be loaded on that flatbed. Start unhooking them.”

  The boy didn't have the slightest idea what Taylor was talking about—Ruby or whoever and the tip on the side or why Taylor had to pay the deputy off—but it didn't seem like the time to ask questions and he started working at unhooking the floor panels from each other.

  He was soon lost in the work. Trying to horse the heavy panels apart was nearly impossible and within fifteen minutes he was greasy and his knuckles were bleeding and he was swearing and pissed and wondering if maybe working on a farm wasn't better than this.

  “Here, I'll help.”

  The boy turned and almost jumped back. He was facing a tall man—he had to be six-five or more—with his head shaved and his eyebrows gone and covered with some kind of black grease that made his face disappear in the darkness except for his eyes and teeth.

  “I'm Bobby,” he said, grabbing the side of the panel the boy was hoisting and helping him throw it onto the flatbed truck. “Taylor's brother.”

  The boy nodded and stared at Bobby. He knew it was rude but he couldn't help it.

  The man noted the stare and smiled. “Don't worry. I do the geek show. I just haven't washed the makeup off. Taylor, he likes to get going when the show breaks down. It keeps the farm boys off Ruby. It don't pay after the show is down.”

  There it was again: Ruby. He wanted to ask a dozen questions—what was a geek, who was Ruby and why did the farm boys want to be on her and what did Taylor have to do with any of it—but the work was hard, harder than any farmwork, and soon the two of them—Taylor had disappeared as soon as Bobby arrived—were grunting and heaving to get all the parts of the Tilt-A-Whirl on the flatbed. When it was lashed into place Bobby went to the cab of the truck.

  “Get in.”

  The boy—covered now with grime and sweat and grease, every muscle in his body aching— moved to the offside of the truck and climbed in. Bobby started the engine, reached under the seat, pulled out a pint of Four Roses, took two swallows and handed it to the boy, smiling. “Want a snort?”

  The boy stared at the bottle. It was the me brandhis parents drank and he hated the four roses on the label, hated the smell of it, hated the memory of it. But there was Bobby, smiling, the makeup coming off in streaks with the sweat, and the boy was a man now on the run with the carnival so he took the bottle and pretended to sip, handed it back, nearly puking from the taste of it on his tongue.

  “Makes the night drive easier," Bobby said, putting the bottle back under the seat. “That's all we do—drive all night, work all day.” He delicately worked the clutch and shifted into gear—with much grinding—and started out of the fairgrounds. Other rides were loaded and leaving as well and he had to stop twice to wait for other trucks to get on the highway before he could line it out and shift up into highway speed. The mufflers were bad and the noise was loud but not as deafening as tractors and the boy decided to ask one question. He had many but didn't want to be a bother and thought he would learn things as they came anyway but he was curious about Taylor and wanted to know more about him except that he didn't want to seem nosy.

  So he turned to Bobby and asked, “Where is Taylor?”

  It was the right thing to do. Bobby was one of those who just need a start and they keep going and he shifted, grabbed a towel off the seat and wiped some makeup off his face and laughed. “He's driving the pickup that tows the Ruby wagon. You won't see them until we're all set up in Harken in a couple of days. Taylor, he'll sometimes help break down but he hates to set up. I remember once in—I think it was Hastings—he didn't come out at all until it was time to get the money boxes. Then there was the time in Cordovia when he went home with two farm sisters and I didn't see him till nine days and two towns later….”

  The boy nodded and tried to pay attention but it all just made more questions come and the night air blowing in the window was soft and warm and in spite of sleeping all day he was hard tired, bone tired. He closed his eyes.

  • • •

  He dreamt while he slept. There was his mother and she was sitting at a table and she pointed her finger at a window and he turned to see what she was pointing to but he never saw, couldn't see and then he woke up.

  It was daylight. Bobby was still driving and the boy closed his eyes again, wanting to see what his mother had been pointing to, but he could not. The drone of the truck worked up through the metal of the doorframe into his skull where he rested his head and he moved away from it, sat up, wiped his mouth.

  “Want another snort?” Bobby again held out the bottle, which was now nearly empty, and he shook his head.

  “No. It's too early for me.? He'd heard men say that asan excuse to not drink. Never his parents. It was never too early for them. But other peoplej other men.

  “I'll bet you're hungry.”

  The boy nodded and realized that he was— starving.

  “You'll find some prunes in a bag under the seat. Hand them up.”

