The Victory

A STORY

by CARL MOON

You working for Judd Derr this summer? He’s the hardest-working man in the county, and harder on a man. Last hand he had quit when Judd ordered him to catch his runaway huntin’ dog.”

I had worked for Judd a week before I heard this in town; Saturday nights, the working men and boys met to talk and spend some of the money they had earned, drinking milk shakes or soda pop.

“I don’t think he’s so bad,”I replied with all the assurance of fifteen years and the status of an experienced hired man. “Sure, he’s a hard worker, but he’s good pay, and I ain’t afraid to work. He don’t want to try any of that lord-and-master stuff on me, though.”

“Well, here’s luck — but Judd Derr never kept the same hand a whole summer yet, that I know of.”

Judd farmed the home place ns well as his own land which adjoined it. His father was in the government, down at the state capital, and he had turned the farming over to Judd. The huge, modern dairy barn with its concrete floors, steel stanchions, and running water inside, its two tall silos outside, was more up to date in furnishings and equipment than was the house.

The Derr cattle were purebred, pedigreed stock. There were two prize bulls, one of them a National Grand Champion. Before the depression came, the cattle had brought premium prices. Now the herd had grown large: the Derrs would keep their cattle rather than put them up in a cheap market. A small sign at the end of the lane, along the main road, was kept freshly painted in plain, legible letters, “Thos. Derr & Son, Purebred Cattle.”It was nol an advertisement, nor an invitation to buy; it was more like the professional shingle, identifying the place and nature of business.

All other work was arranged around the care of ihe cattle. They were fed and milked at exactly six o’clock, morning and evening. The two-hour chore was regular, no matter what other work might sutler. This twice-daily task had been the clock of Judd’s life, and his father’s, and his grandfather’s.

We worked down the ground and planted the oats, and then the corn. The winter wheat grew thick and green, bright patches on the gray land. The summer grew fatly thick and hot, filling the fields we worked. The corn was cultivated, the first cutting of hay was made, then to the corn again and ihe hay again, with little jobs between. When it rained, there was machinery to repair, oil, and make ready for use; there was feed to grind, cow barn or chicken house to clean. I swung a scythe through a few slack days, along the fence rows, along the ditch banks, the tough, green weeds withering as they fell in the heavy sunshine. I was judge, jury, and executioner; these plants should stand, and those should fall, and I felled them.

The corn grew too high to cultivate wit h the team, but a man could always go through the tall, green rows, so Judd started me hoeing. He would go swinging along a row of corn, bent double and slashing earth from under the weeds as though they might reach up to tangle him and drag him down if he did not destroy them first. When I had reached his pace, he would go to some other work, calculating the rows I should finish by night.

Judd’s hoes all had the handles cut short; you could not lean on a three-foot hoe handle, and you had to put your back into it to chop. There was a driving and a watching in Judd Derr that was always with him and yet was always left behind him over the work which he entrusted to me. Even on the rare days when he went to town, I felt, compelled to work hard for a full day. He drove himself just as hard, as though this force were not in him but over him, so that he served it too. Once I lay in the cool sand to rest, looking up through the restless leaves of corn and relaxing completely. Suddenly I was up and hoeing furiously. I could see Judd with the team, half a mile away, and I knew that he could not see me. And yet, I had started up guiltily.

Judd seldom spoke of anything but the work. After weeks of working with him, eating at his table, sleeping in his house, he was stilt strange and distant with me. I was the only man he saw for weeks at a time, and yet he never ottered to make small talk, never displayed any friendliness.

A few times he tried some brief, halfhearted, halfintended joke when I was leaving on a Saturday night, about the date I must have, or something like that, but it was never really any more than another way of saying “You can go now. Be here early Monday.” He laughed when he spoke so, but it was not laughter — just short, humorless chuckles which seemed intended only to show the strength of his even teeth and his rough, muscular features. His direct blue eyes never lost their look of contempt for the universal imperfection which they always saw. There was no softness in his face, even when he looked at his wife or his small son — only proud, fierce possession. His short, dark hair stood as wiry and straight up as his compact body. He was altogether concentrated, intense, with a tight, aloof arrogance that aroused instinctive opposition. Everything about him challenged resistance, created resistance to challenge.

