“So we didn’t have tickets, even though they were paid for, and when we borrowed a phone and called our relatives in Tyler, they were out. We decided to just go on and catch a train hobo-style and ride in.”
“This ain’t Tyler,” the man said.
“No,” Jane said. “I was just explaining to my cousin Jack here, that he had us jump off the train too soon. Right, Jack?”
“Sure,” I said.
“If this is your cousin,” the man said, “who’s the little one?”
“I ain’t that little,” Tony said. “I’m young.”
“That’s my brother, Tony,” Jane said.
“Uh-huh,” said the man. “Well now, I got an idea for you. You can take it or leave it, but I figure on your way to your rich inheritance, you might be in need of money, ’cause Tyler, that’s still a good twelve, fifteen miles away as the crow flies. And since you ain’t no crows, maybe for you three it’s twenty-five walking by the highway, if you don’t get a ride. You might want to take yourself a break for a while if you need some pocket money, and a job might be something you’d consider.”
“We don’t need a job,” Jane said.
As much as I didn’t like eating beans, I had noted that when we opened our bags, we were down to one can of beans per bag. There were two bags and three of us. We did have some cooking gear, flashlights, and the like, but you couldn’t eat that.
I said, “What kind of job?”
“Fieldwork,” he said.
I had done plenty of that, and so had Jane and Tony. It was our background.
“I don’t want any fieldwork,” Jane said.
“You’ve done it before,” I said.
“Which is why I don’t want any more of it.”
“There’s better things than picking peas,” said the man, “but that’s what I got, and I’m offering a dollar a day for each of you for an honest day’s work.”
“Tony ain’t nothing but a kid,” I said.
“Kids working all over this country,” he said. “What makes him any different?”
“That’s hard work for a kid for a dollar a day,” I said.
“That’s hard work for anyone for a dollar a day,” Jane said.
The man took his boot off the bench and straightened his hat like he needed to adjust it for the wind, but there wasn’t any.
“Considering you’ve done this kind of work before,” the man said, “if I can take your word for it—”
“You can,” I said.
“Then I’ll give you each a dollar fifty a day.”
“That’s not any better,” Jane said.
“There’s plenty that would take the dollar,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jane said. “Where are they?”
“They’ll show up.”
“Then let them,” Jane said.
The man pursed his lips, took off his hat, ran his fingers along the sweatband inside it, wiped his fingers on his pants, and put his hat back on.
“Here’s the deal,” he said, “and this is the last of it. I’ll give you two dollars a day for a day’s work. I don’t pay the colored but seventy-five cents, and some of the whites a dollar. But you three look healthy enough, and I need someone that can work a full day. Maybe the boy here I’ll have to give less. But you two can put a full day in, I can tell by looking at you.”
“Two dollars, huh?” Jane said.
“What I said. Again, colored don’t get but seventy-five cents and most whites only a dollar, so that’s good money.”
“That’s not fair,” Jane said.
“Ain’t nobody said a darn thing about it being fair. Take it or leave it.”
I looked at Jane. I knew she had about three or four dollars left in her pocket. It was okay money for twenty-five miles, but not okay money for once we got there. Who knew how long we’d have to look for Strangler, or if we’d ever find him? She studied my face for a moment, sighed, turned, and looked at Tony. He nodded.
She turned back to the man, said, “All right. We’ll do it. But I want you to know, the way you’re treating those colored people is not fair, and I don’t like it.”
“Say you don’t?”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Thanks for clearing that up,” he said. “It’s good to know where the hired help stands.”
34
“I’m Big Bill Brady,” he said. “And now you work for me. I can give you a ride to the fields in my car, unless your limousine is about to show.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Jane said. “You’ll often be wrong. And as for a ride, why would we need a ride to the fields and it about to be dark? There’s no pea picking can be done when it gets dark.”
“ ’Cause I got barracks for my workers,” he said. “This is a big first-class operation. I sell peas to the canning factory over in Lindale.”
“Barracks?” I said. “You mean a place to sleep?”
“Yep. It’s tidy and it’s got a roof on it, and I serve three meals a day. I got sixteen workers, not counting you three.”
A man came walking along the street then, a tall skinny fellow. He tipped his hat at us, said, “Hello, Bill,” and kept walking.
“How far is this place from here?” Jane said.
“It’s a ways,” he said. “You couldn’t walk it. It’s down in the bottoms. Rich land. It’ll grow any seed dropped in it, and grow it big. Thing is, I want at least five days work if you come on. Five days, you’ll have ten dollars a piece, and you won’t be out for a place to stay, or have to sleep under a tree, and you’ll have meals you won’t have to pay for”—he nodded at our cans on the bench—“and it won’t be beans out of a can. My wife cooks pretty good meals. You’ll eat and sleep in the barracks, but you’ll work a good, long full day for your money and your upkeep.”
“End of those five days,” Jane said, “you’ll bring us back?”
