Contents
FLORIDA 1927
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Postscript
How to Help
About the Author
Books by Robert Newton Peck
FLORIDA 1927
Chapter 1
“Up,” said Huff. “Move on up, Arly.”
As I climbed a branch or two higher on the slanting oak limb, Huff Cooter followed. He was still on the downside of me.
“See anything?” he asked.
Squinting in the dark, I looked beyond the sprigs of swaying oak leaves toward the Lucky Leg. Some of the upstair rooms were black, but not all. One was lighted.
“Arly Poole,” said Huff, “you gotta inch up a bit more, so’s I can take a see for myself.”
Earlier, it had been Huff Cooter’s idea. Down on the ground it seemed to make more sense than away up here, where we were now. Huff’s plan was to spy into the upper windows of the Lucky Leg Social Palace, and witness the dandies and the pretty ladies, all having at it. Seeing as it was Friday night, plenty ought to be in swing by this time. Some hot entertaining.
“Hey,” I said, “I can see one of the gals. She’s wearing a shiny green dress, with a slit up the side.”
“What’s she doing?” As he asked the question, Huff hustled up the oak limb almost to where I was hanging on real tight, so I wouldn’t fall myself down and smack Florida.
A smile near about split my face before I gave Huff a tricky answer. “She’s taking something off.”
“What?” Huff hissed like a tomcat.
My grin near to hurt my face. “Oh, nothing you’d be itching to learn about.”
“Come on, Arly. What’s she taking off?”
“A gent’s necktie.”
Huff grunted a dirty word.
Long strands of gray moss was hanging down from the oak twigs, so we had to move our heads whenever the summer breeze made the moss sway. The rough oak bark was scratching my naked chest. Huff and I wore only trousers. Nothing else.
“Arly, what’s the guy doing?”
“Well,” I said, “right now he’s smiling. But he looks more’n a bit nervous to be lonesome with her. He just walked over to see if their door was locked.”
“Yeah,” said Huff. “I bet so.”
Here in Jailtown, the Lucky Leg was about the only public diversion. People say that the sporting carries on during the daytime too. The place was certain bubbling with fun right now. I could hear laughter and the clacking of pool balls. Several people talking all to once. And a man named Mr. Knuckle Knapp was playing a pink piano.
“What’s she taking off now?” Huff wanted to know.
“An earring.”
“Is that all?”
“Nope. She’s also taking off her other one.”
Huff crawled up to where I lay with my belly flat along the limb. He was trying to see over my rump and into the window.
“Which gal is it?” he asked.
“Flossie.”
Huff moaned a low moan. “Boy, I gotta see her up close.” He started to climb over me for a better view.
My hands tightened on the wood. “Careful, or you’ll tumble the two of us, so’s we’ll fall and bust our necks.”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s Flossie all right. Ain’t nobody in Jailtown with hair so sassy red.”
As I looked, I noticed that Flossie’s cheeks and lips were red too. Different shade. More like fire. Closing my eyes, I took a deep draw of air through my nose, hoping I’d smell a whiff of her perfume. No luck. All I got wind of was a sorry sniff of Huff Cooter. A picker smell. In Shack Row, where we lived, the Cooter family nested nearby to Papa and me. I’d smelt Cooters all of my life, almost twelve years, and them six Cooters had equal smelt us two Pooles.
“Look,” said Huff, “she got one foot up on the edge of that fancy bed, and slipping off her garter. Yowie!”
“Hush,” I warned him. “Else you’ll invite Roscoe Broda’s dogs to circle this tree, and bugle.”
Huff punched my shoulder. “Don’t you hush me none, Arly. I can lick you in a fistfight any time.”
He was right. He could.
The bedroom window was less than a stone’s throw away from us, so we could start to see plenty … until the light went out. Huff groaned. But somebody, and it was probable Flossie, struck a match. The candle flickered a breath or two and then pinpricked the gloom.
“Boy,” whispered Huff, “I sure would like to be that lucky gentleman right now. Wouldn’t you?”
