The Whale in the Wheatfield: 1952

Up to his waist in winter wheat, Danny Hayes wriggled his bare toes and felt the kernels move between them. The grain box of the truck where he played was nearly full.

 

He leaned forward over the truck cab and squinted through the rising heat waves toward the distant red dot that was a self-propelled combine harvester piloted by his father. On it came, raising a spray of wheatchaff dust over the rolling golden waves a half mile away. The combine engine rumbled quiet like distant thunder. Beyond the dot, farther than Danny could run in a day, were the silent blue-white Montana Rockies.

 

Over his shoulder, magpies squawked in the windbreak of poplars. Across the barbed wire fence, bees hummed in wild clover. Duck-billed dinosaurs flashed through Danny’s mind, grazing like fat brown cows beyond the fence in the near pasture. Where did the monsters come from? He looked again and saw Blackfeet chasing buffalo. He squinted. Then he slipped off his T-shirt and shook the chaff from it, feeling an immediate burn from the September sun. He was hungry.

 

***

 

Danny’s dad fretted. It was 4 o’clock and he’d play hell getting twice more around the field by 5. He’d be lucky to cut another half load today, and tomorrow looked like rain. After rain, he’d face a hard push getting the whole field cut by the end of the week. He reached under the combine seat and grabbed the neck of the bottle. He pulled it out and screwed the top off. The engine roared, and the rig crawled forward, slicing through the shoulder-high grain. “That’s better,” Chet said to himself. He took another long pull at the whiskey. “We’ll make it,” he said.

 

***

 

Danny pulled himself out of the truckload of wheat, shook the kernels out of his pants and slipped quickly over the side of the truck box, swinging like Tarzan down into the cab, never touching the ground. Alligators, he thought. Don’t touch the ground. It’s a swamp and there’s pythons. He popped open the lunch box, unwrapped a baloney sandwich, took a big bite, mustard dripping on his chin. He poured out a plastic thermos lid of coffee. It steamed his sweat-streaked face. He gulped it and flipped on the radio. Arthur Godfrey. The boy slumped down in the seat with the sandwich, listening to Arthur play “Moonlight Bay” on the ukulele, and watching the red dot grow into a rocking, roaring monster, a spouting Leviathan breaching from the sea of wheat, bearing down on him in a tidal wave of oil fumes and dry dust spray.

 

***

 

His quick arrival at the old ‘37 Dodge Brothers truck had surprised him, and Chet regarded the rusty gray cab as he watched Danny open the truck door and step briskly up into the box, grabbing the scoop shovel in a fluid move. You’d never believe he was only 9. He was way better than most men you could hire. Feeling strong now, Chet steered the combine close to the truck and threw the lever to turn on the auger, feeling the rush so familiar as he watched the flow of the grain he grew. This was a good crop--better than 50 bushel. This was a no-rust year, a no-grasshopper year, a no-drought year. Those hard times were then, long ago back on the Fort Peck Reservation, and maybe never would be again, thank God. It was going to be OK. They’d make it.

 

***

 

Arthur Godfrey, magpies, whales, alligators, Indians and dinosaurs vanished. Danny pulled his boots on and laced them up. The shaking, surging machine came on fast. Its great revolving reel gathered in the golden stems as high as his head, the vibrating sickle sliced stems off and the reel and forward motion sucked the wheat into the combine’s revolving auger and onto its drive chain into the concave cylinders where the system of shakers, pounders and screens separated the grain and sent it gushing into the tank, the “hopper” behind his dad, spewing waste chaff out the back. Chet’s wire-rimmed glasses were pasted with yellow-gray dust. His sweat and oil-stained straw farming hat rode on the back of his head. He wore a dusty red bandana around his neck and his shirt was open, showing white hairs and a red raw neck. Danny rolled up the truck window, gulped coffee dregs and stuffed the half-eaten sandwich into the box. Out on the running board, he grabbed a dangling rope and vaulted like Tony Curtis in “Trapeze” up into the truckload of wheat just as dad let the augur go and the grain boiled into the load. Stepping out of the way, Danny grinned at his dad. “She’s going 50 bushel!” Chet hollered. Montana was a “next year country,” he always said-- next year there’d be a big crop, next year after drought, after grasshoppers, after blizzard and hail. Maybe this was “next year.”

