Roy was up on his seat between the horses, sitting up there ramrod stiff in the sun, with the reel ahead of him turning and the sharp section blades along the sickle bar cutting the wheat off close to the ground, and then the canvas belts carrying the wheat off and up through the chute to drop into the header barge Edith drove alongside so Lyman could level it off in the back. My father stayed on the stack, forking the wheat level and even all around him, and I believe they would have finished too. I believe, if what I remember about that afternoon is everything that I was told about it, that they would have finished cutting that field of wheat before dark, and then all Roy Goodnough would have had to do was to let it stay there in the stack sweating for a couple of months until it was dry enough for Ludi Pfeister to come along with his crew and threshing machine and thresh it for him.
But late in the afternoon, along about five o’clock, the header stopped working. It jolted hard, lurched, and then passed over several rods of wheat without cutting them off.
“Goddamn it, back up,” Roy shouted. He sawed at the lines to the horses, pulling them back. “Now stand still,” he said.
The horses stood there, nervous, high-strung, hot, bothered by flies, while Roy climbed down to see what had happened. They had just made one of the square turns at the end of the field next to the barbwire fence separating Roy’s wheat from the native pasture across from it. So maybe that’s where they picked up the wire. Or maybe a piece of the heavy wire Roy always tied his machinery together with finally broke and fell into the teeth of the section blades. But I don’t suppose it matters where it came from, because he had it, all right. He had wire stuck hard between two blades and another piece running across the top of the sickle bar and then down where it was stuck between two more blades, so that the whole business was stopped dead from cutting wheat. He blamed Lyman. He blamed my father.
“You, Lyman,” he yelled. “Goddamn you.”
And the horses lunged forward then, thinking he wanted them to start up again. They pushed the header towards him where he stood in front of it, cursing.
“Whoa. Goddamn it. Stop now.”
“Pa,” Lyman called. “Do you want me to hold them? Pa, do you want I should—”
“No. Stay in the barge. You and that Roscoe have done enough. Can’t even fix a goddamn fence without you have to spread wire all over goddamn hell.”
“But you told me—”
“I know what I told you. I told you to help him fix his fence, for him helping me last year. But that don’t mean you have to spread it all over a man’s wheat field, does it? Does it? Answer me.”
Lyman didn’t say anything. What was he going to say?
“Answer me.”
“It’s not Lyman’s fault,” Edith said. “You know it isn’t.”
“You shut up,” Roy said.
“It’s not John’s fault, either.”
“Stay out of this, I said. Answer me, boy. Does it or not? I want to know.”
“No, Pa,” Lyman said. “No.”
“No, by God, it don’t,” Roy said. “But I got it just the same, don’t I? Roscoe’s fence wire stuck in my header. Goddamn it, anyway. Son of a bitching kids.”
But my father was twenty-five and no kid that summer, and it might just as well have been Roy’s own wire stopping the teeth — wire he used to tie up his damn machinery with instead of ever buying something new or even forking over the two cents that would buy the bolt that would fix it. But that didn’t matter to him: he knew he had fence wire stuck in his header and now he couldn’t cut wheat.
He bent down in front of the header, under the wood bats of the reel, and began to pull at the wire with both hands, working it back and forth, sawing at it to either break the wire or get it free somehow, and he managed to get one piece out that way. He stood up panting then, glaring at Edith and Lyman, then he bent down again and started on the other piece of heavy wire, bending it back and forth, trying to saw through it with the sharp serrated blades, but it wouldn’t come, and he went a little insane with the heat and the salt sweat running into his eyes, and the wire wasn’t coming. He pulled at it, sawed at it and it wouldn’t come, and he went on bending it, sawing at it viciously — then it came so suddenly, snapped so fast, that he stood up too quick and banged his head hard against a reel bat.
“Goddamn it,” he yelled, loud and fierce. “Goddamn it, to hell.”
And that’s what did it. It was that, his hot angry insane yelling, that did it for him. And I suppose it’s only right too: the voice that he hardly ever used at all except to tell somebody what to do with or to curse you with, to damn you, the voice he just didn’t seem to know how to use in any way that was kind at all — his own angry insane voice fixed him. Because, you understand, the horses were hot. The horses were high-strung, nervous, jittery now with his yelling at them and with his sawing at the lines. Besides, they were used to being started by his yelling, and they couldn’t anyway distinguish his giddup from his goddamn.
And it was goddamn, he yelled. Goddamn it, to hell.
So the horses lunged forward. The six workhorses threw themselves hard into the harness, and the header moved, jolted forward. It was free of wire now. The long bat of the reel came around, hit him hard, a blow across the nape of the neck. It dropped him onto his hands and knees. He braced his fall, but his fingers caught in the sharp blades of the sections. He had honed them that morning himself on the grindstone; they were knife sharp. Now his fingers were in them, between the bright blades, and his fingers were being mangled, torn to bone and bits, broken, cut, sliced. And he was yelling. All the time he was yelling, cursing, screaming, his feet kicking out wild behind him, the header was still moving forward, jolting in the rough field, with Edith and Lyman running alongside, yelling at the horses, the horses wild with the noise and still lunging forward in the harness, shoving the header at him, carrying him forward with it, cutting wheat with his fingers. It was insane, insanity, it was hell. The bats of the reel were cracking him down again and again, and still the wheat was being cut all around him, and his fingers were in the blades, being cut, sliced, hacked, and then it was over. It was done. That fast. He was torn free from his fingers and carried off to the side by the canvas belt.
They got the horses stopped. John Roscoe had seen what was happening. He had jumped down from the stack and had come running across the field, and he and Lyman had stopped the horses finally. Now Edith was helping her father crawl out of the header. It was bad. He had a long open cut above his eyes, another in the hair at the back of his head; one of his pants legs was ripped from cuff to thigh and showed deep bruises and cuts all along his leg; he was covered all over with blood and wheat chaff. But it was his hands that frightened you. He held them in front of him, out away from his body, as if they were exhibits. His hands were gore now, raw meat, hamburger. All the fingers and the thumb on his right hand were gone, chopped off. The thumb and the first three fingers on his left hand were gone too, just ragged meat and splintered bone, leaving his little finger alone on that hand, alone of all his fingers, uncut. It was ridiculous. His little finger on his left hand didn’t have a scratch on it. It was a mockery. He held his hands out in front of him, staring at them, as if he had finally gone insane entirely, while his ruined hands throbbed blood, dripping the blood off the jagged stumps of his fingers, down into the wheat stubble and sand at his feet.
“Oh Daddy,” Edith cried. “Oh God, Daddy. Come on, we’ve got to get to the doctor. Can you walk? Oh God, come on, though.”