Broken Fields

Cash stepped out of the cab of her Ranchero onto the soft, black dirt of the field she was to plow under. The sun had barely risen, casting a gentle yellow haze over the Red River Valley. It was going to be a scorcher. The early morning heat and humidity made her thin cotton T-shirt cling to her back. This close to the river, the air was always heavy and moisture-thick. At least the mosquitos weren’t out yet. To the west, cottonwoods, elm and oak created a green snake along the banks. A red hawk flew along the tree line.
     Looking into the sun, her hand shading her eyes, Cash could barely see the slight rise of the ancient meandering shoreline of what used to be Lake Agassiz thirty-five to forty-five miles away on the prairie. The flat land of the Red River Valley with its deep rich soil was created by glaciers moving north thirty thousand years before Cash’s time. As the glaciers melted, they formed a giant lake, larger than all the Great Lakes combined. When the Hudson Bay glacier melted, the waters of Lake Agassiz flowed into that bay, leaving behind the rich farmland.
     Cash scanned the wheat and sugar beet fields spread out for miles along the horizon in both directions. When she looked to the east, her eyes stopped at a small farmstead way at the other end of the section of field she was to plow. The small, white frame house, which even from this distance looked well worn, was owned by Bud Borgerud but was usually rented out to one of his field hands’ family. This morning, it had a newer car sitting in the driveway. Cash saw a faint trail of exhaust from the rear of the car.
     Cash lit a cigarette and blew the smoke softly into the air. She took a swig of coffee from her thermos. Another puff of smoke. Another drink of coffee. I better get to work, she thought. She tightened the cap back on the thermos, reached through the open window of her Ranchero and set it on the seat before walking over to the giant hunk of metal that was a Massey Ferguson tractor.
     Bud Borgerud, or one of his other field workers, had left the tractor parked at the end of the field, the key in the ignition. Cash pulled her slight five-foot-two frame up onto the tractor. Even before she sat down, she realized she had forgotten the cushion she usually used to make the daylong ride a little easier on her behind. She climbed back down, retrieved it from the Ranchero cab and threw it onto the tractor before crawling up after it.
     Once settled on the seat, she turned the key in the ignition, reached back for the lever to drop the plow into the ground and began plowing. As the tractor jounced down the field, Cash was grateful for the padded pillow cushion between her butt and the metal seat. As she neared the opposite end of the field, she noticed the parked car still running outside the white frame house. Someone is wasting gas. She turned the tractor and plow around in a wide, lazy circle and headed back the other way.
     Back and forth, all morning. As the sun rose, Cash baked in its heat. She tied her dark-brown, waist-length braid into a knot at the nape of her neck. As she rode, her body jostled by the tractor traversing hard ground, she thought back on what occurred at the end of the past winter. When the flood waters arrived, there was the crazy woman and her pastor  husband who kidnapped Native babies. Cash shuddered. The husband was dead. Cash, in sheer panic, had thrown a sharp paring knife straight into his neck. It had killed him. Cash’s mind flashed on the knife thrower who performed every year at the county fair. That person had real skill. Her own throw was pure luck. The pastor was dead and she hoped his wife was still locked up in the asylum down in Fergus Falls. As far as Cash knew, the infants were back with relatives on the reservation.
     Wheaton, the county sheriff, was always getting her into one mess or another. He had rescued her as a kid from an overturned car in a big ditch not too far from the field she was plowing for Borgerud. If she looked to the south, she could see the straight line of the gravel road where her mother had been drinking and driving and rolled the car. Cash had ended up in a series of foster homes, one nightmare family after the other until, in her late teens, Wheaton rescued her again and got her an apartment in Fargo, where she still lived.