 

Danny pushed the wheat down in the corners with the scoop shovel, and Chet smiled so Danny smiled. Chet took a big draft of iced tea out of the burlap-wrapped glass jug from beneath the combine seat. The tea streaked his chin, running out of the corners of his mouth, soaking the front of his shirt. He mopped his forehead with his sleeve. Then he swung down the ladder and walked around the machine to check the chains and belts. The combine was damn near as good as the truck. A 1955 International Harvester. He paid $950 for it, and while Selmar scoffed at it, it had proved up. Being able to send Danny inside to clean the sieves and straw walkers was a huge help, 4 1/2 feet and 80 pounds of willing worker, and Chet doted on him. His own dad never did credit him, was quick with a cussing out, quicker with a slap or his belt. Chet grabbed the water jug and tossed his hat on the truck seat. He splashed water on his face and it dried immediately in the sun. “Goddamn,” he said. “That’s better.”

 

***

 

When the grain stopped coming, the boy leapt quick as Cheetah from the truck bed onto the combine platform and threw the lever to stop the auger, then throttled the combine back. He hopped onto the red back of the machine. He sat on the whale. He banged open the lid and dug the jammed straw out of the drive chain so the whale could handle more grain without clogging. The crop was heavy and the whale wheezed and sweated. “Want to ride along?” Dad asked. He hopped on the platform and hunkered into the driver’s seat. Danny vaulted into the grain tank behind Dad as he throttled up and kicked the power takeoff into gear. The machine shook and then rocked forward into the auburn sea. In a moment a strong brown stream of grain gushed into the tank where the boy sat with his legs wrapped around the support struts like Jim Hawkins in the crow’s nest headed for Treasure Island. He’d heard about the kids who drowned in wheat. He didn’t believe the story, but just in case he kept to his own rule: Never Let It Get Above Your Waist.

 

The sun baked the man and boy, two dusty loaves on a red whale surfing along. Danny scouted the horizon watching for breaches and spouts. He marked a spot in the irrigation ditch they were passing. He’d swim there later. Dad steered a sure course, then let go of the wheel and stood up on the driver’s seat, put his hand up with the boy’s to feel the grain spilling into the tank. Their eyes met. “You take the load up to the granary while I make the next round,” Dad shouted. Danny nodded. Aye, Captain. Dad nodded and sat back down. Danny had gone along to dump a truckload many times. Last time, he’d done it all, while Dad stood back. Danny rehearsed in his mind. Drive on over, hit the irrigation ditch plank square. Don’t miss or you’ll be in the drink. Watch the markers and hit them just right, so as to back up straight with no guide, stop in time not to bump the grain loader, wrap the flywheel rope on the engine driving the loader, set the choke half way, and jerk hard on the rope to start the fitful five-horse engine, nurse it along with choke and throttle, set the truck brake, clutch the power takeoff slowly to raise the box steady and let it spill just enough, not too much, into the grain loader tank just right. There goes 180 bushel into the granary. Steady as she goes. No harder than driving tractor, like he’s been doing for three years now, since he was 6. Before that, he was too little for much, but Dad paid him a dollar a day anyway just to come along to the farm from their house in town.

 

Dad worked and Danny handed him tools sometimes when he set timing or changed oil, or Danny changed the cultivator shovels or swept out the tool shed. Often Danny just sat in the car in the shade and read books -- comics, the Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island. And he listened to soap operas and news and quiz shows and Arthur Godfrey. Now he kept the old truck in The Big Low as Dad called it, the grinding, moaning tedious slow first gear. The rig crept forward like a turtle in the mud, rocking relentlessly on. It was only a mile to the granary. The boy had no problem. Backed up, squared the load, started the engine, emptied her out. Aye, Aye, Captain.

