Miss Free won the lag and so it was her honor to shoot the break shot.
“What’ll we play?” she asked my teacher. “Do you fancy straight pool? Your choice.”
“Eightball,” said Miss Hoe.
Miss Angel lifted her chin with a dash of pride. “Good. Eightball happens to be what I’m best at.”
“Second best at,” one of the sporty gents hollered out, and the rest of the guys laugh to beat all.
Charlie reset the balls for Eightball, placing the black one in the forward center, and the table was ready. Drawing back her cue, Miss Angel slammed a break shot to scatter the balls like a covey of flushed quail. A yellow ball dropped. The one ball.
“I got the solids,” said Miss Angel, meaning the solid-colored low number balls, one through seven. “You take stripes.”
“Nifty,” said Miss Hoe, “because, for me, those big ringers always seem to drop easier.”
Miss Angel sunk a six ball. Then a four. But she missed on the three and muttered a salty word. It was a word I didn’t want my teacher to hear. If’n she heard it, she didn’t at all let on. Instead, she sunk a long twelve ball, a short ten, banked the green-striped fourteen. Then missed. Miss Angel missed too. Her three ball clogged a corner pocket but wouldn’t drop.
“That’s fine by me,” she said. “It’ll block that pocket as long as I desire it to.”
Miss Hoe shot a tidy combination shot, the thirteen into the fifteen. Then missed. Miss Angel ran two balls but that was it. Now the white cue ball was froze to a rail, nowhere near any of the stripers, nine through fifteen.
With a smirk on her face, Miss Angel nodded at the cue ball. “I don’t guess I left you much.”
Bending down low, Miss Hoe sighted up the table. “Enough,” she said, and double-banked a long ball, twice across.
“That,” said a man, “was a dilly.”
However, she missed her next shot. Somebody sneezed during her forward stroke and the cue ball met the ringer too fat. The striper rounded the corner and come to rest at center table.
During the game, the rowdies who stood around were quiet for a change, like they’s all watching a prayer. It was easy to figure that Miss Angel Free had emptied their pockets at the old pool table, inside, so maybe some of the gents were rooting for the schoolmarm. However, when either lady score a difficult ball, like a long shot with a lot of green, or cut a thin shot into a side pocket, the men would clap.
Other than the white cue ball, there were now only three object balls left on the table. A red five ball for Miss Angel to sink, Miss Hoe’s orange thirteen and the last ball to drop for either player … the black eight.
Miss Angel smiled and chalked her cue.
“My dear Miss Binnie,” she said, “would you be opposed to placing a modest wager on the outcome of this game, just to make the event more … interesting.”
“Miss Free, I’m not a gambling woman. Leastwise, not until I got up the gumption to come to Jailtown. Besides, what little capital I have will be due to Mrs. Newell, for my room at the boarding house.”
“Doesn’t have to be money. A wager can pit one value against another, deed for a deed. Are you game?”
My teacher nodded. “I’m game. What’s your bet?”
“If you win,” said Miss Angel Free, “I’ll donate a book to that empty-store schoolhouse of yours. A book by Mr. Mark Twain himself.”
“Done,” said Miss Hoe. “And if you win, Miss Free, I shall bring clean rags, soap, and a bucket, and I shall personally wash those two large windows in the front of your charming residence.” She nodded at the Lucky Leg Social Palace.
The two ladies shook hands.
It was Miss Angel’s turn. She missed her shot on the red five by an eyelash. The ball merely hung to the lip of the pocket, yet it didn’t fall.
Miss Hoe’s shot was a toughie. The cue ball was rail tight, and her orange-striped thirteen was away down at the table’s far end. The crowd held its breathing. So did I. Drawing back her cue, Miss Hoe stroke a hard shot. A beauty! The cue ball cut the thirteen into the corner, and then kept rolling, quite fast. Back it bounced, hit the black eight, and the near corner pocket gulped it down.
Miss Hoe lost.
That’s what happens when you sink the eight ball by mistake. It had to be a called shot. Yet her shot on the thirteen had been a miracle. A home run.
“You win,” said Miss Hoe. “I’ll wash those two windows.”
“It was still a nifty,” said Miss Angel.
Chapter 16
We left the Lucky Leg.
