GodPretty in the Tobacco Field

by Kim Michele Richardson

  When Rose was thirteen, her parents were shot during a moonshine raid. Her drunk granddaddy took her in. But when he began beating her, Rose ran off to the city and stayed for ten years, coming back only after he’d passed.

  “Come on round here, honey.” She guided me to the back of the Dodge. “I got something at the Woolworth’s to take care of your parts, too.”

  I helped her lower the tailgate. Rose dug through her boxes of books, secondhand clothes, stacks and cartons of many sizes, and then passed me a small paper bag.

  I looked inside and gasped. A soft brassiere, satin undies, and a book. The daffodil-colored underwear had Wednesday embroidered across the front.

  “New, too,” Rose said as I held the undies. “The woman in the shop said the package split open during shipping. Grabbed the only one left for ya, kid.”

  “I saw these in one of your old catalogs . . . Never owned any Days of the Week undies before,” I marveled. “Thank you, Rose.” I glanced back at the house for Gunnar, expecting him any minute to slip on his overalls and come out. “I’m going to get these on first thing.... Reckon God won’t mind if I wear these Wednesday undies to church today,” I whispered.

  “Don’t reckon He will care much about toting Wednesday on a Sunday prayer bottom, honey.” She nudged her chin to the countryside. “He loves Himself some pretty, too. Here, have a gander at the brassiere. See if it’ll fit,” Rose rushed.

  I pulled it out and saw the white cotton fabric had a pretty pink rose in the center. Smiling, I pressed it to my chest. “I can’t wait to wear it,” I squealed. “This ol’ one’s been driving me mad, cutting into my skin for a long time.”

  “Heard tell a girl having mad boobies is worse than contracting the mad dog sickness,” she snorted, and patted her big chest.

  “It sure is pretty and all with the flower.” I held it up to me, studying. “Perfect, Rose.”

  Slyly, she tapped the bag. I pulled out the book, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Rose, oh . . . oh, this looks great!” This didn’t look like one of her excitement books.

  “The cover is torn off the back, so I couldn’t really sell it.” She shrugged an excuse.

  “It looks practically new. Oh, it’s the love story you told me about—the girl who’s a Kentucky flapper.”

  “Yup, that’s Daisy.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, running my hand over the dark blue cover, tracing the haunting eyes floating over the sparkly city. I studied the naked women the artist drew inside the eyes. “It’s odd,” I declared. “Look here, Rose, wonder how the artist made it so mysterious and pretty . . . I want to draw like this one day.”

  “Oh, I have something else.” She pulled out a creased sketch pad. “Maybe you can practice your own on this,” she said.

  “Do I ever need paper . . . Thank you!” I tucked it under my arm, then went back to the book. Thumbing through The Great Gatsby, I stopped at a poem. Smiling, I shut my eyes and inhaled the ink. “This is gonna be the best one ever.” I kissed her cheek.

  Chuckling, she brushed me off. “Better hide that one from Gunnar real good, honey, or he’ll use it for kindling.”

  Behind us, the screen door banged a warning, and Rose quickly snatched everything back, stuffing the book and clothing into the bag.

  I held on to the sketch pad.

  “Hello, Gunnar,” she called out, “brought your part. Would’ve had it yesterday, but this old truck of mine busted a belt. Anyways, found it at Clyde’s Tractor Parts in Louisville just like you said it’d be.”

  She set my bag on the tailgate and pulled out a small package and handed it to him. “Got your order of thick rubber gloves in there, too.”

  “Thank you, Miss Law.” Gunnar studied the receipt taped onto the box and fished inside his pockets for money.

  “Say, Gunnar,” she said, “State Fair’s coming up next month. RubyLyn’s gonna need a ride”—Rose pointed to the tobacco fields—“for that winning tobacco exhibit.”

  “Sure am.” I pulled myself up. “Best crop ever.”

  Gunnar handed Rose payment, then scratched his neck, taking a spatula to the idea over his own mulish thoughts.

  “I think it’ll win the two-hundred-dollar prize.” I worried for an answer. “And you said I could when I prepared the field this winter and—”

  “And we know you’ve been doing little of that lately.” Gunnar shot out an accusing finger.

