Arly

by Robert Newton Peck

“That web would have covered half the side of a house. And I walked into it, then panic hit me, so I bolted and caught my foot in a tangle of gourd vines and tore my hand on the spines of a fanpalm stem. Some country.”

  “I bet you learned ample,” I said.

  “Well, I’m convinced that to survey the total territory around Okeechobee will require a right smart amount of patience, time and misery.” Mr. Mayland cracked a palm with a fist. “I met an interesting fellow, though. Calls himself Ed Nocker. He’s got one ear and lives in a shack over on one of those dead rivers I was telling you boys about.”

  “What’s he do?” Huff asked.

  “He’s a squatter. Claims that Roscoe Broda’s been attempting to run him out of there for years, but he won’t budge. When I met up with Ed, he was skinning down a rattler that was near a foot longer than I am tall. Then he boiled the snake’s head to loosen up the fangs.”

  “Honest?”

  Mr. Mayland nodded, reaching in his pocket to pull out a white curved needle. Then a second one. He gave one to me and the other to Huff.

  “Here ya go, boys. Ed Nocker says that if you ever want a toothpick that’ll last you a lifetime, you can’t beat a rattler fang.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Huff thanked him, too. “What else do you learn out in the swampy places?”

  “Well,” he said, “I learned enough misery to make me wish I’d stayed myself in school longer, and maybe now had me a softer job.”

  Chapter 11

  I raised my hand. “I know.”

  It was another morning in the vacant store that was next to Mrs. Stout’s place. Miss Binnie Hoe had just took a white thing and drawed three lines on the board wall and then asked us what it was. She nodded to me and my grin.

  “Arly?”

  “It’s a F,” I said.

  “Very good.” Miss Hoe smiled. “Today we’re going to try and remember some of the good things, the words, that begin with the letter F.”

  “Fox,” I said real quick, “and Florida.”

  “And,” said Miss Hoe, “we will also give everyone a chance to recite.” She eyed me real steady as she said it and then shifted her look to the back of the store. Turning around, I saw Brother Smith stand up. There was a wide smile on his face.

  “Fish,” he said. I don’t know why we all clapped our hands, but we did, and I could see how joyous it made Brother. He clapped, too. “I can learn,” he said. “Can’t I, Missy Hoe?”

  “Yes, indeed you can.” Miss Hoe looked more than just some pleasured. “Now then,” she went on, holding up the white thing, “this is chalk. It can draw pictures and also make a letter. Who wants to come forward and draw a great big F on the wall?”

  Nobody moved. Next to me, I saw one of the two new kids, a dredger’s boy, slump down low in his seat, so he’d not git called on by our teacher lady.

  Miss Hoe stepped forward, handing the chalk to Essie May Cooter. Essie didn’t reach out to take it, not at first, but then she did. She went up to the board wall and stood there in her short dress. Her bare legs sure looked pretty. As she turned around with her back to us, facing the wall, she reached the chalk up real high and her skirt skinned up, too. It covered her sitdown but not much more. She started to draw an F and her whole body moved, almost like she was dancing it, instead of just drawing. One of her legs bent a bit into a right beautiful curve.

  “That’s right,” said Miss Hoe. “You made a good line for the trunk of the letter, straight down. Now just add the two arms.”

  Essie May just stood there, looking at her one big line. Then she chalked the two little lines, to make an F. She did the top one first. Making the bottom one, she bent down some, and her own bottom nudged out real handsome.

  “That’s very good, Essie May,” said Miss Hoe.

  Huff’s sister smiled, handing the chalk thing back to Miss Hoe, and then she come back to take her chair, near mine. There be little spots of white on the ends of her fingers. Somehow, she sensed I was looking at her, real hard. I saw a look in her eyes that I hadn’t ever seen before. It made me wonder if Essie ever looked at Mr. Roscoe Broda that same slow way. Maybe it sounds dumb, but Essie May could smile with her whole entire person.

  My back started to itch.

  “Now,” said Miss Hoe, “an F all alone does not spell a word. But if we add two more letters, it can help. This letter,” she said, using the chalk on the wall, “is an A. And this letter is a T. See how a T looks like a tree?”

  She now had something of the board that looked like FAT. “Can anyone guess what these three letters now spell? It’s a word.”

