They was another eight weeks of spuds waiting in Othello, so I caught a ride up with old Nugene. Man was blacker than the insides of a sealed-up boxcar. Slow as molasses. You'd come up behind him, jab him in the ass with a sack-sewing needle and he'd just shrug real slow and turn round with his eyes skinned over. Anyone else would of jumped out of their boots. He was walking blind, Gimme would say. Gimme was the foreman. “Anyway, it was all Nugene could do to stay up with the number twos even when they was dribbling along. Sometimes he'd get mad at my teasing and snatch a spud out of a sack he was sewing and toss it at me. It wasn't nothing to dodge a spud throwed by Nugene. Man couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a bassfiddle. His stick of a wife drove the old pick-up with the beat-up camper on the back. I just slipped my mind out the back door, daydreaming all the way up the San Joaquin. Through the godforsaken guts of Central California, hot and thirsty, seemed like days. On up to Oregon, crossing over east of the Cascades, over the Columbia and into the Basin. Othello was just another taters-and-onions town. One main street with a row of old two-story buildings, couple of gas stations, about eighteen churches--one for every kind of Baptist, Gimme would say — a yellowed park with spindly trees, and the faded red Purina checkerboard overlooking the tracks. Hooked on to the checkerboard was a new aluminum building with a fresh-painted packing machine inside. Biggest machine I ever seen, arms sprawled all over like a mechanical octapus. Main body of it was bright red, conveyer belts dark blue, snaking this way and that, and where the spuds went everthing was covered with white styerfoam. First time I seen it I saluted the damn thing. They was styerfoam everwhere. Out front in the washway where the trucks unloaded. On the jigging platforms. Side panels off the belts. Loading platforms. Handtrucks had new styerfoam fitted round the bottom blades. Beds of the field trucks even. Suppose to keep from bruising the spuds, according to Gimme. Me, I think they overdone it on account of the owner being some kind of nut. Most of them Mormons are. Next thing he’d be asking us to carry the damn spuds round on velvet cushions like they was holy stones dug out of a mountainside. Never seen such a rag-tag crew. Half rejects or sidemen or pregnant cows, the other half heifers in blue jeans — locals. But they was one made my heart skip a tick. Couldn't of cared less if she knew a tater from a beet. Risa. Lord what a piece of work. Stood so pretty on the grading line, shifting from one foot to the other, light brown hair in a wispy ponytail. She'd lean on one foot and hook the other round a curvy calf, one hip making a soft pillow. Ever once in awhile she'd look up, blow wisps of hair out of her yellow eyes and glance round. Her small face was smooth and shiny. Reminded me of a polished egg. When she looked my way, that's when I put on the speed. I wasn't the only one had my eye on her. Clayton Skeels stuck himself at least twice sneaking looks at her. He was the other side sewer, next to Nugene. Where Nugene was slow on account of arthuritis and a gummed-up brain, Clayton was just plain lazy. His pregnant old lady — she was always pregnant far as I knew — she brought in the steady money grading on the front. She'd grade right up to labor time, then stash the baby with the Head Start ladies running their little nursery on the side. Must of got real fat popping the first one out cause now she always looks the same. Bloated. Clayton he'd just chew his gum and comb his wavy black hair and sew a sack once in a while. First day at a new job, didn't matter where, Clayton he'd come into my boxcar at breaktime. Hanging out, leaning with his arms crossed. Yeah, he'd say, never missed a night in three years. Then he'd unsnap his needle from his string bundle and slide a Kentucky stone out of his pocket, as if he needed it. Yeah, he'd say, stroking on his needle, that's some sweet stuff. Like hell, I'd think — I may be wet behind the ears but I ain't stupid. If cows need forty days off a year, I figure a woman is good for at least thirty. Didn't matter none to Clayton. Evertime we opened up a new boxcar I half expected him to hike a leg and pee all over the walls.
One day he was telling me all about his honey dipping exploits and I called him on it. I seen you eyeballing that girl on the grading line up by Nugene's old lady, I said, that ain't the look of no satisfied man. (I didn't want to say Risa's name. Like I wasn't really interested in her for myself.) Clayton got that waxy slick look on his face. Some men just can't be satisfied, he said. He was wearing that same half-lidded look he got dropping a sack on the belt and clipping his needle to his next string. But, he said, if any pretty little thing could satisfy me, I'd bet it'd be her. Like hell, I thought, not if I can help it. If I was six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier I'd of kicked his lazy lying ass all the way to Walla Walla. For cleaning up after hours Gimme let me use the women's fridge and sleep in their lounge on that caved-in mattress with the stains. Got to where I was either loading spuds in boxcars, hosing them all over the floor, shoveling them into a wheelborrow, or dreaming about them.
