Arly

by Robert Newton Peck

  There was no way, I thought as I headed into Jailtown, that folks would call Essie May Cooter a child. Leastwise, not menfolk who walked behind her and had eyes.

  More than one member of the canal dredger crew had took notice of her. The admiration hadn’t stopped there. Essie May Cooter’s real booster in town was Miss Angel Free who bossed the Lucky Leg. Miss Angel telled Essie that whenever the time got ripe for her to look for a job, there was ample work waiting, so Essie telled me one time.

  When she said it all, I just couldn’t make myself believe it, because to picture somebody like Essie May in some fancy dress and all of them ruffles didn’t hardly set too good in my mind. Lately, whenever I’d pass by the Lucky Leg Social Palace, it was about all I could reason on, almost seeing Essie inside the place, entertaining the customer men.

  Then I recalled how Mrs. Cooter had spoke, earlier this morning, about all her five going to school, and I smiled. Maybe I’d git to sit myself beside Essie May.

  I whistled through town.

  Mrs. Stout was sweeping off the wood planks outside her store, right next to where the school was going to meet.

  “Morning, Mrs. Stout.”

  “Morning.” She didn’t waste a smile.

  “Looks to be a nice day.”

  Mrs. Stout grunted. “Too early to tell. Maybe it’ll be a weather breeder.” She leaned on her broom. “I s’pose you’re here for the schooling.” To me, she didn’t sound too happy about having Miss Binnie Hoe next door, in the empty store.

  “Yes’m.”

  Her broom swatted at a big old horsefly. “You pickers is gettin’ mighty uppity.”

  I leaned against a porch post. “Maybe so.”

  “Huh! No maybe about it. What all you blacksoilers need is work. When I be your age, I weren’t hangin’ round no schoolhouse. Jailtown needs a schoolteacher ’bout as much as I need another bellybutton.” She took a breath. “Uppity.”

  “Papa says up is a good direction.”

  Mrs. Stout pointed the bristle of her broom at me. “Don’t you dare sass me none, young Poole. You do, and the wage book’ll bring you and your pa back down to soil and sensible.”

  For some time, I’d notice that Mrs. Stout be one of the people who wore shoes. So around her I’d best mind my manners.

  “I’m real sorry, Mrs. Stout. Honest, I sure don’t ever mean to sass nobody. Maybe I’m just a bit joyous.”

  “Joyous? Pickers ain’t got no right to joyous.” Her fingers bit into my chin, not quite as hard as I figured she wanted them to. “Jailtown don’t need no school tax, and it don’t need no fancy city female to schoolteach it.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  As I felt Mrs. Stout’s fingers loosen on my face, I turned to see Miss Binnie Hoe, who was about half of Mrs. Stout. Yet I could see that our lady storekeeper was more than some rattled.

  Miss Hoe walked up to her. “If you wish to pinch someone’s face, you can start right now and practice on mine.”

  I saw Mrs. Stout’s hands tighten to the broom handle. Maybe she was fixing to give Miss Hoe a hefty swat, and was thinking it all over. Miss Hoe’s hands weren’t too idle. Her fists doubled up. Mrs. Stout was bigger, by lots, yet Miss Hoe sort of looked to me a bit like a hard little hornet.

  Brother Smith come along and took off his hat.

  “Good morning, sisters.” His deep velvety voice seemed to bless the day. Brother had a way of pouring words on trouble like they was liniment.

  Mrs. Stout shot a mean look to Brother Smith and then telled him she didn’t approve of no darky not knowing his place and speaking first to white ladies. And that she weren’t about to be a sister to his kind, or to schoolmarms neither. Turning, she stomped inside her store.

  The five Cooter kids arrived, but that was all. Just us seven. I took a chair in the vacant store where I could just sit and look at Essie May Cooter’s legs. Standing up, Essie was pretty enough. But in that old chair, her dress just kept shrinking up into wrinkles and her legs twitched to one another like two serpents in love.

  Brother Smith sat away in the back, in the biggest chair, folded his big black hands in his lap and listened to every single word Miss Binnie Hoe said, like it was Gospel. I didn’t plan to pay it much mind.

