ONE FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

From: Murder Incorporated - In a Keg

by Harold J. Treherne

oes personal bad luck or misfortune occur more frequently on Friday the thirteenth? I don't think so but this Friday was, without any doubt, an unlucky one. This date will survive like an obnoxious and perennial weed.

Hail, ruthless scourge and reaper of prairie grain, accompanied by violent wind, his devilish partner, had already paid destructive visits in widely scattered localities but on this Friday the thirteenth 1956 he had struck home and in no uncertain manner.

I didn't count it an honor to be singled out thus, neither did my neighbors and if anyone can be so resigned to the inevitable as to say in all humility, "If the Lord sends rain, then rain's my choice," I wish I knew the secret then I could hold it up before me like a banner if and when another hailstorm comes along. And who can dispute the law of averages?

It had been a dry Spring after a fairly severe Winter with more than average depth of snow. Eventually the rains came and with the rains also came ominous reports of hail. We were now near the middle of July, wheat was well headed and it appeared a bumper crop was in the offing, due allowance being made for the usual hazards, frost being enemy No. 1. The dry Spring had retarded the crop giving frost a menacing head start. The life cycle of wheat truly is a hundred-day saga of inbred stamina and achievement and not accomplished overnight.

A farmer, mated to his calling, sows his fields, agreed, with the thought of ultimate monetary gain, but who can measure the satisfaction and inner contentment he derives when, all in good time, his gaze scans a veritable sea of heads where, but two short months before, everything was black? Beamed on by Nature, so often kind and generous and with her 99 per cent of help and his 1 per cent he has the coveted goal within his grasp. What is the impact then when, in the space of fifteen minutes or so, all that was is now a downed and tangled mass of straw and decapitated heads? Should he bow his head and murmur, "Que sera."

July the 13th was a warm day, clear except in the West where a storm had passed in the early morning moving leisurely in a Northeasterly direction with its attendent Summer lightning. Discing a first round on the Summerfallow I watched those clouds assume their all familiar blue-black density with more than passing interest. So far and yet so near but praise be to the Fates that guided its harmless way. It dissipated finally in spent out grey across the Northern horizon having shed its watery load on points farther West. At this moment I was as serene as that green carpet of unruffled wheat. Crowding close its tight knit border for three quarters of a mile was a four mile per hour excursion into contentment. The front furrow disc threw an unbroken "hill" of dirt against its sturdy roots and heads constantly shivered behind me. A blackened swath, newly born, tapered to pencil thinness as it contoured a distant knoll. Continuous sidestepping bands of dancing soil marked its beginning, its even surface broken occasionally where a disc gang had jumped a stone. Tempered steel zinged for an instant, lifted, then resumed an even throw.

The varying tenor of the tractor exhaust as the governor, attuned to the lay of the land, purred or goaded him on, was indeed throaty music. Even those high whining hot-footed pesky little bloodthirsty mosquitoes couldn't break the spell. On my second round, again I experienced that satisfying and quiet content. A few more rounds with their added miles and the hours consumed had dampened my ardour a little. Who but the robot can trace and retrace with undiminished perfection? The sun had reached his zenith and the tractor exhaust pipe was my ready made sun-dial. Its short shadow along the hood by careful squinting paralleled the furrow. A short swing to the left, a quick jab by the left foot, a flick of the hand and the motor, suddenly relieved of the load, calms into a quiet buzz. How extraordinary peaceful all around. Hours of stentorian mechanical rhythm is now replaced by Nature's eternal and myriad voices. These are always with us when the shouting and the striving dies. A dog yaps from afar and over the still air comes the faint bawl of a cow. Closer home the swallows twitter and weave their swift, tortuous, zigzagging flight. Alert Nature, always calling, but I am not enthused. The mid-day meal and rest call just a little louder. I unhook. This, by the way, is a little left-over from those long past horsey days; to withdraw the bolt is more correct. There were a few clouds in the South-West.

