“Miss Hoe knows you’re inside,” I telled him. “She’ll do all she can to spring you out of there.”
“It don’t matter, Arly.”
“Why don’t it?”
“Because … because Essie’s gone to reside at the Leg. That you possible already know. So tell Miss Hoe to work on Essie May’s problem. It’s a whole worse’n mine.”
“I will.”
“Never mind on me, Arly. I didn’t take to schooling much as you. Maybe I’ll be a picker, or work with Ma seeing to the mules. It was dumb to run off. That old swamp back yonder is one spooky hellhole. Murky water, green slime, moss hanging down like ghosts in the night. All them frogs drumming at you from all sides.”
“Gators?”
“Only saw one. Arly, I near to stepped on him. He give out a hiss loud enough to scorch a man’s mind to crazy. So I turned tail and retreated, only to meet Jim Tanner’s dogs. One bited me fearful. I’m still bleedy.”
He ate more prunes, spitting the pits out one-by-one through the bars and into the dusty sand.
“Huff, I’m leaving too.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night, Miss Hoe says.”
“How?”
“Don’t know yet. But it’ll probable be to Moore Haven … at Mrs. Newell’s cousin’s place. We gotta keep in touch, Huff. We’re pals. So sometime, ask Mrs. Newell at Newell’s Boarding House exact where I’m at.”
Huff laughed. “Poor old Arly Poole. He’s so simple he don’t know where he is yet.”
Both of us were giggling. But right then, I stopped, because there was a noise behind me, coming from the roadway, toward town.
“Dogs,” said Huff. “You best scamper.”
I touched his hand, jumped out of the pit, then run, hearing one of the hounds bugle, followed by a man’s deep voice. “Vernon, you hear anything?”
Another man answer in a high-pitch voice. “Nope, I didn’t hear a cussed thing, but my dog certain did. Looky them ear.”
“Which way?”
“Well, maybe over along them bushes by the jailhouse wall. Let’s go see.”
Again I ran. Behind me, two dogs tune up their bugling like they’d treed a coon. Outside the feed store stood an empty ammonia barrel. It stunk to glory. Sharp fumes that smart your eyes. But it was the perfect hiding place. Made to order. There weren’t a dog alive that would keep his nose anywhere near ammonia. Holding my breath, and nose, I crawled inside the barrel, closed my eyes really tight, and prayed.
The dogs come.
Vernon and Deep Voice come too, letting the dogs sniff around. I could hear their panting. But one whiff of ammonia and both dogs turned tail. One even whine. Then another dog come back to brave one more intake. Maybe he smell picker. Mr. Roscoe Broda always claim that there be a stench on us Shack Row people. The dog stay for so long that I was crazy for air. Yet if I breathe, I’d cough. That’d bring the guns.
Ripping off my biggest bandage, the one still soaking with iodine, I held it to where I could see a dog’s snout through the widest crack between the barrel staves. One whiff. The strong medicine smell of iodine caused the hound to yelp, and run away.
“It ain’t nothing,” Vernon said to either his dog or to his friend.
They left, arguing.
As I crawled out the barrel, I took in air, filling my lungs and making me feel alive again. The men and their dogs were close to the jailhouse wall, patrolling, so there was little hope in going back to Huff. Yet I still was too frighted to stray too far away from the ammonia barrel, even though my eyes were stinging.
All along, I was hoping that both Miss Hoe and Mrs. Newell were sound sleepers. If either lady woke up in the night and went to check on me, they’d possible turn to worry.
My progress back to Newell’s Boarding House was slower than torture. No point in making any noise. I’d been careless with Huff Cooter. The two of us must’ve stirred up enough racket to turn the dogs pesky. Or perhaps one of the hounds sniffed the air, caught my scent, and then started fighting his leash.
“Vernon,” I could hear one of the men say, “best we check down under the boat dock.”
Their voices fade to silence.
But still I stay in the thickest and darkest of cover, seeking deep shadow, mindful of the overhead moon. As I walk on tiptoe, I watched where I was stepping, fearful that my foot could rattle a tin can.
