Robert Reed - To Church With Mr. Multhiford

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2024-11-23 0 0 34.74KB 18 页 5.9玖币

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ROBERT REED

TO CHURCH WITH MR. MULTHIFORD

It was everybody's idea.

Or maybe it was nobody's.

Maybe it's that ideas drift in the air like gas, and beer and boredom worked on

us to where we could catch hold of that particular notion. Sometimes I think

that's what happens: Ideas are invisible clouds that get trapped inside people's

heads. Different shaped heads trap different ones, which explains a helluva lot.

Here in Pelican County we've got a lot of simple round heads, if you know what I

mean. Here it pays to be perfectly average. And if you happen to get stuck with

a fancy-shaped head -- one that catches goofy ideas -- then you'd best keep a

hat on it.

If you know what I mean.

Habit is everything in this part of the world; nothing wants to change.

Our Saturday night habit was to go somewhere peaceful, like the cemetery, and

drink beer. Which is what we were doing when the idea found us. Pat started

things off, saying, "I'm bored."

Charlie belched and said, "Yeah, why don't we pull something?" A prank, he

meant. Detergent in the town pool, trees dressed up with toilet paper. That's

the sort of stuff we specialized in. But that night somehow felt different, and

we couldn't get excited about ordinary shit.

We had ourselves another round of beers, and I stared up at the stars, feeling

smaller than small; and finally, after clearing his throat of a big loud gob of

something, Lester said, "I know. Let's make ourselves a crop circle."

Charlie belched again -- he's famous for his gassy sounds -- then reminded us,

"It's been done."

Not by us, but he was right. Pelican County is famous for its crop circles, and

everyone knew who made them.

Old Man Multhiford, I was thinking. And just like that I knew what we could do.

The idea settled in my head, and I giggled, and I said, "Hey, let's make a

circle out on Multhiford's place!"

Pat straightened, eyes getting big and round. "On his farm? Are you fucking

serious?"

Multhiford put maybe half of the circles on his own land. That was common

knowledge. It was also known that he was insane and probably dangerous. If he

spoke to you, he spoke about corn. His corn; all corn. I'd seen him talking on

and on about its beauty and importance and how it was holy. Field of Loopy

Dreams nonsense. Myself, I tried avoiding the man. If I saw him in town, I

turned and slipped away. Even when my dad, the local Methodist minister, told me

I was being rude. I didn't care. Madmen scare the piss out of me. Which is why

our plan sounded fun, I suppose.

And the beer didn't hurt my mood, either.

"We aren't going to do it," Pat kept saying.

"Why not?" Charlie growled. "I like the plan!"

"Yeah," said Lester, "we'll put a circle in his own damned field. Nobody ever

has."

"Who lived to tell it," Pat muttered. But it was three against one, no more need

for debate. We loaded up Pat's old pickup with shovels and ropes and lengths of

lumber. Lester rode with the tools. I sat between Pat and Charlie. Driving out

into the country, the three of us talked about how to do it and do it fast --

how do you make a flattened circle in the middle of a corn field, in the dark,

on a madman's property? --and it was Charlie who pointed out, "It doesn't have

to be a circle. Is that some law? Why don't we mash down something simple, like

a message? We can leave words in his corn."

"Take Me To Your Leader," Pat joked, laughing.

It seemed funny to them, and decided. To me words sounded a lot less pretty than

a circle, but I knew they'd vote me down. That's why I didn't complain, riding

quietly there between them.

Eventually we came to a low rise, barely worth noticing, and after that the

ground started dropping, sliding into what used to be marshes. Past the next

corner was Multhiford's land, and Pat killed the headlights, driving by

moonlight, and all of us started looking for someplace to turn off and set to

work.

The mood in the cab was getting a lot more serious. On both sides of us were

enormous fields of corn, green oceans of the sun-fattened stalks. Another half

mile ahead was Multhiford's farmhouse, set off the road in the only patch of

trees on his section and a half. Where in all this nothing could we hide the

pickup? Behind a little machine shed, we decided, and Pat parked and killed the

engine, everyone taking a deep breath before climbing to earth.

I don't know much about corn -- I'm as urban as you get in Pelican County -- but

Multhiford's corn looked particularly tall and happy, standing in all that rich

black marsh soil, moving the way corn does at night. Big leaves were uncurling

in the cooling air. Hundreds of acres were uncurling, and I stood off by myself,

listening. I didn't hear the guys talking. I never noticed Charlie sneaking up

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Robert Reed - To Church With Mr. Multhiford

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