Harris and Me

mice.
I kept walking along. Harris got two more and Buzzer got three more and I still hadn’t gotten any. Harris was starting to give me distinctly dirty looks and I decided I better get busy and had no more than lowered my eyes for another look than I saw a little form scurrying through the grass.
“Got one!” I yelled, a bit prematurely as I jumped for it. I missed, saw it wiggle again, grabbed at the grass, and felt the mouse wriggle inside my hand. I looked up and there was Buzzer—staring at me full on in the face with his wide yellow eyes. He pointedly looked down at the mouse, then up at my face again.
I nodded—“My mistake”—and gave him the mouse, throwing it to him. He caught it in midair and swallowed it whole.
“Ahh, come on,” Harris snorted. He’d been watching the whole exchange. “That ain’t fair—he didn’t earn that one. He’s just taking them from you.”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind.” I didn’t, either. When he looked at me that way I would have given him anything he wanted.
“Don’t be giving up so easy—that’s half a penny every time you let him get away with it.”
“You said not to take his mice.”
“Well... just don’t give up so blamed easy. He don’t own the whole world.”
I nodded to Harris and we continued, working through the morning. Harris caught just under thirty. I didn’t do so well, first because I hadn’t learned the trick of seeing them as well as Harris and second because of Buzzer. We worked out an agreement after a fashion. To wit: if I caught a mouse and he wanted it, I gave it to him. It turned out he wanted about two out of three mice that I caught, so when Knute pulled the team up in the shade of a huge elm and unhooked the trace chains and said, “Time for dinner,” I had only put six mice in the bag. Three cents’ worth.
“I’m not doing so well,” I said as we sat under the tree and waited for Glennis and Clair to bring us what I would call lunch but they called dinner. “It’s Buzzer. He keeps taking them from me.”
Harris nodded. “He’s a crook. That’s how he got his name, sort of...”
“What do you mean?”
“We had an old collie dog somebody gave us last year. It didn’t bother Buzzer none but Buzzer, he kept taking food from the dog. One day the dog got sick of it and bit him on the leg a little. That’s how he got his name.”
“From getting bit?”
“Naw—he killed the dog. Louie said it was like the dog got hit by a buzz saw. So we called him Buzzer after that. Just keep giving him mice. He’ll fill up in a little while.”
We sat, leaning against some rocks. Knute had taken the bridles off the horses, rubbing their ears and saying low things to them while he did, and they were eating alfalfa off to the side. I liked the sound of their chewing—it made the grass sound like it tasted good.
Knute rolled a cigarette and leaned back, dragging deeply. At the other end of the field I saw Glennis and Clair coming, carrying a double-handled boiler between them.
Harris stood. “Come on, let’s help them.” He took off running across the field and I followed, and we took a pail of water Glennis had been carrying in her free hand.
“Mind you don’t spill,” Glennis said. “There’s just enough for the horses.”
“Mind you don’t spill,” Harris mimicked, his voice singsong. “There’s just enough for the damn horses...”
Smack.
He had forgotten himself. By taking the bucket from Glennis we freed up her right arm and she used it to pop him across the back of the head.
“Watch your mouth...”
He was unfazed. “You ever try that? Watching your mouth? It’s impossible. You can’t see your mouth without you have a mirror and I don’t have a damn mirror...”
Smack.
We walked in silence until we came to the horses. I thought it was mean to hit him. He swore naturally, the way I had heard soldiers swear in the Philippines; swearing was a part of him. It was like hitting him for breathing. But it didn’t seem to bother him to be hit.
The horses drank the way they ate. Their sounds made the water seem delicious. We gave half the bucket to Bill and took it away to give the other half to Bob, after which they stood slobbering water and wiggling their lips before returning to grazing while we ate.
Clair and Glennis had carried what amounted to another full meal out in the boiler. There was sliced bread with butter, cheese, a big pot of beef stew, a whole round cake, three quart jars of rhubarb sauce, a large bowl of cookies, and a couple of two-quart jars wrapped thickly in feed sacks—one full of cool milk and the other full of hot coffee.
I thought I would still be full from the two breakfasts and the forenoon lunch but there was an edge of hunger there and I found myself eating right along with Harris and Knute. The food was so good it made my jaws ache to chew.
Neither Clair nor Glennis ate but sat picking at grass and talking softly, in a teasing way. Every once in a while Glennis would laugh softly and blush and Clair would poke her with a finger and laugh.
Knute leaned back and rolled and lit another cigarette when we were done and Harris flopped on the grass and burped.
“Good food,” Knute said to Clair and Glennis by way of a compliment. He seemed about to say more but stopped and watched a hawk swoop low over the new-cut grass and I realized that Knute was always like that; always seemed about to say something but never quite got it out.
“I like field dinners,” Harris said to no one in particular. “Especially when Louie ain’t here. You don’t got to