Grand Change (16 page)

“Go ahead and laugh; go ahead and laugh,” he said, his words gagging. “What a man has to go through in this world.”

We settled down to rest leeward behind the bags when we got lunch out of the way. There was just enough chill in the breeze to make the sun a comfort; we lay back feeling the after-lunch laziness setting in with its stiffness. The girls lay on their set with their feet pointing up and toward us, their slanting faces half shadowed by their bandana peaks. We could hear their low melodic murmurs mingling with the cries of a flock of curlews skimming into a nearby pasture field.

“We should visit the girls,” I said.

Wally pried an eye open and glanced their way. “Go ahead. If you don't come back, write.”

We fell into a drowsy silence for a while.

“You know there's got to be a better way of doing this,” Wally broke in.

“Here we go.”

“No, but there's got to be a better way.”

“Mechanical pickers.”

“Nah, they're no good, too slow. Can't grade out all the tops and rocks at any decent speed; more stopping and starting than you can shake a stick at; half the time the man at the end can't keep the bags from running over. Kept me busy cleaning up after the old man's. No good for Fred James, that's for sure. He'd need a dozen or more with the five hundred acres he's got.”

Wally paused, sifting clay with his fingers. When he spoke, his voice took on a far-off idle tone. “Way I see it you could take a big funnel and drag it behind the digger 'til it gets full, then hang it up and dump it into dump trucks from the small end.”

“With a steam crane and a sky hook. And thirteen bulldozers to haul it down the field.”

“Ten would do.”

“Then what would we do?”

“Drive a bulldozer.”

“Who could afford it?”

“Well, there's that,” Wally said. “We couldn't, that's for sure. We're at the point of needing a bigger mailbox now with all the bills coming our way.”

“Joe feeling the pinch pretty bad?”

“Most everybody is, except youse. Think Harvey will ever change, get a tractor, the lights and that?”

“Hard to tell what goes on with The Old Man most often. He's getting old, though, no two ways about that. We may not be getting the bills, but the slaving and doing without could be getting to him. Shipped his potatoes out by truck last winter. He'll even sneak a visit to someplace where there's a TV to watch the fights or a hockey game. I guess it's like Dan Coulter says, ‘If you don't change with progress, it'll do it for you.' And the rheumatism is hitting The Boss pretty good now, too. But you never know; he's a tough, stubborn old bird.”

The wind began to pick up; a sudden whirl flapped a loose bag mouth, belting us with a choky puff. Two guys a few sections down were punch-sticking potatoes to the end of short sticks and whipping them across the field at a flock of seagulls. Up and down the fields, pickers were limp-footing across the drills to and from a woods nearby on toilet breaks.

“When do we get paid?” Wally said.

“Saturday afternoon. They hold back a day's pay.”

“Three day's pay, fifteen bucks. I'll have me a hot hamburg sandwich and a banana split at the restaurant, thank you very much.”

“
Big Plane Riders
is on. Should be a good movie. I'm wondering how The Marshal's going to make out in the showdown with the gunfighter in the serial.”

“Coming over to watch
Durango
tonight?”

“Might. How's school, by the way?”

“Not bad. Some nice girls.”

“Pull a Casanova yet?”

“I am Casanova.”

The sudden, sputtering
rhutt, rhutt, rhutt
of the tractor's barks broke in from the headland.

“Bark, you pile of junk,” Wally said, sitting up. Then he jumped to his feet with a curse. “Got to go. Flying axe handles—must have been something from the lunch can got into me lunch.” He cursed again bounded up and limp-footed across the drills, glancing over his shoulder at the digger at times.

I met up with Wally that Saturday night in the Masons' porch. He was gluing his hair back in front of the mirror over the sink, with that goo women used to set their hair with. Wally's hair was never meant to be combed back, but since he'd started school in town, he wouldn't have it any other way. Trouble was, once the goo dried stiff, the hair would spring up in thick points and he'd look like a kingfisher. It seemed in tune somehow, though, when you considered his black suit, short at the arms and legs, his green shirt, red tie and wool socks and those big feet of his.

We had been hitchhiking pretty regular that summer, but the wind was cold that night and we'd decided to catch a ride
with Dan Coulter in the old rattle trap he had recently
obtained. Dan was eating supper by the light of one low-watt bulb hanging from an open rafter when we got to his house.

His shadow pretty much covered the few dishes scattered in a ragged semi-circle on the naked top of his table. At the far side of the bare wood floor, across from where the kitchen range sat, shaggy and slightly awry from its flue pipe, a floor TV sat below three rough-board wall shelves stacked with books.

It was known that Dan had been drinking less since he got the TV. But you could tell by the slurs in his speech, the jerky way he spooned his stew, the long slurps as he ate, that he wasn't exactly on the wagon.

“You fellows want some stew?” he said.

I was full of Saturday night beans so I decided against it.

“I'll have some,” Wally said. That was another thing about Wally: he eat could anytime, anywhere and as much as he liked and he wasn't much more than skin and bones.

Dan flung out his arm in mid-slurp and pointed to some extra dishes and cutlery in the oven. Wally got a bowl and helped himself to the stew from a large, gravy-encrusted pot on the stove. Then he sat down across the table from Dan and began poking it back like he hadn't had supper, or dinner either.

“That's good,” Wally said without looking up. “Partridge, eh?”

I was standing behind Wally, and Dan bobbed his head sideways so he could see me. A clownish grin crossed his face and screwed up into a delayed wink.

“Nope, it's muskrat.”

“Yeah, ha, ha, muskrat,” Wally said. “That's funny.”