I resolved to do my work as well as possible, to avoid any mistake that might condemn me to his scornful superiority. Slowly, a barrier grew between us, an understanding of the conflict between his will to mastery and my will to submission without surrender. I believed that he understood and felt it as much as I did.

2

MID-JULY, and the wheat was fast turning ripe. It seemed that the fields themselves grew larger as the grain rose, faded, and then tanned in long days of hot suns, a glowing flood that brimmed the fences. Judd had forty acres of wheat. “Do you think I ought to hire another hand to help shock?” he asked, the night before we were to begin cutting.

“Let’s see how it goes for a day or so,” I said. Somehow, I wanted to keep the work between just the two of us An extra hand might show me to be weak. I was willing to try if Judd was.

He drove the team on the binder while I followed as closely as I could, setting up bundles into rows of wheat shocks. At the end of the first day, I was not far behind. We worked an hour after supper and set up all that was cut. Judd asked again if I could keep up alone through forty acres. I said that I would try.

It was grueling, hot work, but exceedingly satisfying. The hot sun; the briny, streaming sweat; the regular, easy rhythm; the ev idence of accomplished labor in the neat, growing lines of shocks, all capped against the west; the slowly increasing gap ahead to the binder which must not grow too great to make up after chores and supper; these, and the necessity to measure up to Judd, made the days seem short.

Judd’s job was no easier. The binder was a ton of intricate, clicking, clattering parts, balanced on one heavy bull wheel. Every clod and furrow and turn was a gut-wrenching, bone-jarring shock; the hands and feet were busy with the team and the machine; the eyes had to be every second alert on ev ery part of the binder from sickle to twine-knottcr; an incessant, angry machine noise and a dry cloud of dust enveloped the binder in its own private atmosphere of grinding sound, choking heat, and dry, burning light. I knew the binder for a lifeless, punishing tool, and I preferred to shock bundles.

Feet on the ground in swinging steps, bending and grasping and turning to set a bundle with one flow of motion — the bundle caught at the waist between my two hands like a straight, supple girl: passive, pliant, firm, and golden —it was a wild, hypnotic dance of youth and strength.

The third day, Judd moved on to the other field. I hurried to keep up. It was the hottest day I can remember. The sun spread all across the sky, and the bright stubble threw back steady waves of the down-pouring heat. It was difficult to breathe. The yellow glare of sky and stubble whirled together and became a burning red sea on which little black bubbles darted and tossed and burst. Wiping sweat, I stood there in the red dark behind hot eyelids in the sun, relaxed, and tried my sight again. At first I thought I must be sun-struck; the sky was directly before me. I was on my back in the stubble, but could not remember falling. Had Judd seen me fall ? No, that was good; back to work.

About midafternoon, Maria came out to the field with a jug of icy, unsweetened lemonade. She offered it hesitantly, as though fearing to be presumptuous. Judd’s wife was timidly eager in everything she did for others. She was the sort of person who worked at friendship with an embarrassing zeal. Once I complimented her on a homemade cheese which she had made from her German mother’s recipe, and she made it regularly afterward, although Judd never ate it. I was sure that she loved Judd with all her generous, sharing nature, and he accepted her. But she wanted to be needed. Judd loved and wanted her, but he did not need her. She could not find room in him for this extra measure of her affection, and so this part of her went unused except for little kindnesses, performed intensely.

The next evening after supper, the wheat was finished. Judd was in good spirits, almost admitted me to equality. But my victory in the wheat-cut ting was lost in the threshing. The threshing ring shared ownership of the machines and exchanged labor according to the sizes of their separate jobs. Judd had to supply two men with his team and wagon for some jobs, but instead of going himself, he hired an extra man. Did he know that I was trying to be his only hand? There was not so much work on the farm that he could not leave it to go threshing.

3

IT WAS pleasant to work with a crowd of men, away from Judd. Threshing was more a harvest celebration than just work. The annual jokes were passed; neighbors seldom seen at other times were familiars here again; the friendly, unspoken contests to build the highest, squarest loads were resumed; the greenhorn loader’s upset could be anticipated again — and kidded when it came; the dinner tables were proudly and heavily laid, because this was even more than a family feast. During the gossip of this harvest work, I heard the story of Judd’s belling.

