A Garden of Earthly Delights

  “Roosevelt, get the hell out of that crap!” Carleton said.

  He cuffed the boy on the face. Roosevelt had a narrow head and light brown hair that grew out too thin, so that he looked like a little old man at times. There were hard circular things on his head, crusty rings that had come from nowhere, and two of his front teeth had been kicked out in a fight with some other kids. He shrank away from Carleton and ran off. “You stay out of other people's goddamn garbage,” Carleton said. The other children waited for him to get past. They were afraid of him.

  The rest of the men were outside now, waiting. They spent their time working or drinking; when they had nothing to do, their arms were idle and uneasy. Two of them squatted down in the shade of a scrawny tree and took out a deck of cards. “Want to try it, Walpole?” one said.

  “You don't have no money,” Carleton said sullenly.

  “Do you?”

  “I don't play for fun. You don't have no money, it's a waste of my time.”

  “You got lots of money yourself ?”

  The Texas man, Bert, appeared in the doorway of a shanty, stretching his arms. He had taken off his shirt. His chest was sunken and bluish white, but he looked happy, as if he'd just come home.

  “C'mon play with us, Walpole,” he said.

  Carleton made a contemptuous gesture. He had some money saved and maybe he could double it if he played with them, but he had come to despise their odors and stained teeth and constant, repetitious talk; they were just trash.

  “I got no heart for it,” he said.

  He walked by. He could hear them shuffling cards. “We don't go out till the mornin,” someone said. Carleton did not glance around. His eyes were taken up by other things, drawn back and forth along the rows of cabins as if looking for something familiar. Some sign, some indication of promise. There were a number of sparrows and blackbirds picking at something on the ground; Carleton tried not to look at it, but saw it anyway—a small animal, rotted. It made him angry to think that the farmer who owned this camp didn't bother to bury something like that. It was dirty, it was filthy. The whole camp ought to be burned down.… And the junk from last year, last year's garbage still lying around. Carleton spat in disgust.

  He had left the packed-down area between the shacks and was looking now out over a field. The tomato plants were pale green, dusty, healthy. Carleton could see in his mind's eye the dull red tomatoes, rising and falling as if in a dream, and his own hands reaching out to snatch them. Out and down and around and back, in a mechanical, graceful, endless movement. Out and down, tugging at the stem, and then around and back, putting the tomato gently in the container—then inching ahead on his heels to get the next plant. And on and on. He would squat for a while and then kneel; the women and kids and old men knelt right away.

  It used to be that he would dream about picking after he had worked all day, but now he dreamed about it even before he worked. And the dreams were not just night dreams either, but ghostly visions that could come to him in the brightest sunlight.

  “Son of a bitch,” Carleton muttered.

  He turned and shaded his eyes to look back over the camp. He saw now that it was the same camp they'd been coming to for years. Even the smells were the same. Off to the right, down an incline, were two outhouses as always; it would smell violently down there, but the smell would be no surprise. That was the safe thing about these camps: there were no surprises. Carleton took a deep breath and looked out over the campsite, where the sun poured brilliantly down on the clutter: rain-rotted posts with drooping gray clotheslines, abandoned shoes, bottles of glinting red and green, tin cans all washed clean by the rain of many months, boards, rags, broken glass, wire, parts of barrels, and, at either side of the camp, rusted iron pipes rising up out of the ground and topped by faucets. A slow constant drip fell from the faucets and had eaten holes into the ground. Alongside one of the shanties was an old stove; maybe it was for everyone's use.

  It was another bad year, Carleton thought, but it would get better. Things had been bad for a long time for everyone—they talked about rich men killing themselves, even. The kind of work Carleton did was sure, steady work. Up on high levels you can open a newspaper or get a telephone call and find out you're finished, and then you have to kill yourself; with people like Carleton it was possible just to laugh. It was the times themselves that were bad, Carleton thought. It was keeping him down, sitting on him. But he would never give up. When things began to get better—it would start up in New York City—then men who were smarter than others could work themselves up again, swimming upward through all the mobs of stupid, stinking people like the ones Carleton had to work with. They were just trash, the men squatting there and tossing cards around, and the fat women hanging in doorways and grinning out at one another: Well, we come a long way! Ain't we come a long way? Some of these people had been doing fieldwork now for twenty, thirty, even forty years, and none of them had any more to show for it than the clothes they were wearing and the junk they'd brought rolled up in quilts.… This was true of Carleton but he had a family to keep going; if he didn't have that family he would have saved lots of money by now.