  “Been working twice as hard, and waiting all my life,” I reminded. “You told me I could when I turned fourteen. Done made it to almost sixteen now. It’s time—”

  “There’s no time for fairs and foolishness,” he snapped, “or that.” He glared at my sketch pad.

  Rose stepped in front of me. “I’ll tote RubyLyn up to Louisville and have her back in the field the next day. Won’t cost any extra to have her along. And she’ll get to show her tobacco, see all them fine crop exhibits . . . and them new tractors I told ya about last year . . .”

  At the word tractor something passed over Gunnar’s eyes.

  Rose licked her painted lips, then glanced down at my feet before continuing. “Sure would be a big help, her setting up my wares in the booth. At forty-four years old, these ol’ bones . . . Lord, these ain’t like they used to be.” She lifted a limp arm, jiggled. “Don’t think I can manage without help this year. Nah, sir, can’t . . .”

  Dogged, Gunnar stared out to the fields, his mind working some more. After a minute he quipped, “She’ll work for her share of the gasoline . . . and you make sure she does.”

  “Lotsa work to do, ya hear?” Rose lectured me for Gunnar’s sake. “Takes a mess of hard work to set up a fair booth . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, not imagining anything harder than breaking your back in the tobacco.

  “Gunnar”—Rose pulled her small frame up and pushed—“I brought some nice shoes back with me. Might find a pair in there for the kid, seeing how hers is—”

  “Not till fall,” he growled.

  “The fields have worn them out,” I protested.

  Gunnar didn’t make much off his small tobacco patch. And money for selling the crop only came in the fall. He wouldn’t take a draw, and as far as I knew the damn government didn’t care considering the sorry state of my shoes and the ugly ankle-length dresses he picked out. He called it being frugal and proper, but I knew he didn’t pay attention to my growing and was too tight to buy new things and too stuffy to buy anything colorful.

  Gunnar never once peeked inside the town’s Feed & Seed’s mail-order catalogs that they carried. Instead he went behind the store where Rose parked the traveler and went through her secondhands she’d picked up in the city thrift stores.

  Rose frowned. “Fair prices . . . Come take a peek, Gunnar.”

  I rolled my worn sneaker in the dirt, remembering when I was seven. In the back of Rose’s traveling trader I’d found a spanking new pair of red patent leathers and some ruffled anklet socks that fit like a fairytale.

  I have no idea why, but I’d begged for those shiny shoes, promising God and Gunnar (and there weren’t much difference at that point) I’d work twice as hard if I could have them.

  Rose had put her hands on her wide hips to chide him to spend one more dollar, but Gunnar fixed her with his cold executioner’s stare. When she sighed and cut the price to a measly two dollars, Gunnar smacked the shoes out of my hand and reached for a big plain pair of boys’ sneakers that cost one dollar less.

  When I got home, I saw that Rose had packed those boy shoes with a half bottle of her Faberge Tigress cologne. Thrilled, I’d dabbed the cat perfume all over myself, toes included, and waited for an exciting transformation. I’d practiced purrs and roars, swelling my sentences with them. Nothing happened and no one noticed. Instead, the cologne gave me an elephant-sized headache, and Gunnar had sneezing fits that shook the panes. For three days the bees chased me through the fields, finally sending me off to a creek bath. Soon enough, Gunnar found th
e perfume, poured out the pale yellow liquid, and buried the bottle under the dirt floor in the barn.

  “No shoes till September,” he repeated to Rose, “and not a day sooner.” Gunnar nailed a warning finger to me.

  Rose raised a brow. “Your niece’s brassiere and panties . . .” She ceremoniously waved the small sack with them and the book inside, hoping he wouldn’t look, and that the mere mention of female unmentionables would have him hightailing it back to the house.

  I held my breath.

  Gunnar fished inside his pocket, pulled out another dollar, and shoved it into her hands for the clothes.

  “A gift.” Rose tried to give the money back. “Young lady needs herself a good-fitting brassiere—”

  He held up his hand. “Dammit, woman, this is the Lord’s day!” Gunnar spun around. “RubyLyn, fix my breakfast and get ready for church,” he roared from halfway across the yard.

  Rose snorted and I choked down a giggle.

  “We’re going to the State Fair, kid!” she declared with a hug, and handed me my package.

