“Goddamn it, back up,” Roy shouted. He sawed at the lines to the horses, pulling them back. “Now stand still,” he said.
The horses stood there, nervous, high-strung, hot, bothered by flies, while Roy climbed down to see what had happened. They had just made one of the square turns at the end of the field next to the barbwire fence separating Roy’s wheat from the native pasture across from it. So maybe that’s where they picked up the wire. Or maybe a piece of the heavy wire Roy always tied his machinery together with finally broke and fell into the teeth of the section blades. But I don’t suppose it matters where it came from, because he had it, all right. He had wire stuck hard between two blades and another piece running across the top of the sickle bar and then down where it was stuck between two more blades, so that the whole business was stopped dead from cutting wheat. He blamed Lyman. He blamed my father.
“You, Lyman,” he yelled. “Goddamn you.”
And the horses lunged forward then, thinking he wanted them to start up again. They pushed the header towards him where he stood in front of it, cursing.
“Whoa. Goddamn it. Stop now.”
“Pa,” Lyman called. “Do you want me to hold them? Pa, do you want I should—”
“No. Stay in the barge. You and that Roscoe have done enough. Can’t even fix a goddamn fence without you have to spread wire all over goddamn hell.”
“But you told me—”
“I know what I told you. I told you to help him fix his fence, for him helping me last year. But that don’t mean you have to spread it all over a man’s wheat field, does it? Does it? Answer me.”
Lyman didn’t say anything. What was he going to say?
“Answer me.”
“It’s not Lyman’s fault,” Edith said. “You know it isn’t.”
“You shut up,” Roy said.
“It’s not John’s fault, either.”
“Stay out of this, I said. Answer me, boy. Does it or not? I want to know.”
“No, Pa,” Lyman said. “No.”
“No, by God, it don’t,” Roy said. “But I got it just the same, don’t I? Roscoe’s fence wire stuck in my header. Goddamn it, anyway. Son of a bitching kids.”
But my father was twenty-five and no kid that summer, and it might just as well have been Roy’s own wire stopping the teeth—wire he used to tie up his damn machinery with instead of ever buying something new or even forking over the two cents that would buy the bolt that would fix it. But that didn’t matter to him: he knew he had fence wire stuck in his header and now he couldn’t cut wheat.
He bent down in front of the header, under the wood bats of the reel, and began to pull at the wire with both hands, working it back and forth, sawing at it to either break the wire or get it free somehow, and he managed to get one piece out that way. He stood up panting then, glaring at Edith and Lyman, then he bent down again and started on the other piece of heavy wire, bending it back and forth, trying to saw through it with the sharp serrated blades, but it wouldn’t come, and he went a little insane with the heat and the salt sweat running into his eyes, and the wire wasn’t coming. He pulled at it, sawed at it and it wouldn’t come, and he went on bending it, sawing at it viciously—then it came so suddenly, snapped so fast, that he stood up too quick and banged his head hard against a reel bat.
“Goddamn it,” he yelled, loud and fierce. “Goddamn it, to hell.”
And that’s what did it. It was that, his hot angry insane yelling, that did it for him. And I suppose it’s only right too: the voice that he hardly ever used at all except to tell somebody what to do with or to curse you with, to damn you, the voice he just didn’t seem to know how to use in any way that was kind at all—his own angry insane voice fixed him. Because, you understand, the horses were hot. The horses were high-strung, nervous, jittery now with his yelling at them and with his sawing at the lines. Besides, they were used to being started by his yelling, and they couldn’t anyway distinguish his giddup from his goddamn.