Arly

  Miss Hoe shook her head. “That’s not true. You’re coming along with me, and that’s all there is to it.”

  The two of us near trot through the Okeechobee mist on our way out of Shack Row as we headed for Jailtown. Once we’d leg it to Mrs. Newell’s, my teacher sent me out back to wash myself clean. After that, Mrs. Newell fed me full on stew and two glasses of sweet milk. I tried not to gulp it all in too fast, yet I did. Both of the ladies sat to watch me while I ate.

  “Arly, I have a cousin in Moore Haven,” Mrs. Newell telled me. “His name is Mr. Alfred Bonner, and he’s a schoolteacher.’”

  Dribbling milk down my chin, I wiped it on my sleeve and grinned. “I already got a teacher. Fact be, I got me the best doggone schoolteacher in the all of Florida.” I winked at Miss Hoe.

  “Thank you, Arly,” Miss Hoe said. “But Verna and I have talked it all over, and Mr. Bonner knows you’re coming.”

  “Run away?” As I asked the question, the hot stew bubbled up from my belly and I could taste it again, in my gullet.

  “You’re getting out, Arly Poole,” said Miss Hoe. “And you will be the first of many to follow. My flagship. There won’t be any picker wagon looking for you, or any bloodhounds on your trail.”

  “Amen,” said Mrs. Newell.

  “I can’t leave Essie May,” I said. “Because if I do y’all know what’ll happen to her. She’ll wind up going to live at the Lucky Leg Social Palace. And it ain’t right. I got feelings for her.”

  Miss Hoe nodded. “I understand, but Essie May might be older than you are, in some ways.”

  “Maybe so,” I told her, “but maybe no. Both of you ladies is real kind, so I don’t guess I can sass you none, but I’m not always going to be a kid. I’m close to being a man. All men ain’t as big as Roscoe Broda. Papa was a small man. So is Mr. Witt.”

  Standing up, Miss Hoe started to rub her hands, as Mrs. Verna Newell cleared the table, run water into her sink place, but didn’t use it much. She walked around the kitchen, going nowhere, and the two ladies sort of looked at each other without speaking.

  “Arly,” said Miss Hoe after taking a deep breath, “it’s all arranged. Brother Smith is going to help us get you away. He’s in on it too. But you’ve got to trust us, all the way, and believe in what we’re doing. If you drag your feet …”

  My fist hit the table. “I’m sorry,” I said quick, “but it couldn’t be decent for me to leave Essie here in Jailtown. It just wouldn’t seem righteous.”

  “You are very young, Arly,” said Miss Hoe. “Perhaps older than Verna and I imagined, yet you’re still younger than you are judging to be. Give yourself this chance to grow, Arly. You can’t grab a rosebud and force it open into a rose. You need time to blossom into manhood.”

  “Essie May’s already a woman.” As I said it, I could hardly hold back telling what I knowed about Essie and Roscoe Broda, and the thought of it soured my insides, like I might lose up all the milk and stew. “Someday,” I said, “Essie and me are going to be one, flying together like two white gulls.”

  Miss Hoe shook her head. Sitting down at the table, she reached out to touch my hand.

  “Moving on,” she telled me, “often entails a leaving behind of treasured things and cherished people. When I came to Jailtown, I left someone behind, a person very dear to me. Yet I had to tighten my will and do it. Because it needed doing.” Miss Hoe sighed. “Oh, there’s such a selfish streak in us schoolmarms. We never expect our kittens to ever grow up and become cats.”

  “I ain’t nobody’s kitten, Miss Hoe.”

  “No indeed, you certainly are not.” She smiled. “Least of all mine.”

  I stood up. “Thanks for the meal, Mrs. Newell. Believe me, I ain’t never ate so good in my whole entire life. But I’m going back to Shack Row and locate Essie May. On account it be ample better to face sorry matters and not just run away like it don’t be worth a bother.”

  “Think on it, Arly,” Miss Hoe said. “Verna and I won’t push you. You’ll have to make up your own mind what to do.”

  Nodding, I thank both the ladies once again, and left, running all the way from town and back to Shack Row. I never stop running until I pulled to a whoa at Addie Cooter’s place.

  “Essie?”

  Mrs. Cooter come to the door, holding little Florence in her chubby arms. Her eyes look red and her face swollen, a blushy pink.