 

***

 

Half way around the field, Chet got to thinking. The old Hansen place was for sale down the road. With money from this crop, he might be able to make a down payment. Then, if it all went right, he could stop working for the government measuring fields and grain bins. Then he could finally get to farming full time instead of this damn running back and forth from town to farm. They could move out to the country, for good. And by then Danny could be a full partner and there’d be some real ground to leave him. Yes. That could happen. The header and reel of the combine embraced the heavy wheat here on the richest soil of the place. Wheat spewed into the tank like water from a fire hose. The sun was falling lower in the western sky, beginning to throw shadows so Chet could see himself reflected on the wheat. He drank the beauty of it, then reached under the seat for the bottle.

 

***

 

Danny let the truck box back down easy. Then, as he stood beside the truck near the hoist lever, he saw a brown bottle stuffed in a sack behind the truck seat. He walked behind the truck, shut off the loader motor and secured the tailgates. He walked around again and pulled out the bottle. Whiskey. Half full Seagram Seven. He felt a pain behind his ribs, like the time Charlie Dunn punched him in the stomach for no reason at school. He turned the bottle around in his hands, the put it back. He walked around the truck checking the tires. He went in the granary-machine shed he and Dad had built two years ago, climbed up the ladder, waited for his eyes to widen in the dark and surveyed the conical pile of wheat growing in there. Smelled like bread. Funny about bread and farming. It seemed to be everywhere. Cast your bread upon the waters, the preacher said. Oceans of grain. Loose stacks of hay looked to Danny like loaves of bread. Now, here in the granary were 2,000 or 3,000 bushels of dry hard winter wheat. $2.35 a bushel. Millions of loaves. Millions. Good clean grain, high in protein, the elevator man said on testing it. The man weighed the sample on the big silver bar scale, using the hook he had instead of a hand, weighing the truck load of grain first, then the truck empty. The difference was the weight of grain minus any dockage, such as dandelions, wild oats or Canadian thistle. The man lost his hand in the war, Dad said. Lost a hand. Lost it like Dad lost his first wife. Not Danny’s mom. Dad’s first wife. Lost her in ‘29. Pernicious anemia. Lost her. Gone like the wind.

 

***

 

Chet stood on the combine seat letting the machine inch forward into the heavy wheat. He put both hands into the flow of the grain, flushing up from the field and into the tank. He wasn’t sure he could make it another half mile to the truck. His tank was full. But he could wave Danny over if he had to. The boy was getting good with that truck. Next year they’d be able to unload on the fly. He smiled. A big jackrabbit suddenly bolted out from under the header, escaping. “Whoa!” Chet yelled. “Watch out, you’ll lose those ears!” He sat back down and throttled up, moving faster into the golden field. He reached again under the seat. *** Over by the truck, the boy took out the whiskey bottle again and looked at it. Mom didn’t allow whiskey in the house. Not even when Uncle Gus came from Scobey in the fall for his elk-hunting trip. Then Dad brought the whiskey in anyway, and the two men drank right at the kitchen table. Mom did sewing then. Later, when Gus left, Mom and Dad would argue, and the whiskey would go out in the garage again and there would be a long black silence. Danny didn’t like whiskey either, much as he liked Gus and his huge, gnarly hands and red hair going to gray, his laugh and stories about wild horses, his Indian wife, Two Quail, and bear hunting. The boy smiled. “The details, boy.” Gus would laugh.

