FARM HAND

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Submitted Date 09/17/2018
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The following is a story that my great-grandfather confided in me shortly before his passing. A couple of years before the Dust Bowl hit America’s heartland, he worked as a traveling farmhand – bouncing from one farm to another and helping out with any work that he could. According to him, the events of this story are the reason he gave up the job and decided to settle down. The following is narrated as I heard it from him. I’ve done my best to recall how he told it.

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Let’s just start by saying that I wasn’t never any good at schooling. There wasn’t any need for me to be. My father was a farmer, his father was a farmer, his father was a farmer too – that’s just how it was back in those days. I grew up in this little, backwoods farming town called Arcadia about halfway between Conway and Fayetteville and, as far as the eye could see, there was forest and farmland.  Just forest and farmland. I went to school through eighth grade and then I went to work on my father’s farm.

It was hard work, but it was honest work. When the seasons started, we plowed and sowed seeds in the mud and the dirt. As we waited for the crops to grow, we’d alternate between tending them and tending the animals. Corn and cows, that’s how my father liked it, and that’s how he said it too. Corn first, then the cows. When harvest hit, we’d load up carts full of corn and run them along the road either way. Whether we wound up in Conway or Fayetteville was dependent upon what the word was – who was paying best for it. If we were lucky, we’d bring a cow or two along as well and sell those at market.

In the end, my father did all right. There was always food on the table, even if it was mostly corn and beef. My brothers and I never starved growing up, and that was about all you could ask for. But as I got a little older, I realized I didn’t want to stay in Arcadia. I wanted to see what the rest of the world was like – wanted to head out West. My father was none too happy about it, but he had my brothers there to help, so he didn’t put up much of a fight. When I turned eighteen right at the turn of the decade, I walked with them to Fayetteville for the last time. When they left, I stayed there for a while, and then I moved out in the other direction.

Working as a traveling farmhand wasn’t bad – not when I was doing it at least. Before everything got ruined in the Dust Bowl, there was still plenty of work to be had. I managed to join up with a handful of others just like me – kids who was raised on farms and such and wanted a taste of the world too. We moved north and then west, mostly following the road. Sometimes, we’d find a farm looking for harvest hands and we’d get paid. Sometimes we wouldn’t. Either way, I had enough money in my pocket and food in my stomach to keep me going. So I kept with it.

I cut up through Oklahoma and into Kansas. There was a lot of talk about heading out further west – to California and the like – but I wasn’t ready to head out that far, so I stuck around. It was hard to find work in the winter, usually, but I got lucky enough and landed myself on a dairy farm. That was the secret to it, really. In the summers, you look for crop work. In the winters, you look for animal work. I got myself a room on this nice little farm, getting up early to feed the cows and run them out to pasture. Like I said, it was hard work but it was honest work. I didn’t mind it none.

When summer hit again, I hit the road. That summer was Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming. Hot as hell but the work was nonstop. There were a couple of times that I wondered if I wasn’t gambling – if I shouldn’t just use the money I’d saved up to head out west where there was always work to be done – but I figured I could always do that if I really wanted. I looped back through the pot-handle and into north Texas. That winter, the winter of 1930 this is, I settled up with a rancher.

Now, I won’t go into it, but my understanding with that rancher fell through about halfway through the winter season and I found myself out on my ass. I tried to tell him that it had been his wife who’d been making bedroom eyes at me since I’d shown up but it didn’t matter. To be fair, if I had caught my wife rutting like a hog with some roadie I was housing, I would’ve tried to cut his throat too. Anyways, it was about that time that I decided to cut and run – make way for California like I should’ve. It took me almost until the spring of ’31 to do it, but that’s because I enjoyed it and took it slow. When I finally hit the Great Coast State, it was just about the start of the season.

Work was good – real good – out in California. I was making plenty of money and I didn’t need to stick around nowhere too long. I worked the spring and the summer cheaper than I usually would, just so I could get a name for myself where I was at. Dependable was the name of the game. That’s what set you apart from others back then – your merit. I managed to get enough by harvest time to wind up a hand on one of the biggest farms I’d ever worked. The pay was supposed to be amazing. The farmer’s name was Joseph Bradley.

