Devil on My Heels

  She stares out toward the groves. “Just some trouble with a few pickers.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know any more than that.” Delia looks me right in the eye. She is daring me not to believe her.

  I lift her book from her lap and flip through it. There is a photograph of the poet on the back of the jacket. I stop flipping pages and stare at it. It is the face of a colored man.

  Delia grabs the book from my hands and sets it on her other side, safely out of my reach. “You think only white folks write poems?”

  I shake my head. “Of course not.” Although I have to admit I never really thought about it till now.

  I look over at Delia’s book and suddenly I see her, plain as day, back before she started wearing Gus’s clothes. She’s sitting on an upside-down empty crate in the groves. She has on a faded work dress and her hair is tied up in a scarf that is wound around her head. A bunch of the pickers’ kids are sitting by her feet. Gator is perched next to her on the crate and she is showing him something from a book.

  I remember the sun was setting and everybody was heading back to Travis’s produce truck. Chase and I were running through the groves, playing Tarzan. Chase was grabbing branches and pretending to swing from them.

  When it was almost too dark to see, Delia called me. I stepped out onto the rutted sandy road a few feet from where she was sitting with Gator. All the other kids had left for the day. But Gator was still holding the book, running his finger slowly across the lines on the page, sounding out the words.

  Delia and Gus’s youngest boy, Jeremiah, was in high school by then. And their other children were all grown up and off on their own. Jeremiah didn’t go to our school, of course. But sometimes he stopped by to pick up his mother when he was using the family car.

  Watching Delia with Gator—it was like somebody grabbing my insides and twisting the life out of them. Every night Delia read me a story before she left to go home to the colored quarters. Seeing her reading to Gator, maybe even teaching him how to read, made me so jealous I picked up a rotten orange and threw it at them. It caught Gator on the shoulder.

  Delia was on me in a flash. She grabbed my arm and marched me straight home. She said if I ever did anything like that again I could pretty much count on her not being around to make my breakfast the next day. That was the scariest thing I could imagine, Delia not being in my life. And somehow she knew it.

  I look out over our backyard, beyond the old oaks to where the groves begin about two hundred yards away. In my mind I can still see them, Gator and Delia, sitting side by side on that crate. I think about all the paper sacks Delia has saved for Gator over the years, about how she has watched over him in her way, and I know I have to tell her about Willy and Earl.

  “Something happened after the movie this afternoon,” I say.

  “What movie? You been to a movie? You didn’t tell me you were going to no movie.” She pinches the material of my shorts between her thumb and forefinger. “You went to the movie theater wearing shorts?”

  “Bermuda shorts,” I remind her. “They’re longer.” I am hoping this will appease her. Delia has some very definite ideas about what is proper for young ladies and what isn’t.

  “Going to town, dressed like—like—” She sputters a few times.

  I pinch Gus’s coveralls, the same way she pinched my Bermuda shorts. “I don’t think you’re the best person to tell me how to dress,” I say.

  Delia looks away. I know I’ve hurt her.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Do you want to hear what happened after the movie or not?”

  She lights another cigarette. “Suit yourself.”

  I tell her everything that happened from the moment I saw Gator talking to Rosemary to when I left to come home.

  Delia doesn’t say anything for a long time. I expect her to light into me about not helping Gator, about not trying to stop Willy and Earl. But what she says is, “That boy’s gonna get himself killed one of these days.”

  She tosses the cigarette on the step and crushes it with Gus’s sneaker. She puts her hand on the small of her back and stretches. She stands up and lifts the heavy basket of wet laundry, resting it on one hip. Her face is shiny with sweat. “How’d it make you feel, watching that?”

  She narrows her eyes at me. I can almost feel them burning right into my soul. Delia has a way of digging out the truth with those eyes of hers. You don’t dare lie to her when she looks at you that way.

  A wave of nausea washes through me. I lower my head. “Sick,” I tell her. “Sick to my stomach.”

