Two in the Field (5 page)

The car bobbed less violently as it began to sink.

Fighting against panic, I managed to get the seatbelt loose. My neck was wedged against an armrest, my feet braced against the roof. I tried to force a door open but in that position I couldn’t get much leverage, and the pressure outside was too great. I punched the window button. Amazingly, the electronics worked and the glass began to lower. Water shot in as if from a pressure hose.
Mistake!
I pushed the “up” button but the window kept lowering. Then I was blasted sideways as the glass gave way. I grabbed for the wheel. I tried to pull myself toward the opening. I took a gasping breath and my mouth filled with water. Panic seized me then. I thrashed around like a great fish, trying to climb to the open window, trying not to breathe the cold water that enveloped me.

 THREE 

A resonant
caooooooo, hoo, hoo
. Then a deep rolling cadence, like distant thunder, a rhythmic booming that built to a fast climax.

Tom tom tom tom tom tom tomtomtomtom!

After a pause it started up again. Underlying it was a sort of cooing, like pigeons, but more staccato. My head reverberated to it, pain licking behind my eyes and temples.

Christ, I hadn’t felt this bad since …

Could it be?

Raising my head with an effort, I discovered that I was lying in high grass. Its gentle swaying and rustling increased my vertigo. The circle of sky above me was the grainy pearl of dawn. My clothes were damp and I was shivering. My arms and legs seemed to work okay, but when I tried to stand up my balance failed and I toppled back. I tried to take stock. My brain was on fire, my eyes swollen nearly shut, my sinuses a clogged mass. But at least I was breathing air, not water.

How had I escaped?

A new burst of booming. I crawled in the sound’s direction but managed only a few feet when my arms sank into muddy ooze. I pulled free with a
slurp
and fell back into the grass, exhausted.

Next thing I knew, the daylight was brighter. The booming came again, startlingly close, and this time I made it to my feet and peered through the tips of the stalks. A dozen birds the size of chickens were gathered on a nearby rise. They were yellowish brown and spotted with black. As I watched, one abruptly broke into the strangest dance I’d ever seen. It began as a soft-shoe routine: he executed clever little foot pats while ducking and circling
and bobbing. Suddenly he stood erect as plum-colored sacs inflated like balloons from his neck. Tail fanning wide, wings drooping, he bobbed maniacally.

Tom tom tom tom tom tom tomtomtomtom!

By the time it finished, his sacs were deflated. He let out some chicken-like cackling, sprang high in the air, spun around like he was having an epileptic fit, then strutted and preened as if winding up a Vegas lounge act.

TOM TOM TOM TOM TOM TOM TOMTOMTOMTOM!

The sounds threatened to fragment my skull.

I was looking for a rock to scatter them with when the shadow of some larger creature—hawk or hunting owl—passed over. The birds on the knoll became feathery mounds that blended with the trampled-down grasses. I caught a glimpse of a distant winged shape just as it dipped from sight. Staring at its vanishing point, I felt a strange tug. My previous journey in time had begun with a bird that faded before my eyes; another had led the way to Mark Twain; yet another had saved my life in the Elmira graveyard, and on Russian Hill I’d heard drumming wings while staring down the barrel of O’Donovan’s pistol.

Was this bird pointing the way?

Had I come back again?

Trying not to be carried away by wild hopes, I looked around for portents. The day promised to be a scorcher. Did this sunlight and warming air belong to the nineteenth century? The dew was gone from the grass, and my jeans and cotton shirt were dry. One of my running shoes had vanished, doubtless jerked from my foot in the car. I stepped gingerly over the grass and hopped on the remaining shoe through patches of thistles. Exhausted by the effort, I reached the edge of a swampy pond ringed by cattails and bulrushes. Ducks and mud hens moved on the turgid surface. The relentless drone of locusts added to
my sense of displacement. A poplar at water’s edge offered the only shade on this side, and I headed for it, needing to lie down. Mosquitoes swarmed in dense spirals, so I packed mud on my arms and face before curling up beneath the tree.

When I awoke again the sun was high overhead. My face was puffed from bites—the mud hadn’t worked—and my throat was parched. I risked a few handfuls of water from the pond, then set out around it. I made it to a clump of scraggly cottonwoods on the opposite side. The ground was higher there and as far as I could see stretched a rolling prairie dotted with wildflowers. No trees. No houses. No people.

Where was I?
When
was I?

Ravenous, I gobbled down a handful of berries and some roots that tasted vaguely like onions. I felt better. The throbbing in my head was nearly gone, but there was no way I would venture out on the baking prairie. The mosquitoes weren’t so thick here. I settled down in the warm shade of the cottonwoods and lost myself in a meadowlark’s song that trilled above the insect drone.

“Wha—” My shoulder was being shaken.

A man’s creased, leathery face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. “I asked if ye’re sloughed down, feller.”

“Sloughed …?”

“Don’t see your rig.” He waved toward the pond. “If it’s down under, I got a length of wire rope.” The words came out in thick, yawly accents, barely understandable. And once I understood, it didn’t help much.

“Rig?” I asked.

He squatted beside me, ducked his head and spat a brown tobacco stream between his knees. “Ain’t likely you rode shank’s mare out here.”

“I had a car.”

He spat again and fixed his squinted eyes on me. “Nearest cars are ten miles off.”

“A blue Olds Alero.” Was he really as clueless as he seemed? Had I made it back? “Rental. Sank it here last night in the storm. Thought I was a goner. Air bag must have kept me from getting banged up, but I don’t even remember it going off.”

He nudged his hat back and scratched where the brim had been, the skin there pale above his weathered face.

