Dirty Work

by Larry Brown

  “He knew something was wrong by dinnertime the next day. He’d bring his sack out and it would weigh light to him every time. He’d stand there and look at it. He’d picked enough to know what the sack would hold damn near to the pound. Daddy didn’t say anything, he was just watching. Maybe Daddy knew Norris was screwing us. Maybe he just wanted to stay out of trouble. But Champion finally said something about it. To Norris. Said I believe it’s something wrong with that scale. Well, Norris just flew into cussing. Usually that was all he had to do. Most of them wouldn’t stand up to him. But Champion did. I guess Daddy had seen this kind of thing happen before. He didn’t say nothing, he just watched. Champion told old Norris he wasn’t calling him a cheat, but he knew what his sack would hold. Norris told him if he thought there was something wrong with the scale to go on and look at it, so he did. Hell, it looked all right. You’re talking about just a little bit of metal shaved off that made a lot of difference. The whole thing didn’t weigh but a few pounds. He looked at it, just shook his head. Said well, it didn’t look like they was nothing wrong with it. He just couldn’t figure it out. Said I know what my sack holds. Shit, I hated it. It looked like we were fixing to have some real trouble. I didn’t know what Daddy was going to do, whether he was going to stay out of it or not. I figured I knew whose side he’d be on. But Champion didn’t look like a guy you could push much, either. Only thing was his wife and kids looked scared as hell.

  “Finally he went on back in the field and started picking again. Working faster than he was before. He rolled. Worked on through dinner and wouldn’t even stop to eat. He was packing it in there. Got it so full it wouldn’t hold any more. Just about too heavy to pull. Daddy quit picking and left his sack on the ground and helped him pull it up to the truck. Took both of them to get it up on the hook. I’d never seen one sack with that much in it. Old Norris got up there and fiddled around with it a while and hollered out One twenty-two. And hell, it had over a hundred and fifty pounds in it, easy. And it flew all over Champion. He told him. Said You weighing us short. And hell, everybody could see it. Everybody’d done stopped picking. Old Norris was scared. He eyeballed Daddy a little bit. Then he called Champion a lying black son of a bitch. Right there in front of his wife and kids and everybody. You could tell he really had to suck up his guts to do it. Cause there was Daddy looking at him, too. But Daddy wasn’t saying anything. He was just watching.

  “Champion said Well, you can just pay us off. Cause we ain’t working no more. Norris said that was fine with him. He had it all wrote down. Started figuring it up. Champion got all his kids out of the field and they started packing everything up. Daddy just motioned for me to get out of the field so I did. They had to take down their tent and all. I was trying to figure in my head how much they must have picked. A lot. And if it was fifteen percent he was trying to gyp us out of it was a bunch. Hell. He could’ve made it right. That’s what Daddy was doing, giving him a chance to. Champion was smoking a cigarette, just waiting. Old Norris looked up at him one time and said I doubt if you’ve made thirty dollars yet, and it was like he’d slapped him. He had this look on his face like the world was fixing to end. Norris put his pencil in his pocket finally and handed Champion the little book he’d been figuring in. He looked at it for a minute. Then he just closed it up and dropped it on the ground. Said I know a ton of cotton when I see it, white man.

  “At two cents a pound it would’ve brought forty dollars. And Norris held out four dollars and told him that was all he was getting. Said that was all he owed him if they didn’t pick any more. Champion wouldn’t take it. Said You cheating me. Norris started cussing him again. Told him he’d better take it and get off the place. Champion said Why you want to cheat me? Said I ain’t never done nothing to you. He said he was taking ten, but he wasn’t taking four. Norris throwed the money down. Said there it was if he wanted it, but for them to get their asses gone.

  “Daddy was real calm about it. He said If you’ve cheated this man then you’ve cheated me too. Me and my boy. But he wasn’t even looking at Norris while he was talking. He was looking at Champion’s kids. Man, they were scared. They were all holding onto their mama. Daddy said Now you pay him what you owe him and then you pay me.

  “Man. I’ve thought a lot of times how easily all that could have been avoided. All he had to do was be honest. Just wouldn’t do it. Just that damn sorry.

  “He told Daddy, said Now Randall I ain’t got no quarrel with you. Said I’m gonna pay you what I owe you. Daddy said yeah and he was gonna pay them what he owed them, too. Started walking toward him. Norris started backing up. Backing around toward the cab. Champion spoke up and told him to just leave it alone, he could handle it. Didn’t need any help. It all happened so fast. If he hadn’t been so scared of Daddy it probably wouldn’t have happened at all. I mean all this shit happened over six dollars.

  “He had the gun under the seat. Little sawed-off twelve-gauge single barrel. It was on the other side of the truck. I didn’t actually see it when it went off. Just heard it. I saw Norris fall. We stepped around there and it looked like about half his head was blowed off. There Daddy was holding the gun. Hell, we thought he was dead. So much blood. But he didn’t die. Not till he turned that tractor over on him a few years ago. They never did figure out how that happened. He was snaking logs out by himself. Way off down in the woods. Had a fifty-foot cable with a hook on it. Got the damn thing hooked around a tree somehow. That’s the thing about a tractor. You don’t want to pull nothing with the back end that can’t be pulled. They’ll turn straight over backward on you. Every time. You’d think a man like that would know to watch behind him. All he lost that day in his cotton patch was one ear and some skin off the side of his head. My daddy lost some more years of his life. And I lost that much more of my daddy. Cause they sent him back to the pen again after that.

