Arly (7 page)

Huff's ma told us once that whenever she'd look at Brother Smith's face, she could almost hear a hymn. Addie figured that God sort of looked some like Brother.

There wasn't any church in town. Papa said it was a crime to have no place to worship. So I guess Jailtown
was ample lucky to have a man who thought that all men were his brothers.

When I left the vacant store, our school room, I headed home for Shack Row. Then I saw Essie May Cooter talking to Miss Angel Free who was boss of the Lucky Leg. She was all spank out in a red satiny dress. Miss Angel sure could gussy up her person real splendid. She was smiling at Essie, and I guessed I knew why.

Miss Angle took off the fancy bonnet she was wearing to let Essie May try it on her own head. Then she tied a bow beneath Essie's chin. But as far as I could see, the bonnet didn't fit Essie May too proper. The fancy of it didn't fit her face neither. To my way of thinking, Essie May Cooter didn't need a frilly hat to pretty her. In fact, seeing her in Miss Angle Free's bonnet made me notice her ugly for the only time. It was all I could do to keep from running over to where the two of them were standing, untie the bow, then snatch the fancy bonnet off Essie's head. Yet I held myself in rein. To stir trouble with Miss Angel Free would only hatch worse trouble, and Mr. Roscoe Broda might harden the field work on Papa.

Folks in Jailtown usual claimed that Miss Angle was our number-one handsome woman. But right then, as I watched her sweet-talking Essie May, she looked downright piggy, and like she was fixing to throw mud on Essie May's life, and on mine.

If only there be some way to make sure Essie May Cooter never goes to live at the Lucky Leg. The thought of it near to killed me. Essie just weren't intended to be one of those dressed-up ladies with color on her face. Not that I was holding myself up to be better than the fancy women. Just different. Essie was too. People in Jailtown seemed to believe that, sooner or later, Captain Tant would own us all, heart, mind and soul. Maybe
they actual didn't
like
believing it, but a passel of them nodded to it, sure as tomorrow.

As I watched, Miss Angel stuck a hand into her beaded purse and pulled out a looking glass.

“See yourself,” she telled Essie. “You look so pretty natural in my bonnet. Honest do. Why, I declare, people will be coming to town on the boat someday, just to sport a look-see at you, Essie. And I'd wager they'll snap your picture. If I had a camera right now, I'd take your photograph myself.”

Miss Angel carried on and on.

So I turned myself away and headed alone for Shack Row, a place where there weren't no fancy ladies or gussy-up clothes. For some reason, the gray boards of Shack Row and the plain of its people was a welcome sight, a lot more comforting than the picture I could remember of Miss Angel's bonnet on Essie's head. Thinking on it turned my hands to fists. Somebody ought to stand up to Roscoe Broda and to Captain Tant.

But, as I recalled about school and Miss Hoe, I sure weren't fixing to ever sass Miss Liddy Tant. No sir. Because they way I figured, it be Miss Liddy who'd done Jailtown a decent turn.

“Thank you, Miss Liddy,” I said to the heavens.

There weren't much sense in hanging around Shack Row, and I didn't feel much like looking up Huff Cooter. He'd only badmouth our school. So instead, I took me a stroll toward the big lake. Okeechobee could certain shine in the afternoon, like the sunshine near to polished it into silver. Squinting and shading my eyes with a hand, I looked out across the water to where its edge greeted the sky. Sure was a piece away. It took me to wonder what lay beyond Okeechobee.

“Whatever it be,” I said, “it's distant.”

In school today, Miss Hoe said that our entire
world was round, like an orange she was holding in her hand. Nobody believed it except me. Because whatever Miss Hoe said, to my thinking, was the Gospel truth. Our teacher also said we didn't have to take her word for it, because all we had to do was level our eyes across Lake Okeechobee and take a look for ourselfs. We'd notice that the lake appeared to be flatter than a board, but it weren't, as there was a curve to it like the outside of her orange.

“Learning,” Miss Hoe had told us, “is something like an orange too.” On the outside, it weren't too good to taste. Even bitter as a orange rind. But inside, once the learning settles in your head, it becomes sweet. Sweeter than candy.