  Miss Hoe asked us our names. “I already know Brother Smith,” she said, “but I would like to learn your names as well.” She nodded to Huff’s sister.

  Essie May didn’t say anything. She just stare down at her knees, trying to cover up her thighs with both hands, on account her dress be so short and raggy.

  “What’s your name, please?”

  “Essie.”

  “That’s a beautiful name. And I bet the rest of your name is every bit as pretty.”

  “Essie May Cooter.”

  Miss Hoe smiled. “My, I was right. And you?” She looked at Huff.

  “Huff Cooter. I‘m brother to Ess.”

  “Yes, I can see you favor each other some.”

  Jackson Cooter told who he was, and so did Delbert. But little Flo kept quiet.

  “Her name’s Florence,” said Huff.

  Miss Hoe asked me who I was. So, just for the smart of it, I said, “My name is Captain Tant.”

  “Are you really?”

  Before I could answer, Brother Smith piped up. “Oh, Missy Hoe, don’t pay Arly Poole too much mind.”

  She looked at me. “Arly, is it?”

  Brother smiled. “He one of God’s ideas.”

  Chapter 9

  “How many come?” Papa asked.

  The two of us stood out behind our shack, near the live oak trees, skinning a catfish. We’d have ourselfs a fair supper, Papa and me. From inside our shack, the smell of boiling collards come from the pot on our cookstove, and we still had a few swallows of vinegar to pour on, once the greens got boiled to a tender. We’d have cucumbers too. Papa had picked cukes today.

  “Seven,” I told him.

  His face frowned. “That ain’t right to me. Seems like it ought to be double. Who come?”

  “Brother Smith, the five Cooters, and me.”

  Papa’s knife cut a slit under the white throat and he run it down to near the tail. We’d stab a stick through the gills and hung our catfish twixt trees, about eye high. The knife worked in to carve out a fin which Papa tossed to the ants.

  “More’ll come, boy. This’n here was only the first day, so’s you tell Miss Hoe that. She’d get more if’n Brother Smith stayed away.” He sighed. “Tell me what you got learned.” Papa put a rough thumb to tough catfish skin, and pulled.

  “She hung up a map.”

  “I seen a map once. Long time back.”

  “Miss Hoe said a map was a picture of land, but it sure don’t look like any land I ever saw.”

  “What land was it?”

  “Florida.”

  Papa yanked on the skin. “That’s right here.”

  “Maybe so, but her map that she tacked up on the empty store wall don’t look a whole much like Jailtown, or Shack Row.”

  “What’d it look like?”

  “To me, it looked like a thumb. She made us all say Florida. The first letter is a F.”

  Bending down, I made a F in the black earth, but as it didn’t pan out so hot, I rubbed it over with my toes, to start pure. On the second try, I did it handsome.

  “There,” I said. “That’s a F.”

  Holding his knife, Papa looked at the letter I’d drawed in the dirt. “Letters look a some like people,” he said. “Like ladies and gents with arms and legs. Animals too.”

  “They’s too many letters to learn,” I said.

  “How many?”

  “I think Miss Hoe said twenty-six. Like a quarter and a penny.”

  “What’s a F do?”

  I smiled at the catfish. “It starts words, like fish.”

  Papa nodded.

  “Fish, flower, and fern. Yes, and a fox. Or family. F starts ’em all, Papa. Miss Hoe said. Sh
e knows more than spooky. I bet she knows ever letter there is in the whole world.”

  Papa shook his head. “Ya wonder how some folks git to be so smarty. And then, people like us Pooles.”

  “Well, she can keep smart. Because I don’t be fixing to go to school much.”

  “How’d old Huff learn up?”

  “Not so hot. On the way home, he told me that Miss Hoe was a liar, and that a F couldn’t draw both a fox and a flower. On account they sure don’t look alike to him.”

  Papa itched his neck. “I don’t guess they do, now that you speak it out.”

  “Florida is bigger than Jailtown. I learned that, too.”

  “How big is she?”

  Thinking real hard, I held up my arms so’s they be a same size as our wall map at school. “Florida is this big.” It sounded dumb. Maybe I didn’t soak it all in today or get the straight of it.