The belling of newlyweds was a universal rural custom then. A few days after m .mage, the new couple in the community could expect this celebration of welcome into its married society. With no warning, usually after dark, the neighbors would gather and descend upon them, surrounding their house and setting up a racket which penetrated the night for miles around. Cowbells, tin pans, horns, shouting voices — anything to make a din — notified the pair that the initiation was beginning.

To imbue them with a full appreciation of their neighborhood, they were conducted on a long tour around and through it, preferably overall its roughest roads. The recent groom was made aware of his new status by being provided special accommodation in the caravan, usually a hog crate on a springless wagon. The bride could indicate at once her view of their new relationship by choosing to ride with him inside the crate or in comparative comfort on it. A boisterous uproar was maintained throughout, until the initiates were returned to their home, where they produced treats. The belling was always a surprise, but the surprised couple never failed to have a mysteriously adequate supply of cigars, candy, cakes, and coffee.

Judd’s belling was different. His wife was a girl from another community, of a family little known locally. This was the more reason for making her welcome a warm one. The house was surrounded, and the noise-making began. Shortly, Judd’s head appeared through a window, his angry mouth shouting, “ Go away, get out of here, all of you! ” Perhaps his shouts were lost in the hullabaloo, perhaps his words were too incredible. The clangor continued until Judd thrust a shotgun through the window and fired. Then silence came so suddenly and completely that the spattering bird-shot was clearly heard in the trees. There was no doubting his words or his meaning this time when he shouted, “Get of here, all of you!”

Judd had always been cool and distant with his neighbors, but this was insubing, a thing beyond independence. The subdued n errymakers drew together in a solid little group, then began to drift away, except for a half-dozen men who walked very deliberately up on the porch to the door. They went in without a word, took the shotgun away from Judd, carried him kicking and writhing out to the barnyard, dropped him into his watering trough, and then went quietly home. Judd’s belling was over, He was never again given a chance to refuse has neighbors’ hospitality. They all respected his hard work, his honesty, his independence even, but none would be his friend.

Now I could understand why Judd sent hired hands threshing. He knew. He would be uncomfortable at other men’s tables where he would be excluded from the fellowship of hard work and good food shared together.

With the wheat harvest finished, it was Judd and I again. We began to fill the silos, working steadily, wordlessly. And the silence was intensified by the thing between us. I had made no mistakes, had submitted with honor to more than might be expected of me. This seemed only to aggravate the senseless, formless conflict.

Judd cut the corn, his knife leaving a row of whitecapped, still-sucking green stubs which offered up the milk of earth to the empty air. I loaded the heavy, succulent stalks on the wagon, stacking them high against the back standards for easier loading and to save tramping over them. Judd clucked at the team. They bolted forward a few quick steps, the tail-heavy wagon bed tilted back out of its bolsters. I had loaded too high, too heavily.

“Dammit to hell, Bud!” Judd’s angry glare was like a blow. I stood helplessly still, immobilized, retreating from his eyes without moving, shrinking in spite of myself, struggling against his overriding, angry scorn, trying to face him squarely.

“It should have been bolted down,” I objected. Dimly, I heard what must have been my voice, without strength, issuing strangely cold from my hot and tingling chest. I thought briefly that he was going to whip me. 1 believed that he could whip me. But I was ready, tense and sickly impatient with the strain of long guardedness.

It may be that he saw justice in my protest. Perhaps he shared responsibility for the accident. Possibly he even respected me a little for my defiance and would not take this unfair advantage to tear down the barrier. We both were willing to uncover the obscure antagonism between us, but it had to be in some way that we both would accept. Whatever he t hought, he said nothing more, and we began to pull the wagon bed into place again.

The summer ended, and I had to return to school. When I left Judd, he spoke the only praise I ever heard from him. He said that I might work for him again, if I wanted to. I knew that he did not care, that he could always find a man, but he was admitting that I was good enough to work for him! Maria gave me a check for my wages and wished me luck. I felt I was leaving a friend in her, at least.