To prove it, Miss Hoe broke the big orange apart. But first, we had to taste the skin. Then the inside. Huff Cooter had made a face at me, as if to say that Miss Hoe weren't telling anything that he already didn't know. Yet I reasoned real quicksome what she was driving at, and it made a spate of sense.

I spotted a rowing boat.

The boat was heading my way, away off to the left, nosing through the shadows of the overhanging cypress trees, riding low in the water. Two men were aboard. One was rowing. It made me itch to learn who they were and what they were doing. As the boat nosed closer, it was plain to see that the two gents was plume hunters.

Their sculler boat was loaded high with a cargo of dead birds. A lot were white egrets. Some was pink curlews and spoonbills. One orange flamingo. Near the stern, where the man who weren't rowing sat with a pair of shotguns, was a basket of dead parakeets. It weren't a happy sight to see. Alive birds are. Not these.

“Boy!” one of the men shouted to me. “What be the name of this here sorrowful place?”

“Jailtown,” I said.

The man who'd spoke at me was bigger than the rowing man. He was smaller and leaner. The big man who was sitting the stern spat a brown stream of tobacco juice into the lake, just before I heard the prow of their rowboat grind her nose into the shore sand, then rock to a rest.

“Yeah,” the man said, “this here's the right town.”

“How come you got to shoot so many of them pretty birds?” I asked.

Squinting at me like I was three kinds of fool, the big man answered. “Hats,” he said. “Ladies who dress up real fancy, in city places, wear all them birdie feathers on a hat.” He spat again. “But it ain't no business of yours.”

“No,” I said, “I don't guess it is. But maybe it's sort of a shame all them little birds got to get gunned.”

The small man spoke up. “You're right, son.”

“Shut up, Joshua,” the big gent spoke. “Besides, I took me a notice of how you're usual eager to pocket the money.”

In turn, the two plume hunters climbed out of their sculler. As they done so, their heavy boots stepped on the pile of birds. Even thought they were all dead, it was more than hurtful to watch.

“You want to earn a dime, boy?”

I nodded.

“There a livery stable in town?”

“Yes.”

The big man flipped me a dime, but I dropped it. Bending over to fetch it from the mud, I heard the bigger gent laughing at me.

“You hightail yourself to the livery stable and git
somebody to snake back here pronto with a mule and a buckboard wagon. Hear? It's still light enough to go back into them dead rivers and kill us another load.”

Inside my hand, I could feel the dime. And it would do handy. But I couldn't make my feet go. If I fetched the wagon in a hurry, maybe a lot more birds would die.

“Git going!” the big man yelled.

The edges of his dime was biting into my hand, because I was squeezing it so hard and wanting it even harder.

I tossed him the dime and ran.

I couldn't eat.

All I could do was keep seeing that boatload of dead color, all them little silent birds. So I boiled some cabbage for Papa and made up a story, a lie, saying I'd already ate before he'd climbed off the picker wagon.

“I'm wore out, Arly,” he said, then folded down to his tick and sound like he was instant asleep. His breathing wheezed in and out.

After soaping his plate and our cookpot, I went outside our shack, around back where the sand was soft, to scratch a few letters in the dirt. I made all the letters that Miss Hoe learn us. Ever single one, and did them over and over, spelling the little words. Most words come right easy on account there be only three letters inside each one. Shack was a leadpipe cinch to spell.

S
-
H
-
C
.

Yet as I studied the letters I'd fingered into the sand, the word didn't look right, on account I'd forgot to place a
A
in it. Words usual had a
A
in the middle, like
rat
and
cat
and
hat
. I sighed. Education sure could be thorny. In school, being wrong had a way of cutting my brain, the like way a stem of a fan palm could cut a
hand. It was hurtsome. But the bleeding was all inside me where only I could feel the misery of it.

Even though I was staring down at my letters I'd drawed in the dirt, my mind kept on seeing the dead birds.

It was near dark, and evenings were usual a happy time for me, because Papa was resting in shade and not stooping in the heat to endless rows of vegetables. But I couldn't turn myself too joyous. It wouldn't be right to allow a happy feeling on a day when so many of God's ideas all got scatter-gunned into a pile of feathery death. Just for hats.

“Arly?”