I couldn't sleep after cleaning up one night, stunk to high heaven in there, so I head out the tracks on my way to the park. The new moon was out, just the skinniest sliver of it. They was two stars near one tip. Looked like a scene somebody sewed on a dark blue quilt. When I passed by the trailer court I looked to the office. Risa was setting on the back steps. Her folks ran the place. I wanted to say something to her on account of catching her looking back at me twice that afternoon but I couldn't bring myself to go over there. Just kept on walking the tracks. Walking and thinking about them pretty eyes, the way they'd catch the morning sun by the coke machine. Imagined working myself up to say something to her.
I could be setting on the floor with a Coke and she could come right up to me and say, you've been looking at me. Her yellow eyes looking right into mine, sending goose bumps up my neck. I didn't mean to bother you, I'd say. She'd give her ponytail a little toss with one hand on her hip and say, maybe I don't mind being looked at by the right man. I'd just take a sip of my coke and not say nothing. Just look right into her eyes and keep on looking. Long as you don't mind my looking, I'd say, I don't mind you're liking it. No, that ain't what I'd say. It'd be a real honor to buy you a Coke. No. Too mushy. How about — maybe you don't know my name's Willis Morgan. I know yours. Risa — I like that name. Something like that. Words don't matter much anyway.
*
First thing in the morning Gimme'd come up to tell us which cars to load. The cars was on three tracks lined up alongside a new concrete dock the length of a alleyway. They was steel ramps connecting the dock to cars on track #1, and more steel ramps leading from those cars to cars on track #2 and so on to track #3. Twelve cars on a track. With three different tracks, things could get all jumbled up calling them by numbers so we give them names--House, Drill, and Team. Gimme'd make sure we loaded the right cars with the right taters. New York and such places always got the pretty spuds while the number twos stayed home. Didn't bother me none. Peel the skin off they're all the same.
Everbody calls him Gimme cause he's always coming up to you wearing that long-billed baseball cap and saying gimme that needle, or gimme that handtruck, trying to show you how you ain't moving fast enough. He's a funny-looking guy — all elbows and long skinny legs with a pot belly. Reminds me of a dirty stork. Stand aside, he'd say, grabbing a hundred pound sack and boosting it with his belly to the top of the handtruck. Watch this. He'd take off at a long-legged trot down the dock, load stacked five high. He'd make a sharp turn and the weight of the load'd pick his long clown feet right off the ground, and when they come down on to the dock they'd be off and flapping again, barging over the steel into the house car, through the drill car right into the team.
You could hear him slam the load up against the wall if it was a empty car, then he'd come running back trailing his handtruck behind him. That's the way to do it, he'd say, huffing and tugging at his long bill. Yeah, old Gimme was good all right. But I'd like to see him trotting round like that all day. One of these days he's going to snag the corner of a steel making a fast turn and end up down on the tracks under a shitload of raw taters.
Anyway, Gimme had us trotting with a three-man loading crew on the front end and no throw-up man in the car. Must of been 110 in the shade. Keep it neat, he'd say, six high all the way, wait for the next guy and throw up every fourth load. Labels up. Don't be plowing your hand trucks into bottom sacks to save space and make it easy on your lazy selves or the Mormon'll have our asses. And remember, he'd say — thumping you on your chest with his bony finger — my ass is your ass.
Long about ten one morning I was stacking a top sack on my handtruck when I noticed Clayton up on the grading line talking to his old lady with his arm around her. I knowed she couldn't be having no period and her morning sickness times was all done with cause I hadn't seen her on the mattress in the lounge since we got here. I figured Clayton was faking something to keep from working. Just his lazy self. I pushed off with my load and trotted out to the dock. Something made me turn my head and look back as I was passing over the steel into #2 house. Clayton was squeezing past the ladies on his way back to the side end but one hand was lagging behind. He was stealing a quick feel of Risa's ass and she turned on him with her lightning bolt eyes just as I passed into the house car. I like to run my load right off the goddamn steel.
