Season of My Enemy, page 4
She glanced toward the others who were dropping to the ground beneath the shade of the cottonwood. All except for Captain Kloninger, who stayed on his feet, uncapping one of the canteens. He watched her and the corporal, and she felt the need to draw her attention away. She didn’t like him. Not one bit. The corporal could say all he wanted about how these men weren’t dangerous. Maybe some of them weren’t, but Fannie knew better.
This one was.
CHAPTER 3
Shortly after sunup, Fannie tied a scarf over the hair knotted at her nape before heading out the back door. She met Patsy on the cobbled walk, returning from the barn with two pails of fresh, frothy milk.
She smiled at her little sister as they passed. “Glad to see you up and at ‘em.”
“Mom says I have to help you in the field today.”
That halted Fannie. “Did she?”
“I always help with the peas.”
“I was hoping we could get along with just me and Jer this time.”
Patsy kept moving but called back. “I don’t mind getting out of it, but I’m not gonna argue with Mama. She’s determined.”
Fannie would see about that. Mama had made it clear that Patsy was to stick close to the house with those Germans coming to work at the farm, so why would she want her out there with them today? They could manage without Pats, even though pea harvest had always been a family affair accomplished along with the hired migrant workers. Everyone chipped in, in some way. Fannie would have a quick chat with Mom about that at breakfast. First, she needed to check over the equipment and make sure everything was ready for the PWs’ arrival.
The sun was just about to crest the treetops. They’d need to be in the field by seven if they were going to get the first loads to the vinery by noon. They had two flatbed wagons on standby ready to load. Jerry was out there now checking the tires and making sure everything else was shipshape.
Fannie hauled a gas can from the shed and filled the tractor’s tank. Then she double-checked that the cutter was hitched all right.
Finally finished, she went back inside the house. Mama set a plate of pancakes on the table. “Eat plenty. Lunch is a long way off.”
Fannie went to the sink to wash her hands. “Patsy said you’re sending her out to help in the field today.”
“You’re going to need every hand.”
“We’ll do fine. Corporal Taft assures me the Germans are prepared to work hard. I’d rather you not let Patsy go out there.”
Mom’s glance shifted toward her younger daughter who was straining the milk with her ear turned toward them. “You know I don’t want to,” Mom said, “but I’ll be out there too, and we can all keep an eye on her.”
“I’m not going to do anything wrong,” Patsy said, lowering the empty pail to the floor.
“Of course you won’t.” Mom opened the icebox for the nearly empty milk jar inside and poured out the remainder in a glass for each of them. “Here. You can use this after you wash it.” She set the empty jar in the sink by Patsy. “I don’t think you’ll do anything wrong. We only worry about the Germans.”
“You let Jerry and Fannie around them.”
“Yes, because someone has to be in charge. That doesn’t mean I like it.”
“Won’t the guard have a gun?”
Jerry burst through the back door and swiped his feet over the tattered rug. “What’s everyone talking about guns?”
“Not guns,” Fannie said, pouring syrup over her pancakes. “We’re talking about the guard and the PWs and whether or not Patsy should help in the field today.”
Jerry rolled his lips. “Pfft. As if her skinny arms can manage much anyway.”
“Patsy, why don’t you just stay here at the house and make sure we have a great big lunch,” Fannie suggested.
Jerry jerked his chair up to the table and forked a stack of pancakes off the pile onto his plate. “Maybe Mom will let you bake us something sweet with that sugar she’s been hiding.”
Sometimes Jerry had good ideas. Maybe he was growing up. Fannie grinned at him.
Mom sighed. “That’s probably not a bad idea. We’re going to get thirsty out there. You can bring us out some water, Patsy. That won’t cause any harm.”
“That sounds okay with me. I don’t feel like pitching peas anyway. I just want to see the prisoners up close.” Her brow jumped with enthusiasm.
