Arly (3 page)

“And bless you too, Brother Smith,” said Huff. He really meant it, I knew. Whenever I was with Brother, I just felt cleaner and stronger than usual. Most folks did. When someone die in Jailtown, white pickers as well as
black sent for Brother Smith, so he'd utter sweet words over the grave in the muck soil. I'd never honest seed a church, or been inside one, but the sound of holy music couldn't ring out any more saintly than the deep voice of Brother Smith's.

I'd heared that, years and years back, Captain Tant's daughter had fell herself out a boat and into Okeechobee, and it be Brother Smith who'd dived in and pulled her to shore. That was how come Brother didn't have to live in Darky Town no more, but had a place to his own. Even so, Brother Smith wanted a church built, but Captain Tant be dead set against it. He didn't allow no churches at all. But over in Darky Town, the colored people sang hymns after the sun rested down.

Pulling his dwindle stick from a knot in his seine, Brother Smith pointed it at Jailtown's biggest boat dock. “Tomorrow,” he said, “the big boat be here.”

“Is it true that you're a prophet?” Huff Cooter asked Brother.

The big man filled his lungs, looked at the brace of us, and let out a long sigh like he was thinking on it. “No, I a fisher, like Simon. I be no prophet. Yet I know a famous person come, as sure as John Baptist knowed about Jesus.”

“Captain'll be mad,” said Huff.

“Maybe so,” Brother Smith said, “but ol' Captain ain't young no more.” As he talked, Brother pointed a finger in a gentle way. “Captain's getting long of tooth.”

“What's that mean?”

Brother smiled. “Olden. Like me.”

“Say, what kind of a knot is that you're twisting into your net?” Huff asked.

“This?” Brother Smith tapped the twine with his
dwindle. “It ain't got a name, like Huff and Arly do. So I calls it a hemplock.”

“Did you create it, Brother?”

His big black face lit up brighter than a Coleman lantern. “No,” he said, poking the dwindle in my ribs, gentle easy. “I just invent it. Because only Almighty God create.”

I saw Brother rest a large paw on Huff's shoulder and then his other on mine. “Out yonder,” he said, turning us around to look at the water, “out in Okeechobee, I hook me a catfishy. But I couldn't never create one. Hadn't I seen one, I never could've thunk up a creation. Young brothers, an ol' catfish favors you an' me. A fish and boy be only two of God's ideas.”

As I listened to Brother Smith's deep voice almost whispering between my ear and Huff's, I kept on squinting into the sun and the silver it dropped out on Okeechobee. Big as the sea it was, folks said, and in a storm, everyone in Jailtown agree, only a fool would dare to cross. And he'd possible never come back. Because he'd make food for catfish, gars, and gators.

“Brother, how did the lake git here?” I asked our big friend.

“Come,” he answered, “and maybe I can show you young brothers how it begin.”

The three of us walked along the short dock, Brother Smith in the middle, dragging the big seine net over one beefy shoulder, which he then hanged up on pegs that he'd pound into the gray boards of his boat house. At our feet, the shore was sandy in one spot, so Brother bended to it. We hunker down to look.

“Long ago,” said Brother, his fingers smoothing the sand, “the land be flat as firmament. But then God dip the tip of one finger into the Florida dirt, like so, to dent a great hole and that be Okeechobee.”

I couldn't breathe. “Praise be,” I final said, staring at the lake. “The tip of God's finger do all
that?”

It weren't easy to measure just how big the Almighty really was. A whole lot bigger than Brother Smith. Too big for my mind to fetch in.

“Brother,” I asked him, “how big's the world? I actual want to know.”

He shaked his gray head. “Me, I don't know at all.” His hand reached upward into the sunlight like he could touch beyond it. Then he walked away from the lake shore, as we followed, to where we could rest in the shade of a small stand of scrub pine. I watched his fingers pry off a bark slab and then point to the lighter scar of underbark that now showed on the trunk.

“Children always want knowing how big our world be,” he told us. “But under each chip of bark live a tiny town, all style of life in yonder, too small to see. Or hear. I guess it be there all right. A tiny town of life.”

“You mean like Jailtown?”

Brother nodded. “Almost exact. So I say to you, young brothers, not to ask only how big our world be. Ask how small it go.”

