Leaving where we live, Shack Row, the pair of us head toward Jailtown with the hopes of maybe earning a dime, or even a nickel. We took the shortcut, the one only us picker kids use, because so much of the path was through muddy water. Shoe people didn’t use it.
Of all the sights to see in Jailtown, perhaps the only, the one that captured a stranger’s eye, would be the big lady’s leg atop the Lucky Leg Social Palace. It stood up taller than a shack. Twice as tall, and painted a blushy pink color of female flesh. Covering most of it was a see-through black lace stocking, wove out of real rope, like a catfish net. The rope was coal black. Yet the wide garter that held it up was redder than raw.
As we walked close to the front door, I spotted Miss Angel Free and her silvery-gold hair, dressed in orange satin. Yawning, she was saying a goodnight to a pair of customers, using a sugary voice.
“Come again, gentlemen,” she said. “At my place, we’re sort of akin to an Irish tenor’s mouth.” She giggled. “We never close.”
Miss Angel Free continued to smile until the two dredgers tipped their hats to her, turned their backs, and final went stumbling along the red dust of Jailtown’s main street. Her smile quickly faded and she spat over the porch rail.
Seeing the two of us kids, Huff and me, her face twisted into a hurried frown.
“Beat it,” she told us. “If’n I catch either one of you young tomcats within a sniff of this establishment, I’ll ask Mr. Broda to sic his redtick hounds after you, and chase you into swamp.”
As she cussed at us, waving her arm to spook us away, I could hear the many bracelets rattling on her arm. It was said that Miss Angel own over a hundred bracelets, and each one a gift from an admiring man. They was, I was thinking, a lot to admire with Miss Angle Free. She was about twice the size of Flossie.
Huff and I trotted away.
When we stopped, Huff said, “Miss Angel don’t own the Leg.”
“She don’t?”
“Naw. Captain own it. Old Captain Tant own everthing, near about.” He pointed across the dirt street at Mrs. Stout’s trading store, a place where Papa would have to report to, ever Saturday at sundown, to collect his wages. “Captain own the store too.”
There was usual no wages to collect. Somehow us Pooles fell into owing, so the debt and our shack rent ate up what little Dan Poole had sweat to earn for six days. You couldn’t leave Jailtown in debt. It was one of Captain’s rules. Once in a spell, a man would try to run off. But there wasn’t no safety to reach. Lake on one side. A swamp on two. The swamp held some gators longer than a wagon. The alligators, jaws and all, would treat you kinder than Broda’s dogs.
One night, some years ago, Papa had got hisself more’n a mite shiny on moon, and had whispered secrets he knew to me. About how, a long time ago, Miss Angel had been a kiss or two closer than cozy to Captain Tant. My daddy warned me that I wasn’t ever to repeat it.
I didn’t. Not even to Huff Cooter.
“Gee,” said Huff, “I sort of hoped we could say a howdy to Flossie.” Looking back over his shoulder at the Lucky Leg, he added, “But I don’t guess Miss Angel would allow her to talk to picker kids. Not if she’s watching.”
Flossie was one of the few ladies we knew by name. But that was all.
Ruby and Amber were two others, but Flossie was our favorite lady to say hello to. Then we’d run into the swamp and giggle. Only one time did the pair of us ever work up the gumption for chatter. That was the day Flossie had just arrived in Jailtown and was crying, on account she was homesick. It’d be the only time in her entire life that she’d strayed off from home. She talked to us about her little sister and her dog. Then told us how old she was.
Flossie was thirteen.
It wasn’t Flossie I was sweet on. Instead, I had feelings for Huff’s older sister, Essie May. In all, there was five Cooter children. But really only four. Anybody man or boy, who looked at Essie May Cooter knowed right away sudden that she wasn’t no child. At thirteen, Essie was a small woman.
Huff and I moved through town. We had secret routes, in shadows, along board fences and through alleys, that kept us hid from view. We avoided people who wore shoes on their feet. Shoe people were rich folks, my daddy warned me. Men in shoes could hire you, fire you, tell you where to go, how to live, what to breathe and eat and think. So I never looked at a stranger’s face first. It was always his feet. If a man wore shoes, or big boots, I didn’t dare look up at his face. Because I was too afraid. I looked down.