  She gives me one sharp nod before heading over to the clothesline, as if to say, Good!

  Sunday morning, after Dad and I get home from church, I change into a pair of shorts, slip on my sneakers, and head for the groves to find Gator. I want to make sure he’s okay after the beating he took the day before.

  A soft breeze blows through the trees, filling me up with the scent of Valencia blossoms. I keep an eye out for Travis Waite. I don’t need any more lectures on staying out of my own groves.

  Up ahead Eli is talking to some of the pickers. Gator isn’t with them. Teak and Jody are playing a few yards from me. They’re swinging sticks, pretending to have a sword fight.

  “Either of you seen Gator?”

  Teak lets the arm holding his stick sword drop to his side. He is wearing a T-shirt that is so big, it covers his knees. I can’t be sure if he is even wearing shorts underneath it. He cups a hand above his eyes like a visor and stares up at me. “Gator ain’t been around since yesterday morning,” he tells me.

  Jody is practicing his own version of sword-fighting footwork. He bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter, swinging his stick. “Saw him at the camp,” he says.

  He is talking about the migrant camp where all the pickers stay. “When?”

  “Last night.” Jody whips the stick in the air, hard and fast. It makes threatening zipping sounds.

  “He’s okay, then?”

  Jody stops his footwork. He and Teak give each other a look.

  I wait.

  Teak chews on his lower lip.

  “Well? Is he?”

  Jody spins around on one foot, holding his stick sword with both hands above his head. I get this unsettling feeling that when he stops spinning he is going to lunge right at me.

  “Sure,” Teak says. He springs forward, launching his stick at Jody, who laughs and jumps back. I’ve been rescued.

  The two of them chase each other, kicking sand onto my sneakers as they take off to find the other pickers. The others have moved on. They are out of my line of vision.

  I stand in one of the ruts in the sandy dirt road. I have no idea where to find Gator.

  The sun is directly overhead now. Blazing hot. The breeze is gone. Everything is still. Only muffled voices—the shouts of the pickers calling to each other—fill the space around me. But I don’t see anyone.

  I step off the road into a line of trees. When I was a kid, I used to think nothing of climbing up through those branches and pulling an orange from the top. That’s where the oranges are the sweetest. I shade my eyes and look up. The branches are too dense to climb. I’ll end up with scratches all over my arms and legs. Instead I settle for an orange from the south side that I can reach.

  I crawl under the lower branches to find shade. It’s cool under here, like being beneath a dark green umbrella. Chase and Gator and I used to hide under these trees all the time when we were playing. They were our caves, our forts, our private sanctuaries.

  The branches are weighted down with oranges. They are so low that I can lean only my shoulders against the tree trunk. With my thumb I dig a hole in the orange, tear away part of the peel, and bite into the fruit. I squeeze the sweet juice into my mouth. It runs down my arm; it dribbles off my chin, making orange splotches on my blouse. The sand beneath me is smooth, cool, and weedless. My eyes are heavy. Before I realize it, I’ve fallen asl
eep.

  The sound of angry voices rips me awake. It takes me a few seconds to remember where I am.

  The pickers must be working in the area. I pull back a few branches and look. No one is there. But the muffled, agitated voices are nearby. I crawl over to the other side of the tree. The voices are closer over here, although I can’t make out what they are saying. They are speaking in Spanish.

  I part a small space in the leaves. Two young men, Mexicans, stand barely twenty feet away. They wear dusty dungarees, sweaty T-shirts, and what look like cowboy hats, only made of straw. One is short and barrel-shaped. The other has a thick mustache and seems to be a few years older. The barrel-shaped man flings his arms upward and shakes them in short, sharp jerks, as if he is holding an invisible watermelon he is about to dash to the ground.

  The mustache man puts a hand on the barrel man’s shoulder. His voice is softer. I can tell by his tone that he is trying to reason with the other man. “Si hace eso ahí será el diablo,” he says. “El diablo, amigo.”