  Papa slid his knife blade into his belt, rested both hands on my shoulders, then looked me in the eyes. “Arly, I don’t guess you yet know that in school you got to listen up. I don’t reason a whole lot, boy, but I bet Florida’s got to be bigger than what your two arms can measure.”

  I nodded. “I figure so.” My mind was all mixed up and I couldn’t explain the map.

  “Boy, this is your one chance. Miss out, and you’ll turn out to be nothin’, like me.” He held my head in his hands. “You got to, Arly. All the stuff Miss Hoe teaches, you got to study smart on and learn. Ever word, ever letter …”

  I felt his body shake. He was trying so hard to tell me so much, and that he wanted to learn it too, right along with me.

  “I’ll try, Papa.”

  He shook his head. “You got to more’n try. I don’t want my child booted into no picker’s wagon and then stoopin’ to cukes all his life. Basket after basket, and day upon day, with nary to collect from the pay ledger, come Saturday night.”

  As he spoke all the words, I could hear his lungs working. I guessed that cropdust was still ample inside his chest, left over from the years he’d rode the cropduster wagon through the citrus groves, beating the chemical bag with a long pole which clouded the white powder on the trees.

  “Education,” said Papa, “is a leg up. It’s more’n letters, Arly boy. It’s a stool to stand taller on. It’s a leg up the ladder.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Learning,” he said to me, “is what pays to store.” His finger tapped my temple. “Right in here. Nobody can never take a cinder of learning away from you, Arly, once you master it and put it by. Nobody, not even the Captain hisself.”

  “I will.”

  “Best you do, son.”

  His hand brushed some dirt off my face. “Learning, boy, is sort of like when you got to move a big load of hefty cement blocks. You don’t motion the whole batch of it to once. Only one block to a time. It’ll budge hard. Nothin’ worth a speck picks up easy. But I tell you true … pickin’ ain’t easy neither. You bend and you sweat them baskets full ’til your whole body nears crying. Saturday last, I worked them cukes on half pay.”

  “I know, Papa.”

  “But all the clean day long, I didn’t see me them baskets of cucumbers. Ya know what I was seeing?”

  “No.”

  “I seed you, Arly, in school. I could vision all the precious learning that’d feed your head, with ever cuke my hand’d yank off them vines. Monday’s what I thought on, all day.”

  Leaning to me easy, one of his skinny arms hung around my shoulders, and with the other arm he pointed at where we pickers lived. “Shack Row, this place is called. Right now, it’s our home. But it ain’t the whole world, Arly boy. It ain’t no sin to be here. But for you, it’d be a sin to settle for it.”

  “That’s funny,” I told him.

  “What is?”

  “Because that’s sort of the same thing Miss Hoe told us. She said to bust out of Jailtown, we’d need ourselfs a ticket. Then she pointed at her own self to say that she was our ticket out of town.”

  Papa nodded. “Lord bless her.”

  Chapter 10

  “Sun’s going down,” said Huff.

  I looked out over the tippy-top leaves of the thicket of custard apple trees. “Sure is.” It was nice to watch the sun bless the sky, like it was thankful for a good day.

  Both of us had eaten supper, so we were wandering toward Jailtown, just to look the place over and check to see if’n any of the drege crew were stirring up sport.

  “How’d ya take to school today, Arly?”

  “I liked it real good,” I lied.

  “Well, I sure don’t.” Huff kicked a pine cone. “It’s too hard.”

  I looked at him with a real even stare. “So’s pickin’, in case you ain’t yet took notice.”

  He gave me a solid punch. “You don’t need tell me about pickin’, Arly Poole. I picked more’n you. Ask your pa.”

  “Yeah, that’s for true.”

  “Anytime the roster ain’t full, Roscoe Broda comes to our shack to git me’n Essie May. He usual gits her if’n the docket’ll only fill up with one. And I know why.”

  Looking at Huff, I felt sort of afraid to ask about Mr. Roscoe Broda and Essie May Cooter. I’d see Roscoe look to her more’n one time. And it weren’t just recent. He’d been turning an eye to her since she was passing by twelve; on account now that Essie was way beyond thirteen, she was tall as Addie, her ma. Also near as womany.

  “Does your ma know?”

