Free The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen Page B

asked.
    The man looked over the boy's head when he spoke, coolly ignoring him, letting his eyes move up and down the fairgrounds.
    “I'll give you thirty-five bucks a week to set up and run the Tilt-A-Whirl for the rest of the summer. We're leaving tonight.”
    Thirty-five dollars a week from a job with the glory of the carnival seemed unbelievably rich and absolutely perfect for a man who was on the run and the boy at first nodded, then shook his head. “I can't“
    The man shrugged. “The world is full of can'ts—it's a word used by losers.”
    “No. I mean I
can.
I want the job. But I have some … trouble. I have to stay out of sight.”
    “For how long?”
    “Just until I leave… you know, for the day.”
    The man studied him, looked up and down slowly, looked away again, dragging deeply on the cigarette. “You're serious.” “Yes.”
    “Is it the law?”
    The boy hesitated. “Yes.”
    “You're wanted?”
    “I ran off.”
    “Oh, hell. We all did that.” He brought his eyes back to the boy, flicked ash neatly off his cigarette. “Good arms—can you work?”
    Can I work? the boy thought—-thought of beets and tractor driving and days so bent over he couldn't stand straight. “Yes. I can work. Hard.”
    “Hmmm,” the man said, taking a long drag on the Camel. He thought for a moment more, then shrugged. “All right. I'm Taylor. You screw me and I'll find you and cut you. Deep.” He fished into his pocket with two fingers and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. “Here. From your first week's pay. Get your butt into town and get some boots and a T-shirt. You look like a hick. Get back here about midnight to work the breakdown. The law ought to be gone by then—or he'll be so drunk it doesn't matter.”
    The boy took the money and started out in back of the Tilt-A-Whirl, into some low trees that led off to town, and had gone twenty paces before he remembered Hazel. She would worry. He stopped. It wasn't like leaving the Mexicans, somehow. They had themselves, their families. Hazel had nothing. In the short time he'd been with her she had become something for him; someone inside him.
    He trotted back to the midway, stopped in back of the Ferris wheel where the machinery hid him and looked for her. And for the deputy. He saw the deputy first, talking to two young women near the draglines. He stood with his backstraight and his stomach sucked in and the boy thought, You bastard, you've got my money, you son-of-a-bitch of a thief.
    He looked away and at length saw Hazel in her bibs moving toward the livestock barn. He gave one more glance at the deputy, who was still by the draglines with the girls, and moved to intercept Hazel, keeping the sideshow tents between him and the lawman.
    “Oh, there you are,” she said as he came up. “We've got to see the workhorses. There might be some I'd want to buy. For when Robert comes back…”
    “I have to leave,” the boy said because he did not yet know a way to say things smoothly. “I have to go.”
    She stopped and turned and he was surprised to see a tear in the corner of her eye. “Is it the talk about Robert? Because I just talk, you know. I know he isn't coming back. If I talk about it, it eases the pain of knowing. But if that's it I can—“
    “No. I have some other things in my life. Some things I've done. I have to leave,” he repeated. Damn, he thought, why does it hurt this way? Goddamn! I don't even
know
her. Jeez. “I'm sorry.Here.” He dug into his pocket and held out the twenty-dollar bill she'd given him. “You take this back.”
    “No. You go now. Take the money. You'll need it.” She took his hand and with surprising strength folded his fingers back on the bill and pushed the hand back toward his pocket. “Go. Now.”
    And she turned and went into the stock barn, leaving him. He felt some loss he didn't understand, a loss he would always feel and never understand, started after her and stopped, remembered the deputy, his new job,