By the time I’d made it back to Mrs. Newell’s rear door, my body was close to tuckering out. My eyes were saggy and I still smell of ammonia. While sneaking in the door, through the kitchen, I heard the clock strike.
Bong! Bong!
The sound near to stopped my heart. But I figured it wouldn’t wake up Mrs. Newell as she’d heared it strike the hour for a spate of years.
In bed, I couldn’t sleep. So I toss around some, trying one hip, then another. My eyes were close, yet my memory kept seeing one sight, over and over.
Huff’s hands through the bars.
Chapter 27
I final slept.
In my dreams, however, I kept hearing the bugling and sniffing of those redtick hounds. Plus hearing the voices of the men with guns.
Broda’s men.
Captain Tant’s men.
I could smell the hot breath of Roscoe Broda’s horse, feeling his rope around my neck, dragging me back to Shack Row. His voice cut me like a whip. Also in my dream Knuckle Knapp was playing the piano. The music drifted to the jailhouse from the Lucky Leg Social Palace.
Worst of all, the painted face of Essie May Cooter kept staring at me, from inside the Lucky Leg, looking out. But there were bars at the window.
“Essie,” I shouted in the night. Yet as I yelled, no words come out my mouth. Only a empty echo of silence.
Essie May Cooter could no longer hear me.
She was gone.
The sorry dreaming come to a finish, waking me awash with sweat. My nose could still smell the iodine on my cuts and rope burns.
At first, in the morning light, I didn’t know where I was. There weren’t no shack roof overhead. No roof at all. Instead, a big white square with no holes in it. Didn’t even look like any roof I’d ever saw. Rolling over, my body hurted and smarted.
Iodine was near worse’n injury.
I could still taste Roscoe Broda’s spit on my face. Tobacco spit. Brown and sour. It seemed to stink of crushed sugar cane, mule dirt, and the dusty sand of Jailtown.
I got up.
My clothes were different. Then I recalled last night, and my brain crept into the daylight too.
Somebody knock. The door open a crack, just enough to allow me to see Miss Hoe, smiling. She sure did own a good smile, bright and shining, the same way she look on the Sunday when she paraded down the gangplank off the Caloosahatchee Queen. Like she could rinse all the dirty off Jailtown and buff it into a sparkle.
“Arly,” she said, “you’re already up.”
“Yes’m.”
“I have good news.” She took my hand and held it. “Verna Newell received a letter from Moore Haven, from her cousin.”
“The schoolteacher man?”
“Correct. And I’ve called on Miss Liddy Tant. She has promised to see that Mrs. Stout clear the books, and properly. The Pooles no longer owe at the store, not for rent or for anything else.”
I couldn’t speak. A “thank you” wouldn’t even come out my mouth, the way it ought.
“You’re leaving Jailtown, for good. Mrs. Newell’s cousin and his wife once had a son. He’d be about your age, had he lived. So they want you for their own.”
It couldn’t be true what Miss Hoe was saying. Nobody runs away. I kept remembering Mr. Clete Yurman and how he got dragged back to Shack Row, behind horses. And then working on half wages. But the face of Miss Binnie Hoe was looking at me straight, and I knowed she wouldn’t make up a story. It sure weren’t easy to believe they be people in the world like a teacher.
“I never knowed my ma,” I said. “But I hope when she was al
ive, that Mama be somebody like you.”
It was all I could say to Miss Hoe. Inside, I wanted to tell her that I needed a person to love, to hold close, somebody more than Addie Cooter or Essie, even closer than Brother Smith. Maybe, instead of a wife, I only wanted a mother.
“I have some sad news too,” Miss Hoe told me. “It seems like they caught Huff Cooter and brought him back.”
“I know. I took him food.”
Miss Hoe blink her eyes. “That was foolish. A very risky thing to do.” Then her face turn soft again. “Yet I’m glad you cared enough to be so brave. Now then, until nightfall, you’re not to budge from this house. When the hour comes, I shall be leaving with you.”
“You’re going to Moore Haven too?”