With that settled, they focused on stuffing themselves with pancakes. Then Fannie and Jerry rose from the table and headed outdoors to get the machinery lined up. They had just finished hooking up the pea wagon to the tractor when the rumble of a military truck came up their long driveway. Jerry watched it approach, but Fannie turned away and moved around the back of their own truck to load the pitchforks.
When she came around the truck again, Mom was leaving the house and the PWs were climbing out from the canvas back of the transport, all in their familiar gray uniforms stamped with the giant PW insignias.
Mom approached Fannie. “Want me to drive the truck?”
“That’ll be best. I’ll be on the tractor, and Jerry will operate the cutter.”
The knot of German soldiers made their way toward them. Corporal Taft followed, his rifle in hand. Fannie climbed onto the tractor, and Jerry cranked the flywheel. The engine fired on the first try.
At the field, Fannie stopped so they could hand out pitchforks. Putting such a weapon into the hands of their enemy while they drove along with their backs turned seemed the height of stupidity to Fannie, but supposedly Corporal Taft wouldn’t turn an eye away. A couple of men would need to toss the vines into a windrow so Mom wouldn’t crush the tender peas with the truck, and the rest of the men would pitch the vines onto the wagon. Still, could the corporal watch them all at once? If her family survived the day, she’d ask for an extra guard next time. It stuck in her craw to have Jerry out on the back of the ensemble—within an arm’s reach of those dagger-like pitchfork tines—and only one guard lagging somewhere beyond.
She parked and jumped down off the seat as the corporal approached. “Good morning, Corporal Taft.”
“Good morning, Miss O’Brien. The men are ready. I’ve explained a little bit about the job. Do you have some details you’d like me to give them?”
She quickly explained the process, adding that after both the wagon and truck were full, they’d take their first load to the vinery.
As the corporal spoke in slower German, she watched the listening men. They waited patiently for his explanation, while the lead man—for so she thought of the blond captain—nodded in understanding and added a question or two. A couple of the men sent long glances the length of the pea field, probably trying to absorb the magnitude of the job awaiting them, but one man’s glance caught hers. It was the darker-haired man with the probing gray eyes who’d smiled last night. He was a handsome man. Lean. Yet his gaze was keen and unnerving.
She jerked away, focusing again on the corporal. “I’ll get started.” She felt them watching her as she turned away.
Someone made a remark that brought a few chuckles, no doubt at her expense. Fannie gritted her teeth as she hiked herself up onto the metal seat. Never having been the overly sensitive type, she had learned to have a thick skin about a lot of things in life. The remark from the German wasn’t probably the first she’d weather.
She’d forgotten the implements and glimpsed back long enough to see Jerry handing them out. Soon after, she put the tractor into gear, thankful that she was at the lead and didn’t need to look at the workers. In fact, the field of tangled vines ahead took all her focus.
As she reached the end of the first row of cut peavines, Jerry gave a sharp whistle. She braked and turned on the seat. “What is it?” She had to holler above the racket of the tractor.
“I just want to give a check and make sure everyone is keeping up all right. I don’t want Mom left too far behind in the truck.”
Fannie nodded. She should have thought of that. Mom was back there in the middle of the work crew. “Maybe she should drive the tractor for a while and one of us can take the truck.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Just let me go check.” Jerry hopped off the mower seat and jogged past the workers turning the freshly cut windrow. He leaned up to Mom’s truck window. Fannie watched the men. The peavines were a lot heavier than hay. She didn’t envy them their part of the work in the long day ahead.
Fannie glanced back to the pickup again. The corporal stood alongside the wagon Mom pulled. That put her at ease. From that position, he could see the men ahead and behind and still be right there if Mom had any need. “Everything okay?” she hollered to Jerry as he trotted back. He waved her on.
Fannie cranked the steering wheel and turned to bring the tractor back in the opposite direction. Now she passed by the row of workers, a few who glanced at her but kept pitching peavines. Even though the day was young, the men already had sweat dripping down their brows. She waved at Mom as they passed each other, and Mom smiled. If they could just keep going like this, the crop would be harvested in a couple of days, and Fannie could relax.