Huff found a pack of CAMEL cigarettes. They’d gotten wet, turned brown, and their owner had throwed them away. As Huff usual carried matches, we hid underneath an empty house and puffed ourselfs silly.
Butting out his smoke, Huff swore. “Dang it,” he told me. “I just figured out that old Captain Tant even own that pretty little Flossie gal. He own her outright. Miss Angel Free bosses her at the Lucky Leg, but it be Captain who own her, mind and soul.”
His face seemed to be so sad as he was sharing his thoughts. It was as though his own secret candle had sudden blowed out.
“Captain Tant own the jail,” said Huff. “And he own the judge, Jailor Jim Tinner. Own it all. Name me one thing around here that old Captain don’t hold a claim on. Name me one free thing, Arly.”
“Huff,” I said, “the Captain don’t own me.”
Chapter 4
“You hungry, Arly?”
My stomach jumped to Huff’s question, so I told him I was. “Sort of. Got anything in your pockets?”
“Nope.” Huff grinned. “Fact is, these here pants don’t got no pockets. Let’s push over to the dock and see if’n we can scare up some catfish.”
We started on our way, rounded a corner, and saw the lake. Out across Okeechobee seemed like the end of the world, and where the distant waterline met the sky it looked like one got seamed to the other.
“Catfishing sure is a business around here,” said Huff. “You wonder who eats it all.”
My belly was so empty I near telled Huff that I could eat a catfish raw. Catfish in Okeechobee be good-size, fatter than prosperous, and some of the whoppers balance near as much as a dog on the weighing scales.
Fishcamps was ample plenty, so folks told it, all along the lake banks, as well as up into the dead rivers. People called ’em dead because they didn’t seem to go nowheres. Folks at the fishcamps be city men mostly, trying to booze it up, play poker, and maybe hook a keeper. Some of the city gents fetched along costly gear, poles and reels that was worth as dear as way up into dollars. Huff and I used beanpoles, or a stalk of cane would do; and for a float bobber, the corky woodpulp of a custard apple served out really fine. At least the catfish never seem to fuss over it.
“Ain’t no better meal than a slice of Okeechobee catfish,” Huff said. “So, seeing I don’t guess we got us hooks or heave lines, let’s go find Brother.”
“Suits me.”
We found him. He was setting his dock, mending a seine. It had sinkers along one edge and floats lining the other. The net was in his lap and over his beefy legs. Even seated, Brother Smith was taller than I was standing. He was a giant, the only colored man that got treated decent. Even the white folks spoke to him … all except Captain. Brother Smith’s hair be as gray as his shirt and pants. He never wore no shoes.
“Well,” he said in his soft voice, looking at me and Huff. “Hither ye be.”
Brother Smith talked like a Bible, people enjoyed saying. Folks said he was neighbor close to God and would still be so even if he hadn’t been a fisherman. Jailtown didn’t have a church or a preacher, but Brother Smith come righteous close to serving the settlement on both counts. He was, I reckoned, near to big as a church and about as holy as any man, dead or alive, or any lady. Holier, I figured, than a few of the ladies with the red lips who worked for Miss Angel Free back in the Lucky Leg Social Palace.
“Bless you, brothers,” said Brother. He called all men brother, which is how he earn his nickname.
“And bless you too, Bro
ther Smith,” said Huff. He really meant it, I knew. Whenever I was with Brother, I just felt cleaner and stronger than usual. Most folks did. When someone die in Jailtown, white pickers as well as black sent for Brother Smith, so he’d utter sweet words over the grave in the muck soil. I’d never honest seed a church, or been inside one, but the sound of holy music couldn’t ring out any more saintly than the deep voice of Brother Smith’s.
I’d heared that, years and years back, Captain Tant’s daughter had fell herself out a boat and into Okeechobee, and it be Brother Smith who’d dived in and pulled her to shore. That was how come Brother didn’t have to live in Darky Town no more, but had a place to his own. Even so, Brother Smith wanted a church built, but Captain Tant be dead set against it. He didn’t allow no churches at all. But over in Darky Town, the colored people sang hymns after the sun rested down.
Pulling his dwindle stick from a knot in his seine, Brother Smith pointed it at Jailtown’s biggest boat dock. “Tomorrow,” he said, “the big boat be here.”
“Is it true that you’re a prophet?” Huff Cooter asked Brother.