Yet not before Miss Binnie Hoe shook hands with a few of the dredgers, and told them their kids would be welcome at the school.
“Arly,” she said, “it’s still early.”
“Yes’m.”
“Lately I don’t retire as promptly as I used to, so let’s take ourselves a stroll, you and I.”
“If you want.”
Then I up and asked her if there be any one place she’d be fixing to visit.
“Well,” she answered, “seeing as you’re offering me a choice, I shall make one.” She looked smack at me. “I should like to see Shack Row.”
I stopped. “No,” I said, “you won’t cotton it much.”
“Perhaps you’ll allow me to judge for myself.”
“But it’s where pickers live, Miss Hoe. People like me, and Papa … and the Cooters.”
“You’re not a picker yet, Arly Poole.” Miss Hoe stared me right in the eyes. “And if Binnie Hoe is as capable a teacher as I’m convinced she is, you may not ever be one.”
“Honest?”
“Cross my heart and hope to teach. Which way to Shack Row? Is it far?”
“Not very.”
Stopping, I bended myself over, to blow my nose into the dirt. But then, as I straighted up again, Miss Hoe looked at me in a strange way, like I’d done something wrong.
“You don’t have a handkerchief?”
I give her a grin. “No, not me. Papa says that a poor man blows his snot on the ground, but a rich man puts it all back in his pocket.”
Miss Hoe shook her head, like she couldn’t think of anything to say. And I was sort of decided that schoolteachers sure git some odd notions. We walked along together. Seeing as Huff Cooter and I used every single shortcut in Jailtown, along with the fact that Shack Row was only as far as the edge of town, Miss Hoe and me got there sudden quick.
“Which house is yours?”
“Over there. But I don’t guess Papa’s got an eye for company coming. Dan Poole might be in his underwear. Or worse.”
Miss Hoe stiffen her spine. “In that case, Arly, I am sure we will first knock before entering. We’ll send you in first. I can’t admit that I’d favor your father’s calling on me when I was in my underwear, so surely we can afford him some preparation.”
I laughed right out. “Miss Hoe, you surely got a wit to you. You certain do.”
“A teacher with no wit, young man, wouldn’t last too long this side of the insane asylum. Now scoot, and tell Mr. Dan Poole that he has a caller.”
I bolted ahead and into our shack. Papa was there, sitting in the dark like usual, down on his tick on the floor.
“Papa,” I said, “we got company.”
Fading light from a crack in the cookstove lit up his face so I could read his surprise. He jumped up to his feet. I’d been right when I’d warned my teacher that he’d be in his dirty old underwear.
“Here,” I said, “pull on your pants.”
“Who’s coming?” he asked me, stuffing in one skinny leg and then the other. “Tell me it ain’t Broda.”
“It’s Miss Hoe.”
“The teacher?” As he said it, his fingers let loose of his garment and his pants fell to around his ankles. I helped him fix decent, but then I smelled his breath, which was foul on moon whiskey.
“Papa, you best rinse out your mouth with vinegar, or hold back breathing.” I wasn’t mad with him. Nobody’d fault a picker fro
m a swig or two of moon after a day of toting cuke baskets to a wagon. Besides, he never oft got what you’d call shirttail drunk. The word he used on himself was meller.
He gargled a mouthful of vinegar, spat it to the dirt floor, and turned back to me.
“Reckon I’ll do.”
“Okay,” I said, “because we sure ain’t fixing to keep a lady like Miss Hoe waiting outside in the bugs and chizzywinks.” I went back out the door and called to her. “Miss Hoe?”
It was dark in Shack Row. So I took her by the hand and into our shack where I struck a match to light the table candle. Slowly I saw its flicker begin to yellow up her smile.
“Mr. Poole?”
“Yes’m,” he said. He bent a bow, and to watch him pull it off so proper made me feel righteous proud. There always had been, I had noticed, a gent inside my daddy, as if he’d almost could have been somebody. At the small table in the corner, where we ate, sat a pair of three-leg stools, one of which I dusted off quick with my sleeve, to offer to Miss Hoe. She sat, looking stiff and more than a meager away from home.
“Dan,” she said, “you can call me Binnie.”
“Oh, no,” Papa said real quick. “I don’t guess I could ever do such, Miss Hoe. Wouldn’t be proper to speak to a genuine schoolteacher by her Christian name.”
