Cashing Out

It was hot enough to pop the popcorn right on the stalks; unusually hot for South Dakota in late August. Charley always worried about another twister whenever it got this warm and sticky. Tornadoes weren’t that common in this state in the summer, but he didn’t ever want to go through another one close up like that one in Kearney.

He felt as strong as he had ever felt in his life. Not having Lena’s wonderful cooking, combined with laboring all day in the fields, had brought him back to almost the same physique he had as a young man. And those two Minnesota boys had matured from the same experience; they both appeared heftier and more muscular. Charley was also sure they had each grown taller over the summer. The three wheat shockers had taken care of each other in every situation they had found themselves over the past few months. Charley felt as if the two brothers were his own sons; he regularly settled their sibling rivalries and gave them advice about life. They certainly admired his maturity and good common sense. All three of them felt a close bond with their prayers and support for each other as they lived apart from their loved ones.

Charley missed Lena all day, every day. He wrote her on Sunday afternoons. Only two letters from her had arrived for him in three months. The first was a really long one, and a second one caught up with him about three weeks later. Since then the crew had moved so many times, so it was understandable how letters would get waylaid. It was disappointing, but Charley kept writing to her anyway. He didn’t want Lena to worry about him. It got more difficult with every letter to tell her again how much he wanted to give her a big hug and kiss her, but not be able to do it. But he always told himself that he was doing whatever was necessary to keep his farm and build a new house for his family.

The best thing that had happened with the harvest was that the farther north the shocking crew went, the larger the farms got. Some were hundreds and thousands of acres. This improved the work, because the farmers had more money, were willing to pay the workers more, and they had an extra machine, called a binder. This gadget scooped up the grain as it was cut and wrapped twine around each shock. All the men had to do was stand up the shocks in clusters and throw two more shocks across the top. The whole harvesting process went much faster. There wasn’t so much bending over and twisting involved. All the men were happier.

Charley had started in Nebraska, then worked the wheat fields through Kansas and South Dakota. He and the brothers from St. Paul had ridden the rails with bums, avoided railroad bulls, slept in tents as well as under the stars, and shared philosophies of life around dim campfires. They had survived a twister, shocked thousands of acres of wheat, and watched a man bleed to death.

He was going home soon. He planned to have $250.00 his pocket. If Lena had saved her money good, they could put it all together and get a place put up on the farm before winter set in. He hoped his neighbors would help. Heck, he knew his neighbors would help; most of them were his cousins! Except for Campbells, Findleys, and Monahans, everyone within miles of his farm was cousins. And there were many more cousins living in the town of Grimes. Wheat harvest would be over in about ten days. Even if it wasn’t over, he’d made up his mind that he was leaving.

The nearest town was Huron. A rail line went through there and he was gonna jump on it. Both brothers were heading home also, so they would all go as far as Minneapolis together. Charley could get back to Iowa from there. The bull situation at the railyards had gotten worse over the summer, he heard, but nothing was going to stop him from getting home. He would stick out his thumb and hitchhike if he had to. The weather was decent, so there shouldn’t be any problems, but even if there was, nothing was gonna keep him away from Lena and Harley any longer. He had his money in his shoe, and if somebody wanted to steal it, they would have to be takin’ shoes off a dead man, he was sure of that.

The next ten days seemed like a dream. He didn’t really think about what he was doing, nor did he have to. After this summer, Charley knew he could shock wheat in his sleep. His movements were automatic and he really didn’t feel up to the usual conversation that went back and forth among the men all day long in the field.

He imagined what it would be like to see the green corn in Iowa; at least he hoped it would still be green. They had been going through a dry spell and sometimes the corn leaves curled in on themselves to preserve moisture, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t hot or dry enough to turn it prematurely brown. That would be bad. He preferred to daydream about it being that late summer dark green that he remembered. He had not seen much green in the past few months Wheat is brown, but the wheat farmers call it “golden.” Charley preferred green over golden or brown.

His mind also kept seeing Lena. In his vision, she was wearing her favorite peach-colored dress, sitting on the porch, the sun making her blond waves look even more blond. He wondered if she was still pale, having had two indoor jobs all summer and not being able to get outside much. Well, maybe she got some sun goin’ out to the farm to tend the garden. In her first letter, she said Harley was takin’ her out there two or three times a week. Thank goodness they had a well that hadn’t dried up; at least the last he heard from Lena it hadn’t. Some folks had wells that were only about thirty feet deep. Those dried up fast in hot summers. Monahan’s had a shallow well, and out of her kindness, Lena had told them they could use her well until they got the new house built. Charley’s well was dug ninety feet deep and had never dried up. He had a flash of how deep his love for Lena was…kinda like that well, it would never dry up.

Harley was on his mind also, out there in that wheat field. Charley tried to visualize how much taller and stronger his son had become over the summer. He would probably be surprised to be seein’ his father looking so strong. Maybe Charley had a chance in a footrace with him now; he thought for a moment, but then realized that was foolish. That boy of his was a fast one. Charley still didn’t have a prayer of winning the race.

The summer had gone slowly, but the last few days went by very quickly. Charley and the boys stood in line to get their last pay envelope and then piled on the truck heading to Huron. It wasn’t far and Charley was glad. The truck was moving, but he was sitting down, so it didn’t feel like he was getting any closer to home. He was going to be very short on patience from now on. Every minute sitting still was a minute he couldn’t be with his family. He wasn’t going to waste any time getting home.

