Horse of a Different Color (19 page)

After I’d thanked Mr. Frickey he walked to the door with me, saying, “If you don’t work out something over there, come back to see me, but as I said before, we’re somewhat reluctant to make livestock loans at this time.”

Nick was waiting patiently in the Maxwell when I went back to the depot. So there’d be something for him to eat besides canned salmon and sauerkraut, I stopped at Bivans’s store for meat and groceries, but didn’t mention having got the contract. When we reached Cedar Bluffs I didn’t stop at the bank, but drove right home, set Nick to unloading the Maxwell, flipped onto Kitten bareback, and rode over to the Miner place for a talk to George before going to see the receiver.

As Kitten slid to a stop in the dooryard Irene came out to the porch laughing, and told me, “I wish you could have seen how tickled George was with that telegram. The Oberlin depot agent phoned it at a quarter to one Tuesday noontime, right when everybody was in from the fields for dinner. I’d bet a cookie there was somebody listenin’ in on every phone up and down the valley, and I never in all my born days seen folks so curious. There’s been leastways a dozen of ’em stopped by to try a little pump priming, and Effie’s fit to be tied, but George won’t let on that he knows who sent the telegram or has any notion what it means. He went to an auction over to Norcatur this afternoon and I don’t look for him home till chore time. Anything you want me to tell him?”

“Just tell him I’ve come out of the creek again with both pockets full of fish,” I said, “and that I’ll be over to see him after supper.” Then I gave Kitten her head and we streaked for home at a dead run.

20

Sweet Music

I
STOPPED
at home just long enough to put Kitten in the corral and tell Nick I’d be back as soon as I could, then drove up to the closed bank. The receiver was apparently waiting for me. I’d barely knocked when he opened the door, said he was glad to see me, and that Mr. Frickey had phoned saying I was on the way from Oberlin. As we walked back to the desk that used to be Bones Kennedy’s he said, “I’ve spent the whole forenoon going over the bank’s outstanding loans, and it seems to me that you and I could be of considerable help to each other.”

When we were seated I said, “That’s what I came to talk to you about. I’m sure you’ve heard that although the Beaver Valley farmers were able to save most of their livestock at the time of the flood they lost nearly all their corn.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know, and it makes me reluctant to press them on past-due loans before another crop is harvested.”

“It was just the opposite with Bob Wilson and me,” I told him. “We lost every hog we had, but I doubt that the flood washed away an ear of our corn. As near as I can tell by digging, there’s about three thousand bushels of it buried under five or six inches of silt in that field adjoining the railroad. It will rot if it’s left there till fall, but if I could put a couple of hundred stocker pigs in that field, along with some old sows to do the rooting, I’d be able to save every ear of it. On the other hand, no mortgaged livestock has been shipped out of this township since the bank closed, and with Wilson and me no longer in the feeding business there’s no market for stocker pigs here. As a result, most of the valley farms are way overstocked with shoats, and what were good bacon hogs a couple of months ago have grown into rangy heavyweights that are almost a drug on the market. With no corn to feed their hogs, the farmers have had to overpasture their alfalfa fields, and if the hogs are left on them till fall a good many of those fields will be ruined.”

“I didn’t realize the situation was that bad,” he said, “but if you have the corn and the farmers have the hogs we should be able to find a way of getting them together.”

“There is if you’re willing and this is something a bank receiver can do,” I said. “Before the new bankers came here Mr. Kennedy used to give me an up-to-date list every month showing what percentage of equity each borrower had in his livestock. When I bought mortgaged animals I paid the seller his equity in cash, we both reported the sale to the bank, the unpaid balance was transferred to my loan account, and I signed a mortgage note for it. If I can make the same arrangement with you I’ll agree to buy all the mortgaged hogs the farmers in this township want to sell at a dollar and a half a hundredweight below today’s Kansas City market quotation, with George Miner doing the grading. Each hog will be numbered for identification as it is weighed in, I’ll pay the seller in cash whatever percentage you’ll allow him, take over the mortgage obligation for the balance, and pay it off when the hog is shipped or disposed of otherwise.”

He listened intently until I’d finished, then said, “That sounds to me like a fine idea for all parties concerned. Such transactions come well within the scope of a bank receiver’s authority, and I’m more than willing to enter into the agreement you’ve outlined. I’ll type out a list of equity percentages and bring it to you before I go back to Oberlin this evening.”

I thanked him and while we were walking to the door he told me, “I hear you’ve acquired a contract to supply all the meat for the railroad reconstruction job. You’re to be congratulated for having the initiative to go after it, and I want you to know that I’ll help in any way I can within the scope of my receivership.”