My shack or should I call it "bachelor abode" with its three rooms and low slung ceilings was really down to earth. Its shallow sloping roofs were most times leakproof but rain would seep in if chased by that bully "Big Wind." I sat down to my simple meal in solitary but happy mood all the while keeping my weather eye open but, all intentions to the contrary, I lay down, for just a minute, and my forty winks stretched into an extended and deep slumber. This wasn't a permanent habit. In the meantime, the weather, unmindful of tardy sleepers was gathering together, slowly but surely, a dastardly array of elemental forces.

Sensitive to noise, suddenly I awoke and, teetering apprehensively on one elbow, blearily I looked out just in time to see lightning streak across the Southwest. With an all-pregnant "Oh! Oh!" a little above a stage whisper I gained the floor and made for the outside.

Another storm was following in the path of the first one although this one appeared to be a little closer. It was cloudy away to the South but heavier in the West and like all Summer storms gone before, it was building up its historic pattern. Lightning suspended above the ground for an instant like brilliantly illuminated yellowish quivering ticker tape. The thunder's rumble growled from a remote distance, guttural, low, but unmistakable. Like a demon in chains it strained at its bonds. The wind was dead, its forward sweep still behind its Western threshold. Maybe it would follow the path of the first one but this of course was just wishful thinking.

Who hasn't, every Summer, seen at least one of these apparently innocent infant storms spawned in prolonged heat rise up almost imperceptibly to giant proportions, stagnating for hours sometimes before gathering momentum? At long last it overcomes its lethargy, fire leaps from within and it spreads and pushes forward against adverse winds. Gaining irresistible movement it thrusts its own greater winds before it and soon the heavens open and the flood descends. It was now about 2 o'clock and the sun was but a cloudy disc. The forerunners of the storm were appreciably closer and the prime mover himself of all natural chaos was about to take a forced leave. Several questions rose to mind all at once. How would it be to move the discer to higher ground? There was still time. Apathy supplied the answer. Wouldn't the tractor be better under cover? This was done as it appeared to be good sense. Was the venerable auto left in gear? It was. These sudden windy upheavals in Saskatchewan can produce strange and freak results sometimes. Anything on wheels not anchored solid to terra firma has been observed to take off unauthorized for parts unknown. Now, what about a supply of wood for the shack's one and only stove in case a second Noah in his Ark should arise? The wood box was duly plugged full to overflowing.

Water now, what about common H2O! Superfluous thought! It would probably be the most abundant commodity around these parts before long or I'd missed my guess.

I studied my two North windows: they had withstood buckets of rain in the past and many a stout Nor'wester. But what about hail? Shouldn't they be supported somehow, by holding a pillow to them or something? Hail was always uppermost in the mind at this time of the year, but being a gambling fellow and maybe more than a modicum of apathy being involved, I believed they would survive anything but a direct hit.

Mine was a comforting philosophy. With the added ingredient of luck it might work. Of course, as a last resort, could sit with my feet up against one window. My work boots would give ample support. Considering the seriousness of the situation such flippancy does me no credit and should not be tolerated.

Time, silent partner in all things, had by now, ponderously slow, pointed his fingers to the hour of three. In the half light or semi-darkness which now prevailed, it was impossible to read the time without a closer look. My two 8-day clocks and one asthmatic alarm ticked on unperturbed in this unnatural light in a confused medley of sound. I awaited Nature's verdict tense as in a crowded court-room. This twilight display, fraught with dire possibilities though impotent at the moment, couldn't last. The fundamentals were hammering around with fire and gong and fully draped curtains of grey cloud were closing in. A little way to the South the clouds were boiling and swirling as in a torment; a giant hand appeared to be stirring them furiously from above. Zero hour was near.

I tried the door again. The door was shut. I steered away from the stove and shuffled round the center table. I sat down. I got up. I peered at each clock in turn and only one possibly was telling the truth. I tried to turn the radio knob which was already turned off, all these mannerisms born of temporary mental anxiety. Close up to a window I scanned a grey grey landscape and smudges of trees in the distance, a drab and somber scene where total darkness could be a blessing. Closer I looked longingly at fine upstanding wheat with a foreboding that the reaper was already poised and waiting.

