Kent Haruf - The Tie That Binds

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.”

Roy seemed almost to wake up then. He seemed almost to come out of his wild fascinated daze. “I ain’t leaving,”

he said. He wasn’t yelling anything now; he was just talking, high, in a kind of old man’s shocked whine. His fingers were gone. “I ain’t leaving,” he said. “They’re mine.”

“What? No, come on. What are you talking about? We’ve got to hurry. Help me.”

“I ain’t leaving them here. They’re mine. They ain’t yours, are they? They ain’t yours.”

“No, please. Oh God. Help me, John.”

John Roscoe took Roy’s arm and tried to lead him away, tried to get him to walk towards the road. But he pulled his bloody arm free.

“They’re mine, goddamn it. I tell you, they ain’t yours. I told you, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you told us,” John Roscoe said.

“They ain’t yours.”

“No.”

“They’re mine. I told you already.”

“Yes, all right. We’ll find them.”

“Give them to me. I want them all.”

“We’ll find them,” John Roscoe said. “Lyman, go get my car started. Bring it here.”

“Oh Jesus,” Lyman said.

“Hurry up, goddamn it. Run.”

Lyman turned and ran stumbling across the wheat stubble to get the car. He fell down, jumped up again, and ran on. Edith and my father stood with Roy Goodnough beside the header. His hands and arms were twitching uncontrollably now, dripping blood all the time. He held them out in front of him. His face was bloody from the wound above his eyes, and there was more blood running down the back of his neck.

“I told you,” he said. “I already told you so.”

“He’s going to die,” Edith said.

“No, he isn’t. Not yet.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to die, though.”

“Stay with him. I’ll look if I can find any of his fingers. Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Give them to me. They’re mine. They ain’t yours.”

“Yes, Daddy. Hush now.”

“I want them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“They’re mine, I told you.”

“Oh, please be quiet. Please, Daddy.”

“They ain’t yours. They’re mine.”

JOHN ROSCOE found two of the fingers and one of the thumbs. The thumb was still stuck in the section blades. The two fingers he found in the sand and stubble behind the header, but he couldn’t find any more. Edith held them in her lap on the way to town, sitting in the back seat of the old Model T Ford behind her father. They looked like thick bloody sausages in the handkerchief on her lap, except that they had black hair on them between what would have been knuckles and they had fingernails on the ends. There was still dirt under the nails. Edith brushed the sand and wheat chaff off them: the fingers were very stiff. Roy sat in front of her with his head fallen on his chest. He was mumbling to himself, and his bloody hands dripped blood steadily onto the floorboards of the car.