“No. Only you. But we mustn’t risk our chances. Liddy Tant warned me about some of the cruel things that happen here after dark. Even to someone she once loved.”
Around noon, Miss Hoe somehow got Huff Cooter out of jail and returned to his mother.
Mrs. Newell fed me again. Twice. Once in the later morning and then again before sundown. We’d spent the afternoon fitting more clothes on me which Mrs. Verna Newell rolled up for me into a bundle. Inside, she and Miss Hoe tucked some brownie cookies, and something else. It was a thing real special … Miss Hoe’s book about that boy named Tom Sawyer, which she give me because I’d once give her a snake fang toothpick.
Miss Hoe also give me a clean white handkerchief so’s I wouldn’t no longer blow my nose on the ground.
Soon as it reach dark, I said good-bye to Mrs. Newell, thanking her again and again for all her doing.
“Bless you, Arly,” she said.
Miss Hoe sneak us both out the back door of Newell’s Boarding House, and together we walk through the shadows toward Brother’s boat dock. I took notice that my teacher took me clear across the other side of town and nowhere close to the Lucky Leg Social Palace.
I stopped.
“Miss Hoe, I gotta do something before I leave Jailtown. One more thing. Somebody I got to go visit.”
Miss Hoe looked alarmed. “Who?”
“He’s at Shack Row. He’s been there all his life, so I don’t guess he’d be nowhere else.”
“Very well, but I don’t like it. Let’s hurry.”
Somewhere, off in the Florida night, a dog barked, and my body turned wet. Walking quietly through the stand of custard apple trees along the lake shore, we made it to Shack Row. I took Miss Hoe’s hand so she wouldn’t stumble in the shadows. Behind our shack, the only place I ever called home, the moonlight lit up a mound of fresh sand. Miss Hoe waited behind as I kneeled down.
“Papa,” I said, “maybe it ain’t right, but I got to leave you.” I looked up, then down again at his grave. “There be trees above you, Papa, so you’ll rest in shade.”
Stretching out a hand, I grabbed some of his grave dirt and poured it into my pocket. It was all I could take with me of Dan Poole.
“I’m ready,” I told Miss Hoe.
“And I’m glad you came to say farewell to your father.”
At the boat dock, Brother Smith was waiting for us, holding a Coleman lantern. When he spotted us hurrying his way, he smiled, and come to greet us. “Be best we take Arly by water,” he said to Miss Hoe, “on account Mr. Broda’s gunners might lug him back, like they done to other runaway people.”
Reaching a hand inside his shirt, Brother fetched out his mother’s Bible. Opening it gentle, he cracked it almost in half, like he didn’t care which page lay open, then pointed to something with a big finger. The pages yellowed in the lantern light.
Miss Hoe squinted. “Isaiah,” she whispered.
Brother nodded. “Swords into plowshares. Arly, your fighting time be ended. Now comes the time of planting, to harvest.” He flashed a grin at our teacher. “That be all I remember Mama tell me. Once I fought. Now I harvest my fish.”
“Bless your heart, Brother Smith,” Miss Hoe said. “I’m glad you’re reading your Bible now.”
Brother shook his gray head. “No, not hardly, as my sight is too olden. Be a shame to waste a Bible under closing eyes.” He handed his Bible to me. “Arly Poole, you keep it. Thataway, it’ll git readed proper for years to come.”
“Thank you, Brother,” I said. “But I couldn’t take it. That just wouldn’t be right. You give me a lot already.”
Brother Smith pressed it close to my chest. “Take it along. It be all I got to give you. Don’t got nothing else to match your worth.”
It weren’t easy to thank Brother Smith for being such a good brother to me. All I could do was look up at him. His grin telled me that he understood.
“A long time back,” Brother spoke in a low voice, “I hated all white folks with a hot fury, like they’s be a fire inside my belly. Then I see a little white girl fixing to drown. For a breath, I figured I’d just allow her to sink under, for old Okeechobee to take her deep. But it weren’t right. So I dived in to save her. Turned out, she be a Tant child. Captain Tant’s only.” His hand rested light on my shoulder. “On that day, I rescue more’n Miss Liddy. I save my own soul.”