That sonofabitch, I thought. It was my turn to go up with a load but I wasn't waiting for no help. I grabbed them one by one off the handtruck, a hundred pounds each of dead weight, and like to throw the bastards plum through the wall. I may be a little guy but I get strong as a ox when I'm mad. When I come back, Gimme was looking at me with a crease in his forehead. What the hell you doing in there? he asked. Sounds like a bull in a barn full of heifers. You get the labels up? From now on wait for help. Don't get to thinking you're superman just cause you got a teenage hard-on all the damn time. What's eating you, anyway? Nothing, I said.
Things was back to normal up on the grading line. Risa was leaning on one leg, cute ass pooched out to one side like always. You'd of thought nothing had happened. Clayton was back down to the side end, dropping a sack onto the belt, chewing his gum, looking bored and superior. I'll be all right, I said as Gimme was walking off, just got a wild hair up my ass. Well get rid of it, he said over his shoulder, you'd best save yourself. You'll be hauling out to number twelve team late afternoon and that ain't no holiday. I just nodded. Yeah, sure, I thought to myself, save yourself. Save my ass. Ain't much saving to be done with only three men loading on the front and the Mormon's octapus cranked up tighter than a well-oiled rollercoaster.
Speak of the devil. Here he comes just as I'm stepping up to the loading platform for my bottom sack. Baby Face Baboon Lips with his drycleaned cowboy hat and fancy stitched boots. Careful the way you handle that bottom sack, boy, he says, bruise them and they'll spoil. Shit, I thought, if I was a grown man with a chubby face and a squeeky little voice like that I'd keep my mouth shut. I just grabbed the sack off the platform and stacked it like always.
Come noontime I found me a far-off refer. Took my lunch down to number twelve drill and sat in a cold corner. Ice above was making dripping noises. Cooled me down on the outside but something inside was still smoking. Didn't feel like eating. I don't know what gets into me sometimes. Anyway, I leaned back and closed my eyes. Drifted off.
Dreamed I got the courage up to ask Risa camping. We was hitchhiking up to the Wallowas. Pitched a tent, built a fire, Risa cooked up something and afterward she was washing up in the creek. I just stood there watching her splash water on her face.
She was something. Pure. Not a smear of make-up. No perfume. Fine little light brown eyebrows with gold sparkles. I sat down with my back to a pine and watched. She was humming and birds was chirping real soft in the background. Up above, through the treetops, I could see clouds like mashed taters all fluffy in the sunset sky. Risa turned her back to me. Right away she started taking off her blouse. Slipping out of her levis. Smooth perfect back with a tiny waist and a indented line connecting her neck with the crack of her round little ass. All the while humming with the creek burbling.
Then I heard something. Next thing I know my heart's banging like a bass drum. Clayton had snuck into my dream like a dog following his nose. Hot on her trail. I scrambled to my feet, ran up behind him, leaped on his big back and wrapped a choke hold on him. Keep your grubby hands to yourself, I said, wrestling him to the ground. Choked him till his face turned purple. Then I caught myself. Wait a minute, I thought, this is a dream, I can change things. Took the pressure off his neck, went back to my pine and sat down. That’s when I come to my senses and woke up.
*
After lunch we was hauling into number twelve house and the spuds was flat-ass flying. Baboon Lips had the octapus cranked up full speed. Jiggers couldn't miss a beat slapping a empty sack on the hooks or spuds'd pour all over the floor. Sewers had their fingers taped and needles flashing. Up on the grading belt the taters was rolling by so fast one of the ladies would leave and lie down on the lounge mattress ever once in a while to keep from getting motion sickness. Gimme was up there too, standing next to Risa, pulling twos to keep from getting out of grade. By the time I'd bump a load and come running back, the sack boy he'd be holding two sacks on the loading platform and pushing back a third that was climbing the belt.
Sweat stung my eyes and my t-shirt was wet clear through and printed with sack dye. I knew I'd get my usual tattoo job from hugging hundred pounders. If I lifted my top sack just the same every load, come knock-off time I'd peel off my wet shirt and they'd be a colored label stained into my chest. This one was a picture of a field with brown and green rows of tater plants, narrowing down to a point like railroad tracks. Above it in big blue letters it said BASIN'S PRIDE. Below in red and white it said grown and packed by Neal Thornton, Othello, Washington, US no. 1A russet potatoes. Problem was it printed onto my chest all fuzzy and backwards. Only way I could make it right was to squint at it in the women's mirror. If I was real careful I could scrub off the Mormon's name with Lava soap and write in Willis Morgan Esq in blue ink about a handspan above my belly button.