“Sure would,” I answered him, knowing certain well that neither Huff Cooter or Arly Poole were old enough to handle a high time with any of the pretty ladies at the Lucky Leg Social Palace. Both of us were only sneaking up on twelve.
Huff cussed again.
“I can’t see much of Flossie. Can you?”
“Nope,” Huff said.
“All we can make out is that there dandy with his necktie off. You reckon Miss Flossie is fixing to give her customer a great big kiss about sudden?”
“Arly, she’s possible doing that and plenty else.”
“What you suppose she’s at?”
“Oh,” said Huff, closing his eyes, “I got me a heavy hunch that Flossie’s got her long red-painted fingernails running through his hair, like ten cooties.”
Listening to Huff’s colorful imagining, I leaned forward to push an inch or two closer to the open window. The katydids and crickets were whooping up so frequent that I couldn’t hear a word of conversation. So I clung tight to that oak limb and pictured myself in the sweet arms of Miss Flossie. We didn’t know whatever her family name was. Nobody at the Lucky Leg Social Palace announced more than a first name, except for Mr. Knuckle Knapp, and Miss Angel Free. The big blonde bosslady. She wasn’t ever called just Angel. It was always Miss Angel.
Folks in Jailtown sometimes laughed, guessing that her name was the only free thing about Miss Angel. All else was for profit. Cash in advance.
“Huff, how much money do a man tote inside his pants pocket before he can as much as ring the Leg’s front doorbell?”
Huff Cooter scratched himself. “Oh, I s’pose away up into the dollars. For sure, he’d best carry enough scratch to spread around, or Miss Angel will watch him git tossed into Okeechobee.”
“Soon’s we’re twelve,” I said, “you and me’ll work as pickers and be earning men. I’ll be fetching up melons and cukes right alongside of my daddy. On the labor docket that Mr. Roscoe Broda carries, it’ll say Dan Poole, and then me, Arly Poole.”
Huff spat. “Who wants to be a picker? We ain’t hardly no better than colored folks. Far as I can figure, a picker ain’t nothing but a white darky. Shack Row’s all white people, like you Pooles and us Cooters. Yet nobody rise up nowhere, and no how. On account your daddy’s like my mama. They’ll both settle up the storekeeper every penny they sweat for.”
Huff was right. Mrs. Stout’d claim it all. She’ll squint down into that beat-up old ledger book and tell us we still owe. Shack rent eat up whatever it want. Nobody dare to say liar to anyone who worked for Captain Tant.
“Arly, can
you spot any hot doings in some of the other windows?”
“No. All we can do is guess it.”
Huff was silent for a spell. Then he spoke up. “Are you going to meet the boat when Sunday come?”
“Maybe. On account that the famous person is coming to town. Yet I certain don’t know why anybody high and mighty would stop off here. I hope he throws a lot of pennies.”
“Yeah,” said Huff. “All to one fling.”
Once a week, the Caloosahatchee Queen docked here in Jailtown, but not for long. The clean people only stood up, leaning on the railing, and pointed at us. I’d usual wave. Most always, some rich boatrider would fish a penny out of his pocket to toss into the lake. We kids’d dive to fetch it up. Some other kid always brung it up from the deep dock water. I’d not found it even a once time.
But I never quit trying.
Chapter 2
The scream woke me up.
Opening my eyes, I rubbed my face with both hands and stared up at the roof of our shack. It was easy to tell by the roof holes that night was near over. A peacock screeched again, making me wonder how so pretty a bird could cry out such a smart awful noise.
“Papa,” I said, “it’s time to shake out.”
A few steps away, on the other mattress tick, my daddy was still asleep, breathing heavy like always.
His sleeping sounded stiffer than a sore back.
Rolling off my tick, I heard the straw inside it whisper, as if to warn me that it’d soon make another Florida morning and the picker wagon would be here to lug folks to the field. And if Papa missed the wagon, he’d have to run or get fined by the field boss, Mr. Roscoe Broda.
“Papa,” I said, shaking the bony shoulder that was under his work shirt, “it’s soon morning.”