  “The 1969 Kentucky State Fair,” I barely breathed, thinking about the prize money that could get me a new life.

  All day long I felt like one of those girls in the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalogs. Wearing the new underwear, holding on to Rose’s declaration, and peeking at the glorious new book, I steered clear and refused to let Gunnar spoil it.

  That night I leaned out the window, hoping to see Rainey. I couldn’t wait to tell him that I’d be going to the city. But the barn shadows stood quiet.

  A half hour later, I heard him playing his violin. The soft, airy notes coming from his porch brushed across the tall tobaccos and rose into the quiet countryside. His old-fashioned draw tickling and teasing the summer breeze that mewed through leaves. “ ‘Wake up, wake up, Darlin’ Corey, tell me what makes you sleep so sound.’ ” Rainey sang “Darlin’ Corey” in a sweet measure that deepened with the notes. One of those naturals, he’d picked up his daddy’s violin when he was four and his mama said that in no time he was making that old fiddle spark magic into the nights.

  Like always, he finished with “Sweet Kentucky Lady,” the honeyed ballad he’d first sang for me when I came to live with Gunnar.

  A gust of cool mountain air lapped at my skin. I pulled on the quilt jacket Rose had made for my thirteenth birthday, crawled into bed, snuggling into the fabric she’d pieced together from a few of my mama’s old clothes that Rose begged from Gunnar after Mama’s death. “Hard things can happen in a house without a mama . . . girl should have one close at this age,” Rose had said when she surprised me with it.

  I lingered my touch over the fraying seams and faded patches of Mama’s dresses, lazed a crooked arm across my eyes. Sometimes when my mind let me, from one patch or another, I’d catch a glimpse of something she’d worn: the swish of her pale-green dress, a wrinkle lying along a daisy-splattered sleeve, the willowy blue sash on her hip, my little hands clumsy and clinging to them, my face pressed into the folds of soft, rain-washed cottons when she held me.

  It was like she was still with me. And every thread that had worked itself loose from the jacket and fallen, I’d scoop up and save inside Daddy’s tin. Not able to throw any more of her away, or bear to lose another piece of her.

  I brushed a sleeve lightly over my hurting jaws and more hard things I knew were headed my way.

  Chapter 3

  For Penance, Gunnar sent me to work the back rows of the tobacco alone. But with the State Fair only a month away, I welcomed the Salvation. Quiet field work let me visit loud thoughts of the city I’d soon live in. I’d be sixteen in September, and if Rose made it there at thirteen, imagine what the extra years and prize money would do for me. These were just a few things rattling my brain.

  I gathered tobacco seed from the blooms for next year’s planting while Rainey worked the rows alongside Royal Road. I was a little relieved Gunnar’d separated us, being I didn’t have much talk in me still because of my sore mouth. Not to mention I was embarrassed for Rainey to see my puffy cheeks and swollen lips.

  Still, I missed him. Every time my eyes set upon him, worked shoulder to shoulder with him, or heard him humming three rows over, my heart got lighter and my mind rested some.

  Shortly before suppertime, I took the hoe to my own tiny tobacco rows, careful not to disturb the prized plants. The last thing I needed was my small patch competing for sun and growth, getting crowded out by Gunnar’s tobacco.

  After an hour of weeding, I dropped the hoe and looked over at Gunnar’s land. Fifty acres of the best in these parts. A breeze rippled over his separate five acres of tobacco, leaving a standing shiver of green rolling toward the east. Gunnar grew some of the finest burley on the rich bottomland, and still left a big plot for vegetables, letting the surrounding acres rest for crop rotation. I dropped my hoe and examined my work.

  When Gunnar parked his tractor for the day, Rainey joined me to inspect the leaves.

  “I will surely take home the prize money at the State Fair next month,” I slyly announced to Rainey.

  “Gunnar told me.” Rainey grinned. “And he wants to send me, too, so I can check out those new tractors he’s been hearing about. Rose can tote me in the back.”

  “Oh . . . he did? It’s going to be swell, Rainey.”

  “Swell,” he bounced back.

  “Yeah . . . The city—us there, the lights, the people,” I chirped. “I can hardly wait—”

  Across the field, Gunnar rang the porch bell.