  Nobody spoke up.

  Looking over at Huff Cooter, I could see that he was near as puzzled as I was. I wanted to guess it was fish, but I decided to keep mum and sweat it out.

  “It spells fat,” Miss Hoe told us. “This is an A and this is a T. Together, they spell AT. But when the F is in front, it makes fat.”

  I felt ample glad I hadn’t said fish.

  “Fat,” said Brother Smith. “That’s right good.” As he grinned, his big hand patted his belly.

  Miss Hoe drawed a curve. “This,” she told us, “is a C.”

  People in Jailtown oft said that Okeechobee used to be a sea, so the sound of it got me a mite mixed up. Besides, the chalk C that Miss Hoe made sure weren’t blue, like the lake. It was whiter than the inside of a moc-snake’s mouth. Like cotton.

  “C - A - T spells cat,” said Miss Hoe.

  Cats sure don’t swim in no sea, I was thinking, and not in no lake. Miss Hoe was going too fast. Brother Smith was scratching his head, like me. I sure didn’t figure that school was going to be this thorny.

  “This is an R,” said Miss Hoe. “And now R - A - T spells a word. It’s a little gray animal with a long tail that sometimes nibbles into our food, late at night, unless we own a cat to catch him. Who knows which animal R - A - T spells?”

  “Mouse,” I said. All the kids clapped, so did Brother Smith, and it made me feel prouder than pie. Essie May looked at me respectful.

  “Arly,” said Miss Hoe, “that was a very brave answer. And I want you to be pleased that your answer was very close to being correct.”

  “It was wrong?” As I ask the question, I felt my hands melting.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s just say it was almost right. But I want you to change your answer, Arly. Because if F - A - T is fat, and C - A - T is cat, then this R sound … right here in front, makes …”

  It hit me! “Rat,” I telled her. “Did I read, Miss Hoe?”

  “Yes,” she said, in a husky tone. “You can read, Arly Poole.”

  It was right then that Brother Smith jumped up and come to me, pulling me up and out of my chair, waving me around in the air in circles, and clogging a jig at the same time. It made me dizzy, but it felt precious fine. I don’t guess I’d ever felt like I was a famous person or anything any bigger than a picker’s kid on Shack Row. But now I was.

  I was Arly Poole, a reader.

  It took poor Miss Hoe near to all her polish just to work us all quiet again, and back into our chairs. We’d sure made the dust fly in that only empty store, hooting and hollering like we done. Miss Hoe sneezed. At the doorway, I saw Mrs. Stout poke her face in, as if wondering what was going on and was we holding a celebration. Then she just sort of shook her head, real disgustful, looking like she’d up and ate what didn’t settle in too sweet. Papa once said he thunk that Mrs. Stout got weaned on a pickle, and it sure put me into a giggle, just thinking about it in school.

  “Rat,” said Brother Smith. “I can read it, too, Missy Hoe. I can hear a R sound, like the way Arly do.”

  “Bully for you,” Miss Hoe said to Brother. “See how we all gallop ahead? Now, while we’re rolling, let’s think of another word that might start with an R.”

  “Rump,” said Huff. He stood up and slapped his own backside. “Rump got an R sound. Ain’t that right, Miss Hoe?” As he said it there was an edge in his voice, like he wanted to ril
e her. But I could see that Miss Binnie Hoe got sawed out of tough bark.

  “Yes,” she telled Huff Cooter, “and so does rude.”

  Chapter 12

  Brother Smith and I stayed after school.

  While I busied our old broom to lick out the sand, Brother rag the walls clean. Then he left with Miss Hoe, walking along behind her, holding his big hat. The two of them looked like a tot of a little girl leading a plowhorse.

  Brother done the same yesterday.

  When school ended, he’d walked several strides behind Miss Binnie Hoe back to Newell’s Boarding House, the place where Miss Hoe’d took herself a room. Some of the dredgers boarded there, at Mrs. Newell’s. I didn’t like the men of the dredger crews a whole ample lot. They’d usual hang around evenings in Jailtown to point their dirty fingers at people and laugh. Yet I had me a happy hunch not a manjack would point too much at Miss Hoe when Brother Smith was nearby. His fists knuckled up bigger than some men’s shoes.