The big man filled his lungs, looked at the brace of us, and let out a long sigh like he was thinking on it. “No, I a fisher, like Simon. I be no prophet. Yet I know a famous person come, as sure as John Baptist knowed about Jesus.”
“Captain’ll be mad,” said Huff.
“Maybe so,” Brother Smith said, “but ol’ Captain ain’t young no more.” As he talked, Brother pointed a finger in a gentle way. “Captain’s getting long of tooth.”
“What’s that mean?”
Brother smiled. “Olden. Like me.”
“Say, what kind of a knot is that you’re twisting into your net?” Huff asked.
“This?” Brother Smith tapped the twine with his dwindle. “It ain’t got a name, like Huff and Arly do. So I calls it a hemplock.”
“Did you create it, Brother?”
His big black face lit up brighter than a Coleman lantern. “No,” he said, poking the dwindle in my ribs, gentle easy. “I just invent it. Because only Almighty God create.”
I saw Brother rest a large paw on Huff’s shoulder and then his other on mine. “Out yonder,” he said, turning us around to look at the water, “out in Okeechobee, I hook me a catfishy. But I couldn’t never create one. Hadn’t I seen one, I never could’ve thunk up a creation. Young brothers, an ol’ catfish favors you an’ me. A fish and boy be only two of God’s ideas.”
As I listened to Brother Smith’s deep voice almost whispering between my ear and Huff’s, I kept on squinting into the sun and the silver it dropped out on Okeechobee. Big as the sea it was, folks said, and in a storm, everyone in Jailtown agree, only a fool would dare to cross. And he’d possible never come back. Because he’d make food for catfish, gars, and gators.
“Brother, how did the lake git here?” I asked our big friend.
“Come,” he answered, “and maybe I can show you young brothers how it begin.”
The three of us walked along the short dock, Brother Smith in the middle, dragging the big seine net over one beefy shoulder, which he then hanged up on pegs that he’d pound into the gray boards of his boat house. At our feet, the shore was sandy in one spot, so Brother bended to it. We hunker down to look.
“Long ago,” said Brother, his fingers smoothing the sand, “the land be flat as firmament. But then God dip the tip of one finger into the Florida dirt, like so, to dent a great hole and that be Okeechobee.”
I couldn’t breathe. “Praise be,” I final said, staring at the lake. “The tip of God’s finger do all that?”
It weren’t easy to measure just how big the Almighty really was. A whole lot bigger than Brother Smith. Too big for my mind to fetch in.
“Brother,” I asked him, “how big’s the world? I actual want to know.”
He shaked his gray head. “Me, I don’t know at all.” His hand reached upward into the sunlight like he could touch beyond it. Then he walked away from the lake shore, as we followed, to where we could rest in the shade of a small stand of scrub pine. I watched his fingers pry off a bark slab and then point to the lighter scar of underbark that now showed on the trunk.
“Children always want knowing how big our world be,” he told us. “But under each chip of bark live a tiny town, all style of life in yonder, too small to see. Or hear. I guess it be there all right. A tiny town of life.”
“You mean like Jailtown?”
Brother nodded. “Almost exact. So I say to you, young brothers, not to ask only how big our world be. Ask how small it go.”
Wrinkling his nose, Huff Cooter leaned in close by the bark scar on the trunk of the pine and squinted. “I can’t see no little town.”
Brother Smith whispered to him. “And nobody in that little town see you. Or care how growed you is. In there, they got their own business, and catfish to cook up for supper.”
“God made that little town too?”
The big face grinned. “Easy,” said Brother. “As easy as the Lord poked a fingertip hole for Okeechobee.”
“I don’t believe it,” Huff snorted. “God really builded a tiny little town inside here?” His finger tapped the trunk. “A entire little town?”
Brother nodded. “As if He had nothin’ else to do.”
Chapter 5
“Whoa still,” Papa ordered me.
Once again, like he’d just do over and over, he dip our hairbrush in the water bucket and attack my thicket of hair. His tongue peek out from one corner of his mouth.
“I ought to barber it,” Papa said to my hair, “on account it’s overgrowed.”
“We don’t have time. The boat’s due.”
He nodded. As he brushed me, I looked at his hair, thin and gray, with an ample of white in it. But he’d comb it down and part it proper, a doing that I hadn’t seen my daddy bother at for years.