“I’ll let the insurance guys handle it,” I went on breezily, giving in to a welling joy within me.

A boy’s freckled face materialized from behind the man’s shoulder, a cotton baseball cap snugged over his sandy hair. The cap had a button on top. It belonged to another era. He wasn’t wearing it backward. I laughed out loud and they both backed away warily.

“Who’s he, Paw?” the boy said in twangy tones.

The older man shrugged and spat, as if to signify it probably didn’t much matter. The boy promptly turned and loosed a brown stream of his own into the cattails.

“Sam Fowler,” I said, climbing to my feet. I felt more or less normal again. We shook but Paw didn’t offer his name. His callused hand was as hard as a ridged shell. “Any chance of catching a ride?”

“Where you headed?”

Good question. “I guess it depends,” I said slowly, “on where we are.”

“This here’s Cooley’s Slough,” Paw said.

“Twelve mile out of Keokuk,” the boy prompted when I showed no recognition. “Iowa.” He said it I-o-way.

“Are you going to Keokuk?”

They nodded.

“I’d appreciate a ride.”

Paw checked out my mud-caked clothing and seemed to consider it. I took closer note of his homespun hickory shirt and shapeless pants. I was definitely in the deep boondocks. The boy was staring at my running shoe.

“Ever seen one of these?”

He shook his head.

Please, don’t let them be Amish or something
.

“You say your ‘car’ got sunk?” Paw said.

“Right. During the thunderstorm. I was about to hit something.…” I paused. “That wasn’t you on the tractor, was it?”

“Tractor?” His eyes narrowed. “One of them Yankee contraptions you pull across your skin for rheumatiz?”

We stared at each other, foreheads furrowed.

“You a tramp?” the boy demanded.

“Nope.”

“Aeronaut?” The out-of-context word alarmed me until he added, “Balloonist?”

“No, why?”

“Well, you said “air bag” and ‘car’—”

“Twister got him, that’s the sum of it.” Paw pointed at the cottonwoods. “See them limbs ripped off? Twister tore through yesterday like nobody’s business. Swept up livestock, even whole houses, over by Summitville. So don’t fret, mister, if you’re a bit flummoxed. Twisters generally addle folks.” He spat. “Iffen they don’t kill ’em.”

I didn’t know what to say. Maybe, like Dorothy, I
had
been yanked from my other life by a storm. Maybe this was my Oz. The boy looked disappointed that I wasn’t an aeronaut.

“You appear,” Paw said, eyeing me critically, “like you mought got blowed a fair distance.” He turned away. “Anyhow, c’mon up to the road.”

As we pushed through the grass I described the birds I’d witnessed.

“Prairie chickens,” the boy said. “This is their courtin’ time.”

So
that’s
what they were doing. Sex. No wonder.

The “road” turned out to be two parallel ruts in the prairie, puddled in places from the recent rain. A flatbed wagon stood hitched to a pair of scrawny mules. Perched on its high seat was a stout woman wearing a bonnet and shawl. Her eyes stayed fixed on me while Paw talked quietly to her.

“He says he ain’t a tramp,” the boy piped up.

“Alex, mind your manners!” she said; then, to me, “You been a-pilfering?”

“What’s there to take out here?” Paw said, waving toward the pond. “ ’Sides, look at him.”

She looked some more, then apparently reached a decision. “Cora Dickey,” she announced in a no-nonsense tone. “Climb in. You’re acquainted with my menfolk—Mr. Dickey and our boy, Alex, who’s fixin’ to be somebody’s brother.”

As I swung up into the wagon’s bed I glanced at the waist of her calico dress and saw that she was indeed pregnant. To Dickey’s “Geeyaa!” we set off with a lurch that nearly sent me overboard. After that, I held on to the board sides as we swerved and bounced along the ruts. At length the grasslands gave way to carpets of wildflowers. Cora Dickey pointed out pink-blossomed Sweet Williams that perfumed the air. My sinuses should have shut down by now. Instead, I seemed to be breathing easier.

“Got an appetite?” she said, and opened a wicker basket. Soon we were sharing smoked ham and cornbread and sweet pickles and currant pie—all washed down with cream-thick milk.

“Alex, get him some lick for that dodger,” Cora commanded.

Huh?

The boy passed me a jar of molasses.

“All this from your farm?” I said.

“Mostly,” she replied. “Mr. Dickey got the corn in early this year, which is why we’re making this special trip to town.”

“What caused you to stop back there?”

“I noticed this big bird circlin’ over the slough,” she said. “Somethin’ about it sparked my curiosity.”

And brought them to me
.

“It’s peculiar that Maw wanted to stop,” Alex said. “She usually can’t wait to clean the general store outen soft goods.”

“Lucky for me you did,” I said.

“Oh, you could walk to town once the heat slackened,” Dickey offered. “Iffen you knew the way.”

“Folks get lost easy on the prairie,” Cora said. “You can go weeks sometimes without seeing another soul.”

I pointed to the northeast, the direction the bird had flown. “I think I’d have gone that way.”

“You’d be in a fix,” Paw said. “Ain’t nothin’ that way.”

Maybe not, but even as I pointed I felt an odd tingle.

“Where do you come from, Mr. Fowler?” Cora asked.

“San Francisco.”

“Oh.” She gave her husband a long glance. I wondered if he’d told her his twister theory. If so, she must be thinking it was a hell of a long way to be blown.

“Says he had his own
car,”
Alex said pointedly, “and crashed it in the slough.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “But the Pacific Railroad don’t run anywhere near …”

“There’s horse cars in town,” Dickey pointed out. “It was dark, after all, and Fowler ain’t sure what happened to him.”