The farmer refused to drop them off at the railroad station; the railroad people would have none of that. So, the men were dropped about a half mile outside of town. They would have to find their own way to the rails. Charley scanned the horizon and located the local farmers’ co-op grain bins. Those were usually close to the railroad tracks.

He pointed. “Over there, you two! Let’s move out quick. Ain’t no train gonna wait on us.”

Huron was sparsely populated, so it was unlikely that there was any more than one bull at the station. They would get close enough to see what was going on and then decide what to do. As it turned out, most of the other men who had been shocking wheat on that last farm with them decided to stay in town for a night and spend some of their paycheck on whiskey and such. That was okay with Charley because it meant there would be fewer men trying to hop a freight and attracting attention down at the railyard.

The brothers and Charley worked their way toward the caboose end of a train headed east. The sun had just gone down, but it was still light enough to find a car with the door open. Hopefully, they could get on while the train was sitting still. He knew it was mighty dangerous to jump on a moving train. If you didn’t hang on tight and have enough strength to pull yourself up, you would be certain to go under the train. He had not gone through all those weeks harvesting to lose a leg or his life. Charley had spoken with plenty of the men he had worked with in the fields, who had witnessed it personally. He never wanted to see that and prayed it would not be his fate, or the fate of Henry or Mel. He told them on the way into town that if he ever had a chance to meet their parents, he would tell them what upright young men they had for sons. Charley had no plans, of course, of stopping in St. Paul to meet their parents. He was on his way home to Lena, and no one or nothing could slow him down!

Fortunately, there were several doors open on cars and there was no one around guarding them. Henry and Mel were suspicious that it might be a trap, since they figured the whole town knew that the wheat harvest was done and all the bums would be leaving town. Charley let them in on what he had learned as they passed the co-op. He saw a big ol’ poster for a big harvest dinner and dance that was being held that night. Most of the folks in town would be there, he explained. No one was gonna be carin’ any about the bums gettin’ on the train for that one night. So, they took their time and picked out the cleanest of three cars they found open. They settled in one end of the car with their bindles and began to relax.

That train sat there for what seemed like hours. Charley was sure it was midnight before they felt the first lurch of the car. The brothers had fallen asleep, but he couldn’t. He was so anxious to get moving. He woke up the brothers.

“Here we go, boys,” he informed them, giving them each a firm shoulder shaking. “Rise and shine, we are on the road home!”

“Huh? Huh?” was the only response from the two young men.

“I said,” Charley repeated, “we are heading home. We’re moving!”

“Uh huh, we hears ya,” came back a mumble.

“Well, we got outta town without a fuss and we are headin’ east. If this train goes all the way though without more than one or two short stops, you boys will be home before noon tomorrow,” Charley informed them. “Just thought you might be interested.”

“Charley, we are interested, but we are so tuckered out. Even on this hard old train, we are gonna sleep until we get home. Our ma will be pretty angry if we show up lookin’ sickly,” Henry said. “You don’t want to see our ma angry. For a fine Christian woman, she does a mean imitation of a wet polecat!”

“Okay then,” Charley replied, “I’ll be lettin’ you two sleep all ya want. Don’t want you to go home to no wet polecat ma!” Charley laughed out loud and then chuckled a little longer under his breath, as the boys went back to sleep. He had his own son, so knew how much those boys’ mother must have loved them. She would have her sons back soon, and he let them sleep.

That train only made one stop, about ninety miles west of Minneapolis, in some farm town named Litchfield. So, it was about eleven the next morning when they rolled into the enormous St. Paul railyard. He had never seen a place like that. They had more roundhouses than he could count, and what seemed like hundreds of rail cars and lines of track. They went out in every direction. His first thought was wondering how he was going to figure out which train to take to go south to Iowa. He would have to ask the boys.

“You’re home, you two rails bums!” Charley let them know along with another big shoulder shake. They were so sound asleep he thought they might be dead. He had to give them both a gentle boot in the rear. They woke up and truly took a few minutes to even realize where they were. It occurred to Charley that they all had been so used to sleeping on the cots in their bindles, that waking up in the rail car must have been confusing. He had only had a few short naps on this trip east, so he never lost track of the reality of it like the boys apparently had.

“I said, yer home, ya two rail bums. Get up and go home to yer folks! G’wan, git outta here!” He yanked Mel up by the arm and started shoving all his belongings into his arms. “Here, take yer stuff and go!”

“Whoa, Charley, let us get our bearings here,” said Mel. “Lemme get my eyes open for a few minutes. This train just got here; it ain’t goin’ anywhere that fast.”

“Besides,” added Henry, “we ain’t had a chance for a proper goodbye for you, old man.”

“I don’t need none of that sentimental baloney,” Charley said, scowling a little bit too hard. “That’s for the womenfolk. Jest git goin’!”

“We are gonna shake your hand and wish you well. We ain’t talkin’ about hugs and kisses, ya old fool,” Henry assured him.

“You sure ain’t!” Charley scoffed. “Then get over here an’ shake my hand, both of ya! Then get off my train and go home!”

Both young men gathered up their belongings and rolled up their bindles. “May as well keep these, in case we want to go campin’ sometime,” Mel said.

Charley repeated, “May as well.” He stuck out his right hand. First, Henry shook his hand and jumped out of the car in one big hop to the ground. As he watched him land, Charley felt two strong arms wrap around him from behind.

“Gonna miss ya somethin’ terrible, old man. Good luck to you with your house and your farm. God bless your family.” Mel released him and leaped down to join his brother.

“God bless your family, too,” Charley said, and the boys turned and ran to the east, in the direction of St. Paul.