  “She ain’t here.”

  “Where’d she go, Mrs. Cooter?”

  It was a while before Addie Cooter could answer me. All she done was look off toward Jailtown, her chin trembling. “Last night, after we buried your pa, it must’ve all took place. Maybe I was too tired to wake up to reason, on account I’d had trouble with the mules. And this morning, Roscoe Broda told me all about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Essie’s gone. I ain’t got her no more.”

  “Where is she, Mrs. Cooter? Where’d she go?”

  “She … she’s with Miss Angel Free. Roscoe’s seen her there, late last night, and told me this morning with a smarty-mean grin on his face. Huff’s gone too. All I got left is Delbert and Jackson and little Flo.”

  She slump to the door stoop of her shack, cradling Florence in her arms, hiding her face into the child’s hair, her big body shaking.

  “I’m … all shame. Don’t know if I can ever eye decent people again, or face the world. God, please help me keep the three I got left. Help me, Lord, please … please …”

  As I touch Addie Cooter’s shoulder, efforting to comfort her some, I could hear a horse nicker. Turning about, I saw somebody cantering my way on a bay gelding.

  Roscoe Broda.

  Chapter 25

  “Arly Poole.”

  The way Mr. Broda spoke my name made my spine rattle, like he was telling me that I belong to old Genesis Tant, now and forever.

  “Boy,” he said, “you been hiding off from me all morning, and so you’re on half wages for today and tomorrow. Hear?”

  “I hear.”

  He spur his gelding close to me, so near that I could smell the sweat of horse breath. Foam from its mouth spatter me. “You got shack rent due come Saturday night. Maybe it won’t be so pig simple for you to tally up.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’ll work it clear.”

  Broda took off his hat to wipe his face with a sleeve. “There’s ample more you don’t know. Dan Poole become so illy useless to me that he’d worked on half wages better’n a week.” Broda pulled out his pocket watch. “You got five minutes to report to the cane crusher. Pronto. Or git dragged there like a stuck hawg.” As he spoke, I noticed the coiled rope which he looped around the horn of his saddle.

  My legs steadied real sudden. “I’ll go,” I telled Mr. Broda, “but first I aim to visit the Lucky Leg and fetch Essie May back home. She don’t belong there. Essie’s only a kid.”

  Broda’s eyes narrow. I could tell by his look that he figured maybe Essie told me about what he’d done to her, and I’d tell Miss Angel. Or maybe even Miss Liddy Tant. His look made me study the ground.

  “Damn you, Poole.”

  The rope hissed out so fast that I hardly saw it coming. All I felt was a loop tightening around me, pinning my arms to my body. I got jerked off my feet and my face was sudden eating dirt. All I knowed was that I was getting dragged along the sandy road, hearing the hoofs of his horse, and Mrs. Cooter’s screaming for it all to stop.

  He didn’t stop. Not until I got drug through the fanpalm prickers and sandspurs for what seemed to be near a lifetime. But then the rope eased to quit, leaving me lying in the marsh muck, hurting all over. Broda’s hands was on me, claiming his rope. “You’re now at the cane mill, boy. Fastest trip a picker ever took to work.” Broda laughed. “Now git up and report to Mr. Lem Rathaway inside.”

  He kicked me, real hard.

  “From now on,” he said, “best you forget all you heard about me. You’re to forget the Cooter gal and also forget about school. Fact is, the on
ly thing you remember is that you’re a picker, boy. A picker.”

  Broda spat in my face.

  Mounting his gelding, he recoiled his rope and then rode off in the direction of the produce fields, leaving me standing ankle-deep in the black mud. I couldn’t breathe. It was like Roscoe Broda’s noose was still around me, and my arms smarted from the rope burns. My new orange shirt was now a tore-up rag. But all my pain melt away gradual, until I couldn’t feel nothing alive in me, like I was some old limper of a dog.

  Then I heared a voice. “Git in here!”

  As if in a dream I stumble toward the cane mill to report. When asked what my name was, I couldn’t speak it out right away. Finally I did, and they hand me a broom to sweep up the spill. The noise from the crusher was fearful loud. Picker! Picker! Picker! After a while, though, I couldn’t hear it, because a dead soul can’t listen.

  Seeing as I hadn’t brung a noon bag, I didn’t get to eat a midday meal. My gut surely ached hollow by whistle time. I headed to Shack Row in a daze, feeling nothing, not even the sand under my toes.