“There,” he said, straightening his back. “Now put on your hat and we’ll head along.”
“How do I look?”
“Passable.”
I smiled at him. “Good as Sunday?”
“Right,” he said, tossing the brush into the corner of the shack next to his bed tick. “I want you lookin’ your best today, Arly.”
As we walked along Shack Row, pointed toward the Jailtown dock, I liked wearing my hat. It was white, with a dark blue ribbon around it for a band. Usual I wore it only on the Four of July. But today be special. As we walked, I know my hat was getting a bit too small for my head. It fitted rightly snug. Yet I felt proud to wear it, because Papa had bought it for me. My hat had cost fifteen cents.
“Morning to ya, Daniel.” The voice that had called out Papa’s name had chirp out from the smiling face of our neighbor, Addie Cooter. All six Cooters were headed for town. Essie May too. I tried not to stare at Essie May Cooter. Yet I usual did, even if she be a year or more older than I was.
“The same to ya, Mrs. Cooter,” Papa said back with a wave.
She shook a warning finger. “How many times I gotta warn ya, Dan Poole, to call me Addie? I can’t abide a handsome man like you to address me as Mrs. Cooter.”
I winked at Huff and he winked back, as all eight of us joined the parade of people in Jailtown. It was Sunday and some local folks sure did honor it. Dressed up brighter than Christmas, and that included the ladies who usual abided inside the Lucky Leg Social Palace.
The Lucky Leg ladies wore red aplenty on their lips, like they slapped it on with a trowel. I notice Huff Cooter grin as he looked at Miss Angel in her bright green satin dress, trimmed with white lace. Even her fan was green, to match. She sure was a stepper.
We all headed for the boat dock, the very biggest one in town, to greet the Sunday boat that usual come across Okeechobee from Belle Glade. Folks said the steamer sometimes stopped at Pahokee and that it would today, to pick up our famous lady so’s she could cross the lake to Jailtown.
“I wonder,” I telled Huff, “if Captain Tant will show today. Or will he just stay in h
is big gingerbread house and not care.”
His mother answered my wondering. “Captain won’t come.” Her voice lowered. “Mr. Tant don’t want this stranger here. Neither do Broda. But I do know who put up some money for the boat ticket.”
Papa raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Mrs. Cooter moved her big body a step closer to where Papa stood, as we’d found a strip of shade next to a cane warehouse wall. “I heard tell it was Miss Liddy.”
Nobody in Jailtown mention Miss Liddy Tant a whole lot. She was Captain’s daughter. Folks said she was to get wed one time, years and years ago, to one of the plume hunters who’d come to Okeechobee to gun down egrets. But no wedding ever took place, because Captain Tant got Miss Liddy’s boyfriend spook off, or killed. Anyhow, he got took out in a fish boat and never brought back.
“You know,” I heard Addie Cooter whisper to my daddy’s ear, “they say that them two, Captain and Miss Liddy, live in their big ol’ house and don’t never speak a word to one another.”
“Is that true?” Papa asked.
“Gospel. That poorly woman ain’t been seen out of doors in a whole sack of seasons. Some say not since the tragedy. And you want to know who told me?”
My father nodded.
“Roscoe. Between you and me, Dan Poole, I always had me a hunch that Roscoe Broda would up and wed Miss Liddy Tant and has felt thataway since before Noah’s flood. He never married, ya know. Still lone. I figure Roscoe’s forty and Miss Liddy’s ten year older. But he’d wed her tomorrow if the chance come ripe.”
Papa grunted. “Love’s a circus.”
I saw Addie Cooter poke Papa with her hand. “Love,” she said, “ain’t got nothin’ to do with Roscoe’s courting Miss Liddy. It’s the land he’s after. And I figure both Captain and his daughter can see right through Roscoe Broda, and I’m dang glad they do.”
“Hey, there’s the judge,” Huff said.
Sure enough, there he was, in his Sunday black suit, mopping his round face with a square hanky. Jailor Jim Tinner wasn’t what the folks in town called him out loud. To his face, they usual called him Judge Tinner, or just Judge. He was the official law in Jailtown. Judge Tinner also got put in charge, by Captain, of running our jail. And whenever there was enough prisoners to form up a road gang, Judge took to be boss of the chainers. Some said he was a lawyer.