Arly (6 page)

It made me sick to listen it. In my throat, I could taste collards and catfish but mostly vinegar.

“No,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Essie May's too nice to marry up Roscoe Broda. I don't want her to.”

“Ma does. And then don't because I guess she knows that Roscoe's got a mean streak.”

It was my turn to kick a pine cone, so I booted one, and real hard. My toe stubbed on a tree root, which danced me round some while Huff Cooter laughed hisself silly.

“Don't you worry none, Arly. It ain't going to happen right soon.”

“Why not?”

“On account Roscoe's got a plan or two about Easy Street for his own self. And it's all got to do with him and Miss Liddy Tant, the way folks tell it. Miss Angel's sweet on him too.”

“Yeah, so I hear.”

“I don't know much,” Huff said, “yet I do know this. Roscoe Broda's a greeder.”

“What's that s'pose to mean?”

“A gent, as fancy as Roscoe sees hisself, he'll cotton to have two women. One for bed and one for banking.”

I sure knew which was which, I was thinking, wishing righteous awful that I was already a growed-up man. Maybe I'd just have to first pack in the schooling.

“Hey!”

Looking at Huff, I saw that he was watching a guy I'd never seen before. A city man, for sure. He wasn't a dredger, that was certain, nor was he a cane mill worker. But he was a real mess. Clothers were cut to a tatter, and he looked to me that he'd got lost out in the swamp glades, or he'd run through a long ways of sawgrass. His shoes looked rotted wet and near to falling off both his feet.

“I know him,” Huff said.

“Who's he be?”

“His name's Mr. Mayland. He's a mapper. You know, he's one of them gents that always gets sent to here to Okeechobee by the government, to make maps of the place. Captain don't like mappers, Ma says, and Broda hates 'em even worse.”

Huff and I walked closer to where the man had set hisself down, right near to out front of the harness maker's place. As we got close up, he looked at Huff and me and spoke.

“Howdy.”

“Are you Mr. Mayland?” Huff asked him.

“I'm not sure. I been lost out there,” he said, pointing at the sundown. “Nobody sane or sober can map this hell hole. I'd settle up my transit on a tripod, like always, but the legs would sink so deep into the swale that it forced me to squat or lie down to sight through it.”

“Well,” said Huff, “you ain't the first mapper to
quit and leave Jailtown. I seen plenty others, and I don't guess you'll be the last.”

“I lost my binoculars and half my stakes. It's crazy out there. The bubble in my level's always off-kilter. I can't true it to take an elevation.”

As he talked on, shaking his head, I didn't savvy even the first word of it, but it made a sport to listen. Maybe I'd fetch up some useful learning.

“Okeechobee just runs off places into dead rivers,” Mr. Mayland went on saying. “Cricks that don't
go
anywhere, except into marsh and muck, and those places are crawling with cottonmouth snakes, gators, bogs, floating clumps of brush and slime that drift with a current. Trouble is, the dang current's going nowhere.”

Mr. Mayland looked up and smiled. Maybe on account both me and Huff Cooter were smiling at his story. He wore a decent look.

“Boys, I've been here in Jailtown almost a week, and your two faces are the only ones who ever looked at me friendly.”

He held out his hand and I shook it, just like I was somebody. Huff shook hands with him, too.

“The name's Harry Mayland. I'm a surveyor. Or supposed to be one. Right now, I don't know what I am, except maybe thankful I'm alive. Never did I think I'd be glad to see Jailtown.” He looked up and down the road. “Golly, what a dump this place is.”

If you think it's ugly
here
, I was thinking, wait until you take yourself a healthy squint at Shack Row.

“Your hand's sort of bloody,” I said.

“Want to know how that happened? I somehow walked into a spider wed. Never had I seen a spider that size. I could have thrown a saddle on that critter and rode it clear back to Moore Haven.”

“It was probable a wolf spider,” Huff said. “They sprout up real prosperous around here.”

“That web would have covered half the side of a house. And I walked into it, then panic hit me, so I bolted and caught my foot in a tangle of gourd vines and tore my hand on the spines of a fanpalm stem. Some country.”

