"What else?"
"Well--You know where I live and the money will be there when you go to
plant."
Pete mounted his tired horse and rode homeward. Moodily, with mingled
pity and sadness, Joe watched him go. Pete wasn't really to blame. But
he felt that he was. He had, however unwittingly, dealt mortal injury to
his very good friend and that thought would forever haunt him.
Joe wandered out to his own ravaged fields, and as soon as he was in
them he confirmed what he had known anyway. In the oat patch, a few
bruised stalks strove valiantly to raise battered heads toward the sun.
The corn was ruined and the vegetable garden was gone. What remained was
not one twentieth of what was needed.
Joe caught the mules and evaded their striking feet and slicing teeth as
he fought them into harness. Having run free for four days, the mules
were not inclined to work again. But they had to work, for the man who
commanded them was stronger than they. They plunged and reared when the
harness was buckled about them, and kicked and squealed when they were
once fastened to the plow. That was all they could do.
Joe guided the plow down the first long, straight furrow, and even as he
did he assured himself that the second crop of oats would be better than
the first for the second would feed on the bodies of the first. Joe
reversed his mutinous team to start the second furrow, and when he came
to the end it seemed, quite unaccountably, that the day should also be
ended. Then he looked at the scarcely risen sun and knew that it had not
yet started.
He steered the mules down another furrow, and angered more at himself
than at them, jerked hard on the reins. The plow had gone a bit to one
side, so that instead of being in rhythm with all the rest, the furrow
curved away from them. Joe stopped and passed a hand over his sweating
forehead. Twenty years or more ago his father had whipped him
unmercifully for plowing a crooked furrow. From then until now he had
never plowed one.
Joe turned the mules and straightened the furrow so that it matched the
rest. From that time on, in order not to repeat the error, he had to
watch himself and that made plowing twice the work. With an exhaustion
equal to--maybe greater than--last night's, Joe saw the first long
shadows of evening.
For the first time, rather than providing a refuge from problems, his
house seemed to admit them with him. There was no peace and none of the
calm that paid for a day's work. When dinner was over, the almost
electric restlessness that tormented him mounted to supercharged
heights.
"Do you know what?" he said fiercely, "I wish we could go to a good
hoedown tonight! A real rip-snorter with everything in it!"
"Go down to the store and find out when the next one is and where," Emma
urged. "I wouldn't mind going to a party myself."
Joe walked down the path toward the store, and in his mind, as he
walked, he tried to create some of the camaraderie he would know when he
reached it. He could not.
The sky might as well have been nonexistent, and he was scarcely
conscious of the cool night air fanning his cheek. _It was not Elias
alone. It was not his ruined crops alone. It was more that he couldn't
stretch without bumping someone else's ribs._ Unless a person had enough
money to start with, or was exceptionally lucky, he was lost here. It
was not the way to live and certainly it was not the way for his family
to live. Mechanically Joe strode toward the store and he was on the
point of entering when a man moved toward him.
"Hi, Joe," Elias Dorrance said.
"Hi."
"I heard," said the other, "that you lost your crops."
Joe waited an interminable moment, until it occurred to him that, by
now, everyone must have heard it. Then he said, "That's right."