“I’ll need every bit of help I can get,” I said. “The initiative was all George Miner’s, and I’ve done little more than to follow his advice.”

“You’re still to be congratulated,” he said as he let me out; “I’ll bring that list to you as soon as it’s ready.”

It was all too evident that he’d been convinced to make the agreement with me before I’d ever reached the bank, so I was sure that Mr. Frickey had told him over the phone about my getting the meat contract. But I didn’t know how many of the details he might have given, and there were some of them that I didn’t want broadcast. With a direct wire between the Oberlin and Cedar Bluffs telephone offices, and with Bones and the bank both on one-party lines, no one except the switchboard operators could have eavesdropped on the conversation, but I was sure that Effie had listened to every word. To find out how much she knew, and in hope that I could head her off before she’d broadcast it to the whole township, I went right from the bank to the telephone office, directly across the street.

I found Effie absorbed in a half-whispered phone conversation, but I’d no sooner stepped inside her office than she yanked the line plug out, sprang from her chair, threw both arms around my neck, and nearly smothered me against her bulging bosom. Then she stood me away at arm’s length and chortled, “So it was you sent George that telegram about corrallin’ a horse of a different color! If I was your own mother I couldn’t be happier about the whole thing, and I’d ought to have guessed who sent that telegram right off the reel, but I thought you was in Kansas City. Wasn’t that where you told the depot agent to route your hog cars when you ordered ’em?”

“That’s what you get for eavesdropping,” I told her. “But I’d have been tempted to do a little of it myself if I’d been sitting in your chair this . . . ”

“It would’a been sweet music to your ears if you had of,” she cut in. “My land o’ Goshen, if you had Charley Frickey and Bones Kennedy pullin’ for you as hard down to Omaha as they’ve been at it here to home this afternoon it’s no wonder you got that meat contract. To hear ’em braggin’ you up to this bank receiver a body’d think you was smarter’n horseradish and cleverer’n a kitten.

“Charley told him all about the big profit you got out of your hogs by shippin’ ’em over the Fourth, and what a good contract you made with the railroad, and about one of the big bosses phonin’ him up from Omaha, and that the Farmers National had guaranteed to finance you up to five thousand dollars, and about you going to fix your place over into a slaughterhouse and butcher shop. Then Bones come on the wire and told him the only way he could hope to collect past-due livestock loans this fall was to leave you buy all the mortgaged cattle and hogs you could handle, and to transfer the debts on ’em to you till the critters got butchered or shipped.”

“How did he seem to take it?” I asked.

“Well,” she told me, “he was kind of standoffish at first, but it sounded like he was comin’ around pretty good by the time they got done with him. Why don’t you go on over and see him? He knows you’re on the way from Oberlin and it would sure be a godsend to lots of folks in this township if they could get a little cash money out of their mortgaged cattle and hogs.”

“If you hadn’t been listening in on that line like a coyote at a gopher hole you’d have seen me go through town half an hour ago,” I told her, “and you’d have seen me go into the bank ten minutes later if you hadn’t been so busy broadcasting what you’d heard.”

“Honest to John, I didn’t peep a word to a soul,” she told me. “When you come in I was just gossipin’ a little with some of the women folks down the valley about that new hired girl of Russy Redfern’s . . . the redheaded one.”

Effie was so serious about it that I kissed a finger, touched it to the tip of her nose, and told her, “I was only joshing you, sweetheart. I’d like to have you tell the folks about my getting the contract, but it might cause hard feelings if the butchers I’ve been selling livestock found out how low I bid to get it, and I don’t believe it would help my trading business to have the farmers know how much I made on those hogs I shipped. Another thing you could tell the folks if you’d like to is that the bank receiver is going to let me buy mortgaged livestock the same way Bones used to. I can’t handle cattle right now, but I’ve told him I’d take all the mortgaged hogs and stocker pigs offered me at a dollar fifty a hundred below today’s Kansas City radio quotation. The price includes delivery to Oberlin, and I may not ship till August, but anybody willing to rehaul later on can deliver stock to my place tomorrow and pick up a check for his equity.”

Tears welled suddenly into Effie’s eyes. She engulfed me in another bear hug for a moment, then turned me loose and scolded, “Now get out of here! Get out before I go to bawlin’ like a little kid! I’ve got work to do.”

She hurried back to her switchboard and was cranking the 4-4-4 line-call ring when the screen door banged behind me. As I climbed into the Maxwell I heard a half-sobbing, half-joyful voice sing out, “Line call! Line call, folks! Here’s the best news I’ve had to tell you in a month of Sundays.”