  “He got me to go call the law and an ambulance and all. He got Champion and them to leave while I was gone. We never heard anything out of them again. Daddy just sat there and waited for the law to come get him. He knew it wouldn’t do any good to run. But he gave them the chance to run and they took it.

  “He went quick in his sleep one night. Mama woke up next to him and he was already cold. She just laid there beside him and held him until it got daylight. Then she woke us up and told us. But he was old. Looked old, moved like an old man. He did nearly ten years altogether. That’s a lot of cottonpicking.

  “So Mama calls out to God every night. Praying to die. Because she misses him so much. She just can’t get over him being gone. I wish I’d gotten to spend more time with him. I wish I knew why everything has to be the way it is sometimes.

  “Anyway I told her all that. It started raining. There wasn’t a whole lot to say. We were just holding each other. At first we were. Then we started messing around. Hell, maybe it was sympathy, I don’t know. She took her shirt off and got me to take her bra off. It started raining harder and harder. I remember thinking we might ought to back it out of the creek. But I guess we were too busy doing what we were doing. She didn’t want me to see her legs. I remember her saying that. About how they were all scarred up. I told her it didn’t matter. And it didn’t. It was hard to see it in the dark anyhow. And the rain was so nice. We hadn’t had any in so long.

  “Are you asleep? You want me to hush? I will if you want me to. You sure?

  “Well. I’ve been trying to keep from thinking about it, but that’s all I can think about now. Being in that car with her. With the rain coming down. And the doors locked. Knowing nobody was going to interfere with my life this time.

  “I mean, it had been so long. I’d been waiting, always thinking something was going to happen. And it never did. I’d hidden from everybody for so long. I just withdrew from the world. Stayed in my room all that time. She made me feel like somebody again. Instead of just a freak.

  “But if you could have seen her. What that dog did to her. God.”

  He hushed up after that.
And I hadn’t said a word. Wasn’t nothing to say. He finished the rest of his beer and stuck it under his pillow and then he just laid there looking up at the ceiling.

  I wasn’t sleepy. Wouldn’t’ve been no way to sleep then anyway, after hearing all that. I knew I had to say something else to him. Just didn’t know what.

  Didn’t look like there was no way to fix his troubles. Sure didn’t do me no good to hear all that. Wasn’t no way I could help him. Couldn’t even help my own self. And couldn’t ask him to help me but one more time. Cause the night was almost gone. It was time for Diva to be back, but she wasn’t. I needed her. I needed her to help me. Cause she knew better than anybody what I been through. She’d done seen me laying here all this time. She knew what had to be done. She just couldn’t do it herself. She could do a lot. She’d done done a lot.

  But not that. So I was wishing she would hurry. The night was almost gone. And I didn’t want to see another one.

  I couldn’t tell Braiden everything. I couldn’t tell him all of it. There was too much that was private. Too much I didn’t want anybody to know about her. Because she didn’t want even me to see.

  Her legs were ripped with scars. And I kissed all those bad places. I told her that it didn’t matter. She cried, a little, but I hushed that up. What I was trying to do was soothe her. Make her feel better. It took a long time. I don’t know what she was thinking. That I’d run away? Be repulsed? I asked her, How could I?

  She told me to kiss her, that she’d been waiting a long time for this. That she’d never had a man, and I was the first. The lightning started. The rain came down harder. That was when the little pain in the top of my head hit me. But those pains are common. They don’t always mean something. I’ve had them for so long that I don’t pay much attention to them anymore.

  With the grass, everything had slowed down to slow motion. Every movement, every touch of flesh, every breath and every sound. The rain was so loud on the roof, we couldn’t hear anything else after a while. It was like a hundred little hammers all beating at once. No other sound. And just as black. We weren’t even in the world anymore. There was just us two, and the night.

  We were naked together. Me against her. We started trying to ease it in. She put her legs around me. That’s the last thing I remember.

  I saw a thing I maybe dreamed. It come in the window and lit on my bed and it was a little angel child with gold hair and sandals. It looked at me and smiled and smiled and smiled. It come a crawling over my feet and over my legs and I held out my arms and the child come to rest against my chest. Put its head down against me like it wanted to sleep. I touched the gold hair. The child looked up and smiled and rested with me. We laid there for a long time, just holding on to each other. Don’t know how long a time passed. A long, long time. Things that wasn’t said flowed from the child to me and I come to understand that he or she was the one they sent to lead me, but it wasn’t time to go. And it didn’t have to be the time to go. The child could leave, and I could stay, and it would come back for me some other time. But my arms would leave, and my legs would leave, and they wouldn’t come back till the child did again.

