Centennial (129 page)

“It looks just fine,” she said, turning the pages.

You wouldn’t believe what Dr. Creevey accomplishes on land just like this,” Earl said, and he went on to explain Turkey Red, that fine winter wheat imported from Russia, and the clever new ways of trapping moisture.

She was not listening. Her eye had fallen upon the one photograph Mervin Wendell had fought against including in his pamphlet. “You’ve got to show them what the land looks like.” the railroad agent had insisted. “I don’t want women looking at those bleak empty spaces.” Wendell had said with the prescience that marked his dealings. “You show a bunch of Iowa women those prairies, and they’ll panic.” Against his better judgment the dry-land photograph had been included, and now as Alice Grebe looked at it, she had a premonition of the loneliness she could expect and the dread silence at night with no human being within earshot, and she was no longer sure they should embark on this adventure.

“Are you all right?” Earl asked, seeing her grow pale.

“Of course,” she said weakly. “It looks to be wonderful land.”

“I want to move west,” he said. “I want to work where I can own my own place.”

It was the timeless cry of the man who dreamed of moving on, of leaving old patterns which circumscribed less venturesome men. It had been voiced at every stage of American development and had motivated the most diverse types of men: the renegade trapper, the devoted Mormon, the feckless son, the daring entrepreneur, the young woman without a man or a prospect of one, the housewife who wanted better things for her husband. It was the authentic vision of the pioneer American, the dream of freedom and more spacious horizons.

In the early years of the twentieth century this eagerness to move westward reached its height. New immigrants from Europe who did not wish to be trapped in city slums caught the train to Chicago and from there to the wheat-fields of Dakota and Minnesota. Old residents of the Atlantic seaboard who sensed that this might be the last chance for a man to live more freely heard of unclaimed lands in Colorado and Montana and made the break. Young ministers, middle-aged hardware merchants and old roustabouts joined the movement, while a score of different railroads sent persuasive men into all towns preaching the doctrine of free land in the west. It was a conscious movement and the people who participated were among the finest and strongest citizens America had yet produced.

Alice Grebe stifled her fears. If her husband longed to hazard new fortunes, like the hero of a book she had just finished, she must encourage him. And in the last days of summer, 1911, two families from Ottumwa reported to the station for the journey west: Earl and Alice Grebe and a crafty older pair already familiar with emigration, Magnes and Vesta Volkema, accompanied by their two teen-age children. A few men in the crowd that bade them farewell said, “I wisht I was younger so’s I could go along,” and Vesta Volkema told some of them, “You’re younger right now than I am.”

They went to Omaha, and caught the train there which would take them to Centennial, where Mervin Wendell would be waiting. And as they sat in the coach through the long night while the train crept westward through Nebraska and across the border into Colorado, they talked of their bright future.

“It’s a new start,” Alice Grebe said with an animation she did not wholly feel. “Like the ox-cart women of a hundred years ago. It’s really quite thrilling.”

“It’s a chance to pick up a few easy dollars,” Vesta Volkema said. “I want to get hold of as much land as possible as quick as possible. Sell at a profit. Then on to California.”

“I see it as an opportunity to establish a home,” Alice Grebe said. “Our own town ... maybe watch one of our sons become mayor.” She leaned forward as she spoke, as if eager to begin this new contest with the land, and once she reached out to touch her husband’s hand, reassuring him that she was ready for whatever the new challenge presented. “I can hardly wait to see our new home,” she said.

“Our families will build the church,” Alice said prophetically. “And we’ll put our books together to build a library.”

“You’re looking too far ahead,” Vesta teased. “What I’d like to see is a good grocery store.”

“We’ll get one,” Alice said. She had been valedictorian of her class in Ottumwa, a very bright girl who should have gone on to college, her teachers said. She read books by Upton Sinclair and visualized an always-better society. In her graduation address she had declaimed: “We are the builders of tomorrow. We are the new pioneers.” At the time she drafted those words she had been only vaguely aware of their import, but now as the train rattled toward Denver and the great mountains she felt as if she were the very spirit of a pioneer movement, and she reveled in the excitement of what lay ahead.

