THE TRACTORS came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like
insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying
the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood
idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar.
Snubnosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the
country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in
straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored
hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses.
The man sitting in the iron seat did not  look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber
dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The
thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the
earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not
control it—straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight
back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat', but the driver's hands could not
twitch because the monster that built the tractors, the monster that sent the tractor out,
had somehow got into the driver's hands,  into his brain and muscle, had goggled him
and muzzled him—goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception,
muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as
it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth.
He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or
encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip
or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If
a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered
in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the
tractor.
He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the
tractor—its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders;
but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth
with blades—not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the
second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by
the cut earth. And pulled behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that
the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long
seeders—twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping
methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud
of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no
man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No
man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised,
had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually
died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
At noon the tractor driver stopped sometimes near a tenant house and opened his
lunch: sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, white bread, pickle, cheese, Spam, a piece
of pie branded like an engine part. He ate without relish. And tenants not yet moved
away came out to see him, looked curiously while the goggles were taken off, and the
rubber dust mask, leaving white circles around the eyes and a large white circle around
nose and mouth. The exhaust of the tractor puttered on, for fuel is so cheap it is more
efficient to leave the engine running than  to heat the Diesel nose for a new start.
Curious children crowded close, ragged children who ate their fried dough as they
watched. They watched hungrily the unwrapping of the sandwiches, and their hunger-
sharpened noses smelled the pickle, cheese, and Spam. They didn't speak to the driver.
They watched his hand as it carried food to his mouth. They did not watch him
chewing; their eyes followed the hand that held the sandwich. After a while the tenant
who could not leave the place came out and squatted in the shade beside the tractor.
"Why, you're Joe Davis's boy!"
"Sure," the driver said.
"Well, what you doing this kind of work for—against your own people?"
"Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner—and not getting it.
I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day, and it comes every day."
"That's right," the tenant said. "But for  your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty
families can't eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go out and wander on the
roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?"
And the driver said, "Can't think of that. Got to think of my own kids. Three dollars
a day, and it comes every day. Times  are changing, mister, don't you know? Can't
make a living on the land unless you've got two, five, ten thousand acres and a tractor.
Crop land isn't for little guys like us any more. You don't kick up a howl because you
can't make Fords, or because you're not  the telephone company. Well, crops are like
that now. Nothing to do about it. You try to get three dollars a day someplace. That's
the only way."
The tenant pondered. "Funny thing how it is.  If a man owns a little property, that
property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can
walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain
falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if
he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so."
And the tenant pondered more. "But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't
take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it—why, then the property is
the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the
man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big—and
he's the servant of his property. That is so, too."
The driver munched the branded pie and threw the crust away. "Times are changed,
don't you know? Thinking about stuff like that don't feed the kids. Get your three
dollars a day, feed your kids. You got no call to worry about anybody's kids but your own. You get a reputation for talking like that, and you'll never get three dollars a day.
Big shots won't give you three dollars a day if you worry about anything but your three
dollars a day."
"Nearly a hundred people on the road for your three dollars. Where will we go?"
"And that reminds me," the driver said, "you better get out soon. I'm going through
the dooryard after dinner."
"You filled in the well this morning."
"I know. Had to keep the line straight. But I'm going through the dooryard after
dinner. Got to keep the lines straight. And—well, you know Joe Davis, my old man, so
I'll tell you this. I got orders wherever there's a family not moved out—if I have an
accident—you know, get too close and cave the house in a little—well, I might get a
couple of dollars. And my youngest kid never had no shoes yet."
"I built it with my hands. Straightened old nails to put the sheathing on. Rafters are
wired to the stringers with baling wire. It's mine. I built it. You bump it down—I'll be
in the window with a rifle. You even come too close and I'll pot you like a rabbit."
"It's not me. There's nothing I can do. I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look—
suppose you kill me? They'll just hang you,  but long before you're hung there'll be
another guy on the tractor, and he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right
guy."
"That's so," the tenant said. "Who gave you orders? I'll go after him. He's the one to
kill."
"You're wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, 'Clear those
people out or it's your job.'"
"Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the
magazine of the rifle and go into the bank."
The driver said, "Fellow was telling me  the bank gets orders from the East. The
orders were, 'Make the land show profit or we'll close you up.'"
"But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I
kill the man that's starving me."
"I don't know. Maybe there's nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn't men at all.
Maybe like you said, the property's doing it. Anyway I told you my orders."
"I got to figure," the tenant said. "We all got to figure. There's some way to stop
this. It's not like lightning or earthquakes. We've got a bad thing made by men, and by
God that's something we can change." The tenant sat in his doorway, and the driver
thundered his engine and started off, tracks falling and curving, harrows combing, and
the phalli of the seeder slipping into the ground. Across the dooryard the tractor cut,
and the hard, foot-beaten ground was seeded  field, and the tractor cut through again;
the uncut space was ten feet wide. And back he came. The iron guard bit into the
house-corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation so
that it fell sideways, crushed like a bug. And the driver was goggled and a rubber mask
covered his nose and mouth. The tractor cut a straight line on, and the air and the
ground vibrated with its thunder. The tenant man stared after it, his rifle in his hand.
His wife was beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the
tractor.