“I bet you learned ample,” I said.

“Well, I'm convinced that to survey the total territory around Okeechobee will require a right smart amount of patience, time and misery.” Mr. Mayland cracked a palm with a fist. “I met an interesting fellow, though. Calls himself Ed Nocker. He's got one ear and lives in a shack over on one of those dead rivers I was telling you boys about.”

“What's he do?” Huff asked.

“He's a squatter. Claims that Roscoe Broda's been attempting to run him out of there for years, but he won't budge. When I met up with Ed, he was skinning down a rattler that was near a foot longer than I am tall. Then he boiled the snake's head to loosen up the fangs.”

“Honest?”

Mr. Mayland nodded, reaching in his pocket to pull out a white curved needle. Then a second one. He gave one to me and the other to Huff.

“Here ya go, boys. Ed Nocker says that if you ever want a toothpick that'll last you a lifetime, you can't beat a rattler fang.”

“Thanks,” I said. Huff thanked him, too. “What else do you learn out in the swampy places?”

“Well,” he said, “I learned enough misery to make me wish I'd stayed myself in school longer, and maybe now had me a softer job.”

I raised my hand. “I know.”

It was another morning in the vacant store that was next to Mrs. Stout's place. Miss Binnie Hoe had just took a white thing and drawed three lines on the board wall and then asked us what it was. She nodded to me and my grin.

“Arly?”

“It's a
F
,” I said.

“Very good.” Miss Hoe smiled. “Today we're going to try and remember some of the good things, the words, that begin with the letter
F
.”

“Fox,” I said real quick, “and Florida.”

“And,” said Miss Hoe, “we will also give
everyone
a chance to recite.” She eyed me real steady as she said it and then shifted her look to the back of the store. Turning around, I saw Brother Smith stand up. There was a wide smile on his face.

“Fish,” he said. I don't know why we all clapped our hands, but we did, and I could see how joyous it made Brother. He clapped, too. “I can learn,” he said. “Can't I, Missy Hoe?”

“Yes, indeed you can.” Miss Hoe looked more than just some pleasured. “Now then,” she went on, holding
up the white thing, “this is chalk. It can draw pictures and also make a letter. Who wants to come forward and draw a great big
F
on the wall?”

Nobody moved. Next to me, I saw one of the two new kids, a dredger's boy, slump down low in his seat, so he'd not git called on by our teacher lady.

Miss Hoe stepped forward, handing the chalk to Essie May Cooter. Essie didn't reach out to take it, not at first, but then she did. She went up to the board wall and stood there in her short dress. Her bare legs sure looked pretty. As she turned around with her back to us, facing the wall, she reached the chalk up real high and her skirt skinned up, too. It covered her sitdown but not much more. She started to draw an
F
and her whole body moved, almost like she was dancing it, instead of just drawing. One of her legs bent a bit into a right beautiful curve.

“That's right,” said Miss Hoe. “You made a good line for the trunk of the letter, straight down. Now just add the two arms.”

Essie May just stood there, looking at her one big line. Then she chalked the two little lines, to make an
F
. She did the top one first. Making the bottom one, she bent down some, and her own bottom nudged out real handsome.

“That's very good, Essie May,” said Miss Hoe.

Huff's sister smiled, handing the chalk thing back to Miss Hoe, and then she come back to take her chair, near mine. There be little spots of white on the ends of her fingers. Somehow, she sensed I was looking at her, real hard. I saw a look in her eyes that I hadn't ever seen before. It made me wonder if Essie ever looked at Mr. Roscoe Broda that same slow way. Maybe it sounds dumb, but Essie May could smile with her whole entire person.

My back started to itch.

“Now,” said Miss Hoe, “an
F
all alone does not spell a word. But if we add two more letters, it can help. This letter,” she said, using the chalk on the wall, “is an
A
. And this letter is a
T
. See how a
T
looks like a tree?”

She now had something of the board that looked like
FAT
. “Can anyone guess what these three letters now spell? It's a word.”

Nobody spoke up.

Looking over at Huff Cooter, I could see that he was near as puzzled as I was. I wanted to guess it was
fish
, but I decided to keep mum and sweat it out.