“It’s so thrilling!” she whispered to Vesta. “There can’t be another pair on this train as fortunate as we.”

But when dawn broke and she saw those interminate plains west of Julesburg, those prodigious reaches of loneliness, gray-brown to the horizon without tree or shadow, the enormousness of their adventure overcame her, and she fell into such a trembling that Vesta had to grasp her hands and quieten her.

“Earl! Come here!” Vesta called, and when Grebe sat with his wife he said, “She’s only nervous,” but Vesta sized the situation up more accurately. “She’s pregnant,” she said matter-of-factly, and when she confronted Alice, the girl confessed that she had known for several weeks but had told no one lest the trip west be canceled.

“It’s an omen,” Earl told the group. “Just like the Bible says: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ Those are the first words God ever spoke to man.” He sat with Alice’s hand in his and looked out at the lonely land. “We shall multiply,” he said, “and we shall subdue.”

Mervin Wendell rose early that morning. In the years when he sold irrigated farmland, he had learned to be at the station whenever settlers arrived, for he had found that in their first hours in Centennial they were likely to require his reassurance in a variety of ways, and if he signed them up early, they stayed signed. Now that he was trying to peddle drylands, it was even more important. He therefore shaved by the new electric light which graced his mansion, then doused himself with real French eau de cologne shipped in from Boston. He trimmed the hair about his ears, using his wife’s scissors, and slipped into his western outfit: whipcord trousers, Texas boots adorned with silver, pale-blue shirt with string tie, a wide-brimmed hat. Reviewing himself in the mirror, he felt satisfied that his figure was as good as ever and his jaw line still firm and in its way commanding.

The Negro cook waited with Mervin’s regular breakfast: sourdough pancakes, two eggs, three strips of bacon and a pot of hot coffee without cream or sugar. He liked the batter for his cakes to be kept watery, so that the resulting cakes were thin and very brown on each side. “Thick pancakes that taste like a blotting-paper sandwich are not my style,” he explained, and this morning they were done his way.

When he had eaten, he went upstairs to kiss his wife goodbye, advising her, “I’m hauling our first load of homesteaders out to Line Camp, and I won’t be back till late. Each man will want to tramp over his land, and I’ll be busy.”

He went downstairs and climbed into his new six-seater Buick, which he idled for some minutes before venturing out onto Eighth Avenue. The quiet purr of the motor pleased him, and slowly he engaged the clutch, releasing it with skill so that the gears meshed properly. With a restrained touch on the horn, he announced without ostentation that Centennial’s leading citizen was about to move down the street.

On this morning he was to experience a nasty shock, for when he reached the station he found Jim Lloyd and Old Man Brumbaugh already there, and he discovered that they proposed addressing the new settlers as they left the train.

“What about?” he asked with visible dismay.

“About land,” Brumbaugh said shortly.

“What about it? They homestead legally. I sell them additional land, which I own. What’s wrong about that?”

“The use of the land.” Brumbaugh said with impatience. “Have you no conscience?”

“It’s good land for wheat,” Wendell said pugnaciously, glaring at Brumbaugh. “It’s been proved you can grow wheat out there.”

“The sod crop,” Brumbaugh said contemptuously. “Any soil in the world will produce a crop first year the sod’s broken. You know that.”

“It’s the years that follow the sod crop that will break these people’s hearts,” Jim Lloyd broke in. “What are they going to do, Wendell, when those roaring winds blow out of the Rockies? You’ve seen what they can do to irrigated farms. What in hell would they do to dry-land crops?”

Wendell licked his lips and asked placatingly, “What kind of speech will you make to our visitors?” He did not try to override his two antagonists; from past experience he had learned that where land was involved, these men could be difficult. However, he did keep stored in the back of his mind a strong telling point against them, and if they tried to make real trouble for him, he intended using it.

“We’re going to warn the newcomers to go back home,” Brumbaugh growled. “We don’t want them to commit suicide on this barren land.”