Now, the Bradleys ran a tight ship. They had hands out in their cornfields picking nonstop. They had other fields, too, and a small apple orchard as well. When I got there, I had my pick of the lot, and decided that I’d stick to dealing with the barn animals. I figured that, if it was going to be as hot as it had been, I might as well do my work with a roof over my head some of the time. I never regretted that decision.

The Bradleys was nice folk – real nice folk. They had a couple of kids, but I only saw the one on a daily basis. Her name was Angeline and she was five. You could tell by her face that something had gone wrong. Back then, you’d say soft in the head. She had Down’s Syndrome. Still, she was the sweetest little thing you’d ever meet.

Almost every morning, she’d come wandering in to play with the cows. Some of them were the meanest things I’d ever dealt with – real prissy cows that didn’t want no one touching them – but they’d calm right down when she was around. She’d push on them, she’d pull on them, she’d yank their tails or their ears, and the damned things would just low and rustle about. Nothing bad ever happened to her, and she was in the habit of causing mischief. She took a shine to me, too, I think.

Angeline liked to play tricks on me. Sometimes, it was just hiding my things before I got out there. Other times, it was jumping out of some hidden corner at five in the morning and screaming. More than once, she scared the shit out of me. Her cruelest jokes, though, were when she’d rustle up a cow real good and then let me walk right into it. I got kicked more than once on her account, but I couldn’t hold it against her. Like I said, she was still a sweet little girl, and it wasn’t like I’d never taken a kick before. I learned to tell which cows she’d been messing with right quick.

So, I worked the barns mostly, but when they needed help elsewhere, I would do that too. A couple of times, I had to go into the orchard and pluck ripe apples. Mrs. Bradley was kind enough to give me a few jars of applesauce for that service. Other times, I had to go out into the cornfields and pick there too. Mr. Bradley always let me keep some for my supper. They were real nice folk – reminded me of people in Arcadia. It’s a shame what happened to Angeline. It’s something I’m still haunted by today.

It was one of those rare occasions where I was brought out of the barn to work. The Bradleys had this big, old corn shucker that they used. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of them, so I’ll explain. It was a gas-powered motor with a bunch of belts connected to it. The belts weaved into a wide bin and ran up against each other. Alls you had to do was toss a piece of corn in there and it would tear the husk off right away and spit it out into a pile below. The corn fell into a basket. Now, usually a corn shucker’s got a nice top to it to prevent you from getting too close to the belts, but the Bradleys had removed theirs because it was an older shucker and the corn had a habit of getting stuck on its way down after shucking. Even us grown men were scared of what might happen if we leaned in a little too close. We had the mind to use a stick to get anything stuck to move all the way down.

So, like I said, it was one of those days that I was brought out of the barn to work, and I was working the shucker with a couple other farmhands. Things were going fine and it was about time for a break for me, so I bowed out to eat a bit and have a smoke. There were two other guys supposed to be watching that shucker. I guess both of them got tired of it because, when I came back, they were gone.

But there was Angeline, sweet little Angeline, up on her tiptoes on a bucket and peering over the edge. I knew right away what it looked like and I swear to God I dropped that cigarette so fast. I was running and shouting but she wasn’t paying no attention. She leaned over and I saw her foot slip. I don’t know what was more terrifying – the sound of her screams or the sound of her hand slipping in between the belts.

I was the one that ran the screaming girl to the house. I could feel her hot blood soaking through my shirt and down my arms, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley were in the house and came running when they heard her howling. I count myself lucky that I’ve never had to see something so terrible happen to my kids or their kids. I count myself lucky that I never had to be put in the situation that the Bradleys were put in that day.

We laid her out on a blanket in their living room. Her whole right hand was a mess. She was missing her three middle fingers and the tip of her pinky and her thumb. What was left of them bones was poking out beneath red meat, torn muscle and such. The worst part of it all was where all the skin had ripped off – about six inches up her forearm. Even the thought of it now makes me sick.

