Read Online Big Wheat by Richard A. Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

He found that he could easily walk twenty or twenty-five miles a day and still have time enough to set up an orderly campsite for the night and find some fresh water. He could do thirty if he pushed it, but he seldom had a reason to push it.
    Whatever it was he was after, all he knew for sure was that he hadn’t seen it yet. He slipped into his long-legged, loping stride and drifted into a world of his own, almost a trance state. Sometimes he would suddenly snap out of it, wondering where he was, and he would chide himself for missing out on seeing new sights, new parts of the country, though in truth, most of what he had seen so far had looked the same. Rolling prairie, oceans of grain or stubble patterned with header stacks or standing shocks of cut wheat, waiting for the threshers.
    The truck approaching from behind blew its horn, shaking him out of his reverie. He looked over his shoulder and recognized a Reo single-axle flatbed, apparently running unloaded, and he moved farther over on the left shoulder to let it pass. But instead, the driver stopped as he came alongside.
    “Need a lift?”
    “I wouldn’t mind,” he said, looking the man and the rig over. On the battered green door of the truck was a professionally painted sign that read:

    James Avery
Wheelwright Machinist Blacksmith

    Suddenly he found the prospect of a ride with this man a lot more interesting.
    He threw his gear on the truck bed, and climbed around to the passenger seat. The driver was not a big man, but he had something of a presence, not least because of his heavy, brooding brows and a thick mustache of the sort Charlie had always thought was only worn by Mexican bandits. Well, maybe them and Theodore Roosevelt. He wore a blue striped shirt and a black necktie, common enough among artisan workers but not farmers, and a black leather vest that was shiny with wear. He released the hand brake and shifted into super low, and the truck chugged down the road again, slow but probably very hard to stop. The Reo was a hell of a truck, and Charlie looked over the instrument panel and the interior finish, which wasn’t much, with great interest.
    “You wouldn’t mind a ride, huh? I’d hate to think you were doing me a big favor. I don’t like having debts.”
    “I wasn’t looking to be rude, sir.”
    “You call everybody ‘sir?’”
    “Everybody older than me.” Which was a lot of people. “I was raised to respect my elders.”
    “Well, keep it up and sooner or later you’re bound to meet one who deserves it. I’m Jim Avery.” He took one hand off the wheel and extended it. “And I’m not a ‘sir,’ just Jim.”
    “Charlie Bacon,” said Charlie. The words came out of his mouth so quickly, he didn’t even have time to think about them.
So I guess my new identity starts now.
    “Pleased to meet you sir. I mean Jim. Are you really all those things that it says on the door?”
    “Pretty much. I’m not sure there’s a name for what I am, but that string of words was about as close as I could come.”
    “What’s a wheelwright?”
    “An anachronism is what it is.”
    “Excuse me? I had all the education I could get back home, but I’m afraid that wasn’t much. I don’t know that word.”
    “The word means it belongs to another time, not our own. Used to be, people could make a living just building wheels, so they were called wheelwrights. Then there were wainwrights, who built nothing but wagons. Hell, there were probably buggy wrights, for all I know. People who built stuff out of metals were mostly smiths of some kind, though, instead of wrights. Blacksmiths, coppersmiths, silversmiths, and so on. Anyway, all that’s just about gone. Anymore, people still need their horses shod, but wheels are made in factories, and people buy factory hardware and make their own wagons, too. You work on a farm, you’ve probably made a wagon or two.”
    “A binder wagon, yes sir.”
    “There you go with the sir again. Relax, kid. You from