He sat up. “Dang,” I heard him mumble, “it’s like I just went down, Arly boy.”
“The wagon’ll be coming. You wash up while I fix your eats.” The dirt of the floor was cool under my bare feet as I poked up the cook stove to a boil. Dan Poole liked hot tea at sunup because it loosened his joints. To be a picker and do stoop work, a man had to make his back bend easy. Papa weren’t very big in any direction, up or out.
As it was turning light outside, I hoped he’d hustle himself some, so’s he wouldn’t be last in line to load onto the picker wagon. Papa pulled off his shirt to wash at the bucket, and his white chest loomed out like a skinny lantern. His arms and face were red and he looked the way most pickers looked, like he’d lost every fight in his life. And that he had never knowed shade.
Outside, the peacocks nagged at each other under the custard apple trees. I was praying that my daddy wouldn’t nag me about where Huff and I’d gone last night. And final fell out a tree.
“Hear that?” I said. “Them peacocks realize the mules coming with the wagon. So you best hurry, hear?”
Papa mussed up my hair. “Yup, I hear it, Arly. Don’t guess I’d make rising if’n we didn’t have them peacocks around.” He pulled his shirt over his thin hair.
“They sure sound ugly, don’t they? Even uglier than old Captain Tant hisself.”
Resting a hand over my mouth, Papa said, “No, boy, you don’t sass thataway on the Captain. He’s hard. But he ain’t near ornery as Roscoe Broda, folks say, so you better don’t badlip him none. A mean mouth spoons in trouble, Arly. Faith me on it.”
He drank his tea and bit into a flour biscuit faster than a hungry gator. I was glad to see him eat two biscuits instead of his usual single. While he ate, I stuffed a cooked potato and our last strip of dried hog meat into his noon bag, and then knotted the neck so’s his food wouldn’t foul gritty with field dust.
“Be sure to rest your bag in the shade,” I telled him, “so’s it’ll keep proper and won’t spoil out.”
A mule snorted. Papa jumped, a late look on his face. He didn’t cotton to be last in Mr. Roscoe Broda’s line.
“We best hurry, Papa. Real sudden.”
“Yeah, we do.”
After I near to pushed him out of our door, together we run up the dusty ground, along the line of shacks. Everbody run, afeared to be late. All I could think of was that I didn’t want Dan Poole to be the last man to crawl over the tailgate. Papa couldn’t run too fast, so I about dragged him with both my hands hauling to his one. I wanted to work in his place; but rules was rules, about the count of pickers that got took. They didn’t usual use nobody eleven.
A mule let out a long series of hee-haws, a sound that worked back and forth, cutting through the gray of morning like a bucksaw. Up ahead, I saw Addie Cooter, the big woman who drive the picker wagon, holding the ribbons to the four mules.
I liked Huff’s mama. Papa did too, because she’d bring drinking water to the vegetable fields, ever workday. She had a big body that near filled the wagon bench and her face usual scratched a big smile to go with it. She was our nearby neighbor in Shack Row. Addie Cooter had five kids. And claimed she’d popped four before she’d knowed what caused it.
When I waved to Mrs. Cooter she waved back, motioning with a frown and a toss of her head that I’d best get Papa loaded on quick.
“Hurry up, Papa.”
His lungs were heaving in air, but those bandy old legs kept a trot to his feet. I could see we’d make the tailgate and he’d not be the last one to skin aboard. Papa let loose of my hand and run for it. Roscoe Broda stood at the tailgate of the picker wagon, holding his roster board under one of his bully arms. Roscoe wasn’t fat. He was just built solid as a plow ox. When he eyed Papa, he spat into the dust of the wagon ruts.
“Arly Poole,” said Addie, from up on her wagon seat, “you best look yourself tidy come tomorrow.” She said it righteous bold, as if she didn’t care a sniff if Mr. Broda heard her say it.
“Yes’m, Mrs. Cooter.”
I was thankful to see that Papa wasn’t going to load on last, because old Dinker Witt was a good twenty steps back of Papa, limping along on his twisted knee. Mr. Witt put an eye to Roscoe Broda’s big boot, like he knew he’d load on last and take whatever meanness come due.