Her thoughts turned to her dad for the next little while. How she missed him being out here doing the thing he loved. Farming was in his blood, and it was in Jerry’s blood too. All her brothers really. Until the day Dale was captured, and even up to Cal’s last letter back in March, they wrote how they missed the planting and the simple changing of the Wisconsin seasons. She sure hoped the army would find Cal soon and send him home. Once he got here, things would be all right again, or at least as all right as they’d ever be without Dad.
Her heart twisted. What if they never found Cal? What if he was gone too—not just captured like Dale but gone?
Fannie tightened her grip on the steering wheel. No. She would never believe that. The army didn’t even say if he was missing. Where are you, Cal? Why don’t you write?
Such thoughts pestered her the whole morning long. By ten o’clock they had the first wagon filled as high as they dared with vines full of plump pea pods. They decided Mom would drive the first load over to Pearson’s viner and Corporal Taft would take the soldiers along to unload the vines. Every farmer was required to supply his own crew for that job. Another crew was contracted to pile the leftover vines into a mountainous stack nearby—after they’d been put through the enormous box-like machine and stripped of pods. The “stackers,” those men and boys hired to build that pile of vines, would remove the vines coming out of the machine and keep piling them up. As the days went by and the mountain of green vines heaped to the warm sun, juices would flow out and ferment, and the men who held that task would go home stinking of the filth of it. Even those who weren’t stacking managed to get pretty dirty and smelly, but it was worth it to the farmers. All those vines would turn to a sort of silage distributed to each farm that had contributed. As a by-product for their cattle and hogs, it would go a long way toward feeding their stock during the following months.
Fannie smirked. Stacking seemed like the sort of job those prisoners ought to be doing. While Mom was gone with the wagonload of peavines, Fannie and Jerry cut another row and then took turns at pitching them into a waiting windrow.
“I’m getting hungry,” Jerry said when they reached the end of the row. “Since Mom isn’t back with the truck yet, let’s go see if Patsy has started any lunch.”
They left things where they were and walked toward the house.
“Sure would be nice if we had another truck to pull the second wagon,” Fannie said.
“Be nice if we could keep a couple of those workers here instead of sending them all with the load. It doesn’t take eight men to unload the vines. They’ll just get in each other’s way.”
Fannie nodded. The problem was separating them with only one guard. If they could get another guard, maybe they could divide the crew. “I’ll talk to Corporal Taft about that when they get back.”
“I could always grab Dad’s pistol and keep it on me.”
Fannie shook her head. “I don’t know if I like the idea of that. I doubt the army would approve.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They might.”
Fannie didn’t want them getting ahead of themselves. “Let’s just go get something to nibble, and then we’ll talk to the corporal about it.”
Patsy met them at the door and held it open. “Just in time. I made up a batch of lemonade with honey to go with the cookies.” The warm, sweet smell of baking goodness wafted out the open door. “Man, it’s hot in there. Feels good to come outside.” Her face was flushed from standing over a cookstove.
Fannie went in after her brother. He grabbed three oatmeal cookies off the platter and wasted no time popping half of one into his mouth. He spoke around the mouthful. “We could use a little lunch soon.”
“I’ve just about got all the boiled eggs peeled.”
Fannie poured a glass of lemonade and downed it. “That was good. Maybe you can bring us out a big jug of water. The PWs are probably parched.”
“Okay!” Patsy spun around to look for the jug.
“Don’t go smiling at them or anything when you bring it out.” Fannie thought of the dark eyes of the soldier this morning. “In fact, try not to look directly at them. We don’t want them getting any notions.”
Patsy set the open jug under the faucet. “What kind of notions?”
Jerry laughed. He shook his head and stuffed another cookie in his mouth when Fannie glared at him.
“Some of them are just boys no older than Jerry. They haven’t been around any girls in a long time.”