 

Two Octobers ago, Gus and Danny had got up at 4 a.m. and crawled a mile with their shotguns through a snowy ditch to a stubble field where the geese were supposed to come in to land. Gus had his old 10-gauge double-barrel, and Danny had his new Sears 16-gauge with the adjustable choke. Dad got it for him for the hunt. “I got a plan,” he said. Danny still remembered his numb toes. When dawn came, the geese flew by all right, a mile high and echoing, perfect v-formation. Not a bird dipped a wing. They cruised the sky. In the early sunlight, when they looked now, Gus and the boy could see why. The pond was frozen solid. Four inches of ice. Uncle Gus laughed. “We forgot a detail, boy,” he said. “We forgot just one detail. She’s frozen. That’s for sure.” Now whenever Danny saw Uncle Gus, that’s what he always said. “Remember the details,” he said, laughing. “Don’t forget, boy.” It was always fun to see Gus.

 

***

 

Danny wished the bottle wasn’t there. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just his imagination and he should just forget it. He shrugged his shoulders back and knew he couldn’t, replaced the bottle and got the truck groaning along in Big Low back to the field. It was a hot, dusty field now, not a sea, not a jungle. Dad was waiting when the boy got back. It was time for a break. They took out the lunch box, the water and the iced tea. Dad sat on the truck running board. The boy lay in the stubble in the shade. He didn’t say anything about the whiskey.

 

***

 

Chet unwrapped a baloney sandwich and poured a cup of iced tea. He wasn’t hungry because at noon, as always, Vi had showed up with fried chicken, potato salad and pie. She was a wonder driving 20 miles out from town in the hot weather, sitting on two cushions so she could see over the steering wheel of that Plymouth car. It was only a couple years old and drove real smooth, but Vi was no mechanic. She was brave to drive that car out on the highway, and it meant cooking a big meal right after breakfast, driving out, setting a full table in the shade by the granary, and then driving back home. All just in time to start cooking a big meal again for supper. He’d been lucky to find her just in time, teaching school in a one-room school house. He shook his head at his good fortune. He felt rich and magnanimous, lucky. Like a king. Dad threw down his hat, looked afar off at the mountains and told the boy a story from a long time ago, this time from 40 years ago when he was 9 years old back in Minnesota. “I remember my dad bought a farm at Red Lake Falls,” Dad said. “See when he went up there, and dad rented two quarters of land...one was all brush and small aspen timber and there was some scrub oak in it, and there was some patches of meadow and they used it for pasture. And the northern quarter was mostly farm land and some of it was wild hay meadow, wild grass meadow, grass in it that reminds me of some of the meadow up towards Glacier Park, lots of flowers in the spring but not too much grass...” He shook his head at the thought, and laughed.

 

Danny thought of what he found in his father’s chest of drawers the other day, when he was snooping around. There were two magazines in the drawer, magazines with pictures of women with huge breasts and no clothes on. Danny felt a stir. He slipped the magazines out from under Dad’s socks. Later he came back and took the magazines away to his room and looked at them for a long time. He was out of breath. He felt dizzy, and there was a tightness in his pants. He sneaked the magazines back in the drawer. Danny thought of the sixth-grade girl Marlene who took his hand and crawled with him into the belly of the WorldWarTwoFighterPlane in the vacant lot across the street from his house in town. She asked him if he liked kissing and before he said anything she pushed up against him and kissed him some more and pushed him down in the plane and lay down on top of him and they wiggled and giggled and she squealed real loud and pushed harder and harder against him and took his hands and put them on her, and then they had to go home. He hadn’t seen her for a while but yesterday she smiled at him in Sunday school and then she brushed up against him in the hall and he felt her legs beneath her dress and got out of breath waiting to touch her. He was out of breath even now, and sweating, and tingling as he lay in the shade looking up at the sky. He heard Dad’s voice drift back, telling his hay story. “...where they really got the bulk of the hay was around the edges of these sloughs. They were pot holes that toward the end of the summer if it didn’t rain too much, they would dry up. Then they’d mow it all for wild hay...around the outside edge that upland grass was the best hay. There was no tame hay...” Dad poured out some coffee then, shook his head and laughed lightly. He took a bite of sandwich. His voice slurred. “...And dad got to raising some corn fodder, but it never went to ears. It made real good forage. I remember once in the winter, we got some snow, and it froze the corn stalk so we had to take an axe and chop it off at the top of the ice and take that in for fodder. And I remember when they threshed they had a log granary, and a platform so you could dump the sacks of grain into the bin. You know, in Montana we shovel it loose, always have, but in Minnesota in those days they put it in bags and never sold it. It was all fed to cattle and hogs. Did I ever tell you about horses running away from me?”