The next summer, Tub Cross hired me as soon as school ended. I stayed with him for a couple of weeks, then went to see Judd about a job.I had left something unfinished there. He was in the tool shed, tinkering with the corn planter.

“Hello, Judd. I hear you need a hired man.”

“Well, I’m going to hire somebody this summer. You looking for a job?”

“At thirty dollars a month, yes.” This was ten dollars more than Judd had paid me before.

“If you’ll work every other Sunday, you can start now.”

And so, I was working for Judd again. Maria was glad to see me, mentioned some school affairs that I had taken a part in. The routine of work was still freshly familiar; everything followed the pattern of the summer before. But I was beginning to hate Judd Derr, and the nature of my hatred was becoming clear. He was so completely assured: sufficient, possessive self— all self, lie needed no one, no thing. His wife was his wife, his sons were his sons, his land was his land — all was his and only therein valuable. He had no debts — no obligations to any man for money, or service, or even simple recognit ion.

The wheat ripened again; the heat grew close and kept the thin blood burning and roiling. The almost-hate was in my veins, too. I wanted to get inside Judd, to make him like me or hate me actively, to make him break out of that damned little self he lived in. But he would not come near or let me, and the thing strengthened in the womb of sweltering, abundant summer, waiting an incident to give it birth and shape and substance.

Judd had bought a new team that spring; heavy, young, half-broken bays. I think he got them before they were broken to work so that he could do it himself. I drove them a few times without trouble, but I did not trust them. It took constant strength on the reins to keep them in control. Once they took me the length of a field on the manure-spreader when I let up my grip to throw the machine in gear. That load was really spread by the time I got them stopped. Il was surprising, then, to hear from Judd that I was to go threshing with those skittish colts.

I could vision catastrophe the first time they were driven up to the clattering thresher with its exposed, whirring wheels and belts. This was a test of tameness familiar to every horse owner. I wondered if Judd was testing me us well. Maybe it was some knowledge shared of mutual trial that brought us through without accident, the team and I.

Toward the end of threshing, I went without the team to help at Tom Frank’s, pitching bundles to a neighbor’s wagon. The job was finished by suppertime, and the crew ate at Frank’s. As we were leaving, Hank White came around to several of the wagons to ask the men if they would thresh out his grain that night; he said he had only a couple hours of work. The team I had worked with all day was going, so I went along. We finished at White’s, and Hank told me before I left that he would pay me Saturday night. I realized then that he did not belong to the regular ring, had only hired part of it. Judd would be mad because I had worked for another man, especially since it made me late and he would have to do the chores alone.

When I got back, I went straight to the barn, took a bucket, and began to help finish the milking.

“What kept you so late tonight?” Judd asked, never looking up from his milking. Then, before I could reply, “I know, you went to help Hank White, and he’s no friend of mine. You’re supposed to be working for me.”

“I didn’t know he was not in the ring,” I said, “not unt il we were done.” Judd got up and walked over beside me.

“Don’t lie to me, and don’t give me any back talk!” He was grim-pale and shaking. “You get up and get out of here — you’re fired!”

The fury was born, and Judd was its father and mother, and midwife. As his anger grew and twisted and leaped at me from his mouth, lashed at me from his eyes, l felt, a cool relief; the struggle and the conflict had been taken from me, he had it all now, all to himself and in himself, and it could not touch me. This was the end, and he had lost; but I had been fair, and he should be, too.

“All right, can I have my pay?”

“You get out! Get off the place before I throw you off!" He was not shouting now, but his words roared through and around me with the force of his rage. I left him there, got my extra shirt from the house, and walked away home. It was over; it was ended and he had lost, He had broken the barrier to take ihe conflict into himself, and I was free of it.

The next week, I went out to get my pay. Judd told me, with his hard laugh that was not laughter, to get my check from Maria. He was cooled off now, and he looked older and smaller than I remembered him, smaller than I thought he was. His wife gave me the pay check and an embarrassed good-bye. Her eyes trembled and wavered away until I took her hand and said, “Good luck, Maria.” She looked full at me.

“I’m sorry, Bud,” she said.