  I touched the hair on the child’s head. It was soft and sweet. I held the child. I didn’t want to decide. I just wanted to hold the child. But finally it looked at me and I knew it was time to decide. I nodded my head. The child nodded its head. It stood up and walked back across the bed, stepped up on my knee, and stood there balanced, looking back at me. Had its hands clasped together and looking down. It pointed to the foot of the bed. And there He stood.

  So you’ve decided?

  Yes, Lord. Won’t I be happier there than here?

  You’re leaving others behind you. What about them?

  They’ll miss me for a while. One especially. But she’ll get over it.

  There’ll be nieces and nephews later that you won’t get to meet. What about that?

  If I don’t know them then I won’t know what I’ve missed.

  Things have been set in motion that you know nothing about. It won’t be easy when it comes and you’ll wish you hadn’t wished for it.

  But after that.

  Yes, after that.

  Will everything be explained to me?

  This child will come back.

  Will I be whole again?

  You’re whole now.

  Then that’s what I want.

  It’s not what you want. It’s going to happen whether you want it or not. I could intercede if you wanted me to. You want me to?

  No sir. I don’t believe I’d want that.

  He held out his arms to the child. The child hopped off my knee and landed in His arms. He stood there holding it on His hip.

  For what it’s worth you’ve been brave.

  Thank you, Lord.

  He sighed.

  Well see you after while.

  They left, and I didn’t know if any of it was real or not. More than anything I was scared.

  I didn’t know if Braiden was asleep by then or what. He was quiet, but I was through talking anyway. I’d said all I wanted to say. I was watching the window so I could see when the first of daylight came through it. I wanted to talk to Mama and tell her to send Max after me, and then I wanted to get dressed. I was hoping that maybe he was already on his way.

  I saw her coming, just a vague white shape moving toward me out of the darkness. Swishing. I could still hear her stockings. She was still fine.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. One hand swept my hair back and lingered on my jaw.

  “Not much time left,” she said.

  “Time for what?”

  “This. Braiden asleep?”

  “I don’t know. What about my phone call? She called yet?”

  She looked around. “In a little bit.”

  She leaned closer, until she was lying next to me. I could feel her breasts pressing against me. I couldn’t move. The smell of her almost drove me crazy and made me think of Beth and made me hate myself. She put her cheek against mine and rested it there.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Just listen to me. His mind will go. It’s starting to already. He just like you, he ain’t gonna get no better.”

  I closed my eyes, reached out, and put my arms around her.

  “I went to nursing school just so I could take care of him,” she said. “Ten years. He’s the only thing holding me here. I know you in bad shape. Everybody in here in bad shape. Wouldn’t be in here if they wasn’t. You might have a chance. They might make you better. They ain’t no way they can make him better. He ain’t got no chance. He can’t lay here till he’s sixty or seventy. It ain’t right. I started out thinking I could take care of him. Way he used to take care of me. It would of been a mercy if God had let him die when he was supposed to. He ain’t got no peace, Walter. He don’t want to stay. He wants to go. His life is over.”

  I said what I knew was a stupid thing: “His life’s not over.”

  She drew back, drew her hands back and put them in her lap. She sat still, quiet, on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor.

  “Put yourself in his place,” she said.

  I did. I felt my arms and legs still attached to my body. I felt my legs taking me down the road at night, my arm extending to punch the start button on my VCR, my fingers coming up to my lips with a cigarette. I felt Beth in my arms and wished oh God so bad that night could be here again, instead of this.

  “You can’t just murder people,” I said.

  She didn’t move at first. She didn’t seem like she’d even heard me. And then her hand moved to my leg. High.

  “Stop fucking around with me,” I said.

  “You white boys,” she said, and a slow easy little laugh came out of her.

  Flat on your back for that long. Fed every meal. Rolled over like a sack of shit when it was time to change your sheets. For twenty-two years. I couldn’t take it either.

  She bent over me then.

  “I can take care of it,�
�� she said.

  “What?”

  “You lay back. I take care of you one time anyway,” she said. I saw her hand come up, and it was dark against the pale cloth of her uniform. Her hand caught the zipper and pulled it down to her waist. She struggled out of the top of it. She bent her arms behind her back, and took off the bra and laid it aside. She leaned closer, smiling.

  “Give you something like you ain’t never had, baby,” she said.

  She started humming the tune, the same one she’d been humming when she first came to see me. The field song. The picker’s song. Her breasts were right over me, just inches away. I thought about Beth. She started pulling her dress up over her hips. Then she was sliding down my belly, raising my gown.

  “I do this, and you do that. Cause you don’t know what’s going on.”

  It was hard to speak. She had me in her hands. I had to arch my back, and dig my fingers into the sheet.

  “He my brother,” she said, and then she put her mouth on me, and Braiden started talking to me, and I was drunk, and I knew I was his last chance, but inside I was saying no, please no, hell no, forever no.

  “The Young Lions. Man you know I had a granma whose daddy was a slave. He was freed and fought at Shiloh, and run at Vicksburg when he seen it was gone, that they was beat. Whole town was starving to death. Had trees, logs stuck up through the bank to make it look like cannons. People was living in caves like rats. Lost his left arm. And he lived to be a hundred and one. You know what he told her?