“Oh. Oh,” Patsy said again, her understanding taking hold.
Did Fannie imagine it, or was her sister’s skin flushing an even deeper shade of pink than it had from the warm oven?
“Here comes Mom.” Jerry pushed the screen door open and let it crack shut against the frame behind him.
Fannie stuck an extra cookie in her bib overalls pocket. “Thanks, Patsy.”
The trucks, both Mom’s and the army’s, came to a halt in the barnyard. The men climbed out the back, and Mom strode toward the house. Fannie could smell the rancidness of the vinery, even though none of them likely went near the stack.
Mom brushed the back of her hand over her cheek. “If you have another load cut, why don’t you take the truck and head out there, honey. I’ll get cleaned up and help Patsy with lunch. After you get it loaded, have the men take a break. They have bag lunches.”
“I’ll bring the water,” Patsy called.
“Take it out there now, Pats,” Mom said. “But mind yourself. Don’t get close to them. Just deliver the jug to Corporal Taft and get back to the house.”
“I will. Fannie already told me.”
Mom and Fannie shared a look. “You be careful too, Fannie. They’ll be around the truck, and I saw the way a couple of them looked at you on that tractor.”
“What do you think about Jerry taking Dad’s pistol out there?”
Mom blinked, taken aback. Then she shook her head and turned away to the sink. “No. Not out there on the tractor. I don’t want them to see us walking around with a firearm. It might prove as much of a temptation as a hindrance. ‘Sides …” Mom set a pot under the faucet and turned it on. “There’s enough violence in this world. We’re safe. We have Corporal Taft handling things. Those men seem glad enough to be here doing something useful. Just forget about that gun.”
“I’m going to ask Corporal Taft to bring another guard tomorrow. That way we can divide the crew and work faster.”
Mom set the water pot aside. “I doubt we’ll get another man. From what I hear, there’s not a lot of guards to spare, especially with the crews sent to the canning factories. Mr. Pearson had a crew of them working there along with some local boys Jerry’s age and even a few boys as young as ten or eleven.”
Of course. Where would Mr. Pearson find able-bodied help otherwise?
Fannie adjusted the knot in her head scarf as a sigh escaped. “Guess we’ll just keep doing what we can then.”
Fannie went outside and climbed inside the truck. It smelled of the spent vines. The empty flatbed rattled behind as she drove out to the field. The men fell into pitching peavines as she drove alongside the windrow.
The corporal strolled alongside her for a bit. “Happy with the progress, Miss O’Brien?”
“Yes, thanks. I’m glad you asked. Corporal, is there any chance you can bring along another guard tomorrow so we can split the crew and keep loading while one of us takes the full load to the vinery?”
He shrugged. “It’s a possibility. I’ll have to see. We’re stretched pretty thin now.”
“I understand that, but we only have two days to get our peas in. The migrant workers used to keep up through the night, but you have to take the prisoners back at four o’clock, right?”
He nodded. “That’s what I’m told. I’ll see what I can figure out.” He stepped off a ways and strolled toward the back of the truck and wagon.
Fannie looked into her mirror and could see some of the men tossing forkful after forkful of vines into the wagon. The corporal disappeared around the back, but she watched one of the prisoners on her side of the truck. It was the German captain. His blond hair fell down over his forehead as he jabbed his fork into a scoop of vines. He worked in a T-shirt, and his shoulders bunched as he pitched vines into the growing heap on the truck bed. He shouted something to one of the younger men a few yards back and then looked her way. As their glances caught in the side mirror, he gave a nod. That was all, just a nod. Then he turned back to his work.
Her nerves tingled as she gripped the wheel and watched her way ahead. She had done exactly what she told Patsy not to do. Twice now. Twice she’d caught the look of a German prisoner. Twice she’d felt the crawl of feelings she couldn’t name. Regardless of what Mom said, from now on she was going to keep that pistol of her father’s in the truck under the seat.
