Floyd settled back in at his parents’ farm out east of town, about halfway between Augusta and El Dorado on Haverhill Road. His dad’s health had broken while Floyd was away, so like the good son Floyd pitched in with fixing the run-down farm equipment that was all Mr. Bellamy could afford. Harvest time wasn’t far off, even in August, and Floyd was needed.
I was proud of him. Whatever Floyd had or hadn’t done in the war, even if he was the biggest liar God ever placed on His green Earth, Floyd loved his folks and did every dirty, nasty or just plain dumb job that had to be done on a small farm. All of it without a word of complaint, not even to me in private. Every Saturday night he would come into town in his dad’s Willys pickup truck. He and Mary Ann and me — and sometimes even Lois — would drag State Street, just like we were back in high school again. If we were feeling flush, we’d pile into my ’39 Hudson 112 and head to Wichita for steaks and beer.
Fall came and brought the end of the Pacific War with it, along with the harvest. Ever since I went off to college, I had managed to avoid working the fields. First there was school, then the war work. But V-J Day had come and gone, with Harry S Truman’s atomic gamble paying off handsomely. Being from Missouri, Harry S was almost a Kansas boy, so we were as proud of him as if he were truly one of our own.
Now, with the war over, things were slowing down. I managed to keep my job at the plant, working full-time as a parts buyer now, but I had evenings and weekends free for the first time in years and a chance to use up some vacation time. So I took two weeks off to help the Bellamys with their corn harvest, bad leg and all. Heck, they’d done so much for me over the years it was the least I could offer.
“Hey, Vernon,” Floyd puffed from the top of the silo. Poor or not, the Bellamys had a lot of corn. “Guess what?”
I killed the clattering engine of the battered Farm-All tractor, leaned on the steering wheel and wiped my forehead. “What?”
“Remember that German convoy I told you kids about?”
Floyd had never mentioned the Battle of the Bulge again, so I figured the whole story had been bravado, the returning hero showing off for his hometown chums. “Yeah…” I said cautiously.
Floyd had his exasperating I’ve-got-a-secret grin. “Borrow one of your old man’s trucks tomorrow. I’ve got something coming on the Kansas City train.”
My dad ran an on-again, off-again cartage business and had a couple of old medium-duty Mack trucks — a 1932 AC model and a 1929 off-highway AP model — which more or less worked. If you were lucky and it hadn’t rained lately. “What — a panzer tank?”
“Nah,” said Floyd, still smirking. “Something much better. Trust me, you’ll love it.”
I drove the grumbling old AC stakebed up to the freight platform at the Santa Fe depot. Though my bad leg was on the gas pedal side, I never was much for the pressure of a clutch, but Dad’s old monsters speed-shifted anyway. Kansas weather is unpredictable in late September, and Wednesday’s warm fall day had turned into a damp, windy Thursday. If it started raining, the Mack might well decide to develop one of its innumerable electrical shorts and refuse to run until Thanksgiving. The weather bothered my game leg as well, tugging at the muscle and joints like a pair of harsh hands until simply bouncing along in the cab was sheer torture.
Floyd was already at the station, sitting on hood of the rusted Willys pickup rolling a cigarette. “Hey, Vern,” he called, waving his handiwork. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks. Trying to quit.” Truth be told, I had never enjoyed cigarettes much. Floyd didn’t drink or smoke before he went off to Europe, but nearly four years in the Army Air Corps had turned him into a connoisseur of bad habits.
“Train’s late,” Floyd said. He cupped his cigarette to light it in the damp wind.
“I can see that.” I stretched my back and studied the ragged gray sky. How soon would it rain?
Floyd finally got his cigarette lit and took a deep drag. “You didn’t tell your old man what you were doing with the truck, did you?”
I laughed, trying to disguise the bitterness. “He was sleeping.”
Floyd smirked. “Drunk again?”
“Yeah, drunk.” I didn’t like to talk about that. Dad’s drinking was one reason I took a room in Mrs. Swenson’s boarding house on Broadway Street. I hadn’t liked stepping over him on the hall floor, or under the kitchen table, or on the porch steps — wherever he was when his drinking finally overcame his muscle control. My polio had disturbed him enough — Dad always called it “the disease that ruined my son.” But Dad had given up and crawled inside his bottles since Mom died.
Floyd studied the railroad tracks. “What are you gonna do now?”
“About Dad? Not much I can do.” Except clean his side of their joint cemetery plot, I thought.
“No, no,” Floyd waved a hand. “I mean, the war’s over, America’s getting back on its feet, all that stuff. Everybody will go off rationing soon, the service is discharging a million guys just like me, jobs are tough to get. What are you gonna do?”
Floyd knew I had a good job at Boeing, and a college degree and pilot’s license to go with it. I figured he was really talking about himself. Floyd didn’t much like to ask for help, or even advice. I spoke carefully. “Well… I figure I’ll marry the right gal, maybe buy a house here in town. Keep working in Wichita.” Watch my Dad die from drinking. “What about yourself? Got plans with Mary Ann yet?” Plans more complicated than condoms and a mattress in the back of the Willys, at any rate. He kept both in the barn at home when he wasn’t planning to use them.
“Yeah, we’ve talked.” Floyd flashed me his million-dollar smile. He really ought to move to California and go into movies. “She wants kids, dogs, a flower garden. I don’t know…”
Floyd was rarely uncertain of anything. It was almost charming to watch him wonder. Every now and then I could still see the rough-edged farm boy who’d carried me around school and town on his back, that first year after the polio got me. “So, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, you know… take you, Vern.”
I hated being called Vern. He knew that.
“While I was off getting my gourd shot at in Europe, fellows like you were safe back here going to college and getting swank jobs you could keep after the war. A poor Gus like me, never even finished high school, I don’t have a chance unless I want to run my father’s farm. Any fool can see that’s a losing game these days.”
I was too surprised at Floyd’s comment about high school to be angry for what he said about me. We’d get back to that later. “Floyd, you finished school. I remember. You were sick for graduation, but so what?”
Floyd shook his head, then took a deep drag off his cigarette. “No. That was just a story. I failed senior English and American History that spring. I was ashamed, so I didn’t tell no one. Then I went off in the service the week after everybody graduated. It never came up again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but I tried. “Still, a guy like you — you’ve got a clean service record, you know aircraft engines. You could get on at Boeing or Beech Aircraft in Wichita real easy. I can put in a word for you in personnel if you’d like. Maybe get you on my team, even.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. He might be the nearest thing I had to a brother these days, but Floyd working under me was not high on my list.
“Yeah, well, about that service record…” Floyd broke off and stared down the tracks. He looked like he might bust into tears right there. Then we both glanced up at the scream of a train whistle, coming in from the east.