  He did have about ten dollars, wadded up carefully in his pocket. Nancy knew nothing about it and what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. It struck Carleton sometimes that he should spend this money on Clara—get her a little plastic purse or a necklace. He did not feel that way about his other children. Mike had run off a while ago and nobody missed him; he'd been trouble at the end. Carleton had had to give it to him so hard that the kid's mouth had welled with blood, he'd almost choked on his own blood, and that taught him who was boss. Sharleen was back in Florida, married. She had married a boy who worked at a garage; she liked to brag he had a steady job and he could work indoors. But she never brought the boy home for Carleton to see. So he had said to her: “You're a whore, just like your mother.” He hadn't meant anything by that. He hadn't thought about what it meant. But after that he had never seen Sharleen again. He was glad to get rid of her and her darting nervous eyes.

  The fear he saw in his children's faces did not make him like them. Even Clara showed it at times. That wincing, cautious look only provoked him and made him careless with his blows; Nancy had enough sense to know that. What Carleton liked was peace, quiet, calm, the way Clara would crawl up on his knee and tell him about school or her girlfriends or things she thought were funny, or the way Nancy embraced him and stroked his back.

  Carleton was hungry. He headed back toward the cabin. The square now was filled with children and women airing out quilts and blankets on the clotheslines. Bert's wife was flapping something out the doorway. She had a beet-red face and surprised, tufted hair. “Nice day!” she said. Carleton nodded. Two boys ran shrieking in front of him. He saw Clara and Rosalie by the men who were playing cards. Clara ran out to him and took his hand. He thought how strange that was: a girl runs out and takes his hand, he is her father, she is his daughter. He felt warm. “Rosalie's pa won somethin an's goin to give it to her!” Clara cried. Carleton let himself be led over reluctantly to the cardplayers. Bert was making whopping noises as he tossed down his cards. He chortled, he hooted, he tapped another man's chest with the back of his fingers, daintily. Carleton's shadow fell on his head and shoulders and he grinned up at Carleton. Behind Bert were the rest of his kids. The girl's hair was a frantic red-brown, like her father's, and she had her father's friendly, amazed, mocking eyes. “Here y'are, honey,” he said. He dropped some things in her opened hands. Everyone laughed at her excitement.

  “What's this here?” Rosalie said. She held up a small metallic object. Clara ran over and stared at it.

  “That's a charm,” said Bert.

  One of the men said: “Don't you know nothin? That ain't a charm!”

  “What is it, then?”

  “A medal,” the man said. He was a little defensive. “A holy medal, you put it somewheres and it helps you.”

  “Helps you with what?” br />
  Rosalie and Clara were examining it. Carleton bent to see that it was a cheap religious medal, in the shape of a coin, with the raised figure of some saint or Christ or God Himself. Carleton didn't know much about these things; they made him feel a little embarrassed.

  “It's nice, I like it,” Rosalie said. The other things her father had given her were a pencil with a broken point and a broken key chain.

  “How does it work?” said Clara.

  “You put it in your pocket or somethin, I don't know. It don't always work,” the man said.

  “Are you Cathlic or somethin?” Bert said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Shit—”

  “Isn't that a Cathlic thing?”

  “It's just some medal I found laying around.”

  Carleton cut through their bickering by saying something that surprised all of them, even him. “You got any more of them?”

  “No.”

  “What're they for?”

  “Jesus, I don't know.… S'post to help a little,” the man said, looking away.

