Corn-Farm Boy (19 page)

“It's no fun to stand around and wait,” said Mom.

“Oh, he'll be along soon,” said Dad.

Dad started talking to two men who had hogs in the pens across the alley. One man was from South Dakota and the other from Nebraska. But the problems of raising hogs were just the same as in Iowa, so they had a good time comparing notes. Cries of “Hi-yah!” and “Soo-ey!” echoed back and forth through the chilly, drafty building. Close at hand was a “Buyers' Shanty,” with telephone booths, where orders for pigs were received from all over the United States.

“There comes Uncle Henry!”

Margy spotted him first and ran up to meet him. He caught her in his arms and tossed her high up in the air. “Upsy-daisy!” he cried. “How's my little Tootie?”

“Good,” said Margy, “but hungry!”

“You're late, Henry,” said Dad.

“Yes, a little,” said Henry. “We had a party last night and I overslept this morning.”

“Here comes Red, our commission man,” said Dad. “Hi, Red, good morning! Well, we got here.”

Red was a short stubby man with red hair and freckles. He smiled broadly and shook hands with everybody, even Mom and Margy. He motioned to a buyer who now came up. Soon the men were deep in a discussion of Dad's hogs and their merits.

Dick still felt unsure about the hogs. He looked over the fence at them. Both truckloads were crowded together in one pen. They looked different, not the same at all. They were restless and a lot dirtier. A patch of hair had been sheared off their rumps on the right side to identify them. Maybe there was a mistake. Maybe these belonged to someone else. Dick looked at the card tacked up outside the pen. There was Dad's name, the number, description and necessary information. A blank space was left for adding the name of the buyer.

Dick climbed on the fence and called softly, “
Soo-ey! Soo-ey! Soo-ey!
” This was the call he used at home in the hog lot when he fed them. All their heads turned and looked up at him. They squealed a greeting. Dick grinned. They were Dad's hogs all right and they knew him. Then they turned back to their feed again.

“A lot
you
care!” he said in a half-whisper. “All you think about is eat, eat, eat! Well—eat then! This is your last meal.”

Mom was right. Nobody could get sentimental over a hog. A calf now was different. A calf was pretty and appealing with its soft eyes and gentle ways. That was why Dick did not want to stay at the cattle pens. Even if they were other people's calves, he could not bear to see them go.

A workman came up with a hose. He turned water on and began washing out an empty pen across the alley. He sloshed running water all around everywhere. It was a big job to keep the pens and alleys clean. Although they were cleaned daily, there was always plenty of dirt from hogs going through.

The first buyer walked away and others came up to Red and gave him bids. Finally, at the highest bid, the hogs were sold. Mom spoke to Dad and said she was taking Margy back to the Exchange building.

“Now, Dick, you come and help,” said Dad.

Dick ran over. They drove the hogs out of the pen and down the long alley to the scale house. There they left them to be weighed.

Dick could not help but feel a pang of regret. That was the last he would ever see of them—the last of old Squeaky. It was the last time, too, he would ever make a pet of a runt. He tried to tell himself that Squeaky had been no pet, that she was no different from the others and that he would never miss her. But at the same time it was an awful thought that Squeaky would be on the slaugher block in an hour's time, and no telling how soon after that in a refrigerated car all done up in Cellophane packages or in gauzed quarters. He tried to forget all that. It was better to think of the new litters of hogs that had been coming since August—only to be sold next spring, in April.

“Aw—shoot!” said Dick to himself. “What do I care, anyway! People have been eating hogs since the year one. They'll keep right on doing it, too.”

“We'll go to the Exchange building and get our papers,” said Dad. “We'll find out what they weigh.”

“Did you feed them heavily the last two weeks like I told you?” asked Uncle Henry.

Dick followed slowly behind the men as they returned to the main building. There would be a long time to wait to get the hogs' papers and the check for the hogs. Dick looked at the hogs in the other pens. There were so many they almost made him dizzy.

Suddenly he heard a shriek behind him. It was louder than the squealing of the hogs. It sounded familiar. He turned around to look. Whom should he see but Margy! She was running fast on a cross alleyway, terrified and crying at the top of her voice.

“Margy!” called Dick. “Come here! This way!”

Margy heard him, stopped and looked, then came over sobbing. Her dress was wet and covered with mud.

“Where's Mom?” asked Dick.

“Back over there somewhere,” cried Margy, pointing vaguely. “I don't know where.
I lost her!
”

“You lost Mom?” said Dick. “Why, that's impossible.”

“We both got lost,” explained Margy. “We couldn't find the way out to the Exchange building and we went back to find you and Dad and Uncle Henry, but the hogs were gone and you weren't there any more. Mom told me to look down one alley and I did and when I went back
she
was gone! I can't find her.”

Dick took his little sister by the hand. “I'll find Mom,” he said. “You just can't see over the fences, that's all. Stop crying now.”

Margy began crying louder than ever.

Dick scolded her. “If you don't quit that noise, I won't even look for her. You sound worse than a stuck pig!”

Margy quieted down to sniffles. Dick walked back a few yards with her. They came on two cats in the alley, licking themselves. Margy stopped to pet them.

“Oh, here are the cats,” said Margy. “I'd like one of these.”

Dick laughed. “Don't be silly, punkin,” he said. “Probably there are rats here and these cats have come to eat them. We've got cats enough at home. You know that.”

They looked up and saw Mom hurrying toward them.

“Heavenly days!” cried Mom. “What a place! I'll never come in here again—not if I'm in my right mind.”

“Did you really get lost?” asked Dick.

“Well, I got all turned-around,” said Mom. “I couldn't seem to find my way out. Each time I turned I went in the wrong direction.”

“You were, too, lost!” said Margy. “You said, ‘Now I know how Margy felt when she was lost in the cornfield.'”