 

Danny shook his head and watched a dragonfly cruise by like a helicopter. Dad took a bite of sandwich. “Well, when I was 9 years old, and Dad got this other farm, he had a very steady team and a mower. And that fall, when it was time to plow, he got the land all struck out and had three horses and a sulky plow. Well, anyway, I was out plowin’ on one of these fields about a quarter mile from the house and there was a cloud come up and it started to thunder and I thought, well, I’ll make one more round. And this was an 18-inch bottom plow, a big one, but these horses could pull it easy because it was sandy loam--three nice horses. And this shower got pretty close so I thought I better go home, so I unhitched ‘em from the plow and started home and I didn’t get much farther than from here to the other side of that row of poplars over there when a crash of thunder come and scared the horses and they started to run and they jerked me down and they all run home and the barn door was four feet wide, and all three of them horses went through that barn door side-by-side, hitched together. Long ago they’d left me laying out in the field far behind.” Chet laughed hard. Danny smiled. “Dad scolded me,” Chet said. “He was worried I’d get hurt. But I had them unhitched from the plow, you know, and those horses were pretty strong in the mouth and I was only a 70-pound kid you know, or 65. They jerked me down and I tried to hang on but I was sliding on my belly in that stubble field and I just had to let go. And the horses come in without me, and Dad was worried. He said when you see a storm comin’, you unhitch, and get on home! Did I ever tell you about the wagon my brother and I made out of a baby buggy?”

 

Danny shook his head. There were two dragonflies now, kind of hooked together and bouncing around over the field. “Well, we did that. I’ll tell you about it some time, but I guess we better get to work.” Chet got up, wrapped up the remaining lunch and tucked it in the truck, then climbed up and started the combine and augured the grain into the truck. Then he killed the engine, and told Danny to clean ‘er out a bit. Danny got up and stretched, crawled inside the combine from the back and dug the sieves and straw-walkers out good with a screwdriver. I’m in the belly of the whale, he thought. A wad of wheat chaff dropped in his face. He spit it out and climbed out sneezing. Dad had the chains greased and in a few minutes he was on his way again, around the field.

 

***

 

A couple of rounds more, Chet figured, still would be possible if he kept the throttle high. The sun was sinking now toward the tops of the cottonwoods on Bushman’s place a mile off. He pulled out his pocket watch. 8 o’clock. There was no hint of moisture from dew yet, and wouldn’t be for at least another hour. The combine purred with the new oil on the chains and the cleaning Danny gave it. In this spot on the field the yield was less. It was drier. It was five acres Chet planned to let Danny use for a Future Farmer’s project when that came up in a couple years in high school. He’d help the boy raise a crop of barley or oats. Let him learn first hand about raising a tough crop for little profit. He could keep the money if they could get any out of it. He was a fine son. It was a perfect day. Chet felt strong and he reached again under the combine seat. *** The poplar trees threw shadows now and Danny sat against one of them away from the mapgies and looked at the Rockies. They didn’t seem far away now. From other farms a mile or so away he could hear tractors, trucks and combines. He thought of Dad as a boy being dragged by a team. He could not imagine that boy. Dad was dad with gray hair and a big belly. When he looked over now, Dad was almost out of sight. Danny checked the whiskey bottle behind the seat. There was less in it now. He unscrewed the top and sniffed it, he tipped it up to his lips. It stung his tongue. He swallowed it, and it burned on the way down. His heart pounded.