Oppressive heat is a great physical burden but a person generally comes out whole but to an insignificant pawn in the chancy game of farming this could mean the loss of a shirt or the whole ensemble. While bemoaning my premature and uncertain fate a sudden squall of rain backed by a new born wind soused the North windows. At long last the bonds were severed, but no, momentarily it let up as if seeking time to weigh the consequences, meantime I could smell brown earth just lately seasoned with a sprinkling of rain. Then wondering ceased. Heavy and driving rain from overflowing clouds spilled over and closed us in, riding the boisterous bosom of a strong Nor'wester. The lightning excelled in dazzling ruddy patterns, its afterglow imprinting on the retina for a fraction of a second a skeleton of burnt-out light. The thunder snapped its chains in steps of bulging and tearing sound crashing to a peak in resonance, rolling over and over in receding booms as it probed the distances. New noise levels arose and repeated and in compelling obedience the telephone quick dinged.

The clocks ticked silently on, their faces for an instant lit up in clear relief and instantly the dark was oppressive. The rain drummed on the roof in unceasing tattoo and, like the farflung spume plucked from the wave's crest some, caught by the mad wind, departed in level spray. It plastered the windows in misty glistening sheets of water and in a twink, spawned in hell itself, a flash of devilish red slid over the shack, ripping the firmament in a spine chilling explosion like the shattering of unshatterable steel which only super-human force can bring about. A few seconds of tense and absolute silence prevailed, the silence of illimitable space and time, the negation of all things positive where the stature of man, temporarily at least is jostled and tumbled from his position of seeming importance. Rightly and soberly he ponders his destiny, a stark and compulsive realization that he functions only by the grace of God. This super noise had momentarily reduced all the rest to puny squibs.

"Thank you," I said to myself in subdued mood, back in reality's presence, "One like that is close enough." And the wind and the rain, lightning and thunderous noise recovering after that supreme effort came back into focus, furiously to battle it out, wholly unconcerned. Apprehension mounted to real concern then to a sinking feeling of finality when the first few hailstones clicked ominously at the windows, pea-size yet clearly heard above the beat of the rain. They bounced off the puddled and shiny ground like little jumping jacks to be washed away in countless rivulets. As an unwilling but fascinated spectator I watched this life-size drama unfold and pursue its tidal course to the bitter end clinging to the slim hope that the hail would peter out. So far this small hail had done but little damage but the stage had been set, the plot from the beginning had been master-minded and this was to be no wishy-washy show ending in indecision but an enthraller from beginning to end. The small hail was the opening scene of Part II. Part III would follow at the appointed time. I looked intently at the bouncing hail for signs of other and deadlier missiles. The roof stopped the first one. Part III was upon us and the thud was sickening. A resounding crack at a window heralded another and for thirty seconds a sporadic bombardment ensued, each thrust a death knell. Then, keyed-up tension and wondering was over as pandemonium broke loose and the swirling clouds spewed out their heavy burden of small egg size irregular hail. The bullet sound of hail fired o n glass at an angle and the swift slightly muffled hammer blows just above my head relegated the thunder's utmost to second place. Hail, whipping past the corner of the shack slammed into the small open porch (there was no door on it), bouncing off the single boards with the swift clack-clack of a batter volleying a multitude of balls with the dexterity of a magician. It performed an animated hop-scotch in the corner piling up in a snow like drift. To gain ascendancy over this babel I could have, under compelling urgency bawled out, "Fire!!"

Back and forth I paced, back and forth between the hail-lashed window on the North and the more sheltered window to the South expecting the one to shatter at any moment. That it didn't was a minor miracle. Well, I always say a man has to have the courage of his convictions and I did have the shallow satisfaction of saying "I told you so." For over fifteen minutes this bedlam enveloped all else and hail, with mallet swinging cowed all his competitors. The be-all and end-all of this massive build-up was this final and destructive finale. A million arrows of white fury hit their target in senseless, unreasoning, primitive and spiteful hate to my biased way o f thinking. This sinister middle-day dusk lent just the "atmosphere" for such an onslaught.