Wrinkling his nose, Huff Cooter leaned in close by the bark scar on the trunk of the pine and squinted. “I can't see no little town.”

Brother Smith whispered to him. “And nobody in that little town see you. Or care how growed you is. In there, they got their own business, and catfish to cook up for supper.”

“God made that little town too?”

The big face grinned. “Easy,” said Brother. “As easy as the Lord poked a fingertip hole for Okeechobee.”

“I don't believe it,” Huff snorted. “God really builded a tiny little town inside here?” His finger tapped the trunk. “A entire little town?”

Brother nodded. “As if He had nothin' else to do.”

“Whoa still,” Papa ordered me.

Once again, like he'd just do over and over, he dip our hairbrush in the water bucket and attack my thicket of hair. His tongue peek out from one corner of his mouth.

“I ought to barber it,” Papa said to my hair, “on account it's overgrowed.”

“We don't have time. The boat's due.”

He nodded. As he brushed me, I looked at his hair, thin and gray, with an ample of white in it. But he'd comb it down and part it proper, a doing that I hadn't seen my daddy bother at for years.

“There,” he said, straightening his back. “Now put on your hat and we'll head along.”

“How do I look?”

“Passable.”

I smiled at him. “Good as Sunday?”

“Right,” he said, tossing the brush into the corner of the shack next to his bed tick. “I want you lookin' your best today, Arly.”

As we walked along Shack Row, pointed toward the Jailtown dock, I liked wearing my hat. It was white, with a dark blue ribbon around it for a band. Usual I
wore it only on the Four of July. But today be special. As we walked, I know my hat was getting a bit too small for my head. It fitted rightly snug. Yet I felt proud to wear it, because Papa had bought it for me. My hat had cost fifteen cents.

“Morning to ya, Daniel.” The voice that had called out Papa's name had chirp out from the smiling face of our neighbor, Addie Cooter. All six Cooters were headed for town. Essie May too. I tried not to stare at Essie May Cooter. Yet I usual did, even if she be a year or more older than I was.

“The same to ya, Mrs. Cooter,” Papa said back with a wave.

She shook a warning finger. “How many times I gotta warn ya, Dan Poole, to call me Addie? I can't abide a handsome man like you to address me as Mrs. Cooter.”

I winked at Huff and he winked back, as all eight of us joined the parade of people in Jailtown. It was Sunday and some local folks sure did honor it. Dressed up brighter than Christmas, and that included the ladies who usual abided inside the Lucky Leg Social Palace.

The Lucky Leg ladies wore red aplenty on their lips, like they slapped it on with a trowel. I notice Huff Cooter grin as he looked at Miss Angel in her bright green satin dress, trimmed with white lace. Even her fan was green, to match. She sure was a stepper.

We all headed for the boat dock, the very biggest one in town, to greet the Sunday boat that usual come across Okeechobee from Belle Glade. Folks said the steamer sometimes stopped at Pahokee and that it would today, to pick up our famous lady so's she could cross the lake to Jailtown.

“I wonder,” I telled Huff, “if Captain Tant will
show today. Or will he just stay in his big gingerbread house and not care.”

His mother answered my wondering. “Captain won't come.” Her voice lowered. “Mr. Tant don't want this stranger here. Neither do Broda. But I do know who put up some money for the boat ticket.”

Papa raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

Mrs. Cooter moved her big body a step closer to where Papa stood, as we'd found a strip of shade next to a cane warehouse wall. “I heard tell it was Miss Liddy.”

Nobody in Jailtown mention Miss Liddy Tant a whole lot. She was Captain's daughter. Folks said she was to get wed one time, years and years ago, to one of the plume hunters who'd come to Okeechobee to gun down egrets. But no wedding ever took place, because Captain Tant got Miss Liddy's boyfriend spook off, or killed. Anyhow, he got took out in a fish boat and never brought back.

“You know,” I heard Addie Cooter whisper to my daddy's ear, “they say that them two, Captain and Miss Liddy, live in their big ol' house and don't never speak a word to one another.”

“Is that true?” Papa asked.

“Gospel. That poorly woman ain't been seen out of doors in a whole sack of seasons. Some say not since the tragedy. And you want to know who told me?”

My father nodded.