  Carleton went back to the shanty, where Nancy was sitting in the doorway. She wore tight faded slacks and a shirt carelessly buttoned, and Carleton always liked the way she smoked cigarettes. That was something Pearl hadn't done. “Y'all moved in?” Carleton said. He rubbed the back of her neck and she smiled, closing her eyes. The sunlight made her hair glint in thousands of places so that it looked as if it were a secret place, a secret forest you might enter and get lost in. Carleton stared at her without really seeing her. He saw the gleaming points of light and her smooth pinkish ear.

  Finally he said, “Don't think you made no mistake, huh, comin up here with me? All this ways?”

  She laughed to show how wrong he was. “Like hell,” she said.

  “You think New Jersey looks good, huh?”

  “Better than any place I ever was before.”

  “Don't never count on nothing,” Carleton said wisely.

  Which turned out to be good advice: that evening the crew leader, a puffy-faced, lumpy man Carleton had always hated, came to the camp to tell them it was all off.

  “Come all the way here an' the fuckin bastard changed his mind, says he's gonna let them rot out there,” the man shouted. Flecks of saliva flew from his angry mouth. “Gonna let them rot! Don't want them picked! He says the price ain't high enough an's gonna let them rot an' the hell with us!”

  Carleton had heard announcements like this before and just stood back, resting on his heels to absorb the surprise. Around him people were making angry wailing noises.

  “What the hell is it?” Nancy said faintly.

  “It's his tomatoes, he can let them rot if he wants,” Carleton said, his face stiff as if he wanted to let everyone know he was miles away from this, miles and years away. It did not touch him.

  It turned out finally that they got a contract to pick at another farm the next morning, so they had to ride there in the school bus, an hour each way, and could still stay at the campsite—it was the only one around—if they paid that farmer rent (a dollar a day for a cabin); and out at the second farm they had to pay that farmer for a lunch of rice and spaghetti out of the can and beans out of the can and bread (fifty cents for each lunch, thirty cents for kids); and they had to pay the crew leader who was also the recruiter and the bus driver for the ride (ten cents each way, including kids), and then had to pay the recruiter twenty cents on each basket for finding them this other job, because he was their recruiter, and, when that job ended, they had to pitch in to give him fifty cents apiece so that he could ride around the country looking for another farm, which he did locate in a day or two, some fifty miles away, a ride that would cost them fifteen cents each way. At the end of the first day, when they were paid, Carleton won five dollars in a poker game and felt his heart pound with a fierce, certain joy. The rest of these people were like mud on the bottom of a crick, that soft heavy mud where snakes and turtles slept. But he, Carleton, could rise up out of that mud and leave them far behind.

  6

  Tom's River was the name of the town: Clara smiled wondering if there was a boy named Tom, and it was his river.

  People talked of the Pine Barrens, too. Clara whispered “Pine Barrens.” No idea what it was except cranberry farmers lived there. And sometimes they hauled in day-pickers, and sometimes they did not.

  Tom's River was seven miles from their camp. Always they were being driven through it on their way out, on their way back from where they were day-hauled. Whenever they rode through Tom's River, Clara and her friend gazed hungrily out the grimy window hoping to catch somebody's eye. Hi! Hello! they would wave and giggle like little kids being tickled.

  Clara believed that towns were special places with their grids of streets, some of them paved and some not; stores built so close together they were in a row; and some of them double-decked on the others so your eye lifted up to the second story, surprised. Clara had never set foot above any first-floor place. She wondered what it was to live so high, like it was nothing special to look out a window and see where you were like in a tree!

  “Don't you get lost in Tom's River. Nobody is goin to come fetch you, miss.”

  Nancy was moping, it wasn't right for Clara who was her daddy's damn favorite to take an afternoon off. A damn big hungry girl always eating more than her share. But if Nancy voiced such an opinion, Carleton told her shut up. Like that: “Shut up.” In front of the kids disrespecting her.