It weren't necessary for me to look up to learn who'd spoke my name. Her voice I already knowed like it was near a song. But I did look up to see her.

Essie May Cooter come strolling my way, wearing her skimpy dress in a manner like she wanted to wish it bigger, as if she feared everybody in jailtown was looking at her, and laughing. Or thinking worse. She stood sort of hiding inside her dress.

“Howdy,” I said.

“Sure is hot. What you doing out here?”

“Practicing my letters, the way Miss Hoe said we probable ought, so's we would remember.”

Essie leaned against the trunk of a custard apple, looking up at the still-light sky, hauling in a deep breath and then letting it loose really slow. “I talked to Miss Angel today. She let me try on her bonnet.”

That I knowed, because I'd seen it all happen. But no words about it would come out my mouth. All I done was kick at the letters with my toes until every word I'd wrote got destroyed.

“In our shack,” Essie said, “I can't seem to breathe no longer. There's only your pa and you in your place,
but us Cooters got six. Ain't even room to turn over, on account if I do in the night, I'll wake up little Florence and she'll wail. Soon, I got to have me a room of my own.”

“Is that what Miss Angel promised you?”

Essie May nodded.

Seeing her do such was so hurtful I couldn't hardly abide it. Yet I was afraid to run away, recalling the night a picker runned off. Before sunup, Roscoe Broda and some other men on horses had rope-dragged Mr. Yurman all the way back to Shack Row. He was nothing but earth and blood. And then, as if'n that weren't enough punishing, Clete Yurman sweated a week on no wages. Broda had even worked him on a Sunday.

“I can't live in Shack Row no longer,” Essie said. “A body can't stand to stay where there ain't enough space. Huff's fixing to scamper off some night.”

I looked at her. “He say so?”

“Not actual. He knows they posted guards down the road. Jailer Jim Tinner's men, carrying guns, and with tracker hounds. Huff claims he can swim across the lake.”

“He'll drown. Ain't nobody about to swim across Okeechobee. All he'll be is gator meat.”

Essie May nodded. “Huff says it'd be better to die free than live a whole life in Jailtown. All I know is, Huff fixes to go his way, and I'm near ready to go mine. And I reckon my only chance is …”

She couldn't seem to say
Lucky Leg
. All she done was turn about and hug the trunk of the custard apple tree. “I been a mother to Jackson and Delbert seems like forever. And little Flo about thinks I
am
her ma. I love her dear. But sometimes I know I can't stay in our shack no longer. It's like I'm counting days. I telled it all to Miss Angel and she understands.”

Standing up, I walked quick to Essie, and rested my hand light on her shoulder. But instead of stretching up on my toes, to be as tall as Essie May, I just stood up straight, to be honest. “We got a school now,” I said. “We can learn stuff. Miss Hoe says she's our ticket out of Jailtown.”

“It's too late, Arly. Maybe not for you, but for Huff and me. The teacher didn't come soon enough. I ain't a child no more. I'm a woman. Miss Angel Free told me so, but I already knowed it. For most of a year.”

“You can't, Essie. I won't let you.”

Her hands clawed at the bark as if she was trying to climb the tree. “Can't you see it's the only road I got. For me, it'll be either the Lucky Leg or Shack Row. And it sure ain't going to be here. You claim Huff'll drown in the lake. Maybe so. But I'm already choking in our shack … us Cooters sleeping like fingers. Well, I ain't a finger much longer. At the Lucky Leg, I can salt away money, and maybe Florence won't have to … social dredgers.”

Essie May pulled a twig off the tree and was ripping its leaves away, one by each, until no pretty green leaves was left. All of them scattered all twisted and tore at our feet, like a flock of little green birds that once could fly, but wouldn't fly no longer.

Bending, I picked up one of the leaves, trying to smooth it right again, back to how it used to look, fresh and green.

“This ain't the right way for you to end up,” I told Essie. “They got a fancy front door at the Lucky Leg. But there's no back door.”

She give me a empty look.

“What I mean is this, Ess. It's simple easy to parade inside. Maybe dress fancy. But beyond that, there ain't
no escaping. You'll never come out that door again. Papa said that one time, like the Lucky Leg was just another Shack Row, only dressed up.”