Right then, I knew what Brother Smith was telling me. To forgive.
“Here,” said Miss Hoe, stuffing a scrap of white paper in my pocket, “is the letter and the name of Verna’s cousin, with the street where he lives in Moore Haven. His name is Alfred Bonner.”
I nodded. “Yes’m.”
“Boat’s ready,” said Brother Smith. “Arly, say a proper good-bye to your teacher lady.”
How, I was wondering, would I be able to make words out of all the feeling inside me? Not even the gentleman who’d wrote the book about Tom Sawyer could do it decent enough. All I could do was hug her and hold her close to me, knowing that I’d always remember her goodness. Her little body was shaking, so I patted her shoulder, the same way you’d do for a baby.
“Arly,” I heared her whisper to my ear, “let me tell you again … you’re my morning of life … that one wonder of a child that every teacher dreams of discovering. And there you were, ready to blossom in Shack Row. Now go forward, Arly Poole, and don’t look back.”
I nodded silent.
It come to me what I could say, but I’d save it until the boat would be away from the dock. Only one word, but she’d be pleased that I could master it, and use it proper. It be a word to claim that I weren’t no longer bitter about nothing or nobody. Only thankful.
Brother Smith loaded me and my clothes bundle into his little sculler boat, sat facing me, and start to work the oars. The bottom of the boat felt gritty and damp beneath my bare feet. Sitting on the stern seat, I twisted around so that I could wave to Miss Binnie Hoe. In the night, she stood on the dock, a small woman growing smaller with the first pull of the oars.
I waved. So did she.
Then I spoke the word I was saving to tell my famous lady because she would understand. A name to hold in her heart. Even if I couldn’t no longer see her face, I knew my one good-bye word would make her smile all over.
“Genesis.”
THE END
Postscript
Today, here in Florida, there are thousands upon thousands of little Arly Pooles.
Their names are Marita and Pasco. In many cases, this is the only name they know. They move as pickers do, from field to field, grove to grove, from one Shack Row to the next. They wear rags. Their little faces stare, without expression, from the cracked windows of old school buses, no longer yellow, that will never unload at a school.
These children are thin, and hungry.
And ours.
R. N. P.
How to Help
There are several worthy organizations in Florida that deserve our salute, and our support:
Florida Association of Community Health Centers
Community Health of South Dade
East Pasco Health Center
Florida Community Health Centers
Florida Rural Health Services
Redlands Christi
an Migrant Association
Ruskin Migrant and Community Health Center
Southwest Florida Health Centers
West Orange Farm Workers Health Association
If we all help, we can make sure that children as well as vegetables are growing, and greening, in our Eden—Florida, our home.
Robert Newton Peck
About the Author
The author dedicates this book to another Florida author, a writer of excellent novels such as Angel City and Forever Island. His name is Patrick Smith. Hi Iris.
I also dedicate this book to a teacher who earned thirteen dollars a week in a one-room, dirt road school. Her clothes were as shabby as ours. Yet her torch guided us from the darkness, and our respect for her forever endures.
And to President Calvin Coolidge.
Robert Newton Peck
Books by Robert Newton Peck
A Day No Pigs Would Die
Path of Hunters
Millie’s Boy
Soup
Fawn
Wild Cat
Soup and Me
Hamilton
Hang for Treason
Rabbits and Redcoats
King of Kazoo
Trig
Last Sunday
The King’s Iron
Patooie
Soup for President
Eagle Fur
Trig Sees Red
Basket Case
Hub
Mr. Little
Clunie
Soup’s Drum
Secrets of Successful Fiction
Trig Goes Ape
Soup on Wheels
Justice Lion
Kirk’s Law
Trig or Treat
Banjo
Soup in the Saddle
Fiction is Folks
The Seminole Seed
Soup’s Goat
Dukes
Spanish Hoof
Jo Silver
Soup on Ice
Soup on Fire
My Vermont
Hallapoosa
The Horse Hunters
Soup’s Uncle
My Vermont II
Copyright © 2008 by Robert Newton Peck