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

from the cab and he could see the swell of her breasts above her dress and there was a little perspiration on them where they came together and he couldn't stop staring at them, at the dampness of them.
    'Well, that's all for the good.” She straightened. “Are you done eating? I'd better get back to the house and start cooking dinner.”
    She took the bucket and the Thermos of coffee and drove off and he went back to the tractor and started it and began to disc. He worked allafternoon up to dark when he saw Bill coming for him and if he didn't force his mind to think of other things it stuck on the way Alice's breasts had looked with the faint sheen of sweat on them when she'd leaned down and asked if men liked skinny women with large breasts.
    They drove into the yard just as it turned dark and the boy was so tired he'd fallen asleep in the truck. Because he was dozing it took him seconds to realize what Bill said as they turned into the driveway.
    “Damn,” Bill mumbled. “A sheriff's car is here. I'll bet Oleson was pissed about losing that money and wants the law to get it back for him!“
    Bill parked and they got out just as a deputy came from the house with Alice.
    “He wants to talk to the boy,” Alice said to Bill, and the boy thought, Shit, the Mexicans were right. They have been looking for me.
    “I got a report on a runaway and I heard you have a new hired kid out here,” the deputy said. He was tall and had a stomach that hung over his gun belt but his shoulders were wide and he looked strong. And mean, the boy thought— something about him had an edge.
    “What's your name, boy?” the deputy asked, and the boy gave him a phony name.
    “You got some paper with your name on it? A license or something?”
    “No.”
    “I think you're lying, boy. About the name. You come with me and we'll straighten it out.”
    “Hell, Jacobsen, he's a good worker. There ain't nothing wrong with him.” Bill stopped him with a wave. “He busts his balls for me.”
    “Fine. If he ain't the runaway I'll bring him back hère. But there's a poster and I've got to tell you he looks close to the picture. Get in the car, boy. The front seat.”
    The inside of the squad car smelled like booze and puke and he setded into the seat with his knees near the shotgun bolted in the floor bracket and thought of how it would be to go home. He no longer had a home, in his mind, and if the sheriff had the right picture they would send him back and he didn't think he could stand it.
    The deputy drove in silence—breaking it only to make a report on the radio—until they came to a town, the boy fighting sleep all the way so thathe missed the sign that said the name of the village.
    “We get out here," the deputy said, parking by a two-story brick building and pointing to a side door. “Wait by that door. Don't run.”
    “I won't,” the boy said, and for the first time actually thought of it. Maybe he
could
do that, if could run.
    The deputy locked the car and then came to the door, jmshed it open and made the boy go up a set of stairs inside. They were cement steps with steel pipe for handrails, dimly lit by a bulb hanging at the top.
    At the head of the stairs there was a steel door and on it was stenciled the word:
JAIL
    “Inside,” the deputy said. The boy pushed at the door and then pulled when it didn't open and went into a fifteen-foot-square room with a metal desk and a table with a hot plate and a coffeepot on top of it and some file cabinets along a wall to the right. On the left wall there were three steel-barred cell doors. Two stood open and one was closed with an old man sleeping inside on ametal-frame bed that folded down from the wall and hung on chains.
    “Empty your pockets,” the deputy said. “There, on the fable. Everything, and I do mean everything or I'll kick your ass until. it's a ring around your neck.”
    The boy had a dilemma about the money. He had an old pocketknife he'd picked up somewhere and some