  The barrel man stops waving his arms and looks away.

  “¿Me oyes?” says the other.

  The barrel man lowers his head and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Pero mi niño. ¡Mi hijo!” This last comes out like a sob. I feel it rumble in my own chest.

  I recognize one word. Niño. Baby. The other man keeps his hand on the barrel man’s shoulder. He leans toward him and speaks in a reassuring tone. The barrel man shakes his head, keeping it down.

  The men turn to leave. I crawl out from under the tree just as a shadow darkens the ground in front of me and find myself looking right into Gator’s bruised and swollen face.

  “Is this what you do in the groves now?” he asks.

  I stand up and brush the dirt off me. “I was cooling off.” I don’t bother to mention I was taking a nap.

  Gator stares at me as if he isn’t sure I’m telling the truth. Above his left eye is a red, puckered gash. A bruise smudges his left cheek. He is wearing his faded red T-shirt again. I can’t help but wonder about the blue shirt, the new one. Was he able to wash the bloodstains from it?

  “We used to play under these trees all the time when we were kids. To get out of the sun, remember?” I don’t know why I feel I need to remind him of this. But I do.

  “Looks to me like the games have changed,” he says.

  When I don’t answer—because I’m not sure what he’s getting at—he jerks his chin in the direction of the two Mexicans. The mustache man has his hand pressed against the barrel man’s spine, as if to keep him from falling backward.

  I turn to Gator. “I wasn’t eavesdropping if that’s what you’re thinking.” With a sickening feeling I realize that maybe Gator thinks I’ve been spying on the pickers for my dad.

  “Gator, they were speaking Spanish. I don’t even know what they were talking about, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know any Spanish.”

  He studies me with those eyes of his, eyes the color of raisins. Then he raises his hand and points at the backs of the two men. “They were talking about the camp store.”

  “There’s a store at the migrant camp?” I’ve never been to the camp. For all I know it’s like a town, complete with shops and a main street.

  He nods.

  “I thought they were talking about a baby.”

  Gator gets this twitch of a smile in one corner of his mouth. “I thought you didn’t speak Spanish.”

  “Well, I don’t, Gator. I recognized that word is all. From playing in the groves, I guess.”

  Gator kicks at the sand with a bare foot. Sand flies every which way. “That’s Julio Gonzalez. He’s got a new son.”

  “Oh.” I wait to see if he’s going to say more. When he doesn’t, I ask, “What’s that got to do with the camp store?”

  Gator stares up at one of the trees. I can tell he’s trying to decide whether or not to answer that question. “I’d better let Eli know the fruit’s getting too ripe on those top branches,” he says.

  He turns to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. I point to the gash on his forehead.

  He gives me a curt nod before he heads down the road, a nod that puts me in mind of the one Delia gave me the day before, after I told her about Willy and Earl and about how what they did to Gator made me sick to my stomach.

  7

  Delia is whipping up a batch of her cracklin’ corn bread when I come through the back door. She’s got a ham baking in the oven. I head straight for the stairs. I have a ton of homework to do. That’s the worst thing about Sunday afternoons.

  “Just you hold on there,” Delia says, wiping her hands on an old dishtowel she has tucked in the waistband of Gus’s patched khaki trousers. “Not so fast.”

  I stop in the doorway that leads into the hall. By the tone of her voice I know I’m in trouble.

  She reaches into the cabinet next to the sink and pulls out a Campbell’s soup can.

  I stare down at the red-and-white label, wondering if Delia is planning to make soup to go with our Sunday dinner. But when she bangs the can on the counter and I hear the hollow sound, I know what’s coming. With Delia, it’s always better to face the storm head-on rather than stand still and wait for a bolt of lightning to take you down.

  “You’ve been going through my personal things!” I’m not really all that upset about this. Delia more than likely found the soup can by accident while she was cleaning. She isn’t the snooping type. But I have to make it seem as if Delia is the one who’s done something wrong if I’m going to win this round.