  Happy, I slapped the dirt off my hands and looked over to the big porch aglow from a grayish orange ruffled sunset. “I best go get supper on the table. It’s later than I thought.”

  “I still got some time,” Rainey said, picking up my hoe.

  “You go on, and we’ll finish this later.”

  He lifted the bandana from around his neck and wiped the beads above his lip. “Just another hour, girl.” Low sunlight sparked his smiling eyes.

  I stared at him, thinking how hard he worked. How he hung around extra to help with my burley. How much he acted like my uncle when it came to putting tobacco above everything else—and even the way his hands talked like Gunnar’s when he was excited. My uncle had rubbed off on him good.

  “You’ve stayed till eight o’clock every day this week, Rainey Ford. And you’ve more than earned your five dollars from Gunnar today. It’s Thursday night and I bet your mama has a mess of fine fish on the table waiting. Go on and get.” I hiked my thumb to his small house on the other side of the field.

  “You know August is coming fast,” he said.

  “Only July 24. Sure wish it would come faster,” I said, thinking about the fair.

  Rainey shook his head. “Only? You know with folks running toward the easy draws, instead of field work or to the coal mines, it’ll be hard for Gunnar to get his crop harvested with only the two of us.”

  “That’s what Gunnar says, too, but he’s talked to the Newtons.”

  “Now, Roo.” Rainey teased out my nickname. “You know the Newtons ain’t gonna work the field beside me . . . not many folks in eastern Kentucky would, I imagine. Hell, Jenks showed up last week and hightailed it back out of the rows when he saw me.”

  He was right. Not many would, and most said they’d load muck in the coal mines before working alongside a field nigger.

  “What about Mr. Thomas and his son?” Rainey asked.

  “They might pitch in.” I studied. “They told me last month they’re not taking a draw and said they’d come by as soon as it’s housing time.”

  When I first came to live with Gunnar, he’d kept me inside and busy with housework—and only taking care of the big house, refusing to let me work in the fields, unless I was being punished. But after President Johnson came to Kentucky and declared his War on Poverty, Gunnar couldn’t get men to work the rows. He swore he’d lost money when he had to reduce his crop. And when my punishments started adding up, he gave me a full-tim
e hoe to go along with my dust cloth, sassy mouth, and sins.

  Him being a former government man and all and having experience as a hardworking state executioner employee, I reckoned that was his way of working the devils out of me and getting free help at the same time.

  Rainey said, “Hope so. Seems everyone around Nameless is thinking up easy ways of doing jobs other than work. Even Statler’s saying his cow has to be babysat seven hours a day or else she won’t milk.”

  “Statler clan is always claiming something, mostly pickpocketing good folks’ hearts for whatever they can get.”

  “Damn government sure ’nuff gave him the draw.”

  Gunnar clanged the bell again.

  “Sound like ol’ Gunnar,” I mused. “Go home, Rainey, it’ll get done. We’ll make it, we always do.”

  “Just a few more minutes, Roo.”

  “Well, bye, then, I need to go over and get squash from the garden.”

  “Hear, now. We don’t have to say good-bye.” Rainey reached for my little pinky with his, tugged. “Thought we agreed never to say that.” He lit a soft smile.

  There was that smile again. More and more it was something I needed at the end of the day to get me through to the next.

  “Oh,” I laughed, “so tired I nearly forgot.” Because a “good-bye” seemed too sad and forever, and we’d both had our share of that with family, me and Rainey had made a secret pact nearly a decade ago, a childish pinky promise to never say good-bye to each other. Instead, we’d always call out our partings with a pinky squeeze and sweeten it with a “good night.” Morning or night, it was our saying, and the cracked-open door that meant we were always with each other.

  “Real glad you’re going to the fair with me and Rose. Good night, Rainey.”

  Rainey grinned. “Good night, Roo.” He squeezed our pinkies together, holding on a bit longer than usual.

  I pressed back. “Don’t stay too long now.”

  He went back to hoeing. I watched him a second, wondering why everything felt so confusing around him lately. Mostly I’d forgotten the silly childhood promises, but recently, I couldn’t stop thinking about them or him . . . and what his grown-up kisses were like. I couldn’t help wondering if he was thinking of mine....