“I will. End of that day, after you’ve had a nice supper, I’ll drive you back into town and let you out right here at this bench. Then you can go your own way. But I need the workers, and my guess is even if you do have a fortune waiting for you on the other end, it’s still a good many miles, and you got to depend on a ride to catch, and you’ll still need some money till you get there. Who knows, the inheritance might fall through. Another relative with better connections might come out of the woodwork. A tricky lawyer, a crooked judge or law official. I’ve seen it happen.”
I knew he knew we didn’t have any inheritance coming, and that he was just buttering us up a little, but he was darn good at it, and I began to think I ought to have some concerns for the inheritance we didn’t have coming.
“It’s a deal, then,” Jane said, “providing Jack and Tony agree.”
We agreed.
“All right, then,” Big Bill Brady said. “Get in the car.”
It probably wasn’t smart for us to get in a car with someone we didn’t know, and I’d be the first to admit that that is a true consideration. But there was things he had on his side. An offer of money for work. A fellow passed him on the street and knowed him enough to say hello, and would recognize us if our bodies turned up in the pea patch. And there was another thing: what he said about those barracks and square meals was right appealing. I was hungry and tuckered out.
Still, I put my hand in my pocket and got hold of my pocketknife so I could pull it out and pop it open. I kept it there while I sat in the front seat of the car and Jane and Tony sat in the back. I glanced back at Jane, saw she’d pulled one of those cans of beans out of one of our bags, and she had it held in her hand in such a way that I knew if the man up front got to acting funny, she’d bring it down on his head like a ton of bricks.
She grinned at me.
Turning back in the seat, I started watching where we were going. I wanted to have my bearings, have some idea of where we were going to end up, and some idea of how to come back the way we had gone.
We drove for a good hour, I figured, and finally we turned of
f onto a narrow road that went down deep into the woods. The road was so bad, Big Bill had to drive slow, and I figured I had to, I could jerk the car door open and leap out. I had leaped off a train going faster, so I knew I could handle this.
But Bill didn’t do anything, or say anything, so I didn’t. He just kept driving, now and again reaching through the open window to adjust his mirror on the side of the car.
The road emptied out into a wide field planted in peas. You could see them in the moonlight, all green and shiny. The trees didn’t start up again until the far side of the field. They was just a dark line on the other side.
We turned onto what was nothing more than a trail and began to ride around the field.
“Them’s just some of the peas,” Big Bill said. “That’s just one of the fields. But they all got to get picked so they don’t ruin. That’s going to be your field.”
The car bumped along a little more, and then we saw a long low-slung building on the far side of the field, near the trees. Bill drove directly for that.
When he got to it, he got out of the car quickly, leaving the door open. He pulled a revolver from somewhere, probably from under his seat, and pointed it inside the car. He said, “I see you with that can of beans in the wing mirror, girl. Why don’t you put it down.”
Jane dropped the can on the floorboard.
Bill wagged the gun at me. “And I know you got your hand in your pocket there, and I’m thinking pocketknife, ’cause whatever’s there ain’t big enough to be a gun.”
“What about me?” Tony said.
“Hell, boy,” Bill said. “You ain’t got nothing.”
“I hope,” Jane said, “that you didn’t bring us all the way out here to steal what’s in our bags, ’cause you are going to be sorely disappointed.”
“Nothing like that,” Bill said. “I brought you here to pick peas, just like I said.”
“But I’m thinking,” Jane said, “not for two dollars a day.”
“You’re smart,” he said.
“Not smart enough,” she said.
“No,” he said, “not smart enough.”
“Will we get a dollar?” Tony asked.
“No,” Bill said. “No dollar.”
“Same as the colored?” Tony asked.
“Even the colored don’t make what I said the colored make,” Big Bill said. “And I ain’t got sixteen workers neither.”
He waved the pistol at me. “Toss that pocketknife on the seat there and get out of the car.”
35
As we walked toward the barracks, Big Bill behind us with the pistol, I felt like the world’s biggest horse’s ass. Being tired and hungry can suck your smarts away sure as a leech on your leg can suck your blood. Right then I felt I couldn’t have been any dumber if my head was cut off.
When we got to the barracks, I noted there were no windows, just some trapdoors in the walls that were held shut with long metal rods that ran through them. The rods were fastened to the building with padlocks on either end. There was no light coming through any cracks. Inside it might as well have been the bottom of the ocean.
“Here’s your nice barracks,” he said. “You can find your place inside.”
“We’ll be missed,” Jane said. “My relatives have plenty of money, and they’ll send the law looking. They’ll find us, and they’ll find you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about those rich relatives I figure you don’t have,” Big Bill said. “Or the law either.”
He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a badge and held it up so we could see it in the moonlight.
It was a sheriff’s badge.
“Dang it,” Tony said.
“Yeah,” Big Bill said. “Dang it. Thing about being sheriff is I pretty much do what I want. I ain’t out to hurt you none. I want you to know that. I just want my peas picked, and I ain’t got the money to get them picked, least not the way I want. And then there’s this: I don’t want to pick them myself. And couldn’t. Not all those peas.”
“I don’t figure you actually planted them,” Jane said.
“No. I had help.”