  He nodded his head. “Sure enough do. Ma tells Ess that if’n she sets her cap for him, that she’d be Mrs. Roscoe Broda in a couple years. That’d move us to Easy Street. Roscoe’s got a dollar or two, Ma says.”

  It made me sick to listen it. In my throat, I could taste collards and catfish but mostly vinegar.

  “No,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Essie May’s too nice to marry up Roscoe Broda. I don’t want her to.”

  “Ma does. And then don’t because I guess she knows that Roscoe’s got a mean streak.”

  It was my turn to kick a pine cone, so I booted one, and real hard. My toe stubbed on a tree root, which danced me round some while Huff Cooter laughed hisself silly.

  “Don’t you worry none, Arly. It ain’t going to happen right soon.”

  “Why not?”

  “On account Roscoe’s got a plan or two about Easy Street for his own self. And it’s all got to do with him and Miss Liddy Tant, the way folks tell it. Miss Angel’s sweet on him too.”

  “Yeah, so I hear.”

  “I don’t know much,” Huff said, “yet I do know this. Roscoe Broda’s a greeder.”

  “What’s that s’pose to mean?”

  “A gent, as fancy as Roscoe sees hisself, he’ll cotton to have two women. One for bed and one for banking.”

  I sure knew which was which, I was thinking, wishing righteous awful that I was already a growed-up man. Maybe I’d just have to first pack in the schooling.

  “Hey!”

  Looking at Huff, I saw that he was watching a guy I’d never seen before. A city man, for sure. He wasn’t a dredger, that was certain, nor was he a cane mill worker. But he was a real mess. Clothers were cut to a tatter, and he looked to me that he’d got lost out in the swamp glades, or he’d run through a long ways of sawgrass. His shoes looked rotted wet and near to falling off both his feet.

  “I know him,” Huff said.

  “Who’s he be?”

  “His name’s Mr. Mayland. He’s a mapper. You know, he’s one of them gents that always gets sent to here to Okeechobee by the government, to make maps of the place. Captain don’t like mappers, Ma says, and Broda hates ’em even worse.”

  Huff and I walked closer to where the man had set hisself down, right near to out front of the harness maker’s place. As we got close up, he looked at Huff and me and spoke.

  “Howdy.”

  “Are you Mr. Mayland?” Huff asked him.

  “I’m not sure. I been lost out there,” he said, pointing at the
sundown. “Nobody sane or sober can map this hell hole. I’d settle up my transit on a tripod, like always, but the legs would sink so deep into the swale that it forced me to squat or lie down to sight through it.”

  “Well,” said Huff, “you ain’t the first mapper to quit and leave Jailtown. I seen plenty others, and I don’t guess you’ll be the last.”

  “I lost my binoculars and half my stakes. It’s crazy out there. The bubble in my level’s always off-kilter. I can’t true it to take an elevation.”

  As he talked on, shaking his head, I didn’t savvy even the first word of it, but it made a sport to listen. Maybe I’d fetch up some useful learning.

  “Okeechobee just runs off places into dead rivers,” Mr. Mayland went on saying. “Cricks that don’t go anywhere, except into marsh and muck, and those places are crawling with cottonmouth snakes, gators, bogs, floating clumps of brush and slime that drift with a current. Trouble is, the dang current’s going nowhere.”

  Mr. Mayland looked up and smiled. Maybe on account both me and Huff Cooter were smiling at his story. He wore a decent look.

  “Boys, I’ve been here in Jailtown almost a week, and your two faces are the only ones who ever looked at me friendly.”

  He held out his hand and I shook it, just like I was somebody. Huff shook hands with him, too.

  “The name’s Harry Mayland. I’m a surveyor. Or supposed to be one. Right now, I don’t know what I am, except maybe thankful I’m alive. Never did I think I’d be glad to see Jailtown.” He looked up and down the road. “Golly, what a dump this place is.”

  If you think it’s ugly here, I was thinking, wait until you take yourself a healthy squint at Shack Row.

  “Your hand’s sort of bloody,” I said.

  “Want to know how that happened? I somehow walked into a spider wed. Never had I seen a spider that size. I could have thrown a saddle on that critter and rode it clear back to Moore Haven.”

  “It was probable a wolf spider,” Huff said. “They sprout up real prosperous around here.”