We patched her up while Mrs. Bradley made a call for a doctor. We had to tie off her entire forearm, and I watched as the skin grew blue, purple and then black. The bleeding stopped and her screaming stopped too, but the way her teeth grit and her eyes were pinched closed made me know she was still feeling it. We wrapped the stump up in a sheet and tied it off with another tourniquet. The doctor arrived almost an hour later.

The two other farmhands were kicked right away, but they kept me on. From what I gathered, even if they had blamed me, they had forgiven it because I’d been the one to carry her to the house. They told me I’d saved their daughter’s life and the doctor echoed what they said. She would have died from blood loss if I hadn’t been so close.

As with most things of that nature, it’s hard to decide what to do after. When Angeline was doped up, the parents and I went out to the shucker. Cleaning what was left of the corn that was thrown in was a bitch. Cleaning up what had happened to Angeline? That was the worst task I was ever given in life.

When we’d found her fingers and the skin, the Bradleys threw it in a wooden box and ran it back to the house. The doctor told them that, with the extent of the damage that had been done and the tourniquets, there was nothing he could do. So they sealed the box up and they kept it. The doctor left, I went back to work, but things never went back to being the same.

When Angeline was off her meds a while later, they had a burial. I think they figured that letting Angeline bury the box with the remains of her hand in it would help her understand what it meant a bit better. I was there when they did it – when little Angeline, right arm still wrapped up tight, brought that wooden box out the back of their house and dropped it in the hole I’d dug. I watched her cry and wave goodbye with her good hand as I filled the hole back up. After that, I didn’t see Angeline much anymore, at least for a good while.

They stopped shucking the corn after that and I went back to working in the barn. When the harvest season was coming to a close, they cut out all the extra work they’d hired, except for me and a few others. The Bradleys offered me a place to sleep in their barn, in return for a cut in pay. I accepted. After what I’d gone through there, I figured that the least I could do was hang around for a while longer and help as I could. They were more than happy to have me stay.

I started having meals in the house with them, and that’s when I started to see Angeline more regularly again. Since the fall, she’d healed up considerably, and she was more herself. Still, there was no denying that she had been affected real bad by what had happened. More than once, I saw her burst into tears at the table out of nowhere. She’d clutch the stump with her good hand and wave it around. Mrs. Bradley would always try to defuse the situation by coddling her, but she’d keep crying and saying, “It hurts, Mommy! It hurts!” She would cry for hours about how she could feel her hand and it hurt.

After about the second or third time, Mrs. Bradley brought me off and apologized. She told me she could bring my dinner out to me if it bothered me. Honestly, it did, but I told her it was fine. She told me it was just phantom pain – that her daddy had lost a leg in the first World War and had had the same thing happen to him. I think that helped me understand things a little bit more. After that, if I ever saw Angeline crying and her parents weren’t around, I’d talk to her about it. She started to cry less, after a while.

When spring came, Angeline started to be around more. She seemed more chipper and she was far more talkative than I’d ever heard her before. More than once, I came into the barn to hear her whispering, low and long, to what I thought was the cows. “It’s okay,” she’d say, “It’s all right. Shh, shh, shh. Shh, shh, shh.” Whenever she’d catch sight of me, she’d stop talking and come out of hiding. She’d say something to me sometimes and, other times, she’d just leave without a word. It started to happen almost every morning.

There were days where, while I was working around the farmhouse, I’d catch Angeline bent double over her hand’s grave. She’d always be talking. I didn’t know what she was talking to it about, but I figured that maybe that was her way of coping with it – treating it like a dead pet or something. Only once did I wander close enough to hear what she was saying: “It’s okay. It’s all right. Shh, shh, shh. Shh, shh, shh.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time. There’d been no reason to. But, now, I know that she’d never been saying that to the cows.

It was summer again and farmers were terrified. Word of drought had spread throughout the farming settlements and people knew it meant bad news for the season. Farmhands were being let go left and right, but I was lucky enough to be kept on because of my arrangement with the Bradleys. I kept working their animals as they contemplated if they should waste the time tending their cornfields. As it was, nothing was growing quite as fast as it had previously.