“Nothing funny about it,” Dan said in a fuzzy drawl. “It's a big, fat muskrat—they make the best stew. The thin ones are better fried.”

Wally's head tilted up and his hand, with a spoon full of stew, froze about halfway up to his mouth.

Dan flung his arm out and pointed to a pelt hanging on a bare wall stud. “It's muskrat,” he said.

Wally reeled from his chair, gagging out, “Muskrat!” Then he wobbled to the door, stuck his head out and hocked and heaved with his knees half bent.

“That mean you don't like muskrat?” Dan slurred.

Not a trapper himself, Wally couldn't reason that the pelt was from last year's catch. Trapping season wouldn't open for a week or so.

We got away, with Dan Coulter stiff-arming the wheel of his old square car, his long neck stiffened into a bow. Eventually, after hedging the ditch here and there, and nearly sideswiping a light pole, we made it to town. Dan pulled up at a curb not far from what was left of the horse shed. The car backfired when he cut the motor and a weave of blue smoke, barely visible from the glow of a streetlight, wafted under his nose.

“Well, me boys, we made her in and we'll make her out, the good Lord willing,” Dan said. “Should meet here around ten I guess.” A wry, somewhat mischievous, look came over his face. “We'll wait on one another whatever.”

With only a few people scurrying here and there and what few cars were parked, the street had a cold, vacant look. There were no wagon wheels jutting into the pale light at the horse shed. The hot dog stand was a black block amidst the taller buildings.

There were a lot of empty seats at the theatre and the vacant dryness gave a depressing effect to a half-decent movie.

The wind had picked up by the time the movie was over; it moaned and whistled around the storefronts and rocked the telegraph and electrical wires. A heavier chill had moved in and, with the moan of the wind, the dim, near-vacant streets gave off an eerie oppression. There was a dry quietness inside the stores now, with the proprietors and attendants watching, strikingly inanimate and almost doleful, some with one foot on a stool or a chair and arms draping at the knee.

After checking a few prices here and there, we decided that sometime soon we'd go to the city—where things were cheaper and more varied and there was some life—to buy most of our wares. While we were in town, I bought a smoked fish and Wally got a current gossip magazine with a girl in a bikini on most every page. The proprietor in the little store stood in quietness as well, in his usual pose, peering at us from under his visor.

“Quiet tonight,” I said.

“Getting quieter all the time,” the proprietor said.

“Too much TV,” I said.

“TV, cars and the stores opening on Friday nights in the city. The town is drying up. Ben's going to close the restaurant in a week or so. Hal is talking about closing his clothing store. There's talk of them closing the feed mill, too. And I'm just getting by by the skin of me teeth. Thank you very much.”

There wasn't much of a buzz in the restaurant; the smells were still there and the bass sound still thumped from the nickelodeon. But there was no trouble finding a seat.

“When are we going to the city?” I said.

“Might as well go next Friday night.”

“Hitchhike?”

“Might as well.”

“We could take in the hop at the rink—last night before they freeze the ice.”

Wally shot a sour look at me bordering on betrayal. “You really listen to that junk?” He moved back, still eying me with that sour look, as the waitress set down our hot hamburg sandwiches.

“Turn on the radio, baby-o, and let's rock and roll. I've been tuning in most of the summer, ever since they started playing the hop on the radio.”

“Ah, you're spoiling me hot hamburg sandwich. Ugh, you're even starting to sound like them. Dear, dear, dear.”

“Ah, just a passing thing, Wally. That's what The Boss says.”

Wally went completely rigid and dropped his fork. “Ah, dear, spoil a man's appetite.”

“Maybe you should try it; be the first to rock on the fiddle— Rocking Wally with his rocking fiddle. Got to change with the times, Wally.”

Wally shook his head and finished his hot hamburg sandwich without looking at me.

“That ain't the biggest banana split I've seen,” Wally said when the waitress brought it around.

“That's okay,” she said. “You're not a very big monkey.”

We were surprised when we saw Dan Coulter's rangy, square-shouldered, long-headed frame, silhouetted by street lights, come heading for the car slightly before ten.

He wobbled his way to the driver's side and stood, swaying and fumbling for his keys. “Evening, fellows,” he grunted when we spoke to him. It took quite a while for him to get behind the wheel; he sat rigid for a while longer before he spoke over his shoulder to us in the back seat. “Boys, I must confess that I'm about three quarters in the bag due to a little over-partaking. Now, I think there's a possibility that I might be able to run this machine, but I'm a little doubtful if I'm able to steer this tin fizzy on me own. Now the way I got it figured, if one of youse got in the front beside me to keep an eye on the road, and if the other reached over me from the back and steered, I should be able to handle the gears and gas and hopefully the brakes.”

“You'd better get in the front, Jake,” Wally said. “I can drive the old man's tractor.”

There was a lot of
ern-a-ern-a erning
, sputtering, stalling and backfiring before the car motor broke into a regular flub and Dan said, “Now, are we all set?”

“Let 'er go,” Wally said. There was low angry whine.

“Put in the clutch, Dan,” Wally said.

“Yeah, forgot that.” Finally the motor gunned and we jerked ahead. “Here we go.”

“Hold her, Dan, there's a stop sign!”

The car snubbed short and Wally lurched forward, jamming Dan's nose into the steering wheel.

“Get off me head.”

“All clear?”

“All clear.”

“Let go of the wheel, Dan… You got to let go of the wheel!”

“Right, Wally, right, right!”

“Dan, you got to leave the wheel alone.”

“Hold 'er!” I said. “Wait for that car…
whooof
.”

“I can't see,” Wally said.