“As you prefer, Mr. Poole. We shall remain formal. However, I am anxious to tell you, sir, how pleased I am that you allow your Arly to be my pupil.”
I near to fell over. She’d called Papa sir. Nobody ever done that for him. Never. And him just a picker. There sure were a lot to Miss Hoe that I didn’t reason out. As she talked to him, I figured something real crazy … and it was that if’n Miss Hoe ever talked to Captain Tant, she’d speak just like she be conversating with Dan Poole, or me.
“Thank you, teacher,” said Papa. “You know, me an’ Arly don’t get visitors here to the shack. Leastwise, not famous ones.”
“I gather that these houses here belong to Mr. Tant. Is that correct?”
“Yes indeedy,” Papa told her. “Truly be. Captain, he own mostly everthing in the whole world. Even me.”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Hoe, “and then perhaps not. I won’t stay long, Mr. Pool, because I do have to trot back to Mrs. Newell’s and get my rest. Yet I did want to meet you, sir, and report to you how bright a boy you’ve raised.”
It’s hard to strut when you’re seated to a low three-legger, but I near to did it. Miss Hoe sure knowed how to dance somebody’s heart, namely mine.
Papa took a step to me and rested his skinny arm around my shoulder. “Arly’s the salt of the earth. If’n anything ever happened to him it’d rip the sun from my sky. He’s all I got. And because they’s so much inside him, I reckon I’m a rich man, in ways.”
“Mr. Poole, your son can learn to read.”
Papa give my shoulder a pat. “You know what, Miss Hoe? Arly says he can teacher me, so’s maybe I can just swagger myself over into Jailtown some Saturday night, and buy the weekly.”
“Sure you can Papa. Real soon.”
“Yessir, I aim to plunk down my two cents, pick up my newspaper, and then sit right prominent on the town bench, and read it.” Papa turned complete around, waving his hands, like he was in a jig. “Wouldn’t that be grand, Miss Hoe?”
Her voice answered him very quiet. “Yes, it would, Mr. Poole. Very grand indeed.”
“I’m glad you come to Jailtown, Miss Binnie Hoe. Sorry, I just got worked up. But I’m sure grateful you come to do teachering.”
Miss Hoe stood up. “So am I.”
Chapter 17
Papa woke me.
“Listen to her, Arly. It’s so nifty to harken to a morning mockingbird. I don’t guess I’d ever want to live nowhere there weren’t no mockingbirds to welcome a morn.”
The straw inside my tick whispered as I rolled off it, up and onto my bare feet. The dirt felt coldsome and damp.
“Mules’ll be coming soon,” I heard Papa say. “I s’pose Addie’s already gone to fetch ’em. She’ll be back sudden.” He rattled the shaker on our little cookstove. Then we fixed what we could locate, some stale biscuits, and boiled three or four handfuls of oatmeal. There was only a few grains of brown sugar left, so I give it all to Papa, on his oats.
We heard the mockingbird again.
My daddy smiled at me. “My,” he said, “that there old bird know so many callings. One after another. He’s just like you, Arly boy. Inside you, there’s a ample lot of songs. Not just a picker song. You got a whole band concert. I’m hoping you’ll learn to warble ever one.”
A mule brayed.
“Best I git myself aboard,” he said.
Still chewing, we both run up the Shack Row road to greet the mules. The wagon weren’t there yet. It was a rare morning when Addie Cooter weren’t on time and waiting to load on pickers. As we stood in the gray light, the sun nudged awake, and our long shadows got born on the dirt.
Roscoe Broda come cantering on his bay horse. Nobody spoke to him or to anyone else. When he looked at people, they’d just stare down to ground, afraid to heft up their eyes. But not me. I always traded Roscoe look for look. Maybe that be the reason he reined his horse too close to me that morning and made me step back.
“You,” he said to me. “Dan Poole’s kid …” He hadn’t talked up to me much before, and never in a friendly way. So I was took back by it. “We’re short-handed on the sugar docket. So you march yourself over to the cane mill, boy, and see Lem Rathaway, hear?”
“I got school,” I said.
Roscoe spun his horse around, kicking spurs to him. He crowded closer this time. “No you ain’t, sassy boy. You an’ Addie’s lad report to the cane mill.”
