Arly (10 page)

“Please.” Papa took off his hat. “I'll work double today. I can pick for two, Mr. Broda, to free up an extra hand. I can even work through the noon and not eat nothing.”

“Dan, you don't even work single no more.
You
work double? Why, you ain't got the lungs or the legs to sift bug turds out of pepper. Old man, you don't got a thing left. You're lucky that Captain affords you a fancy shack to sleep in and don't charge you hardly no rent.”

I wanted to call Roscoe Broda a liar but couldn't, because I didn't know how much rent we paid. Nobody did, because Mrs. Stout took our rent out of Papa's week wages, on Saturday nights.

“Both you Pooles had best mind your manners, because if'n ya don't, maybe you won't have no place in Shack Row. I got new workers signed in soon.”

The thought of losing our shack, even if I hated the stink of the place, feared me. I turned wet all over. It'd be a sorry time for Papa and for me if we had no shack. And no wage money to eat on.

“I'll go,” I told Mr. Broda.

“See to it then. And take the Cooter bum along and report. Move.”

I left, went back to our shack, and tried to eat. But the cold biscuit tasted too dry to choke down, like I was efforting to gnaw dust. Swallows of pump water didn't help. Leaving our place, I trotted down Shack Row to where the five Cooters would be brushing up for school. Essie was braiding little Florence's hair into pigtails and had her decked out in a clean dress. They both sat on their front stoop.

“Essie, where's Huff?”

“Inside.”

“Huff,” I hollered, “you an' me can't go to the school today.”

I saw the surprise on Essie May's face as Huff came to the door. “How come?” he asked me.

“Roscoe Broda said. They's shorthanded at the sugar mill, so you an' me gotta git there and report to Mr. Lem Rathaway. And sudden.”

Huff sighed. Work never had hurried him a whole lot. He spat into the sandspurs. “Essie May,” he said to his sister, “I guess you gotta take the little ones to the school place.”

“It ain't fair,” she said.

If'n you was a picker, or a picker's kid, you best go where you git ordered. It was like we was ants. I'd watched a anthill one time, and they didn't seem to do any deciding on their lonesome. They just sort of did, and done and kept on doing … like there was no right or wrong to it. And that's what a picker in Shack Row was, nothing but a little ant, working and waiting for the boot of somebody like Roscoe Broda to stomp on your hill.

“Be careful,” Essie May told Huff and me.

Bending down, Huff kissed little Flo. Her smile was prettier than a weed flower. I never seen Huff Cooter do a thing like that before. Usual, he was the bully of the family. There was some dirt on Florence's hand, so he pulled a rag out of his pocket, twisted it to a white spot and wiped his tiny sister. No angel could've done the job more gentle.

“Come on, Arly,” he said.

We headed for the sugar mill that was set back from the water edge of Okeechobee. In a way, I felt glad to be a wager, and earn to help Papa.

Our day with Mr. Rathaway never seemed to come end. First he had us chopping down cane, by hand, then stacking it into a one-mule wagon. We hauled it to the crusher and helped feed it into where it'd become pulp. The work was a sour business, but the cane smell at the crusher was sweeter than store candy. So sweet we could near to breathe it and swell out fat.

It was the noise of the crusher that I hated the worse, a noise that didn't ever ease down; it just went on and on. I tried to make my mind see the rest of the children with Miss Hoe, learning stuff, and also see big Brother Smith in the back of the store, sitting preacher still, and smelling the way he'd usual smell, of catfish.

School could beat down hard on my brain, but cane milling sure didn't. There weren't no thought to it. Only sweat and noise. The faces of the other workers never cracked out a grin. The colored man who worked beside me didn't tell his name.

It was like he weren't even proud enough to share it.

“Fire!”

I'd been too tired to eat supper or help cook much for Papa. Afterward, I'd sunk down on my bed tick, too wore out to even breathe. The yelling work me up.

The voice hollered out again. “Fire! Over to Jailtown!” As I run to the door, I seed old Mr. Witt, one of the pickers, waving his arms and pointing toward town.