A man's estimate of his potential assets but twenty minutes before was now knocked into a cocked hat. His mood, sunk to a hopeless level, seethed with resentment. Inwardly he goaded the hail to go right to it, pound everything to a pulp, bury it in the earth from whence it came and cover it deep. In devilish mad exultation smash the windows, with grinning and thieving intent funnel in the rampaging wind and go on, rip everything apart. What did anything matter now anyway? Produce a good crop and what happens? If not frozen out or dried out, insect riddled or blown out, then it's given the coup-de-grace by hail, that most unscrupulous demon of the bunch.

And what is there to show for all the Spring's work? For ages, or so it seems, he stews in a mental void of his own making. With his puny mind he challenges the all-invincible; in his present unreasoning state he is sure it is a personal slam. But who can stagnate in the lowest depths for long? The spirit of man is as buoyant as a bubble, given the merest glimmer of hope and thus, quietly, in hesitant manner, an olive branch is proffered. Dully at first, and still a little unbelieving he becomes aware of a ray of light a little way to the West. Like the resurgence of hope symbolized by the rainbow following rain, his outlook, till now sunk in a cesspool of defeatism, lifts above self as the sun's liquid light, not to be denied bursts in triumphant and fiery red. In ecstasy his beams diffuse amongst thinning clouds and his ties with Mother Earth are renewed. Down but not out, so does the leaven of sunlight dissipate the gloom and rekindle the spirit. The new blue of the West contrasts with the blackened and burnt out embers strewn across the East.

With mixed emotions he sees again the old familiar landscape studded with shimmering lakes as the increasing light, sweeping the gloom before it, puts daylight and time in proper perspective. In silent appraising he is aware of sun and sparkling water, a hushed and penitent wind, blue sky and shiny raindrops idly falling in a flimsy curtain of quiet weeping, unhurried, unobtrusive like a tearful prayer at the side of a forlorn coffin of dead and dreary fields, drowned and water logged.

Standing outside in the midst of a dripping world I calmly took stock. Those once waving fields of wheat were now no more, but here and there four-foot pig-weed stalks, their leaves stripped, stood straight up like sentinel traitors in a held of dead wheat warriors. Less than thirty minutes before, the wheat had shielded them from sight except for their seedy tops.

Holding my rising resentment in check I turned the corner of the shack and saw a soggy mouse head for cover in the long grass. Startled, he dived into a foot-deep water hole and I sank him and my overshoe to the bottom with sadistic relish. I came up dripping wet and he came up bloody wet. Spasmodically he kicked thrice and was still and in a patch of watery blood he floated; a little crumpled mousy corpse, under-side up in a miniature pond and falling raindrops ruffled his watery grave. For a few seconds I studied him intently - too bad - and turned away. His sudden exit had cancelled out a fraction of my resentment. Now, he never could become a star boarder of mine.

I sallied further afield and sloshed two and a half miles in mud and water and, although half the crop could be written off one hundred per cent, roughly one half of the rest might make half a crop and the balance was hardly damaged at all. So all was not lost and to Allah be the praise. Plodding through the undamaged crop, perspiringly I whistled a happy tune - Count Your Blessings - and in the rest of it I perspired freely also, in tuneless silence. On my way back to the shack I stumbled within a few yards of a skunk slopping around in a duck's paradise.

The encounter, believe me, was entirely accidental. Misery acquaints strange bedfellows and, understandably enough, my animosity there and then subsided like a punctured balloon, in face of a superior foe. Discretion in this case, I was sure, was the better part of valor and without hesitation, in fact with alacrity I backed up and gave him a wide berth. What finally did happen to the crop? By August 1st the hailed crop was all headed out again. Later it was hit twice by frost and then was hidden under six inches of snow. The snow eventually thawed and uncovered the swaths but before the wheat was in any condition to be picked up it was again covered by snow and this time it is, for sure, down for the count - of eight months - what's left of it.

Anybody want to buy one hundred acres of farm land, crop already on it?