page two Reese By Reed Coray If I ever meet Reese again, I think I know where it will be. It will be at a county fair, and I will find him throwing baseballs at milk bottles. He will be drunk and loud and gay. His tired wife will be holding a cluster of kewpie dolls with one hand, and with the other she will pluck his sleeve and tell him they had better be going home; and he will swear and say that he only gets to the city once a month, so what the hell. And he will get Very confidential in a profane way with some bystander about the misery of being a farmer. This picture of him is clear in my mind. It is as clear to me as events that actually happened when I knew him. He was only a boy of sixteen. He was stocky, yet appeared loose jointed and awkward. His clothes were sloppy, except for a big western hat. His smile was what you noticed. You didn't see his sandy hair, brown eyes, and flat coarse features when he flashed his engaging grin. I remember more than this. I remember how he did things and why he did them. Reared on a ranch till he was thirteen, he performed all of the hard jobs that a farmer must do. He could ride a horse, shock grain, herd cattle, and irrigate fields. His early schooling was in the village under old Mrs. Wheeler. She taught all of the forty-odd students of the school when they weren't needed on their fathers' farms. She didn't know much, but she could handle the rough farm boys. Maybe that's because she had a brother and other relatives on the school board. Then, equipped with all his simpleness and inexperience, he went to high school in the city. He was fairly smart, but he had no background of education. The laws of Galileo and the plays of Shakespeare were useless to him. So he got poor marks and sometimes flunked. He was caught once turning in an essay that a girl had written for him. He was exposed and condemned in front of the whole school, but all he ever did was laugh about it. He learned about girls and jazz, port wine and automobiles. The summer that I knew him, he had a job driving the mail between Moran and Border. With money, no worries, and no discipline, he led a carefree life. There was quite a group of boys working in the town that summer. Every night we did something, and Reese was the life of every party. Sometimes we went swimming with the lights of the car shining on the black river. Sometimes two or threeof us just drove around in his old mail truck. Of all Reese's accomplishments, he was proudest of his ability to handle that truck. We would ride around and around the public square, and always Reese would talk. He spoke bad English in a native nasal drawl, but we would listen for hours to his ramblings. Life amused him. As often as not he was laughing at himself. On Saturday nights he and his friend Walter would get a pair of girls girls who were pretending that they weren't farm girls and a quart of port wine. They would go to the dance in his old truck. Reese would tell all the girls at the dance he loved them. He would dance until sweat wetted his shirt to his back. Afterwards Walter would drive the truck home. Reese would neck his girl for a while and then go to sleep. Walter would take Reese home and wake him up. The night after something like this, he would tell us all his thoughts. He didn't want to be a farmer, but couldn't be anything else. He was willing to work hard, and he did. He only wanted money to spend. He got drunk because he felt best drunk. He never thought about religion. He would do anything for his friends, who were just about all the people he knew. He thought about girls as he did about cars: "Drive them as fast and as far as they can go, for that is what they're made for." The difference was that he only had one car. I suppose he is an example of the effect of modern times on farming. People look down on farmers; so boys reared close to the soil yearn to escape their heritage. All of his ambitious friends have left the farm to do something better. Vaguely he wants to do this too. He does not have the love for soil and the reverence for Nature that farmers in simpler times and simpler places have had. He wants to have new automobiles, dress well, and live richly; yet he is suited to be nothing but a farmer. His place in life's plan is to marry some farm girl who will have a lifelong struggle to keep him working on the farm. She will succeed, because work is bred in his bone. He will labor on his farm in the dirt day after day, but once in a while he will think of the good times he used to have and how plain his wife has become. Then he will go to town in his farm truck. He will get drunk, tell stories to waitresses, and be happy. When I see him at the fair, I will speak to him. He will be glad to see me, and he will offer me a drink. He will talk about things we did together. He will not introduce me to his wife. It may be that I can laugh with him. But I think that I will feel sorry for him. page three