  “Prunes?”

  “Damn right. Good food, keeps you regular-just don't swallow the pits.”

  The boy fished under the seat and found the prunes, handed them over. “I'll wait until later.”

  “Later. Shit, kid, there ain't no later. We don't get to Harken until tonight. You'll starve by then. You'd better eat some.”

  Another thing that men do, the boy thought— eat like this, on the run. He remembered the meals with Robert, the food on the tailgate at the farm, the pots of food with the Mexicans. Prunes. Jeez. Prunes. He sighed and took a handful and popped one in his mouth, chewing.

  “See—they ain't bad. I started eating them with whiskey to take the taste of chicken heads out of my mouth but now I like them. Prunes and whiskey.” He laughed. “Gives you the runs, but you don't care….”

  “Chicken heads?” The boy couldn't help it. “You put chicken heads in your mouth?”

  Bobby looked at him. “You don't know what a geek is?”

  The boy shook his head. “I don't know anything about carnivals.”

  Bobby laughed. “Not many do. Once you've been a carny you never look at people the same way again. It's just like being a cop. You know everybody as a loser.”

  Not everybody, the boy thought. For sure the deputy, and his parents, but not Hazel and the Mexicans and Bill-—but he didn't say anything.

  “A geek is a wild man from Borneo who lives in a cage. He's so wild he can't be out with other people and once a day the carnival people throw a live chicken into the cage and the geek bites the head off.”

  “You're the geek?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “Are you from Borneo?”

  Bobby stared at the boy, smiled and then shook his head. “You don't get it, do you? I'm from Michigan. There are no real wild men from Borneo. It's a setup. A lie. It's all a bunch of bull to take money from the farmers.”

  “Oh.”

  “I use makeup and turn my skin black and wear some rags to hide my privates—only let it show a litde now and then to get the women to peeking—and sit in a cage pretending to pick bugs off my skin. The suckers pay fifty cents each to get in the tent and see me and then another fifty cents to watch me being fed.”

  “You actually bite the head off a chicken?”

  Bobby laughed. “I've bit worse than that, boy. I was in jail in Mexico once and ate a rat. Raw. And I was damn glad to have that.”

  Maybe that's why prunes aren't so bad for him, the boy thought. If he has to eat chicken heads and rats.

  “If you do it right you can get them to puke. Best night I ever had was seventeen people and nine of them puked. Course it wasn't all me. When I bit the head and I spit blood and shook the chicken around some to splatter blood on the hicks two women started puking. Then another one smelled that and I think it caused the rest to let go. It was great I left the upchuck on the ground in front of the cage and the smell of it got the next batch going—hey, I had all
of Lincoln puking before it was over.”

  The boy felt queasy and looked out the window, let the wind blow on his face until the feeling passed. He turned back. A different question—to get Bobby off puke. “Who is Ruby?”

  Bobby stopped talking for a moment" looking out the windshield. “She's Taylor's… wife. She dances the kootch.”

  “Kootch?”

  “Hootchy-kootchy. She takes her clothes off for the farm boys.”

  “And Taylor doesn't care?”

  “You are so green!“ Bobby snorted. “Taylor doesn't care what she does as long as she makes money for him.”

  Bobby stopped talking then. He finished the rest of the whiskey in one swallow and threw the bottle out on the highway, fished under the seat and pulled out another pint. The boy was to find that while he never saw Bobby actually act drunk he was never without a pint of Four Roses.

  “All right.” Bobby slowed the truck and pulled over to the side of the road near some brush. “The prunes have hit. I have got to take a dump.”

  He jerked the hand brake on, slammed the door open and was squatting in the brush before the boy had his own door unlatched.

  The boy found another bush and peed, listening to the meadowlarks, looking across the prairie until he was done. As he walked back to the truck a car roared by and the boy was surprised to see the driver—he looked like a salesman—give him the finger. He climbed back into the cab and waited for Bobby, who was done in a short time.

  “That guy gave me the finger. I don't even know the guy and he flipped me the bird!“

  Bobby laughed. “That's because you're in a carny truck. He saw the ride on the back. Nobody likes carnies.”

  Bobby started the truck moving and worked through the whining of the gears until they were at highway speed again. He was silent while shifting but started talking when they got up to speed. The boy tried to listen—something about a man who would swallow anything as part of a geek act—but he was still drowsy and the sun was high enough to warm his cheek and he closed his eyes and was sleeping again.