“Only this place is worse with so many hogs,” said Mom. “All these horrible hogs—black ones and brown ones and white ones and spotted ones! All their snouts poking out between the fence rails and squealing and snorting at me. It was like a bad dream. I had the awfullest feeling of being lost among all these pens of hogs. I wondered if I'd ever get out.…”

“Why didn't you ask some one?” said Dick, smiling.

Mom began to laugh now. “I did ask a man who was shoveling dirt,” she went on, “but he didn't know his way out either. He mumbled something I couldn't understand. He just went on shoveling dirt. He looked so black and grimy, I thought, maybe he never
does
get out. Maybe he just
lives
here!”

Dick roared and so did Mom.

“And just look what he did to my coat and dress,” said Margy. “He took his hose and splashed water and mud on me. He never even looked to see what he was doing.”

“You'll have to go out in the sun and get dried off,” said Dick.

“How
do
we get out of here?” asked Mom.

“Come with me,” said Dick. “I'll show you. If you just keep going in one direction long enough, you're bound to come out
some
where.”

They started walking and soon they could see daylight outside. Mom felt better when she saw she was going in the right direction. They came out on the catwalk again and followed it to the stairs. They went down and came into the Exchange building. Margy's tears were dried now. She forgot about her soiled clothes and they sat down in the lounge.

“Dad and Uncle Henry will find us here,” said Mom. “It will be easier for them to find us if we sit down and stay in one place.”

“Look at that man's boots,” said Margy, giggling. “He's wearing high heels just like a lady.”

“He's a real cowboy from Nebraska, I bet,” said Dick. “He's got those tight cowboy jeans on and a fancy vest. And look at his ten-gallon hat. He looks just like a movie star.”

A woman on one side began to talk to Mom. She said she was from Minnesota. Another woman from South Dakota said her farm was part of an Indian reservation. She pointed out groups of Indian women and children in the lounge. “They all raise cattle,” she said. “They truck them in here to sell them.”

The Exchange building was like a town in itself. Besides offices for the commission firms on various floors, it had a restaurant, barber shop, shoeshine shop, a studio for broadcasting market news and an elevator to the top floor.

All the people who waited were friendly. A woman on the other side of Mom began to talk to her. She said she was from Nebraska and her husband had sent in a load of sheep. She had a girl of ten beside her.

“We flew in ourselves,” she added.

“Flew?” asked Mom. “Do you mean you drove fast?”

“Oh no,” the woman replied. “We flew in our airplane. We own our own plane. My husband was in the war—he's a good pilot. It takes us only half an hour to get here. If we drove in our car, it would take all day.”

Margy stared wide-eyed at the flying girl from Nebraska. Then she whispered to her mother, “She wears blue jeans. She looks just like a plain Iowa girl to me.”

“Why shouldn't she?” Mom laughed.

“We saw one load of cows, a mixed bunch, with some sort of skin disease,” said the woman from Minnesota. “We wouldn't have cows like that on our place. They won't bring much.”

After Wilma and Raymond came back, they all watched the well-fed stockmen come waddling in. They tried to guess how rich they were and whether their wealth was in cattle, hogs or sheep. The men carried papers and notebooks. They slapped other men on the back, calling out, “Hi, pardner!” They talked in loud voices and laughed heartily. Their faces were ruddy from outdoor work.

Raymond was full of enthusiasm over the fine cattle he had seen.

“Boy, they are smooth and sleek, fed to a finish,” he said. “Every one in a pen evenly matched, all the same breed and same weight. You never saw such beauties. They'll bring top-notch prices. The commission men can take one look at them and estimate to a fraction just what they'll dress down to. I wish Uncle Henry would go in for more cattle and give up this hog business.”

“Give up the hogs?” said Dick. “Oh no, I hope not.”

“They've got horses out in the yard there so well trained, they can open gates,” Raymond went on. “I'd as soon go out west and live on a ranch. Then I would ride a cow horse and be in the saddle all day.”

Wilma laughed. “Raymond still wants to be a cowboy and rope cattle.”

“Just like they do in the movies,” said Dick. “O. K. Let him go. I'll stay on Dad's farm and help him with the work.”

“Those rich cattle buyers have a shoeshine parlor downstairs in the basement,” said Raymond, “with fifteen men who do nothing but polish boots! They pay a lot just to get a good polishing job.”

“I want a ride on the elevator,” the flying girl from Nebraska was saying.

Margy heard her. “Do they have corncribs here?” she asked her mother. “That Nebraska girl doesn't know much. She thinks she can ride on an elevator.”

“She's talking about a city elevator,” explained Mom, “not the country kind that takes the corn up to the top of the corncrib. The kind they have here takes people up to the top of this building. You don't have to walk up the stairsteps. You can ride.”

“If it's an elevator to ride on,” said Margy, “I want to ride on it. If she does it, I want to do it, too.”

“Are you sure you won't get scared?” asked Mom.

“I won't,” said Margy.

“An elevator ride really means something to a farm kid,” said the Minnesota woman, “even to that one who is used to flying in airplanes.”

Mom said, “All right then, let's go.”

Margy was surprised to see that the elevator was a small room that moved up from the basement and stopped at doors on different floors. She loved to ride. Dick and Wilma went along. On the top floor they looked out and saw the Missouri River beyond the railroad tracks with all the freight cars. Mom pointed out the whole area that had been so badly flooded in the spring. They all rode up and down twice just for the ride. Margy coaxed for more rides when it was time to get off.

It was noon now, and the run of stock for the day had been sold off. The Exchange building became very crowded. Dad and Uncle Henry appeared and located Mom and the children. Dad proudly waved his check and started for the bank to cash it. The family agreed to meet in the cafeteria downstairs for lunch.