 

Across the field, Danny saw Dad standing up on the combine seat and waving his hat. Danny waved back. But he was thinking about Marlene, and that warm feeling came up through his body again, and he felt like he shouldn’t be thinking of that but he liked it and so he did. Dad was chairman of the board of the Lutheran Church. Two years ago, they fired the minister because he had been seen kissing the woman who directed the choir. The minister was a fat man who told a lot of jokes but who was strict when he taught the boy and his friends Luther’s catechism for confirmation. Every memorized phrase began the same: “We should fear and love God because...” The choir director seemed very old, and it was hard to imagine either the Reverend Stordahl or Mrs. Beach kissing anyone. A year after Reverend Stordahl left town, he died of a heart attck and he was only 49 years old and some people said that it was God’s will. Danny remembered the soft movement of Marlene’s legs under her cotton dress and the magazines in Dad’s drawer.

 

Now the whale was on the other side of the field and Danny stripped off his clothes and slid into the irrigation ditch. The muddy water was warm and soothed the dry dust off his skin. He floated on his back, letting the water carry him slowly, turning him around, ears under water, in liquid silence. When he stood up, the sun warmed him instantly head to foot. He shook out his clothes and put them on, plodding across the field of summer fallow with his boots untied, toward the wheat field. The whale breached beside the truck. The field was finished, all stubble now, the end of the wheat. The barley in the adjacent 40 acres wasn’t ready to cut.

 

“We’ll just park the load in the shed, and head on home,” Dad said. “It’s been a good day, a good day. Mom will have supper ready.” Dad had the thermos cup in his hand, and the boy could smell whiskey. “Want a bite?” Dad said. He held the sandwich awkwardly. Some baloney fell out. His eyes were dull. He smiled, then tilted the thermos cup and a little liquid sloshed out. The boy shook his head. Dad drained the cup and screwed it on the thermos. “No more cuttin’ for a while,” Dad said. “No more cuttin’ for a while. Got her in the bin. In the bin...” There was a trace of tobacco from Copenhagen, whiskey and wheat chaff on Dad’s lower lip. In silence then, Dad got into the truck and started it up. Danny stood on the running board, and they drove back to the farm yard, parked the truck in the shed and gassed up the pickup from the drum in the oil shed for the trip home. While Danny gathered up tools and put them away, he saw Dad retrieve the bottle from behind the truck seat, tip it up boldly now, and stow it nearly empty behind the pickup seat. Danny’s stomach hurt. Dad bumped his shin getting into the pickup. He swore.

 

The boy looked out toward the mountains, rubbing his stomach. On the 20-mile drive to town, Dad swerved over narrow irrigation ditches. Twice the truck skidded on the gravel shoulder, but they were going slow and stayed on the road. “A good day, we had,” Dad said, when they got to the highway. In a few minutes they were close to town. Streaks of clouds now came into the sky along with dusk, and a breeze flickered leaves in the cottonwood trees. Pythons, the boy thought. There are pythons around here. “Did I ever tell you about grampa’s dog power?”

 

***

 

Danny didn’t answer. He saw Blackfeet Indians in his mind. They lived here under these cottonwoods when Dad was born. Uncle Gus married one. Two Quail was her name. “A blanket-wearing Indian, black as they come,” Dad said. His smile was crooked when he said that, and his eyes were dark. Charlie Dunn’s grandfather was a Blood which was some kind of Blackfeet, Dad said, or maybe his grandfather was “French” or “Cree.” Sometimes Montanans ashamed of their Indian blood called themselves “French” or “Cree” or “Meti.” Charlie went to school with Danny. He was mean. No good in school. Charlie couldn’t read, couldn’t even tell time, and his mother was “a whore,” they said. Danny thought of the magazines. She was nice to Danny, though, and came up to him and said she was sorry that Charlie punched him in the stomach. “Sometime you’ll understand, Danny,” she said. “You got a big heart.”