The days were longer and harder than I’d ever worked before. I think everyone knew that that year’s profits rested more on the animals than anything else, and that meant that they rested on me and the others who tended the barn. Every morning, I’d get up an hour or two earlier than I had and I’d still find Angeline in the barn, whispering away, hidden in the shadows. I stopped talking to her all together and she did the same with me. She’d keep going, now, even if I was there – as if she had to say what she said so many times before she could go. I learned to block it out and do my work.

I worked late into the evening and only got a few hours of sleep each night, but my body was adjusting. Still, even the slightest sound could wake me up, and then I’d be up for the whole day. It was nearing the fall of ’32 when I woke up dead in the middle of the morning to the cows lowing below me, and I knew that I wasn’t alone.

I climbed down the ladder and walked along the pens. Something had riled them up good. They weren’t just lowing, they were kicking and swaying, their big white bodies shifting like restless ghosts in the darkness. I tried to shush them down, tried to pat a few, but twice I got kicked flat on my ass. I wondered if a snake or a fox had gotten in, so I decided to double back and grab the lantern I had. I lit it, turned, and crawled back toward the doors.

The first thing I noticed was that the doors were not closed. They weren’t open wide or anything like that, but they were open, if only a few inches. I closed them and began my crawl back toward the ladder, making sure to check each pen thoroughly. The cows were still throwing tantrums and I couldn’t get them to quiet down. I didn’t see anything – no fox in the darkness, no snakes in the hay. I reached the last couple of pens, and that’s when I felt it drop onto my shoulder.

I gave it a brush, thinking it was no more than a spider, but when my hand met something cold and smooth, I turned my head and gave it a shove. I saw it, small and white, hurdle off my shoulder. I heard it land in the bedding of hay. As I lifted the lantern and glanced toward where I’d heard it land, I saw it come creeping out, and I felt the sickness rise in my stomach as my spine pricked with needles.

It was Angeline's hand. The way it moved was unnatural – like it had to throw the little bit of weight it had to get anywhere. It’s front crept like a spider while the back lagged behind, beleaguered by the sheath of pale skin that rested atop it, dragging behind like some ragged, fleshy cape. I knew what it was the moment I saw it, but my mind told me there was no way on God’s green Earth that a hand could move without a body. It stopped, for a moment, and then dragged itself off into the darkness far faster than it should’ve been able to.

The cows began to low louder.

I heard the doors to the barn creak again and I ran toward them and followed. Outside, the pale moon above showed on the barren, dry dirt and I saw it scurrying toward the farmhouse – an almost-luminescent white, rat-sized organ, disembodied, skin dragging. I tore across the field after it and saw the lights in the farmhouse flare on. As I neared, I heard Angeline screaming. I followed it behind the house.

There, where the grass should have grown, where the dirt should have settled, was a hole. I saw it clamber into the darkness and I ran to its edge, peering over. The box was not nailed shut; the top was ajar, not fixed tight. I saw the fingers of the hand disappear within the box's shallow confines like a recluse into its nest. I turned to hear the screaming grow louder as the screen door slammed against its frame and Angeline emerged. Two more claps sounded the follow of Mr. and Mrs. Bradley.

I was told to leave that night. I assume that they thought I’d dug up the burial site myself – that, for some reason, I had been attempting to steal what should have been no more than a pile of rot from a hole in the ground and had been seen by their daughter who’d started crying at the sacrilege. If I stayed, they told me, I would be hunted down. I was to leave California and never come back. I’d caused enough trouble, they said.

After that, I stopped traveling as a farmhand. I gave up the work altogether. I moved back east and met your great-grandmother. We had our children, and they had theirs, and then you were born. I never regretted it, but I never forgot, and I hope you never forget this either.There are strange things out there, Angeline – things that shouldn’t be but are – and you don’t have to go searching for them to find them. Sometimes, they find you in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways.

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