  Delia holds out the soup can with her thumb and forefinger, waving it under my nose. “And you been smoking behind my back.”

  I don’t have to look to know there are six or seven smelly cigarette butts squashed in the bottom of the can. “You have no business rooting through my closet.”

  “Well, then, I expect you can bring your own dirty clothes down to the laundry room from now on.” Delia slams the soup can on the table. “You think I couldn’t smell those old butts the minute I opened your closet door? They were just asking to be found.”

  “It’s none of your business what I do.”

  Delia picks up the wooden spoon and begins beating the corn bread batter within an inch of its life. She doesn’t say anything, and that makes me nervous.

  “You going to tell Dad?”

  “He’s going to want to know his baby’s trying to kill herself.”

  I head for the refrigerator and stand in front of the open door, stalling for time, trying to think what I can do to keep Delia from telling my dad. Most of the time, if I play my cards right, Delia and I can reach some kind of compromise. It’s all a matter of finding the right thing to barter with.

  “You planning to refrigerate the whole kitchen?” Delia snaps. She bends down to lift the glazed ham from the oven and sets it on top of the stove.

  I pretend I don’t hear her and go right on taking stock of my choices, finally deciding on the Hawaiian Punch.

  Delia pours the corn bread batter into the greased cast-iron skillet, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula. She slides the pan into the oven.

  I pour myself a glass of punch and sit down at the table.

  “You want something to eat with that?” She points to my glass.

  “No thanks.”

  One thing I’ll say for Delia. No matter how mad she gets at me, it never stops her from making sure I’ve got a full belly.

  Delia slides out a chair and sits down, not saying anything, just watching. Then she pulls a box of Vicks cough drops from the pocket of Gus’s trousers. “This is what you get smoking. You get a cough that feels like it’s going to take your whole insides along with it on its way up and turn you clear inside out.” She slides a cough drop from the box and pops it into her mouth.

  I lift the soup can and shake it, listening to the dull rattle of the cigarette butts inside. Somehow I can’t muster up the energy to get all that upset over Delia’s discovery. Eve
n if she does tell my dad, the worst that will probably happen is that I’ll get grounded for a week or two.

  Delia leans back in the chair, arms folded, watching me. She’s waiting to see what I’ve got to say about those cigarette butts.

  I take a long swallow of punch. “Is something going on with the pickers?”

  Not one single muscle in Delia’s face moves. “Now just how would I know that?”

  With my finger I sketch a stick figure in the sweat on my glass. “Because you know most of them. I was wondering . . .” I want to ask her the question I should have asked Gator when we were talking in the groves, except I got so rattled when he thought I was spying on the pickers, I forgot.

  “Well, spit it out.”

  “Are they having some kind of trouble over at the camp store?”

  “Who?”

  “The pickers, for heaven’s sake. We’re talking about the pickers, remember?”

  “Don’t want any of your sassin’.” She waves a warning finger in my face. “I don’t know anything about that ol’ migrant camp, so you can just save those questions for somebody else.”

  Delia isn’t being honest with me. I can feel it. She knows something and she’s not going to tell me.

  She pulls the dishtowel from the waistband of Gus’s trousers and tosses it on the table.

  “How come you always wear Gus’s old clothes?” I ask. I know darn good and well that Delia doesn’t like being reminded about what happened to Gus. But I’m upset with her for saying she doesn’t know anything about what’s going on with the pickers when I know she does.

  Delia folds her arms tight across her chest. “Now why you asking me that?”

  “I don’t know. Just wondering is all.”

  Delia doesn’t say anything right away. She’s trying to figure out if I’m up to something. Finally she says, “Well, then, I got my reasons—not that they’re any of your business.”

  “What kind of reasons?”

  “Well, for one thing, I like wearing his clothes because it’s like having a part of him still with me. You know what I’m saying?” She tilts her head back and thrusts her chin at me. “Now if you want to call me crazy, you go right on and do it.”