“Our kind of help?” I said. “Meaning you watched from the sidelines?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.”
“You are not much of a lawman, are you?” Jane said.
“Listen here,” he said, “times is tough. I’m sheriff, and I don’t even have a house to live in. My other property, where I lived, the bank took it. These days, you got to do what you got to do to get along. And these pea patches, that’s how I get along. Them and my car is what I got.”
“So that makes it all right,” Jane said.
“No. But it makes it what it is,” he said.
“This ain’t just five days, is it?” I said.
“I get through with you here, it’ll be more than five days, but I’ll let you go when the job’s done. And if you’re thinking you’ll tell someone, don’t bother. I’ll just say you spent your pay and we didn’t get along while you worked here, and you’re just saying bad things about me ’cause you’re … what’s the word?”
“Try disgruntled,” Jane said.
“That wasn’t what I was looking for,” Big Bill said, “but if that means mad as hell, that’ll do.”
“Close enough,” Jane said.
“Step to the left there,” Big Bill said.
We did. We had been standing in front of a padlocked door. He got the key out of his pocket with his other hand while he held the gun on us. He unlocked the padlock and pulled it off.
“Go on in,” he said.
“I guess,” Jane said, “this means we won’t be getting those three hot meals a day either.”
“Beans,” he said, “same as you got in that can in the car.”
We went inside and he closed the door. Right away, I knew there were people in there with us. I could hear them breathing. It was the kind of breathing you hear when people are worn out and sleeping. It was the kind of breathing my daddy used to do when he was through with a hard day and nothing had really come of it. There was also a smell about the place—the smell of body odor and chickens. I realized this long building had once been a chicken roost. Probably Sheriff Big Bill had raised chickens before he decided to replace them with folks like us and grow peas.
At the far end of the long building, on the back side, was light. The front might have been tight as a fat lady’s corset, but there was a bit of light on the long back wall. It was just a cut of moonlight, thin as a razor, and not that bright, but it showed me someone sitting on the floor with their back to the wall looking at us. I say looking at us, though I couldn’t be certain. I only knew whoever it was, was facing our direction.
My eyes began to adjust a bit, and now I could see that all along the sides of the building, lying on what looked to be feed sacks, were people. I couldn’t tell anything about them, if they were men or women. I could tell that most were big enough that they had to be at least my age.
We walked down between them toward the light. I don’t know exactly why we did that, but I guess it’s the way people are. We’re always looking for the light. At the rear, in the strip of moonlight, we could see who was sitting there now. It was a colored fella, probably our age. He had on overalls. He was awake, and he was looking at us.
“All the room left is back here,” he said “There’s some space along the wall here, you don’t mind sitting with me.”
“Of course we don’t,” Jane said.
“There’s some in here won’t. They don’t want to be by no colored.”
“We’re all some kind of color,” she said.
“Shut up,” someone said from the dark. “Bad enough we’re here, worse we can’t sleep.”
We sat down along the wall and spoke quietly.
“We was snookered by the sheriff,” Jane said.
“Yeah, he got me a week ago,” said the kid. “He promised me a dollar.”
“He promised us two,” Tony said.
“Your promise was better,” said the kid, “but looks like what we got is the same.”
“Yep,” Jane said. “It does. What’s your name?”
“Gasper.”
“Gasper?” Jane said.
“That’s it.”
“That’s an odd name.”
“Tell me about it. I never did get to ask my mama why she called me that. She died. She got the lung disease.”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said.
“Me too,” Gasper said.
“Is this as bad as it looks?” I said.
“It’s worse than it looks. All these folks. They, as you say, was snookered. I was traveling down from Oklahoma looking for work. I got some along the way, and then I got this promise, and it wasn’t much, but I thought a roof over my head, meals, that was worth something. Well, I got a roof over my head, but it’s not so much. I got a bag to lay down on. There’s other bags there for y’all.”
“How thoughtful of Sheriff Big Bill,” Jane said.
“Yeah, ain’t it,” Gasper said.
“We’re from Oklahoma too,” I said. “Around Hootie Hoot.”
“I ain’t never heard of it,” Gasper said. “My mama died and my daddy was already gone. I was living with my grandmother, but she died too. Just got old. I was already doing a man’s work, so I thought I’d go down here and do it and be out of the sand. I’m out of it, but I ain’t no better.”
“We’re down this way looking for Jane’s relatives,” I said. “By the way, I’m Jack, and this is Tony.”
“I guess I’m glad to meet you,” Gasper said, “but all things considered, I don’t know this is such a fine moment for any of us.”
“How’s it work?” Jane said.
“You mean the job?” Gasper said.
“I mean the slavery,” Jane said.
“Yeah, ain’t that something? I thought my people was through with that. But the way it works is you better get some rest. You’ll need it.”
“You don’t look like you’re resting,” I said.
“I was just sitting here thinking on how to get out of this situation. But you better rest. Tomorrow, before the sun comes up, he’ll come get you, and he’s got two other white men with him that’s both as big a skunk as he is. No offense meant on the white remark.”
All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky Page 12
