This story won First Runner Up in a Grain competition and was published in the February, 2011, issue of that magazine.
THE STOOKER
“Hey, Buddy, what d’you think you’re doing?”
The crisp voice startled him out of delicious sleep. Ben was on his way home. Because he was in no particular hurry, he had cut across country roads rather than stay on the busier, dustier gravel highway.
It had been one of those stiflingly hot days in late August. A typical Saskatchewan day when the prairie air refused to move. All day long the dry, gray powder between the rows of stubble had baked into Ben’s well-worn boots, crept up the inside of his overall pantlegs, gritted in his teeth, mingled with the salty sweat of his forehead to sting his eyes into a permanent squint.
Nothing in the day warned him that this day would end in any other way than such days usually did. The work was done, and you simply went home and got to bed.
The sun had just slipped below the horizon, leaving long, lingering fingers of delicate pinks and yellows and soft greens all the way around to the eastern sky. With the sun gone, the hot earth seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Birds busily harvested the rich array of insects that always greeted the end of day.
But Ben was still hot, hot from the memory of the scorching day of stooking. He had had hardly more than two good swigs from the water jug all day. It seemed that every time the binder came around with it, he was far down a windrow, and he didn’t like to lose the rhythm of his stooking.
Ben was a good stooker. He even thought of himself as a great stooker. And he loved work. Even when the prairie air practically choked him, he loved work.
Ben gave the appearance of being a big man. Not really tall at 5-foot-10, he seemed taller with his massive round shoulders, and his big chunky chest, and his big belly.
Ben was one of those stookers who grabbed a bunch of straw just below the twine, picking up one bundle in each hand. With almost effortless grace he swung the bundles together and stood them up leaning against each other. Eight bundles made a single stook. He looked with pride at his sturdy stooks. No wind would knock them over. No fall rain would hurt them. And if they stayed out all winter, they would be ready for the thresh-machine in the spring.
And he saw to it that his stooks were well-rowed. Given good weather, the threshing crew would be around in a few weeks with the bundle teams and hay racks, and Ben did not want them to have to traipse all over the field for scattered stooks.
Yes, Ben could look back at his work with satisfaction, not because he had made a few bucks — that was nice — but because it felt so good to work, to work in a field that was going to make a farmer glad he had planted wheat in the spring.
And because it happened to be Saturday.
He had pulled his rusting half-ton a few feet off the narrow road onto a rutted and almost hidden driveway, where grass and weeds had grown unchecked. He licked his unwashed, stubbled mouth in eager anticipation as he cracked open a Black Label.
He pushed back comfortably in his seat, then decided to open both doors to let the evening air blow through. He took a long, long pull at the bottle and settled back again. He closed his eyes. Row on row of beautifully capped wheat stooks climbed over gently rolling fields.
A tractor roared a long way away. He could hear the busy clacking of the binder as it formed the bundles, tied them, and kicked them out onto the carrier. Someone was working late.
A bird fluttered uncertainly over the hood of the truck and then went on. A kingbird, Ben decided, without checking. Then again, it could have been a red-winged blackbird.
Ah, it was a soul-happy time, harvest time. He wrapped his horny knuckles securely around his bottle, propped it up on his overall bib, and slid down lower in his seat.
He was only dimly aware of the car passing slowly and stopping. He jerked awake at the voice.
He was staring up into the cold, efficient eyes of a very young R.C.M.P. constable. Some of his beer, in fact, most of it, had spilled down over his bib and down into his lap.
“My name is Ben, and I’m having a beer.”
“Step out of your vehicle. I want your driver’s license, your registration, and proof of insurance.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Ben dragged himself out of the truck, suddenly bone-weary and desperately angry. Like a bear, he staggered forward when his left leg refused to carry his weight. It had fallen asleep. He fell against the constable and landed on top of him, their faces almost touching. Revolted by the smell of beer and sweat, afraid that he was under attack, the constable rolled away and reached for his service pistol as he scrambled to his feet.
“Hey! Hold on there. I fell.”
“You know you’re breaking the law, don’t you?”
Having made a quick inspection of the cab, the constable began to copy pertinent information from Ben’s documents. But he kept a wary eye on the big man’s bloodshot eyes just slightly below the level of his own. Even though only one bottle had been opened, he could not be sure just how much this sturdy farmer had consumed. He could not clearly distinguish between the smell of spilled beer and the breath from the mouth twisting in anger and frustration.
“You can get back in.” But Ben didn’t move. He would stand and talk face to face, man to man.
“Sure I know what the law says. But look. I wasn’t hurting anybody. I was minding my own business, and this is my own truck. See, I’ve only had less than half a bottle of beer. Just what’s so dang wrong with having a beer beside the road?”
“Sorry, Buster, but the law says . . .”
“My name is Ben.”
“The law says you can’t drink in a vehicle. And you’re on road allowance. That’s public property. I’ll have to charge you.”
“Why in God’s name do you have to charge me? I’m not drunk. I haven’t bothered anybody. I’m not making any trouble. I have no intention of getting drunk and I’ll not be driving home drunk. You surely don’t have to charge me.”
“Look. You try to be a good farmer, and I try to be a good cop. You’re breaking the law and will receive a summons.”
“Why?”
“The law says . . .”
“Do you mean to tell me I am doing worse than those buggers back there in the beer parlor? Half of those guys are going to drink more than they should, and they’ll be on the road.”
“They’re not breaking the law. You are.”
“Shit on the Goddam law, and little farts like you!”
He pushed his way past the constable, plunked himself squarely into his seat and lurched back onto the road.
At first, much of the joy was gone from the rest of the harvest. Ben smoldered with deep resentment at the stupidity of a law that couldn’t make allowances for a decent man to have a quiet beer by the side of the road on a hot Saturday evening after a glorious day of stooking in a thirty-bushel-to-the-acre wheat field, at the arrogance of a clean-scrubbed young constable who acted as if this was the first ticket he had ever written, who needed to please his boss, show him what a good little cop he was going to be.
Then cooler emotions began to push the anger aside. Ben made up his mind that he would not pay a fine, not under any circumstances. They could jail him first. Nor would he get a lawyer. No one was going to get one red cent of the money he earned out there stooking.
He knew he would have to plead guilty. That was obvious. But he would simply tell the truth, the unvarnished truth, the whole of it, and rely on the magistrate’s sense of simple justice. Yes, he thought that would be best. In the sweet sweat of physical toil his zest for life returned and stayed with him till the end of harvest.
He rehearsed what he would say in court a million times. Over and over, he saw himself, the simple farm laborer, in the crowded courtroom. With commonplace logic and simple eloquence he would point out the difference between the law and justice. He could see the judge nodding solemnly as he made his points. He heard the gavel. “Case dismissed!”
His trial date came late in November when no more farm jobs needed doing. He felt content and confident.
The courtroom was nothing at all like his imagination had painted it. The language, the efficiency, confused him. He was caught off guard by the reference to offensive behavior to an officer of the crown. They used numbers for sections of the law. The judge offered him no chance to speak in his own defense. At least, he did not hear anything like that. He did hear the judge say he could seek counsel, but Ben only shook his head.
“I then sentence you to two weeks at hard labor in the Prince Albert Penitentiary.”
Ben served his time the same way he stooked. What the heck, he figured, he had worked harder, eaten worse meals, slept in a poorer bed. And in the end it hadn’t cost him a penny.