Seeing as I hadn't even skin off my clothes before lying down, I run out the door. Huff Cooter was there too, so we rabbit toward town like the road was burning under our bare feet. Ahead of us, orange flames licked upward into the night, spitting sparks like tiny red stars into a black sky.

Huff said, “Looks like it's Mrs. Stout's place.”

But it weren't.

As we ran in closer, people were scurrying up and down the street, toting buckets of water. Ever mouth seemed to be yelling an order. Working in close to the fire, I feeled the heat of it slapping my face and eyes.

“It's the empty store,” I said. “It ain't Mrs. Stout's place. Our school's burning.”

A few folks throwed water on the flames, which didn't do more than just hiss out laughter. The fire'd took a real start, so not much short of a hurricane was going to wash it out. People filled their buckets at the mule troughs and then started wetting down Mrs. Stout's store, so's the flames wouldn't jump over and spread.

Brother Smith come.

He just stood in the night, with orange light painted on his black face, and shook his head. His big hands tightened into fists the size of twin hammers.

“It ain't right,” Brother mumbled, his voice almost buried in the sharp crackles of the fire. He shook his gray head.

Some of the town women stood nearby, all in bathrobes. I knowed what a bathrobe was, because Mrs. Addie Cooter wore hers every Sunday, all day. She called it her yeller robe, though it sure weren't yeller no longer, but near to egg white, blotchy all over the front with coffee stains.

Miss Hoe come too, in her bathrobe. It was deep blue with a shiny braided belt pulled tight, ending in front with a knot and two hanging tassels of fringe. I didn't know her right off, on account her hair was different. She usual wore it up and wound in a bun, held by long amber pins, but now it was all tumbled down her back and most of it a tired gray.

I run over to take her hand.

“Don't you worry none, Miss Hoe,” I telled her. “This ain't the end of our school. It's only the end of a building. That ol' store ain't our school.
You
are.”

Maybe, I was thinking, my chances for school were burning up too. But at least some of the Cooters might have a shot at learning. It pleased me to figure that maybe a few of us picker kids might make it out of
Jailtown. Didn't look too sunny for Huff, me, or Essie May.

“Arly,” she said softly, “do you know what you have become in my life.”

“No'm,” I said, “I don't guess I do.”

“You,” she said, “are my rock … upon which I will somehow rebuild my school. And don't you fret about missing today. Essie May reported it all to me, about you and her brother, and there are still a few laws in Florida, if matters come to that.”

I didn't understand all she was telling me. Hardly any. Yet the pitch of her voice seemed to say that the sun would come up on Jailtown, like always.

“Miss Hoe, I sometimes get to wishing that all this town would burn up, or just sink into Okeechobee and drown. Me along with it.”

She looked at me stern. “No,” she said, “don't you waste your brain on sour prayers. The world's too sweet for that, Arly, and so are you. Energy your thinking on school.”

“I can't come regular no more. Huff and me are standby workers. If'n we git ordered, we go work.”

Miss Hoe pointed a finger in my face, a finger that looked brittler than a custard twig. Yet it was straighter than a tiny sword. “Wrong! You
are
coming to school, even if we don't at the moment have one, and you
are
going to learn … to read, to count, and to think. You will attend school even if I have to march myself through the swamp in hip boots and drag you out of Captain Tant's cane mill by one ear and the seat of your britches.”

I tried to smile about as game as possible. Miss Hoe was staring at the burning store just as its roof rafters caved in and sent another blast of sparky cinders out into a cloud.

“There it go,” said Huff, who'd drifted over our way, to stand with our teacher and me.

“Somebody,” said Miss Hoe, “didn't approve of our little school. And some hand struck a torch to it.”

I looked at her with my mouth open. “You mean a body done this on purpose, to be mean?”

Miss Hoe nodded her small head. “Yes, to be mean. You know, boys, burning down a school house, no matter how humble the structure, is one of the lowest acts that an adult can commit against a child. Or to his town.”

“I don't believe it,” Huff said. “I just can't swaller that anybody'd do such to my brothers and sisters and to Brother Smith.”

Miss Hoe's lips tighted up firm. “We'll need a modest parcel of land. Not much. Only a wee scrap of it. And perhaps with luck, we might get someone who's handy with tools to raise us a structure.”