“It spells
fat
,” Miss Hoe told us. “This is an
A
and this is a
T
. Together, they spell
AT
. But when the
F
is in front, it makes
fat
.”

I felt ample glad I hadn't said fish.

“Fat,” said Brother Smith. “That's right good.” As he grinned, his big hand patted his belly.

Miss Hoe drawed a curve. “This,” she told us, “is a
C
.”

People in Jailtown oft said that Okeechobee used to be a sea, so the sound of it got me a mite mixed up. Besides, the chalk C that Miss Hoe made sure weren't blue, like the lake. It was whiter than the inside of a moc-snake's mouth. Like cotton.

“
C - A - T
spells
cat
,” said Miss Hoe.

Cats sure don't swim in no sea, I was thinking, and not in no lake. Miss Hoe was going too fast. Brother Smith was scratching his head, like me. I sure didn't figure that school was going to be this thorny.

“This is an
R
,” said Miss Hoe. “And now
R - A - T
spells a word. It's a little gray animal with a long tail that sometimes nibbles into our food, late at night, unless we own a cat to catch him. Who knows which animal
R - A - T
spells?”

“Mouse,” I said. All the kids clapped, so did Brother Smith, and it made me feel prouder than pie. Essie May looked at me respectful.

“Arly,” said Miss Hoe, “that was a very brave answer. And I want you to be pleased that your answer was very close to being correct.”

“It was wrong?” As I ask the question, I felt my hands melting.

“Well,” she said, “let's just say it was almost right. But I want you to change your answer, Arly. Because if
F
-
A
-
T
is
fat
, and
C
-
A
-
T
is
cat
, then this
R
sound … right here in front, makes …”

It hit me! “
Rat
,” I telled her. “Did I read, Miss Hoe?”

“Yes,” she said, in a husky tone. “You can read, Arly Poole.”

It was right then that Brother Smith jumped up and come to me, pulling me up and out of my chair, waving me around in the air in circles, and clogging a jig at the same time. It made me dizzy, but it felt precious fine. I don't guess I'd ever felt like I was a famous person or anything any bigger than a picker's kid on Shack Row. But now I was.

I was Arly Poole, a reader.

It took poor Miss Hoe near to all her polish just to work us all quiet again, and back into our chairs. We'd sure made the dust fly in that only empty store, hooting and hollering like we done. Miss Hoe sneezed. At the doorway, I saw Mrs. Stout poke her face in, as if wondering what was going on and was we holding a celebration. Then she just sort of shook her head, real disgustful, looking like she'd up and ate what didn't settle in too sweet. Papa once said he thunk that Mrs. Stout got weaned on a pickle, and it sure put me into a giggle, just thinking about it in school.

“Rat,” said Brother Smith. “I can read it, too, Missy Hoe. I can hear a
R
sound, like the way Arly do.”

“Bully for you,” Miss Hoe said to Brother. “See how we all gallop ahead? Now, while we're rolling, let's think of another word that might start with an
R
.”

“Rump,” said Huff. He stood up and slapped his own backside. “Rump got an
R
sound. Ain't that right, Miss Hoe?” As he said it there was an edge in his voice, like he wanted to rile her. But I could see that Miss Binnie Hoe got sawed out of tough bark.

“Yes,” she telled Huff Cooter, “and so does
rude
.”

Brother Smith and I stayed after school.

While I busied our old broom to lick out the sand, Brother rag the walls clean. Then he left with Miss Hoe, walking along behind her, holding his big hat. The two of them looked like a tot of a little girl leading a plowhorse.

Brother done the same yesterday.

When school ended, he'd walked several strides behind Miss Binnie Hoe back to Newell's Boarding House, the place where Miss Hoe'd took herself a room. Some of the dredgers boarded there, at Mrs. Newell's. I didn't like the men of the dredger crews a whole ample lot. They'd usual hang around evenings in Jailtown to point their dirty fingers at people and laugh. Yet I had me a happy hunch not a manjack would point too much at Miss Hoe when Brother Smith was nearby. His fists knuckled up bigger than some men's shoes.