“I don’t swim very well,” I said.
“Don’t need to,” Gasper said. “It’s about knee-deep, and once you get into it a ways, there’s trees everywhere. Still water, but trees to hide behind.”
“That doesn’t sound like much,” I said.
“No, it don’t,” Gasper said, “but there’s a little more to it. Couple days back I was by the swamp, dumping my bag of peas into baskets in the truck, and I noticed something. There was a fishing boat that had floated up. It ain’t where we are now, it’s on up the rows, but we’ll be there in about three days.”
“I see where this is going,” I said.
“Yeah,” Gasper said. “Ain’t much to it, really. And it may not even be a boat that’s all together. It could be caught up there in roots and vines and have a hole in the bottom. I only seen it from a distance. It probably come loose from along the river somewhere. It looked real worn. It might have been floating around out there for years before it come to rest in them trees. Thing is, though, it’s a good trek to get to it, and shotgun blasts travel quick. So my plan is simple: when I get up there even with it, I’m going to go for it, try and push it out in deeper water and make an escape.”
“Iffy,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” Gasper said. “But I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”
“Maybe we could all take a look tomorrow, and then we might have some idea about it,” Jane said. “Maybe four heads will be better than one.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Gasper said.
“Forget the boat,” Tony said. “Just take the truck.”
“What, now?” Gasper said.
“Just jump in the truck and drive off.”
“I don’t reckon they leave the keys in it,” I said.
“Yeah they do,” Gasper said. “You see, they start at one end, and when we pick, they keep easing the truck up. They leave the keys in it. When I come up with my bag to dump, I seen the man pulling up and getting out, and I seen the keys. But I didn’t think nothing of it ’cause I can’t drive.”
“I can drive,” I said.
“He’s the only one of us who can,” Jane said. “Tony was about to learn how, and then Papa got the tractor rolled over him.”
“I never had nobody to teach me,” Gasper said.
“Pa only wanted to teach me so I could do the work he didn’t want to do,” Tony said.
“That’s the truth,” Jane said.
“Thing is,” Gasper said, “it won’t be any easier taking the truck than getting to the boat, ’cause they’re right there by the truck.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But wading in a swamp with a gun pointed at you ain’t all that easy of an escape either.”
“Way I figure,” Gasper said, “ain’t none of it any good.”
“No,” Jane said. “But those two ideas, right now, they’re all we got.”
36
I didn’t sleep so good, ’cause that bag I was lying on wasn’t any thicker than a wish and a prayer.
Sheriff Big Bill and another man opened the door and called us out before daylight. I was so sore from that hard ground I could hardly walk. Bill had his revolver in a holster on his hip, and the other man had a shotgun. The man with the shotgun was grinning all the time we came out. He really grinned when Jane came out.
I figured, even by not meaning to, she had already added another fly to the ointment. Her being pretty was something that bad people noticed as much as good, but the bad people didn’t have a positive mind-set about the matter.
As we were being shuffled out to the fields, a rooster crowed off in the distance. We were up before him. It was pretty bad when the rooster got to sleep in and we didn’t.
When we arrived at the field, it was still not daylight, but by the time we went to the back of a truck and were given bags and sent out into the field, morning light was creeping through the trees like a bloodstain.
Gasper took his picking bag and said to me, “Middle of the day, you’re going to get so hungry your belly is going to think your throat is cut. Take a few of the peas and strip them and eat them. Don’t let them see you do it, but you’ll need to do it. They ain’t much, but they’ll keep you going. They’ll give you water, and sometimes they give you a little bread, but you can’t count on it. Only meal you can count on is the beans, and they ain’t always good and cooked, and Sheriff and his boys don’t mind if there’s a bug or two in ’em. But you best eat ’em all, otherwise you’ll be so weak you can’t get up.”
“Thanks,” I said.
They put us in some close-together rows, each of us in a different row, though there was someone at your back picking the one behind you. I had Gasper at my back.
I counted and there were ten workers all together, counting us and Gasper. The other six were four men and two women. All of them were old, and a couple of them were Mexican. Probably come across the border looking for work and ended up with this. One of them had the shakes. Gasper said it was because he was a drinker and now he wasn’t getting any liquor.
We picked, and off to the east—I knew that because that was where the sun rose—I could see a pickup with two men standing at it. Both of them had shotguns. Behind them I could see the swamp water that ran along the edge of the field, and a ways in back of that were the trees. I tried to see the boat up above it, but couldn’t. I hoped it was still there, but the idea of the boat was less and less interesting to me. That didn’t make Tony’s idea of stealing the truck seem any better, but at least it was an idea that wasn’t wet.
Within a couple of hours, my back ached. I hadn’t done this kind of work in a while. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad had there been money and not slavery, and if the hours were reasonable.
After picking until noon, we were allowed to go up to the truck on the east side to get a drink. We took turns with a dipper in a water can. We were allowed two dips, then we were done. The water was warm, but it was water. My clothes were so wet with sweat, it was like I had been wearing them swimming. They let us sit awhile in the shade of the truck, but it was time for us to get up and go before we were any kind of rested.
Maybe that was best. I could hardly move, and the longer I sat, the harder it was to get up.
When I come around in front of the truck, I looked down a ways and saw what Gasper had been talking about. It wasn’t much of a boat, and I thought even if we got to it, there were no paddles, and those men could wade after us as fast as we could wade in. It was a plan that hadn’t sounded too good to begin with, but now it seemed even worse.
We picked all day, and when night finally came, we picked a little in the dark and unloaded our peas into the baskets. There was only one man at the truck now, and he kept telling us to hurry.
The other man had gone off in the woods, most likely to take care of bathroom business. By the time we were walking across the row again, the man with the shotgun was at our backs, and the other one had come out of the woods and got in the truck and drove it off. As he did, a big bloodhound lifted its head up and stuck it out the window. Another problem with trying to steal the truck. Dogs bite.
They took us to where there was an outhouse and let us go in there one at a time and do our business, with them beating on the door almost the second we were inside, telling us to hurry. It wasn’t a thing that lent itself well to a bathroom visit.
Back at the barracks, we went inside, and a little later, Sheriff Big Bill came with a pot of beans and a man with a shotgun. Bill had metal plates, and he passed those out, and then some metal cups. He scooped beans from the pot with a cup, gave us all a plateful. They let us dip some water from a water cooler, and then we had to sit down. We didn’t have any spoons, so we ate the beans with our fingers and sucked the juice from the plate by tilting it into our mouths.
The beans were cold and the water was warm. They took up our plates and cups and took the pot and the water with them. They locked the door. The sound of that padlock going into place was like hearing the crack of doom.
Jane sat down against the wall where we’d been the night before and said, “Home, sweet home.”