She looked over at Brother Smith, then walked to where he stood. As we come close, he took off his hat. His face looked older tonight, and I could see that our burning school had scorched his spirit near to as black as the rest of him.

“Missy Hoe,” his deep voice said, “I be powerful sorry 'bout the store place, and no more school. Powerful sorry.”

Our teacher grunted. “Well,” she said, “seeing as you're feeling so powerful, maybe you'd work up the strength to build us another.”

With a log of a finger, Brother Smith pointed into his own massive chest. “Me?” he asked Miss Hoe.

“You. Could you do it? I don't plan to engage your talents for free, Brother Smith, and you shall be fairly compensated.”

“I be what?”

“Paid.”

A big grin slowly got born on Brother Smith's face and spread all over his cheeks like a Sunday sleep-late morning. “Oh,” he said, “I
do
it, Sister. Do it proud, for free.”

Huff jabbed me to my ribs, giggling, on account of Miss Binnie Hoe and Brother Smith looked like brother and sister about as much as a bug and a beef bull.

“Good,” said our teacher. “The question still lingering is
where
? We'll have to be cocksure of our ground.”

Huff scratched himself. “What's that mean, Miss Hoe?

“It means we can't squat. So if we can muster up ourselves a plot of land, we're in business, as soon as we can beg or borrow the lumber.”

We turned away from the burning store, heading home with Miss Binnie Hoe, back toward Mrs. Newell's.

Huff said, “There's a lumber yard in Jailtown.”

Miss Hoe let out a snort. “I certainly do not need to inquire as to its ownership, do I?”

“Captain Tant,” I said without a think.

But that was when Brother Smith shook his head. “Ain't so,” his big voice rumbled. “I heard it told, for sure, that he
don't
own lumber no longer. Something to do with taxes.”

“Who owns it then?” asked our teacher.

Brother smiled. “Miss Liddy do.”

There was no school.

But there sure was a ample of work. Every morning, right after Addie Cooter would whoa the picker wagon to pick up Papa and the rest of the fielders, Huff and me'd git sent to the sugar mill.

Sunday final come. My daddy slept late, like usual, and so did I. Then I got up, washed, ate, and did me some quiet thinking by the shoreline of the Lake. From across the inlet, near where a dead river knifed back into the thickety green of the gourd vine swamp, I could hear the Sunday morning voice of Brother Smith, humming an old hymn. And I could see him on his pier, a big black catfisherman dotting a pale blue Okeechobee.

Nearby, the water was clearing.

Usual did on Sunday, because during the other days of the work week, the dredger crews stir it into murky mud. Ever since I could remember, the dredgers and their big smokey machines work around Jailtown, trying to unclog an old canal or trench out a new one. Yet old Okeechobee just roll over in the night, and then, come the next morning or the next week, she ooze her way back to normal.

Okeechobee country, I was thinking, weren't too
far from being a fat woman sleeping with bedbugs. Us people were the bugs. She was the lake. Folks, even like the big dredgers, could bite her … yet we'd never poke her awake to change.

“I love Sunday,” I said to our lake.

Jailtown turned hushy on a Sunday morning. Like the band of Saturday night quit thundering its tune. Even the Lucky Leg was asleep, as if tuckered out from the night before. I s'pose Sunday morning was a sad time for a lot of the workers in Jailtown, because Saturday night wages had a way of jumping out of your pocket by Sunday morn. So people claimed.

Not far away, the giant pink leg stood very still over Miss Angel Free's place of business, like it had never danced at all. The big leg looked too tired to tap a toe.

For some reason, I liked to spend a hunk of Sunday morning all by my lonesome. I wasn't praying, but my thoughts were neighborly close.

I sat there on a cotton bale for a long time, just being a speck of Sunday.

Then I jumped into the water to half-swim and half-wade my way over to Brother Smith's. He fed me a hot white hunk of steamy catfish and boiled swamp cabbage. The two of us, me an' Brother, ate like we was never going to stuff our guts again. Or like Captain Tant was fixing to pass a rule to forbid chewing.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”