  I couldn’t eat.

  So I just hided myself in a corner of our shack, behind the cookstove, praying for dark. All I could hear was the picker-picker-picker noise of the cane crusher, even though it’d be shut down until morning. For near all-day I’d worked for half wages which wouldn’t cover my shack rent.

  My gut felt empty, yet the thought of even chicken turned my stomach. I still feeled Broda’s rope around me, dragging me through all the thorns, stumps and muck.

  But then I started to remember Papa, and how proud he was that I was getting some schooling, and about Mrs. Newell’s cousin in Moore Haven who’d maybe take me in. I’d earn my keep. Because I weren’t about to burden somebody who be a schoolteacher. Seems like if’n he was Mrs. Newell’s cousin, he’d be a decent sort of a gentleman, like Mrs. Newell who give me a shirt.

  I stood up.

  “Arly, it’s near about time you gathered your guts together and quit taking it all on the chin.”

  As I walked to the doorway, Shack Row was tuckered out quiet and rested down for keeps. So I headed myself toward town, knowing exact where I’d be going, right to the Lucky Leg Social Palace. Maybe I could rescue Essie May Cooter before she become another of Miss Angel’s fancy ladies.

  Outside of the Lucky Leg, as I was hiding myself in the bushes, I could see into one of the windows and its lace curtains. The music of Knuckle Knapp’s piano tinkled through the open window. Used to be, I liked hearing him play, but not no more. The piano music sounded like a devil’s hymn.

  I saw Essie May Cooter.

  After first, I didn’t know it was Essie. Her hair looked different, lighter in color, almost tow. And her clothes was now satiny yellow, to match her new hair. It seemed that Essie May Cooter weren’t no longer the same girl, because on her face was color paint, and her mouth was redder than a rose. Yet, to me, she looked like a dead bird, one that’d got gunned down somewhere, to frill up a lady’s hat.

  To see Essie like so was sadder than finding Papa dead. Dan Poole had his life, but Essie wouldn’t never have hers, except for socialing dredgers at the Lucky Leg for the rest of her time. The girl I was watching through the window now be somebody strange to me, like she fell from a distant star, someone I no longer knowed. I ached to touch her face one last time.

  She looked at me sudden.

  Then, with a signal of her head and eyes, she moved toward the side door. Hoping she’d meet me there, I went too, and sure enough Essie come outside and whisper my name. I was thankful that it was dark and she couldn’t see how beat-up I was.

  “Arly?”

  I went to her. She smelled like a evil flower, sweet and sickening as the stink from the cane crusher at the sugar mill. Her perfume near to made me gag.

  “It’s too late, Arly. Please don’t scold me none. Just tell Mama how much I love her and y’all. Honest do. But I had to get out’n our shack, or smother. Miss Angel says she knows a doctor man, over in Moore Haven, who’ll fix my belly so’s I don’t ever born no kids.” Her chin tremble. “Don’t carry no hate for me, Arly. Please don’t.”

  “I can’t, Essie.”

  “We had feelings, Arly, you and me. But I ain’t never again going to feel deep about nobody. Miss Angel says that for a spell I won’t have to social no men. My job’s to parade around and be bait, to sucker the sports inside to git serviced upstairs by the older ladies.”

  Holding my hands over my ears, I couldn’t listen to no more. It hurt too much. Looking at Essie was like watching somebody step on a flower.

  “We could run away, Essie May.”

  She shook her heard. “No, on account I made up my mind. I’m out of Shack Row for keeps. I ain’t to become another Addie Cooter and sweat like a mule. My belly won’t never swell up around a baby. Not yours, not nobody’s baby. Because babies, Miss Angel says, is little more than nails in a poorhouse coffin. So don’t pity me, Arly. I made my bed.”

  Taking my face in her hands, real gentle, Essie May Cooter kiss both my cheeks. Her lips were fluttery soft, like the wings of a broken butterfly.

  “Take care now, Arly Poole.”

  Somehow, she seemed older, as though Essie was twice my age, and already knowed so much about the upstairs life, things I’d yet to discover.

  “You take care,” I said, trying to hold my feelings back from the brink of crying.

  Turning away, she went back inside the red door, and didn’t once look back to watch me wave.