 

***

 

“Well,” Dad said, waving his arm and slurring his words while the pickup wove slowly down the town street toward their house. “Grampa had a well in the barn, and here was his great big wheel, seven or eight feet across, and the bottom of it just cleared the ground, and they had a little bit of a dog, a little fuzzy dog in it. Inside the wheel. This wheel had a lot of spokes in it and a tread about as wide as a chair, slats, you know, and this little dog would run in the wheel and the wheel would turn and pump water. Whenever they needed water, the’d just whistle and this dog would come running, and he’d jump in the wheel and pump a little water. That was when I was a boy. A dog power...” He laughed loudly, and pounded the steering wheel with his hand, and shook his head back and forth, back and forth. Danny set his teeth. Dad pulled the pickup into the driveway after bumping up over the edge of the curb. Mom smiled when she saw them coming into the kitchen.

 

“Hi,” she said. “Pork chops.” Her smile stopped when she saw Dad. She turned toward the sink, and began washing dishes. Dad put his arm on her shoulder and tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away. He sat in a kitchen chair and unlaced his boots. He tossed them noisily in a corner. He went into the bathroom, water ran and he came back washed up, his sleeves rolled. They sat down to dinner. Mom nodded at the boy. “We thank Thee, Lord, for food and friends and everything Thy mercy sends. Amen.” Dad turned on the radio to hear the farm reports, said Shhh, and ate four pork chops, green beans and potatoes and gravy. He spilled gravy on his shirt. Mom didn’t eat anything. Nobody said anything. Danny wasn’t hungry. He could see Mom crying when she got up to get more potatoes and stood over the sink.

 

***

 

Chet steadied himself on the back door jam, then teetered out into the back yard. In the twilight, he looked at the pink and purple sky behind Ear Mountain. He shook his head. The big chow dog Bingo ambled up to him. He scratched the dog behind the ears. He thought of his big collie back in Minnesota when he was Danny’s age. Then he remembered his mom. She had six kids in the farm house. He was the oldest, at 12. Gus was less than a year old. Dirty diapers. Not enough firewood. Mostly salt pork and biscuits to eat. His dad was gone, as usual, on one of his deals, running his medicine show that never made any money. “She couldn’t take it any more, is all,” Chet mumbled, feeling sour in his throat. “Take care of the little ones, Chester,” she said. “Help your dad.” Then she went upstairs into the attic and drank a cup of carbolic acid. She hurt real bad, but the next morning she died. “That’s how it goes,” Chet said, petting Bingo as it grew darker and the stars began to come out.

 

***

 

In his basement room, Danny could hear Mom’s and Dad’s voices in their bedroom above him. They were talking softly, and he couldn’t tell what they were saying. He slid silently out of bed and slithered up the stairs and out the door into the garden. He climbed onto the fence to avoid the alligators, sliding along its lower support struts. He stayed safe. “The details, boy. Remember the details.”

 

Stars salted the black arching sky. Danny dropped on his belly into the swamp. Leaves slapped his face as he slid through the potato patch bound for the pickup. Without a sound he unlatched the pickup door and reached past a nest of tarantulas back behind the seat. A fat full bottle of whiskey was there, unopened. He seized it by the neck and dragged it struggling through the mud into the shadows away from the light from Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom window. He kept the bottle silent in a strangle hold and wrenched its head off. In the garden, he shook and shook the bottle and spilled its guts all over the green leaves of the peas and carrots and potatoes. Tears ran down his face and into his silent aching throat. Whiskey was everywhere. Die! Die! When the garden was soaked in the monster’s blood, Danny threw down the corpse and left it to rot. He sucked in a breath while his chest still heaved. He rolled over in the mud, and the pythons that were there before were gone.

 

A million more stars appeared when a cloud drifted over the moon. Danny’s face dried and stung. His breath evened out. The light was out in Mom’s and Dad’s room. He stood in the corn patch and listened to crickets sing. Blackfeet lived here, he thought. Proud people. He walked straight across the garden, past the pickup with its door standing open. He let the screen door slam loud when he entered the dark and silent house.

 

____