“You’ve done pretty well on “this barren land.’” He mimicked Brumbaugh’s pronunciation, and the old Russian grew angry.

“I had water,” he said, turning away from Wendell and leading Jim Lloyd to a different part of the station platform.

They were talking together when the train pulled in, and they watched as this batch of families that Wendell had assembled from all parts of the nation came hesitantly down the steps. They were a handsome lot, men and women in their late twenties and thirties mostly, skilled farmers ready for the new challenge. Potato Brumbaugh felt his heart warming to these adventurous people, especially the women, on whom the terrors of the new life would fall so heavily. “Tears come in my eyes when I see them,” be told Lloyd. “The government should prevent this.”

One of the couples overheard this remark, and the woman shivered at the words and drew her husband closer to her.

“You settling here?” Brumbaugh asked them.

“Yes,” the husband said.

“What’s your name?”

“Grebe. Earl Grebe.”

“Listen to an old man, Earl ...” Before he could issue his warning Mervin Wendell’s clear, reassuring voice sounded through the morning air.

“Over this way, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Mervin Wendell, the man who’s been writing to you, and I’ve rented these automobiles to carry you to your new homes.”

He moved in deftly, a figure of distinction and reassurance, saying precisely those things which the new families wanted to hear: “The land commissioner is in his office at Line Camp. He has plats of the new town we are going to build. More important, he has the surveyors’ maps showing the townships and the sections from which you can choose free land.” As he reminded them of the opportunity they faced, his voice assumed a kind of grandeur, and he held out his hands like an Old Testament figure leading his people toward a promised land.

The effect was somewhat destroyed, however, by Potato Brumbaugh, who muscled his way to the head of the crowd, seeking to warn them against the mistake they were making: “Good farmers, listen to me. You cannot make a living on the drylands. Men tried in the eighties.”

“They did not try Dr. Creevey’s new method,” Wendell said coldly.

“You’ll get good crops the first year, and you women will think you’ve found a paradise.”

“They have,” Wendell broke in.

“But that’s just the sod crop, and you know it. Think ahead to the dry years.”

“If we plant the way Dr. Creevey told us,” an Indiana farmer said, “there won’t be no dry years.”

“Some will be terribly dry,” Jim said. “And you’ve never seen the like of our Colorado windstorms.”

Mervin Wendell saw that Brumbaugh and Lloyd were beginning to have an effect on the newcomers, so he decided that the time was proper for him to counter their arguments. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said quietly, “these good men have every reason in the world to discourage you from claiming land that is rightfully yours. Mr. Brumbaugh came to Centennial years ago without a penny. He took up his free land to grow sugar beets, and now he’s a millionaire. Jim Lloyd, that cowboy over there, also arrived without a cent. He took up grazing land for his cattle, and now he’s a millionaire too.” Wendell dropped his voice and added slyly, “Of course, he married the boss’s daughter, and that never hurts.” He watched with aloof amusement as the two men squirmed.

“The situation is obvious, isn’t it?” he asked with scorn. “These men have all the land they need and now they wish to keep you from getting yours. Every word they utter is self-serving, because they want to keep everything for themselves.”

The charge was devastating, and Brumbaugh realized that anything further he might say would have no effect. He walked away from the young farmers and would have left the station except that a tall young woman ran to him, touching his hand. “Are you convinced we’re wrong?” she asked earnestly.

“You’re dead wrong,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re destroying the grass. You’re tearing up the sod. It’s impossible to farm the land you’ll be choosing.”

“Dr. Creevey does.”

“He spends his whole life on the project. He has every kind of support from the railroad. But when the bad years come, even he will be wiped out.”

“You’re sure the bad years will come?” the young woman asked.

Brumbaugh looked at her, and she appeared to be the type of woman he had known decades ago on the Volga, hard-working, dedicated, whose soul would be shattered by the experiences that lay ahead. “Are you pregnant?” he asked bluntly. When she nodded in shy embarrassment. he said quietly, “May God have mercy on you, because the land won’t.”