“Roscoe. Between you and me, Dan Poole, I always had me a hunch that Roscoe Broda would up and wed Miss Liddy Tant and has felt thataway since before Noah's flood. He never married, ya know. Still lone. I figure Roscoe's forty and Miss Liddy's ten year older. But he'd wed her tomorrow if the chance come ripe.”

Papa grunted. “Love's a circus.”

I saw Addie Cooter poke Papa with her hand.
“Love,” she said, “ain't got nothin' to do with Roscoe's courting Miss Liddy. It's the land he's after. And I figure both Captain and his daughter can see right through Roscoe Broda, and I'm dang glad they do.”

“Hey, there's the judge,” Huff said.

Sure enough, there he was, in his Sunday black suit, mopping his round face with a square hanky. Jailor Jim Tinner wasn't what the folks in town called him out loud. To his face, they usual called him Judge Tinner, or just Judge. He was the official law in Jailtown. Judge Tinner also got put in charge, by Captain, of running our jail. And whenever there was enough prisoners to form up a road gang, Judge took to be boss of the chainers. Some said he was a lawyer.

Addie Cooter curled her lip.

“Well,” she said in a low voice to Papa, “there's our law. Roscoe told me a sorry tale. He says that it's mostly moonshiners that rot in the jailhouse, on account of Judge not wanting them to cut in on the whiskey he run hisself.”

A small black dot appear away out on the straight line of one blue meeting another, in the middle of Lake Okeechobee. People straighted arms and point fingers. Kids got lifted up on shoulders.

I heared a steamer whistle.

“I gotta get off my feet,” Addie said.

Looking down, I saw Mrs. Cooter's old scuffy shoes, hot as it was. It be a caution shame, I was thinking, if she'd saved up and bought 'em too small at Mrs. Stout's.

Lots of folks, I had sort of figure out, tried wearing shoes, or boots. Papa had shoes on. His work boots. They didn't shine up too prosperous, even though he'd earlier yank a rag to 'em, before we'd left our shack. All five of the Cooter kids was barefoot, like me. I'd guess that about half the town people was shod that Sunday, and most be the grown folks.

Out on Okeechobee, the steamer boat seem to be taking her own time, as if she weren't too itching to visit Jailtown. However, lots of people had gather to greet the boat and take a fresh look-see at the famous visitor.

Huff Cooter sighed. “Sure wish that ol' boat would whip herself along.”

“Yeah,” I telled him. “Me too.”

It was right then I heared people start to mumble. Heads turning around, away from the lake, and eyes all look in one direction. That was when I saw a very thin lady, dressed in white lace. Her face was paler than
yesterday's death, more gray than pink, and her hands weren't much more meaty than twigs. Over her head was a parasol which served to keep her shaded more than the rest of us. The lady stood quietly on the dock.

She look different.

Most of the people in Jailtown looked the same. We were pickers, catfishers, gator and plume hunters, fur skinners, cane mill workers, some growers who own citrus, black people and white, dredgers along with their wives and children, along with a few Seminoles who kept to themselves.

“Who's that?” a woman ask.

Her husband whisper his answer. “Holy Moses,” he telled her, “that's Miss Liddy Tant.”

“Ain't possible,” someone else said. “Captain's against us.” And then another voice mention something called the Rural Education Act.

A few people spoke to Miss Liddy Tant, bowing as they done so. She mere nod in return. But then she did bother to speak to one person, the somebody who'd long ago saved her life.

“Good morning, Brother Smith.”

He quick took off his hat and smiled. “Good morning to you, Missy Tant.”

She stood her ground, pale and proud, and waited as the Caloosahatchee Queen blowed her whistle again, three times, and creep close enough to the dock for me to see the faces of the city people who lean on her rail. They Waved to us and we all waved back. Nobody throwed pennies.

“Papa,” I asked, “are them fancy people coming just to see Jailtown? Or to see the Leg?”

He shook his head. “I don't guess so. They say the Caloosahatchee Queen be a day boat, and the people on board is sightseers. She stops here to take on wood fuel,
then goes to Moore Haven and back to Belle Glade where she moors up. A few'll go see the Lucky Leg.”

Two black men dressed up as sailors pushed a gangplank to our dock. Miss Liddy walked forward, and as she went to meet the steamer, people made a path for her, backing off. She looked leaner than a dryspell pea pod.