Speaker 1: 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 oi 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,
wide 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 rides 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 a sentence for him. In his youth
he had reaped with a scythe 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 slut 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 threadle, 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 wheel 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 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 hare 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. Pale 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
a foot 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, oh,
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 ye 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, unscrewing 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 onto 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,