     Cash didn’t know how or why, but she had developed sensibilities other folks didn’t seem to have. A new friend, Jonesy, who lived in the tamarack over on the White Earth reservation, called them gifts. Cash wasn’t sure about that. They seemed to come with the price of knowing too much about some other people’s trouble and hurts. She could sense things other people couldn’t. She out-of-body traveled in a near dream state at times, gathering information about crimes that weren’t evident to others. Sometimes, she dreamt things that gave her true information; like when she dreamt the address to the house where some men were holding young women hostage in Saint Paul. That had been her first trip to the Twin Cities and she had no desire to return. She liked working the fields, not being a cop, but she felt she owed Wheaton and so when he asked for help, she helped.
     He also wanted her to go to college. But it was summer and she had opted not to go to summer school. Killing a man, even a horrible man like the pastor, had messed with her concentration. Her grades remained good even though she skipped out on a lot of classes. She barely finished the spring semester. Given everything that had happened, she couldn’t sit in a classroom without feeling claustrophobic.
     Out here on the prairie there was room to breathe. And being able to see for miles in either direction created a sense of safety and security Cash had come to count on. She found some peace in the Red River Valley fields. When settlers had arrived in the Red River Valley in 1869, they received an allotment of a hundred and sixty acres of the most nutrient-rich soil in the world for an eighteen-dollar filing fee. Paupers from Scandinavian countries and Western Europe hit black gold. They grew children like corn. Some mothers gave birth to potential farmhands at the rate of one per eighteen months. Families would show up to church with eight to ten children, stepladdered from the tallest to the one on the hip.
     It was their descendants Cash worked for. Her own folks, the Ojibwe, had been in this part of the world since the seventeenth century. Prior to the settlers’ arrival, her people traded up and down the Red River with the Cree in Canada and the Dakota to the south. But they preferred to live in the forests by the lakes to the east, where deer and fish were plentiful. Cash, however, due to family circumstances and bad social policies, had grown up in the Valley. She had grown to love farm labor. She loved the quiet stillness of working the fields, driving the big machinery and trucks. There was the occasional broken machine or days of rain when one couldn’t get into the fields. But as a farm laborer none of that was really her problem. The big farmers like Borgerud handled the problems. All she had to do was drive the tractor and get paid.
     When the sun was directly overhead, Cash stopped the tractor by her Ranchero. She ate her tuna sandwich sitting in the shade offered by the big rear wheel of the tractor. There was a white wisp of a cloud in the sky, barely a wisp. She could hear birds talking to each other in the trees down by the river even though the river was a mile away. Looking to the east, beyond the little house with the car still running in the driveway, Cash could see cars driving down the highway two miles over, heading toward town for lunch at the drive-in or maybe to pick up machinery parts somewhere in Ada or Fargo. There were no cars driving the gravel roads out here where Cash was working. A few sections of land over, field dust was rising from another farmer plowing, but that was all that seemed to be moving in the Valley. Cash relished the peace. Sandwich. Coffee and cigarette. She was ready to get back to work.
     Climbing back up on the tractor seat, she looked down the field again at the car in the yard. Several hours and it hadn’t moved. She hadn’t seen anyone come in or go out of the house. Cash felt a familiar tingle at the back of her head, just behind her left ear. No. Just go to work, she told herself. She turned on the tractor and started plowing. The closer she got to the house, the greater the tingling sensation at the back of her head got. At that end of the field, she shut off the tractor. She could hear the soft hum of the car engine running. Not your issue, Cash. Get to work. She started the tractor again and headed back to the other end of the field.
     Cash made about four more rounds before she knew she’d have to check it out. Someone might leave a car running to go inside for a quick errand but no one left a car running all day. And that tingle told her something was off. When she got back to that end of the field, she shut the tractor off and hopped down. She brushed the field dust off her jeans and shirt as best she could. Slicked back the loose strands of hair that had escaped in the summer heat. As she walked up to the house, she ran different scenarios through her mind before settling on just asking for some water. She could always say the heat had gotten to her.
     Cash came into the yard from the field side so she walked right up to the car in order to turn toward the house. She glanced at the house windows. Sheer white curtains were open and no one was peering out. No farm dog announced her presence. Cash took a quick look into the front seat of the car. It was a soft, bluish-gray Chrysler model. The key was in the ignition. The leather seats were clean. No papers strewn about. A neat and tidy car. Tire tracks indicated at least one other car had recently been in the driveway.
