Potato Field
By Taters Canning.
When I was a young boy, thin as a rake,
The Dust Bowl had left us with little to take.
We drifted west, Depression weary in our hair,
To Salinas, California, for work—or a prayer.
My pa saw a field in the moon’s silver glow,
With potatoes piled deep in neat, fertile rows.
He whispered, “Tonight, kids, we’ll fill up our sack.
A farmer won’t miss what he’s got by the stack.”
Ma bit her lip hard, but she followed his lead;
My sister held tight to the hem of her tweed.
With a shovel, Pa crept where the dark furrows lay,
And said, “Dig them quick before night turns to day.”
The dirt was damp-black, and the air smelled of rain,
Of roots and old iron and something like pain.
Then Pa struck a potato, round, pale, and fat—
But it squirmed in the soil. What kind of spud’s that?
He brushed off the loam, and the moon showed the truth:
Not a potatoe at all, but a jaw full of tooth.
It was attached to the tuber by sinew and thread,
With a fingerlike stem and a mouth painted red.
The potatoe was bait, and the creature below
Had waited for hungry folk down in the row.
Pa yanked back his hand, but the earth made a sound—
Like a thousand wet bellies all turning around.
Then something seized Pa by the boot and the knee,
And dragged him down screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t flee!”
The furrow snapped shut with a slurping, soft kiss;
Where Pa had been standing was darkness and hiss.
Ma rushed to the hole with a shriek and a cry:
“Your father!” she wailed. “He’ll be buried alive!”
But a pale potatoe rolled close to her shoe,
And up came a tendril all sticky with dew.
It curled round her ankle, then pulled with a jerk;
The ground swallowed Ma like a mouth swallowing work.
My sister ran first, but the field called her name—
Her own voice came back from the dirt just the same.
“Come help me,” it whispered. “I’m caught down below.”
She turned, and the potatoes began all to glow.
One leapt at her skirt; then the black earth uncurled,
And it took her down fast from the face of the world.
I stood all alone in the cold, crooked rows,
With my heart beating loud as the wind when it blows.
I dropped Pa’s old shovel and tried hard to flee—
But one little potato came rolling to me.
It bumped on my heel with a soft, hollow thud,
Then opened one eye from the middle of mud.
It smiled without lips, and it spoke in a tone:
“Little thief, little thief—now you’ll never go home.”
The ground grabbed my feet. I kicked, clawed, and cried,
But roots wound around me and pulled me inside.
The last thing I saw was the stars shining bright,
Then teeth in the soil, and the end of the night.
* * * * *
At dawn came the farmer, his lantern held high,
With his dog and a grin and a gleam in his eye.
He saw where we’d started our desperate theft—
A few broken clods, but no footprints were left.
No sack had been filled, not a spud had been won;
The potato field lay as neat as begun.
He tipped back his hat, spat tobacco, then said,
“To think, folks call me strange when I talk to the dead.”
He looked at the furrow & laughed through his chin:
“Tarnation! My deal’s working with them vermin.
They get what they want and I get what I want.
No thieves taking ‘tatoes, no matter how gaunt!
Then under the field, where the buried things wait,
A thousand small potatoes rolled over the bait.
And if you pass Salinas when moonlight is low,
Don’t steal from that furrow—
Or down down you may go.
*
About the Author : Taters Canning, a former spuds TV actor, now just peels his shirt off for show.
About the Artist : Romeo Esparrago likes fries with Red ketchup. Redder is better, you know.
PLANET MAGAZINE 