  Huff’s ma told us once that whenever she’d look at Brother Smith’s face, she could almost hear a hymn. Addie figured that God sort of looked some like Brother.

  There wasn’t any church in town. Papa said it was a crime to have no place to worship. So I guess Jailtown was ample lucky to have a man who thought that all men were his brothers.

  When I left the vacant store, our school room, I headed home for Shack Row. Then I saw Essie May Cooter talking to Miss Angel Free who was boss of the Lucky Leg. She was all spank out in a red satiny dress. Miss Angel sure could gussy up her person real splendid. She was smiling at Essie, and I guessed I knew why.

  Miss Angle took off the fancy bonnet she was wearing to let Essie May try it on her own head. Then she tied a bow beneath Essie’s chin. But as far as I could see, the bonnet didn’t fit Essie May too proper. The fancy of it didn’t fit her face neither. To my way of thinking, Essie May Cooter didn’t need a frilly hat to pretty her. In fact, seeing her in Miss Angle Free’s bonnet made me notice her ugly for the only time. It was all I could do to keep from running over to where the two of them were standing, untie the bow, then snatch the fancy bonnet off Essie’s head. Yet I held myself in rein. To stir trouble with Miss Angel Free would only hatch worse trouble, and Mr. Roscoe Broda might harden the field work on Papa.

  Folks in Jailtown usual claimed that Miss Angle was our number-one handsome woman. But right then, as I watched her sweet-talking Essie May, she looked downright piggy, and like she was fixing to throw mud on Essie May’s life, and on mine.

  If only there be some way to make sure Essie May Cooter never goes to live at the Lucky Leg. The thought of it near to killed me. Essie just weren’t intended to be one of those dressed-up ladies with color on her face. Not that I was holding myself up to be better than the fancy women. Just different. Essie was too. People in Jailtown seemed to believe that, sooner or later, Captain Tant would own us all, heart, mind and soul. Maybe they actual didn’t like believing it, but a passel of them nodded to it, sure as tomorrow.

  As I watched, Miss Angel stuck a hand into her beaded purse and pulled out a looking glass.

  “See yourself,” she telled Essie. “You look so pretty natural in my bonnet. Honest do. Why, I declare, people will be coming to town on the boat someday, just to sport a look-see at you, Essie. And I’d wager they’ll snap your picture. If I had a camera right now, I’d take your photograph myself.”

  Miss Angel carried on and on.

  So I turned myself away and headed alone for Shack Row, a place where there weren’t no fancy ladies or gussy-up clothes. For some reason, the gray boards of Shack Row and the plain of its people was a welcome sight, a lot more comforting than the picture I could remember of Miss Angel’s bonnet on Essie’s head. Thinking on it turned my hands to fists. Somebody ought to stand up to Roscoe Broda and to Captain Tant.

  But, as I recalled about school and Miss Hoe, I sure weren’t fixing to ever sass Miss Liddy Tant. No sir. Because they way I figured, it be Miss Liddy who’d done Jailtown a decent turn.

  “Thank you, Miss Liddy,” I said to the heavens.

  There weren’t much sense in hanging around Shack Row, and I didn’t feel much like looking up Huff Cooter. He’d only badmouth our school. So instead, I took me a stroll toward the big lake. Okeechobee could certain shine in the afternoon, like the sunshine near to polished it into silver. Squinting and shading my eyes with a hand, I looked out across the water to where its edge greeted the sky. Sure was a piece away. It took me to wonder what lay beyond Okeechobee.

  “Whatever it be,” I said, “it’s distant.”

  In school today, Miss Hoe said that our entire world was round, like an orange she was holding in her hand. Nobody believed it except me. Because whatever Miss Hoe said, to my thinking, was the Gospel truth. Our teacher also said we didn’t have to take her word for it, because all we had to do was level our eyes across Lake Okeechobee and take a look for ourselfs. We’d notice that the lake appeared to be flatter than a board, but it weren’t, as there was a curve to it like the outside of her orange.

  “Learning,” Miss Hoe had told us, “is something like an orange too.” On the outside, it weren’t too good to taste. Even bitter as a orange rind. But inside, once the learning settles in your head, it becomes sweet. Sweeter than candy.