Anyway it was just me, Cedro the Mexican, and Bully Boy loading on the front and we were falling behind, getting in the red. On the belt, sacks was starting to ride each other's backs so Gimme sent Nugene over from the side-end with a handtruck and told us to let him take a load ever once in awhile. Old Nugene had a hard time handling them hundred-pounders, but just his being there give us some rest.
We got a little break when we run out of spuds from the field. Bully Boy and Cedro loaded what was left on the belt before we run out of sacks. Nugene was up next, but he was off in a empty car taking a leak. Problem is his kidneys ain't what they used to be and his lizard's all dried out. By the time he come back, a fresh field truck had dumped, the machine done started up again and me and the sack boy was holding four sacks back for him. I helped him stack and he took off and then I started stacking mine. Got my load and took off down the dock before Nugene even got to the first turn all the way out to number twelve. Never works when two guys stack the same load.
Nugene was having problems keeping it on his handtruck, slowing way down. Second sack from the bottom was bulging out and if he lost it the whole load'd tumble like a stack of dominoes. He turned and started over the steel and I was coming hard right on his ass. I yelled to let him know I was behind him but he don't hear too good and all of a sudden he stopped just inside the car, about a inch off the steel. I'd already made my turn, was chugging over the steel and they was no way I could keep five hundred pounds of spuds from making a tater sandwich out of old Nugene. No way but one. I steered to the left and put on the skids. The bottom sack plowed into the rim of the steel, my feet left the ground, and the whole load buckled and toppled down to the tracks with me in the middle of it.
When I come to I was gasping for breath and the handtruck and three hundred-pound sacks was on top of me. I'm seeing little explosions going off in the air like miniature fireworks and Nugene is yelling in his raspy voice, HOLD IT HOLD IT MAN OVERBOARD STOP THE MACHINE! Seems like it takes forever to get my breath and my right arm is being mashed across one of the tracks.
Pretty soon they's a crowd up on the steel looking down at me, mostly side-end people. All Nugene can say is, Get Gimme, somebody get Gimme, over and over. The octapus is shut down and pretty soon Gimme pushes through the crowd and climbs down the ladder on the side of the boxcar. He lifts off the sacks and the handtruck off me. You okay, he says, looks like the blade knifed you in the leg. It's my arm that hurts, I say. More people are gathering, graders and front-enders now, and pretty soon I'm feeling like a movie star or something. The octapus is shut down, there I am the center of attention and the Mormon's dollars is going down the drain.
Just then Risa's pretty face with the yellow eyes comes pushing up to the front of the crowd. The pain in my arm seems to blossom like a big red rose opening in the sunlight and I let out a moan. Ohhh God, I say. My arm's broke. I lay my head down in the gravel and people are crouching down ten feet above me now. Risa looks real concerned. Funny thing. Never had spoke a word to her, just eyeballed her every chance I got and now here she is kneeling on the steel above me with her ponytail hanging down.
Gimme says, can you roll over and let me take a look at it. Ohhh God, I done broke my arm, I say. I've got my breath back now and I'm starting to feel better but these moans keep tumbling out of me. Then a funny kind of paralysis starts setting in. Something is keeping me from rolling over. Can you roll over, says Gimme. Ohhh God, I don't think so, I says to Gimme, it's broke. Better get me to a hospital. Gimme tips his long bill up and takes a good gander at me. You that bad off? he says. Well, I say, stealing a quick glance up at Risa, how about a sling or something to take up some of the pain then. Gimme squints, tugs his long bill down over his eyes and turns and looks up to Risa and the rest of the crowd hanging above. Then he looks down at me again and lowers his skinny old face down next to mine. Sling, eh, he says in a voice I can barely hear. You better find a way to get up off these tracks or I'll be giving you two slings — one for your arm and the other for your ass.
The funny paralysis starts fading out about as fast as it come on. Well, I say, loud enough for everone to hear, it's bad but not that bad. With a little help I think I might could get up, I say. You do, do you, says Gimme. Then he turns to the crowd and says, Get on back to work now. Clayton, you up there? Clayton steps up chewing his gum and looking down with his arms crossed. Looks like he couldn't of cared less if a ant had accidentally got squished beneath his heel. Clayton, says Gimme, looks like Willis is temporarily out of order so I'll have to take your loader to the front end for the rest of the day. You'll be sewing both stations then stacking the twos on the floor by yourself. Give you something to do. Clayton stops his chewing, just stares down like he's got a wad stuck in his craw. I'll be slowing the machine down, says Gimme. Clayton gulps down whatever's bothering him, then steps back real slow. Go on now everbody, says Gimme. He'll be okay. Crank it up.