  So Clara had permission to go. It was Rosalie's birthday: that day Rosalie was thirteen. Rosalie's father gave her fifty cents saying it was her special day, and Carleton winked (so Nancy wouldn't see) and gave Clara a dime. A coin so small it grew moist and hot in your hand right away and would be easy to lose, if you weren't careful.

  They were going to hitch a ride, walking along the edge of the road toward Tom's River and waiting for a car to come along, or a pickup. It was what all the kids did and nobody got in trouble except if a sheriff 's car came cruising by, then you might. A deputy in dark glasses staring at you like he'd like to run you off the road. But mostly people were friendly. People tended to feel sorry for you, and were friendly. The girls were excited and uneasy, walking in the road, waiting, and when their eyes met they laughed together breathlessly.

  “What's it feel like to be thirteen?”

  Rosalie shrugged. A blush rose into her face. “You'll find out.” And right away she changed the subject saying with a snigger, “Guess you showed that bitch back there.”

  “The hell with her.” Clara liked how her daddy uttered these words like passing pronouncement from a high throne.

  “Thinks she's so special hookin up with you people,” Rosalie said. “I wouldn't let no nasty bitch like that in my house if my ma died.”

  Clara didn't like such talk. Ma died. Nobody in their family talked like that ever, they'd have got their mouths slapped hard.

  “Oh, Nancy is—” Clara paused. She was going to say Nancy is nice, sometimes. She wanted to say Without Nancy we'd be lonely! But it was a mistake to argue with Rosalie on this special day.

  They fell silent not knowing where to look: a car was fast approaching.

  “What if it's some guy tries to get smart?” Rosalie muttered.

  Clara gritted her teeth as the car came closer. She hoped it would go past.

  The car went past. A man's face behind the wheel and in the passenger's seat some prune-faced old woman with eyeglasses.

  “Sonsabitches.” Rosalie stooped to pick up a handful of pebbles and tossed them after the car, not hard enough to hit. A cloud of dust rose in the car's wake.

  Another car passed, more slowly. And then a pickup, its back loaded with tomatoes in bushel baskets. The front seat was crowded with a driver, a teenaged shirtless boy, a yellow Lab sitting up like a person. “No room, girlies.” The driver grinned at them and wagged his hand out the window.

  “Fuck you, mister.” Rosalie mouthed this after the pickup, not loud enough to be hea
rd.

  Yet each time a car approached the girls straightened their faces to looking polite, serious. Like at school. Rosalie had washed her hair in the sink and her ma had brushed it so it didn't look halfway so stringy as usual. Clara had washed her hair too and brushed it herself so it hung down past her shoulders and it was a gleaming ash-blond, like her father's hair. Except Clara's hair was growing in thick and Carleton's was thinning out so sometimes you could see his scalp at the crown of his head like something you hadn't ought to see.

  The girls' faces, lost inside their long hair, were furtive and hopeful at the same time. Rosalie had all kinds of faces, Clara admired how her friend could switch from one to another. Like somebody turning the dial on a radio. Sometimes Rosalie could look halfway pretty, and sometimes Rosalie looked like a rat with darting eyes and a nervous mouth. At school Rosalie had one kind of face for when the teacher was looking at her, and another kind of face for when the teacher had turned her back; Rosalie had one kind of face when she and Clara had to walk past the kids who called them white trash, and another kind of face when Rosalie was with her own kind. And still another, kind of sly-comical, when she was with just Clara alone.

  Everybody said how Clara had her daddy's eyes—that frank, perplexed blue—but a nice-looking blue, like the sky on a clear day—and her cheekbones were high like his, so people said she'd be real good-looking someday, more than just cute. But also like Carleton she could look haughty, and suspicious.

  “Kind of make your mouth smile, Clara,” Rosalie said, annoyed. “You got to act like you deserve a ride not just want one.”

  So Clara tried. Clara watched how Rosalie made her mouth smile, and tried. It should have helped that both girls were wearing their best dresses, cotton floral prints, with short sleeves and sashes that tied behind, and both dresses were just a little tight for them, uncomfortable under the arms. Rosalie kept shrugging her chest, where the cotton made her itch from being tight.