  To prove it, Miss Hoe broke the big orange apart. But first, we had to taste the skin. Then the inside. Huff Cooter had made a face at me, as if to say that Miss Hoe weren’t telling anything that he already didn’t know. Yet I reasoned real quicksome what she was driving at, and it made a spate of sense.

  I spotted a rowing boat.

  The boat was heading my way, away off to the left, nosing through the shadows of the overhanging cypress trees, riding low in the water. Two men were aboard. One was rowing. It made me itch to learn who they were and what they were doing. As the boat nosed closer, it was plain to see that the two gents was plume hunters.

  Their sculler boat was loaded high with a cargo of dead birds. A lot were white egrets. Some was pink curlews and spoonbills. One orange flamingo. Near the stern, where the man who weren’t rowing sat with a pair of shotguns, was a basket of dead parakeets. It weren’t a happy sight to see. Alive birds are. Not these.

  “Boy!” one of the men shouted to me. “What be the name of this here sorrowful place?”

  “Jailtown,” I said.

  The man who’d spoke at me was bigger than the rowing man. He was smaller and leaner. The big man who was sitting the stern spat a brown stream of tobacco juice into the lake, just before I heard the prow of their rowboat grind her nose into the shore sand, then rock to a rest.

  “Yeah,” the man said, “this here’s the right town.”

  “How come you got to shoot so many of them pretty birds?” I asked.

  Squinting at me like I was three kinds of fool, the big man answered. “Hats,” he said. “Ladies who dress up real fancy, in city places, wear all them birdie feathers on a hat.” He spat again. “But it ain’t no business of yours.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t guess it is. But maybe it’s sort of a shame all them little birds got to get gunned.”

  The small man spoke up. “You’re right, son.”

  “Shut up, Joshua,” the big gent spoke. “Besides, I took me a notice of how you’re usual eager to pocket the money.”

  In turn, the two plume hunters climbed out of their sculler. As they done so, their heavy boots stepped on the pile of birds. Even thought they were all dead, it was more than hurtful to watch.

  “You want to earn a dime, boy?”

  I nodded.

  “There a livery stable in town?”

  “Yes.”

  The big man flipped me a dime, but I dropped it. Bending over to fetch it from the mud, I heard the bigger gent laughing at me.

  “You hightail yourself to the livery stable and git somebody to snake back here pronto with a mule and a buckboard wagon. Hear? It’s still light enough to go back into them dead rivers and kill
us another load.”

  Inside my hand, I could feel the dime. And it would do handy. But I couldn’t make my feet go. If I fetched the wagon in a hurry, maybe a lot more birds would die.

  “Git going!” the big man yelled.

  The edges of his dime was biting into my hand, because I was squeezing it so hard and wanting it even harder.

  I tossed him the dime and ran.

  Chapter 13

  I couldn’t eat.

  All I could do was keep seeing that boatload of dead color, all them little silent birds. So I boiled some cabbage for Papa and made up a story, a lie, saying I’d already ate before he’d climbed off the picker wagon.

  “I’m wore out, Arly,” he said, then folded down to his tick and sound like he was instant asleep. His breathing wheezed in and out.

  After soaping his plate and our cookpot, I went outside our shack, around back where the sand was soft, to scratch a few letters in the dirt. I made all the letters that Miss Hoe learn us. Ever single one, and did them over and over, spelling the little words. Most words come right easy on account there be only three letters inside each one. Shack was a leadpipe cinch to spell.

  S - H - C.

  Yet as I studied the letters I’d fingered into the sand, the word didn’t look right, on account I’d forgot to place a A in it. Words usual had a A in the middle, like rat and cat and hat. I sighed. Education sure could be thorny. In school, being wrong had a way of cutting my brain, the like way a stem of a fan palm could cut a hand. It was hurtsome. But the bleeding was all inside me where only I could feel the misery of it.

  Even though I was staring down at my letters I’d drawed in the dirt, my mind kept on seeing the dead birds.

  It was near dark, and evenings were usual a happy time for me, because Papa was resting in shade and not stooping in the heat to endless rows of vegetables. But I couldn’t turn myself too joyous. It wouldn’t be right to allow a happy feeling on a day when so many of God’s ideas all got scatter-gunned into a pile of feathery death. Just for hats.