*
That night my arm's sore but it don't look broke. It's still about 90 degrees and I'm stripped down to my waist. Hosing off the machine like always, favoring my arm. Long about dark I finish up and turn off the lights and head back to the women's lounge. Starting back it feels like somebody's watching me. I turn but don't see nobody. It's real quiet and the octapus is a big shadow hanging over everthing. 'Anyway, I don't think much of it cause I been having them feelings for a few days now and I figure I'm just jumpy from too much work and no time for winding down. I start back to the lounge again, thinking I could go over to the court and use the showers to clean up but I'm so tired I'll just go without, I figure. Then I get that feeling again.
I turn round and somebody's standing by the pre-sizer where the spuds dump on to the machine, standing where the building opens at one end with the outdoors to their back. It's pretty purple blue outside and a couple of stars are twinkling just above the tracks. I see whoever is standing there has a real good shape, small and solid. Just my size. Even in the half-dark there's no mistaking them eyes.
Are you all right, she says. Imagine that. First thing she ever says to me. Are you all right. She's maybe 30-40 feet away and with the sky and them two stars behind her she's looking like a shadow with electric eyes. For awhile I feel the funny paralysis starting up in my arm so I hold on to it with my good arm. Willis, she says. You all right? Good God, I think, she even knows my name. The paralysis just kind of takes over and pretty soon my arms aren't even there anymore. It's like I don't even have a body. All I can feel is my heart, pounding like a pump pushing water through a pipe.
I want to walk over to her and say something but the paralysis has taken over and my heart is busy filling up my body. She takes a couple steps and stops and says, I couldn't think of sleeping until I knew if you was all right. Me, I can't speak or move. She says, I can go if you want, but I know you're all alone, don't have family or nothing, and I thought maybe you might need someone to keep you company. Specially being hurt and all.
It's funny but I start to thinking maybe I'd died down on the tracks and this paralysis is just the beginning of my knowing it. This is all a different life and I'm starting to feel better than a man has any right to feel. Knowing she cares about me, I mean really cares about my life and all, makes me feel light. No pain in my arm or the usual all-over soreness. No thoughts about tomorrow or wondering about my next paycheck. No matter I'm all alone and don't know where I'm headed after Othello.
Truth is, I never did know where I was headed. Always moving from one home to another, sleeping in beds that never seemed to fit. But all that's over now. And like Gimme says, we're all just a bunch of foster children, anyway. Always on the move. Just passing through. Nobody's got a claim on forever. Nothing matters but the way you feel right this moment.
And right now I feel real good, all on account of her. But I figure I can't go on just filling up my body with this feeling and not being able to talk so I try to say something to her. The words get all jammed up in my throat and I end up doing a lot of throat clearing. Then finally out comes, I appreciate your concern. I can hardly believe it's me talking. That's something I never said in my whole life. I appreciate your concern.
She says, it's true Willis, I've been thinking of you. Well, by now I'm feeling so good I think I'll try staying this way awhile. It's kind of like my dreams, where things happen just by me thinking them. I'd be pleased to have your company I say, It’s real good of you to think of me. My arm, it’s going to be okay. She don’t say nothing, just takes another couple steps toward me.
Now I can see her face a little better. It's got a soft glow on it like a egg getting ready to hatch. I want to invite her to the women's lounge but I feel like a fool even thinking about it. I'm thinking maybe if I can get my feet beneath me we could just go for a walk or something. She's standing there in the shadow of the octapus and it's like she can read my thoughts cause now she walks right up to me and takes my hand and smiles a little smile. Why don't you just come with me, she says, her yellow eyes shining. I won't bite you, she says, a little walk in the night air will do you good.
I can't keep myself from looking into her eyes. Whatever makes them glow like that is flowing through her hand right into mine. It beams down from them two twinkling stars in the purple sky behind her and flows through her eyes and runs right down her body and out her hand straight into my mine. She just stands there looking at me, and me looking at her, with this buzzy feeling connecting us. I feel something heating up inside me. I look down, and the letters on my bare chest are glowing red, white, and bright blue, like a neon sign facing backward, spelling out BASIN'S PRIDE, grown and packed by Willis Morgan, Esq. She turns, leading me by the hand, and my feet start leaving the concrete floor. I just float along behind her, right past the octopus and out the building into the purple sky. ***
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