The Reaper by Dorothy Easton. Millgate was a rich farmer, owning his own
machines, not like those poorer, smaller men who hired an engine from a
neighbor. He has his reaping machine, a red and yellow walter Wood Cleveland
brand. Every morning, now, as soon as it's dry enough, about
nine o'clock, the engine starts, and from the farmer's manor house, its
heavy, drowsy sounds are heard. For those on the machine, the noise
is harder. The only human sound that penetrates it is the old conductor's ai
to the driver. If the canvas sticks, or if weeds are making a
block, then the young man in front slows his engine down and wipes his
forehead with his hand. Reaping goes on until nine at night. No strange
man sits on the Reaper, but one of Millgate's best men, the most
trustworthy, the most faithful, the Wagoner, a man well over sixty,
with side whiskers, gray eyes, a long nose, and a forehead and
chin carved out of granite on his head, a flat white awake hat on
his bent back, a white jacket. When he speaks, his mouth moves
sideways. First. There's always a spot of dried blood on his lip.
When he smiles, a tooth stump appears like an ancient fossil. He talks
slowly, stopping to spit now and then every day of his life. He
gets up at half past three, now mounted on the high iron seat,
a crumpled sack for a saddle. He rise like some old charioteer, a
Hercules, with great bowed back, head jutting out, chin straight, a
hard weathered look about his face, and in his heart discussed this year for
the first time, they are using a motor engine to pull a reaper around
instead of horses. He lived for his horses. He's the wagoner, and
they are his job. If one falls ill, he sleeps with it.
He believes in horses. But speaking of the motor he says, she is
all right, when she's all right, with a look that ends the sentence
for him. In his youth he had reaped with a side. This walter
wood is a neat arrangement. You can't deny that one bit of the mechanism
works as a divider, while a big light kind of wooden windmill arrangement,
continually revolving, beats the corn down into a flat pan, from which it's
carried on a canvas slide up an incline, then shot over and down the
other side in a continual long flat stream like yellow matting. And then the
needle, the threadled as he calls it, nips in somewhere, binding the
flat masses into separate, neat round sheaves pitched out every few moments with perfect
precision by a three pronged iron fork above the one big heavy central wheel.
The charioteer is shaken and jolted from nine till nine in front on another iron
seat by the box like engine. The driver works behind runs a red faced
laborer clearing corners. The motor has to run out the full length of its
cogged iron wheeled bands before it can turn, and the sheaves dropped on the
last round get in the way, so at every corner they have to be
lifted and set back. The laborer clears, then runs after the machine,
now halfway up the field, stops at the next corner, stoops once more
to lift and shift three sheaves, then runs again. This laborer was a
man of forty with a face as naive as a boy of fifteen. Though
getting bald, his eyes were young his mouth loose, untrained as a child's.
He's touched, as we say, and had never really grown up.
He slept in the attic ate in the kitchen and worked, but was not
responsible. He was always given light jobs, walking with the clappers, weeding,
cleaning sties, clearing. His greatest friend was a boy of twelve.
On Sundays, they'd laugh for an hour at nothing. Going to the coasts
for the first time. Last year, he was so taken by a Punch
and Judy show that he never saw the sea. His smile was the most
ridiculous thing in the world. He blushed continually, panted, grinned like some
boy caught kissing, and was always apologetic. Lightning made him hide his head,
and he was afraid of engines. Their regularity upset him. Running behind
the reaper, this quick moving, noisy thing, smelling of oil made up
of sliding chains appalled him. There were five wheels at an angle, and
all the time an oil wet, black flat chain band ran around over them.
Underneath the heavy central wheel ran round and round. To the imbecile,
the wagoner's courage appeared supernatural. There should have been another man to take two
corners, but all hands were wanted, so the laborer had to run all
day. It was hot, no wind, no shade. If he looked
up for a moment, the hills and distant elms appeared bright blue. The
big field itself was ablaze with color, wheat like brown, burnt amber poppies,
small white daisies, thistles. When the engines stopped, the only sounds
were plaintive anxious bird calls from the center of the field. Sometimes a rabbit
or hair looked out, then bolted back. Once five graceful, sleek brown
pheasants ran out toward the hedge, then lost their nerve, turned and went
running back. The sun shone steadily. Sheaves picked up by the laborer made
his hand smell oily. Their string band raised a blister on his forefinger.
Very often he grabbed hold of nettles and sharp thistles, and the backs of
his hands were swollen and covered with stings. Blue butterflies twirled in front of
his face. Poe maws flew out when his hat fell off. He had
no time to get it. The sweat ran down his egg shaped forehead to
his long, square, hairy chin. Though he could shave himself on sundays.
He looked a little like a monkey. When the engine stuck, the
wagoner asked, in his slow, flat voice, won't she speak. She's
not coming out, was the youth's reply. Once the driver was thrown up
afoot when the motor went over a hole, he yelled, Men are often
killed by the reaper. The imbecile got the startled look of a child seeing
snakes at the zoo. Each time the engine snorted or the wagoner called out
ay, a spurt of water ran down his spine. The blood was beating
in his head. The sun shone mercilessly on his pale bald patch. The
field began to bounce before his eyes, bloodshot from stooping. When the yards
of bindweed shackled the machinery, the wagoner just turned his head a sign for
the laborer, who had to run had to catch and tear away the long
green chains full of small pink flowers. By four o'clock they were overtaking him
Before he got round. The driver had to turn more sharply. The canvas
stuck. Don't you do that again, the old wagoner scolded, with stern
eye, you'll turn us over. The engine stuck when they tried to start
it again. For half an hour, the young driver tinkered with the tools
from the box on, screwing small oily nuts, testing wires, feeling levers,
and in desperation, wiped his black, dripping hands on his hair.
Twenty times. He turned the starting handle, but she wouldn't speak. Then
suddenly, with a sound like a pistol shot, the engine fired. The
machine ran backward, upsetting the laborer, and before he could move, the
central wheel ran over his ankles. When the imbecile came to himself, they
were still at the corner. His feet were tied up in a jacket.
He was suffering horribly, yet seemed unable to focus it. But seeing the
red and yellow reaper standing close beside his head, some memory soaked his face
with sweat. He fainted, brandy was fetched. They lifted him on to
a hurdle. When he recovered again, the whole group were still at the
corner. His employer stood there, stout, well dressed and anxious in his
gray felt hat, dark coated trousers. The driver stood there too, and
the old wagoner corn was still up in the middle of the field. The
laborer looked surprised at seeing sky before him as a rule, when he started
he saw fields, he turned his face. The men watching saw his round,
boyish eyes project at sight of something red and wet and sticky like the
mess they made out sheep killing splashing on the stubble, while two broken boots
lay oozing the same stuff in a large pool of it. Following this look,
the old wagoner said slowly, er, my boy, them are yours?
Tears were running down his stiff, dry cheeks. How do you feel,
asked the farmer. His laborer blushed, then whispered to the wagoner,
what's happening, mister Collard? Why you've a lost your feet? For yet
another minute, the imbecile lay panting, shy, self conscious under his master's
eye until the idea struck him once more. Whispering to the wagoner, he
said, help me up, I'll go home, Willie. You can't walk,
said the old man, simply, you can't walk no more. The
black hair stiffened suddenly on the idiot's chin. He had understood that in those
bleeding, mangled boots his feet were lying. He began to cry, and
then, catching sight of his master, smiled as though to apologize. The
end of the Reaper by Dorothy Easton,