  “Good-bye,” I told Essie, saying it to the girl who’d sat in school with chalk dust on her fingertips, a young lady I’d danced a hundred years ago. I’d known Essie May Cooter ever since I could remember. Her and Huff was the first kids I’d ever played with, and all of the Cooters was a part of my entire life. Yet somewhere I’d always guessed she’d become a woman before I’d git to be a growed-up man. Walking away from the Lucky Leg, I kept saying, “I’ll come back for you, Essie,” even though I couldn’t begin to guess how.

  I knocked at Mrs. Newell’s door.

  But it weren’t Mrs. Newell or Miss Hoe who answered. A big dredger come to the doorway, staring at me through the screen. Turning around, he shouted up the stairs. “Miss Hoe, there’s a visitor here to see ya.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be right down.”

  The dredger left me standing on the porch, wondering how I had the strength to pace back and forth. I’d worked most of a full day on only what Mrs. Newell give me, early this morning. My stomach was already complaining too. It seemed a long time before Miss Binnie Hoe final come to the door.

  “Arly!” As I turned to face her in the porch light, her mouth flew open. “Lord, what happened to you?”

  Being tired, hungry and heart-broke over Essie, I’d forgot that I’d been rope-dragged by Roscoe Broda, scuffed up and tore by the torns and prickers. Looking down at myself, I saw that my clothes was near to rags.

  “I’m sorry to look so shameful. Please don’t let Mrs. Newell see my shirt. It’d hurt her feelings.”

  Coming out the door, Miss Hoe hurried to me, threw her arms around me, real snug. It made me sort of back away.

  “Careful,” I telled her, “I’ll git you dirty as me.”

  “Oh, you precious Arly Poole.”

  “Essie May’s at the Lucky Leg,” I told Miss Hoe. “And it’s hurting her ma something awful. Me too. I can’t hurt you, not on purpose, but I don’t guess I can handle life much longer.”

  Miss Hoe shook her head. “No, Arly … the answer isn’t dying. It’s living.”

  “Yes’m. So now I’m ready to do whatever, like you want.” My body started to shake.

  “Come,” she said, “and we’ll soap you clean.”

  Chapter 26

  They washed me.

  I was too tired and tore up to squawk. Mrs. Newell and Miss Hoe spooned food into me, put some stingy iodine and bandages on my gashes, and then dressed me in more of Mr. Newell’s clothes. Neither lady seem
ed to give a hoot that, except for the sudsy soap lather, I’d been near to newborn naked. Both ladies were too busy to look.

  “Mrs. Newell,” I said, “I’m dreadful sorry about Mr. Newell’s orange shirt getting so ripped.”

  “Oh,” she said, “they’s plenty more.”

  They led me upstairs, to a tiny little room and ordered me into a real bed, to sleep on clean cloth for my very first time. Sure feeled strange. They quieted my shaking, placed a soft pillow under my head, and left. Just as I was going to sleep, I overheared Miss Hoe say something to Mrs. Newell that shook me awake sudden quick.

  It was about Huff Cooter.

  Over in the swamp, Broda’s men caught up to Huff, dragged him back to Jailtown and tossed him in a jail cell. Tomorrow, according to Miss Hoe, he’d start work on the highway crew, in chains. It all had to do with his mother owing at the store. Blinking, looking at the clean white ceiling overhead, I thought I’d best see what I could do for Huff. Maybe he was alone in the dark, behind bars, scared and crying.

  Hungry too.

  So later, when I heared Mrs. Newell’s grandfather’s clock strike more times than I had fingers, I figured it was midnight. Getting out of bed, sneaking down the stairs, I helped myself to some sticky rolls, three oranges, a doughnut, and some prunes.

  I left by the back door.

  Staying in the shadows, I moved slowly through Jailtown in the direction of the jail. The building was only one story high, no upstairs, and the barred windows were below ground level, in pits. So I snuck along, hugging the outer concrete-block wall, stopping outside each window.

  “Huff … you in there?”

  No answer. Only a muffled voice that sounded like it belonged to a very old person. Whoever he was, he coughed.

  “Huff …”

  I hit it lucky.

  “Arly? Is that you out yonder?”

  “It’s me. Here, I brung ya some eats.”

  Hands reached through the bars. He ate the doughnut in about three or four snaps. Mumbling how good it all was, Huff ate an orange, a sticky bun, and a couple of prunes.