Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 35 D E PA R T M E N T L I T E R A R Y L O D E e second wheat of April came off warm. e grass around the house was green, the aspens in the coulee shivered in their pale green leaves. e box elders that sprang up wild against the bank held out tight-furled green torches at the tips of their bare branches. "Well, let's go down and look at the wheat again," Dad said one morning, as though we hadn't been watching it every day. "How you think it look, Ben?" Mom asked. "I don't think it did any harm to wait," Dad said. "Some folks have plowed up and reseeded already, but there's too much good wheat left there." Once again, the three of us sat on the seat of the truck while we went to see the wheat. I was driving and I went the long way around. "e road's muddy the other way," I said. I came around the first strip of stubble and parked. We made a procession across the road. e stubble creaked like an old basket as we walked over it. "ere's some brown, all right," Mom said, pointing. We each studied every strip with our own eyes. rough the green wheat that stood already four inches high there were spots where the blades had turned brown and lay along the ground or drooped with a sick whitish-green, and here and there were bare moth-eaten places. I walked up a row and pulled up one of the brown withered stalks and felt it come away in my hand. I looked out over this strip and the one beyond. e brown stalks were only scattered. ere were places where the wheat was deep green and thick. I pulled at a green stalk beside my foot, but it clung to the earth as though its root reached two feet deep. I looked at Dad. His face was thin and already burned by the wind. He had a stick or a match in his mouth and his lips gathered up around it as he considered. I could feel his impa- tience, that was still part of him even after all these years out here, in the way he took off his hat and put it on again and then felt for his package of cigarettes and lighted one with so much attention he hardly seemed interested in the wheat. When he got it lighted he turned back to the field. Mom had tramped ahead of us to look for herself. "How about it, Dad?" I couldn't wait any longer. A LL THE NEXT WEEK WE WATCHED THE WHEAT WITHOUT SAYING MUCH ABOUT IT. I saw Leslie on his way to school stop by one of the long strips of wheat. He pulled up a single stalk. I couldn't see from where I was how it looked, but it seemed to come out easy. en he walked slowly away before he began to run. One of the most popular books set in Montana is Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker. In 2003, it was honored as a One Montana book. e following is an excerpt from this tempestuous novel, involving a young woman, her parents, and a romance. Reproduced from Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1944 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. Copyright renewed 1971 by Mildred Walker. ROBERT RATH by MILDRED WALKER WINTER WHEAT

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