     Cash looked again at the house. Still no movement in the windows. The back of her head started to vibrate as she walked closer to the two wooden steps that led to a screen door. Through the mesh of this outside door she could see inside the entryway, where another all-wood door was ajar. She knocked on the outside door. No answer. The door creaked on its spring hinge as she opened it. The thought ran through her mind that it was like the screen door at the Casbah bar. When she walked into the Casbah after a day in the fields the hinge would bring the door slamming shut right behind her, almost, but never quite, catching her long braid.
     Cash stepped up into the entryway. Denim work jackets hung on nails on the wall above a pair of worn field boots. “Hello?”
     No answer. The air where she stood was heavy.
     “Hello!” she called again before pushing the inside door open and stepping into the farm kitchen.
     There was a dead man lying in the middle of the kitchen. Blood congealed on his back and the floor around him. He faced away from Cash. Across the room, a .30-30 Winchester deer rifle looked as if it had been thrown and lay where it landed, against the base of the kitchen cupboards. Empty shells were scattered on the floor by the body.
     Cash took deep breaths to calm her body, which had started to tremble. She had not caused this carnage. This was not her fault. She looked at the man again. She noticed the linoleum underneath him and thought it must have been a Sears special because so many farm homes had the same flooring. If you looked closely, there were red and black dots that resembled Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl. Cash felt a giggle rise in her chest and stuffed it back down. She quickly scanned the room and leaned forward slightly to peer into the living room. From what she could see, the shooter was not in the kitchen or the living room.
     Cash didn’t see or hear another person. But she could sense she wasn’t alone. She called “Hello!” in what she hoped sounded like a normal, friendly tone. “Hello,” as she moved into the living room. No one. There were two doors in the room. She opened one door and revealed a closet that held a different season’s coats. A wooden shelf across the width of the closet held sewing supplies and kid board games, including a deck of cards and a cribbage board that sat on top of Candy Land. The second door she opened led upstairs.
     As she took one step up the stairs, Cash called out again, “Hello,” and started up. Some of the stairs creaked. If someone was up there, they would know how close she was getting. The top of the stairs was surrounded by a railing with balusters. With her head even with the upstairs floor, Cash looked straight ahead through the balusters into the bathroom. She could hear water dripping. No one was in there—unless they were lying flat, out of sight, in the claw-foot bathtub. Grabbing hold of the floorboards and pivoting around, Cash saw two bedrooms along a narrow hallway. In the first bedroom, all she could see was a window with its curtains pulled shut. In the other bedroom, the afternoon sun was shining through the window. She could see under an iron bed frame, its mattress sagging slightly on wire springs. Nothing under that bed but dust bunnies.
     Cash pivoted back around and continued walking up the stairs. “I was out plowing and got thirsty. Thought I’d stop in and see if I could get a drink of water. Looks like there’s been a pretty bad accident downstairs. I just want to make sure everyone is okay. You okay up here?”
     The hardwood floor creaked as she walked toward the first bedroom. Cautiously, she peered around the corner before entering. The tingling sensation at the back of her neck and head intensified to where it felt like fireflies were flitting around inside her skull. All her senses told her that someone, living, was in this room. She did not want to find another body.
    “Hello?” more softly this time. The bed was unmade. Sheets and blankets were thrown helter-skelter. A woman’s housedress lay on the floor along with a slip and bra. One oak dresser stood, several drawers pulled open, none of them fully shut. The room was quiet. Too quiet. Cash backed out of the room and did a quick survey of the other bedroom. Nothing was out of place. It was a child’s room. A girl’s room.
     Cash went back to the first bedroom and edged inside. She bent down onto her knees and looked under the bed. Back in the farthest corner, under the tall iron bed frame and wire bedsprings that held the mattress, a small body huddled. Big, brown, unblinking eyes looked out at Cash. Terrified, dull eyes.