I saw the look on Papa’s face. “No,” he said to me in a husky voice. “I don’t mean ya to go, Arly. You got to take your schooling.”
“Dan Poole, you got some words to say, you best shout ’em right out heavy so’s I can hear ’em all,” Roscoe Broda said.
Papa blinked. “My boy’s got school today. Don’t make him work no sugar mill, Mr. Broda. Please let him go to school.”
“Don’t matter to me if’n his funeral’s today,” Mr. Broda said. His gelding danced around ample, and I was thinking that even his animal feared him more than some. The horse was sweaty and wild-eyed. “Tell your skinny brat to git over and check in with Lem. Him and young Cooter.” He pointed his horsewhip at my face. “And you git a move on, pronto.”
“Please.” Papa took off his hat. “I’ll work double today. I can pick for two, Mr. Broda, to free up an extra hand. I can even work through the noon and not eat nothing.”
“Dan, you don’t even work single no more. You work double? Why, you ain’t got the lungs or the legs to sift bug turds out of pepper. Old man, you don’t got a thing left. You’re lucky that Captain affords you a fancy shack to sleep in and don’t charge you hardly no rent.”
I wanted to call Roscoe Broda a liar but couldn’t, because I didn’t know how much rent we paid. Nobody did, because Mrs. Stout took our rent out of Papa’s week wages, on Saturday nights.
“Both you Pooles had best mind your manners, because if’n ya don’t, maybe you won’t have no place in Shack Row. I got new workers signed in soon.”
The thought of losing our shack, even if I hated the stink of the place, feared me. I turned wet all over. It’d be a sorry time for Papa and for me if we had no shack. And no wage money to eat on.
“I’ll go,” I told Mr. Broda.
“See to it then. And take the Cooter bum along and report. Move.”
I left, went back to our shack, and tried to eat. But the cold biscuit tasted too dry to choke down, like I was efforting to gnaw dust. Swallows of pump water didn’t help. Leaving our place, I trotted down Shack Row to where the five Cooters would be brushing up for school. Essie was braiding little Florence’s hair into pigtails and had her decked out in a clean dress. They both sat on their front stoop.
“Essie, where’s Huff?”
<
br /> “Inside.”
“Huff,” I hollered, “you an’ me can’t go to the school today.”
I saw the surprise on Essie May’s face as Huff came to the door. “How come?” he asked me.
“Roscoe Broda said. They’s shorthanded at the sugar mill, so you an’ me gotta git there and report to Mr. Lem Rathaway. And sudden.”
Huff sighed. Work never had hurried him a whole lot. He spat into the sandspurs. “Essie May,” he said to his sister, “I guess you gotta take the little ones to the school place.”
“It ain’t fair,” she said.
If’n you was a picker, or a picker’s kid, you best go where you git ordered. It was like we was ants. I’d watched a anthill one time, and they didn’t seem to do any deciding on their lonesome. They just sort of did, and done and kept on doing … like there was no right or wrong to it. And that’s what a picker in Shack Row was, nothing but a little ant, working and waiting for the boot of somebody like Roscoe Broda to stomp on your hill.
“Be careful,” Essie May told Huff and me.
Bending down, Huff kissed little Flo. Her smile was prettier than a weed flower. I never seen Huff Cooter do a thing like that before. Usual, he was the bully of the family. There was some dirt on Florence’s hand, so he pulled a rag out of his pocket, twisted it to a white spot and wiped his tiny sister. No angel could’ve done the job more gentle.
“Come on, Arly,” he said.
We headed for the sugar mill that was set back from the water edge of Okeechobee. In a way, I felt glad to be a wager, and earn to help Papa.
Our day with Mr. Rathaway never seemed to come end. First he had us chopping down cane, by hand, then stacking it into a one-mule wagon. We hauled it to the crusher and helped feed it into where it’d become pulp. The work was a sour business, but the cane smell at the crusher was sweeter than store candy. So sweet we could near to breathe it and swell out fat.
It was the noise of the crusher that I hated the worse, a noise that didn’t ever ease down; it just went on and on. I tried to make my mind see the rest of the children with Miss Hoe, learning stuff, and also see big Brother Smith in the back of the store, sitting preacher still, and smelling the way he’d usual smell, of catfish.
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