When I got home I decided to move into the house, believing Nick would feel more comfortable in a room by himself. We set up a kitchen in what had been the dining room, a living room in the old parlor, and divided the remaining furniture between the two bedrooms. Then we moved my radio bench into the barn, leaving the bunkhouse and former kitchen clear for remodeling into an icebox and butcher’s shop.

Just before sunset the receiver brought the percentage list, and asked what plans I’d made for handling the railroad contract. I told him I’d hired a professional packing-house butcher while I was in Omaha, and that I’d bought secondhand, or was having built, all the fixtures and equipment I’d need. Then I explained how I was going to fit the old kitchen up for a butcher shop with a semiautomatic slicing machine and power grinder, showed him the bunkhouse, and said, “I plan to attach it to the north side of what used to be the kitchen, insulate it with straw, and convert it into an icebox big and cold enough to keep two tons of meat thoroughly chilled. There will be a large door at each end; one directly into the shop, and the other opening to the outside for bringing in ice and dressed carcasses from the slaughterhouse. To have running water I’ll mount a small tank about halfway up the windmill tower, and to keep the yard from getting muddy I’ll run a drain pipe from the shop and icebox to the creek.”

He didn’t seem much interested in my plumbing plans, but asked, “Where will you do your slaughtering?”

“Right here,” I told him. “Most of the butchers I sell livestock to do theirs in some old shed well away from town, where a few flies are no great nuisance and coyotes clean up the offal. My slaughtering will be much more sanitary. Back there at the edge of the creek gorge I’m going to build a little screened-in slaughterhouse with a solid plank floor. I bought enough nearly-new water pipe to run a line back there, so we can scrub down after every slaughtering and do away with any possibility of a bad odor.”

He told me it sounded as though my plans had been well made, and as we walked back to his car he asked, “When do you plan to start buying those hogs we were talking about?”

“Tomorrow morning,” I told him.

“Mind if I drop over?” he asked. “It would give me a good chance to get better acquainted with the farmers, and maybe I could be of some help to you with the paper work.”

“I’d be glad to have you,” I told him, “and I could certainly use the help. I have an idea the first loads will come in right after sunrise. They usually do.”

As he started his car he told me jovially, “That’s pretty early for a banker, but I’ll be here,” then drove away.

Nick had hidden away in his room when the receiver drove into the yard. After he’d gone I took the boy around the place, telling him the plans I had in mind, and scratching lines on the ground to show him the locations of icebox, slaughterhouse, and where I planned to run the drain line to the creek. He made no comments, and except for the animation of his face I might have thought him unable to understand what I was trying to explain. During supper he seemed completely lost in his own thoughts, so I made no attempt at conversation. After we’d eaten I left him to wash the dishes while I went over to tell George Miner all that had happened since I’d last seen him, and to ask if he’d act as grader of the hogs that were brought in next day.

George and Irene were sitting on the front porch when I rode Kitten up to the gate. “Glad to see you back, son,” George called. “From what Irene tells me about Effie’s line call this afternoon, I take it you’re still rarin’ at things whole-hog-or-none. Ain’t promisin’ to buy all the hogs anybody wants to sell kind of like proposin’ marriage to a widow woman before askin’ how many youngsters she’s got? Come on in and sit a spell.”

I visited with the Miners until nearly ten o’clock and told them the whole story step by step.

Although George would take no credit for any of my good fortune, he left no doubt as to how happy it made him. When I left he walked out to the gate with one hand on my shoulder, and told me. “There’s no two ways about it, son, you’re doin’ some awful risky gamblin’ all the way along the line, but with that judgment agin you you’ve a’ready got a pretty big stake in the game, and a man don’t win big pots by playin’ his cards close to his belly. Of course you’ll have to watch every card that’s dealt or throwed away, and you’ll have to keep your chew right square in the middle of your mouth; a man with his mouth tight shut ain’t very likely to tip his hand.” At the gate he slapped my shoulder and told me, “Get on home and get some sleep, boy. I’ll be over about sunup.”

When I got home Nick was in his room with the door closed and a lamp lighted. And, strangely, the plaid oilcloth was missing from the kitchen table.

The next morning we were up by four o’clock, ate breakfast by lamplight, and in the first gray of dawn began fencing a runway from the scales to the field where the corn was buried. When at sunrise George and the bank receiver arrived, Nick looked bewildered, almost like a frightened child who wanted to run and hide. I realized that it would be an ordeal for him to meet as many strangers as would be coming to the place that day, so sent him to take the tools to the house, and said I’d come for him if he was needed. A little later I caught a glimpse of him behind the house, but for the rest of the day I was too busy to think of him again.