But then I saw Papa drop his noon bag.
He run a couple-three steps beyond it, looking at Roscoe as if he couldn’t decide whether to go back and fetch it or miss eating until sundown. Quicker than a spooked rabbit, I made a dive into the dust for the sack and got to it just as Papa did, making him fumble it again. Our four hands seemed to tie into a knot.
“Hurry,” I said.
Ahead of us, Dinker Witt threw his lame old body up and over the tailgate and into Addie’s wagon bin, joining the twenty others already aboard. This meant that Papa would be last and he’d have to work at half pay.
Roscoe Broda put a mark on his roster sheet and said, “Dan Poole,” in a voice deeper than dirt. “Half wages for Saturday.”
Papa tried to hasten over the tailgate, but he couldn’t move fast enough. Roscoe whipped a kick into my daddy’s backside, making Papa sprawl into the floor of the wagon bin. A few of the pickers reached out hands to help him up and made a place for him on the long bench boards.
I knew it was the rule.
The kick was sorry enough, but the half wages for a whole day’s work would hurt us Pooles a lot meaner when we had to trade at Mrs. Stout’s store in Jailtown. Captain Tant own the store. Just like he most own everthing on earth, even the peacocks that he’d brought here. And people usual said he charge the tourist folks ten cents a bag to feed ’em. I’d once saw a city lady fish out a dime so her kid could feed the peacocks. Like ten cents was nothing.
Dan Poole would have to sweat bent over in the cucumbers all day for not much more than ten cents, at half wages.
I spotted a hunk of mud at my feet, which I sure did want to pick up, to chuck at Roscoe Broda. Yet I didn’t. All I did was just stand there in the morning light and wish that I was anybody except who I’d got born to be. I just feeled like a dumb and dirty boy, standing there, watching Addie Cooter cluck at her four mules, and see my daddy ride off to picking. He didn
’t wave to me, like usual. Mr. Broda followed the wagon on horseback and all I did was stand there, hurting inside for Papa.
I hated being Arly Poole.
Chapter 3
Huff showed up.
We stood behind the row of gray shacks tossing bits of bark and loose rock into Lake Okeechobee, listening to the plunk sound.
“We was lucky last night,” he said.
“How so?”
“First off, because we didn’t hurt ourselfs when we tumble off the tree. Second, we didn’t let Roscoe’s men see us, or hear us neither. If so, we’d got whupped for sure.”
“But we didn’t see much of Flossie and the necktie sport she was socializing.”
Huff agreed. “No, I don’t guess we did.”
“Hey, do you want to walk over to the cane crusher, and see if maybe they’re shorthanded at the sugar mill?”
“Won’t do no good,” Huff answered, throwing a pebble to the quiet morning lake water. “Until you’re twelve, nobody’ll take you on. Captain’s orders. And it’s Captain Tant or Roscoe Broda that’ll decide when you’re twelve. If’n we’re thick enough, we’ll sudden be on the labor docket. No questions asked about birthdays.”
As I sat in the dust, my back against the trunk of a custard apple tree, I looked up at my friend. “My daddy say that when Sunday come, that’s tomorrow, things’ll bound to change.”
Huff shook his head.
“No famous outsider is gonna do squat. Captain owns Jailtown. Nobody else.” Huff sighed. “I seen the old Captain one time. He got white hair. Walks with a cane, he do. A mite bended over. But he wearing a white suit of clothes. Clean as a cloud. And sporting white shoes.”
“Did ya run?”
“Yeah,” said Huff, “but not until Captain look right at me with those burny eyes of his. Fever eyes, my mama calls ’em. It was sort of like meeting up with God.”
I laughed. “God don’t pay visits to Jailtown. But come tomorrow, a famous person is due on the Queen.”
“Arly, I believe it when I see it happen. Folks aplenty git off the Caloosahatchee Queen at the town dock. But they seem always to git back up that gangplank and leave with the boat whistle.”