been prairie once, the grass higher than a man’s head, and that the rich, black soil went fifty feet deep. To the west rose Buffalo Ridge, a long stretch of low, untillable hills, and beyond that lay South Dakota. East, where we were headed, the land was flat, and long before we reached them, I could see the big hayfields that belonged to Hector Bledsoe.
At the Lincoln Indian Training School, boys were fair game for Bledsoe, or most any other farmer in the area who wanted free labor. It was justified as the “training” part of the school. We didn’t learn anything except that we’d rather be dead than farmers. It was always grueling, dirty work—mucking out cattle yards or slopping hogs or detasseling corn or cutting out jimsonweed, all of it under an unrelenting sun—but haying for Bledsoe was the absolute worst. You spent the whole day bucking those big bales, sweating bullets, covered in hay dust that made you itch like you were being chewed on by a million fleas. You got no break except for lunch, which was usually a dry sandwich and water warmed by the sun. The kids assigned to Bledsoe were the bigger, older ones or, like me, those who’d created a problem for the staff at Lincoln School. Because I wasn’t as strong as the older boys, it wasn’t just Bledsoe giving me crap. It was also the other kids, who complained that I didn’t pull my weight. When Albert was there, he stood between me and trouble, but Albert was a favorite of the Black Witch and seldom worked for Bledsoe.
Mrs. Frost drove into the field where the alfalfa, cut and dried, lay in rows that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Bledsoe was on his tractor, pulling the baler. Some of the boys were throwing hay into the machine with pitchforks; others followed behind, lifting the bales from the ground and loading them onto a flatbed truck driven by Bledsoe’s son, a big kid named Ralph, every bit as mean as his old man. Mrs. Frost parked ahead of the tractor and waited for Bledsoe to reach her. He cut the engine and climbed down from the seat. I glanced at the guys from the school, shirts off, sweating like pack mules, black hair turned gold from all that hay dust. On their faces, I saw a look I understood—partly relief that they could rest for a few minutes, and partly hatred because Albert and I weren’t suffering along with them.
“Good morning, Hector,” Mrs. Frost said cheerfully. “Is the work going well?”
“Was,” Bledsoe said. He didn’t take his big straw hat off in the woman’s presence, which most men did. “You want something?”
“One of your young men. Mr. Brickman promised him to me.”
“Whoever it is, Brickman promised him to me first.”
“And then changed his mind,” she said.
“Never called me to say so.”
“And how would he have reached you out here in your fields?”
“Could’ve called the missus.”
“Would you like to take a nice long break, and we’ll go to your farmhouse and ask Rosalind?”
Which would have eaten up a good half hour. I saw the Lincoln kids, slumped against the baler, looking hopeful at that prospect.
“Or would you be willing to accept my word as a lady?”
I could see Bledsoe’s brain going over the rough ground of the question. Unless he was willing to call her a liar, he had to give in. Everything in his black, shriveled, little heart was dead set against it, but he couldn’t challenge the word of this woman, this schoolteacher, this widow. It was easy to see how much he hated her for that.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“Moses Washington.”
“Son of a bitch!” Now he took off his straw hat and threw it to the ground in utter disgust. “Hell, he’s the best of the lot.”
“And now he’s part of my lot, Hector.” She looked to a kid who’d been standing on the baler, feeding it hay. “Moses,” she called to him. “Put your shirt on and come with me.”
Mose grabbed his shirt and jumped nimbly from the machinery. He trotted to the Model T, easily hopped aboard the flatbed, and joined Albert and me where we sat with our backs against the cab. He signed, Hello, and I signed back, Lucky you, Mose. He responded with Lucky us, and drew a circle in the air that indicated me and Albert and him.
Mrs. Frost said, “Well then, I guess I have what I came for.”
“Guess you have,”