The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page A

Nothing's wrong, it's time to go to work.”
    Bill turned and left and the boy started to lie hack, so hungry for sleep—it couldn't have been an hour—that his eyes almostslammed shut, but Bill turned and pounded on the trailer again. “Come on, boy—we got work to do.”
    And that time it worked and the boy slid out of the bunk and put his feet on the floor and pulled his pants on and went out to pee and eat a breakfast sandwich as Bill drove the truck to take him out to the field.
    “How much money did I give you last night?” Bill asked while they were pouring diesel into the tractor from five-gallon cans.
    “I don't know—I didn't count it yet,” the boy lied. He had counted it in the yard light coming through the window of the trailer before he went to sleep. A hundred and forty dollars Bill had given him.
    “I don't want it back,” Bill said, reading his thoughts. “It wasn't a lot, was it? Like a thousand dollars or anything?”
    “No. I don't think so.”
    “I mean I don't care. I just need to know so I can tell how much I won.”
    “A hundred,” the boy said. “A hundred and forty dollars.”
    “Oh. Jeez, I was hoping it was more. I wantedto go over twenty-one thousand—the way it is, I'm shy by seven hundred dollars or so,-'
    “You won twenty thousand dollars?”
    “Almost. But Oleson he won over twenty last year when we got our soil money from the bank and I just wish I could have won more than he did—you know, just to say it when we're sipping a beer and rub his ugly face in it“
    He left the boy just as the sun edged up and the boy started discing on a field that was a mile long. It was all he could do to stay awake and finally he stood and sang at the top of his lungs to keep from falling asleep. He had decided to hell with it and vfos going to stop the tractor and sleep when he saw Alice coming with the pickup to bring the forenoon lunch.
    He was moving close to the end of the field and she drove around and waited where he would end the round.
    She smiled at him and gave him cake and sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee, which he drank first while it was still warm, hoping it would keep him awake.
    She did not leave while he ate this time as she always had before but instead sat in the truck withthe door open while he sat on the ground leaning back against the wheel a few feet away chewing the food and staring out at nothing.
    “Was there a woman?”
    The question came so suddenly that the boy jumped. He looked at her. “What?”
    “Woman,” she repeated. “Was there a woman?”
    “I don't know what you mean—“
    “I mean last night at the bar. I know he played poker. He's always a bad one for cards. And to drink now and then. I can understand that. But I want to know if he had a woman there at the bar with him when you went in for him. Was there a woman?”
    He looked out across the field again, chewed and swallowed. It was a meat loaf sandwich and tasted so good he didn't want to swallow but keep chewing. “No. Just men.”
    Alice looked intently at him for a moment, then nodded. “Good. I've put on weight these last two years and I worry that he'll go to wanting skinny women. I read about it in a magazine, that men want skinny women with big breasts. Is that right? Is that what men want?”
    Talking like this made him uncomfortable,made his stomach tighten, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye and saw that she had been pretty before the weight, and wasn't that fat and was still pretty, and he thought, I have never talked with a woman about breasts before and I am not a man to know what men want, but he remained silent and she kept talking.
    Of course you read all these things and they don't mean Shinola but I did want to know if he bad a woman at the bar. Especially if she was a skinny woman…” She let it hang and he realized that he was expected to answer again.
    “No No woman. Just men.” And he had to turn away because she was leaning forward and down