I stumble ashore.
The pole light was the only light nearby.
There it stood, by itself, sticking up on the end of a shallow water ramp about three times the height of a man. Behind the short pier there was a two-building shanty, slanted roof, no lights inside. Blinking, I read a sign:
SATTERFIELD FISH CAMP
BOAT RENTALS … HOMEMADE PECAN PIE
SARAH SATTERFIELD, PROPRIETOR
I saw boats.
There were several of them, close to a dozen, but no oars. The boat nearest to me looked to be in a sorry shape. It was beached with a busted seat. And stove in.
My cut foot was smarting.
So I sat myself on an overturned boat, and hoisted my foot to my knee for a look. I had a bleeding gash about a finger long, or longer, and oozing blood.
I sighed.
As I faced the lake, looking across it, the distant waterline seemed to be getting lighter. This meant, according to Miss Hoe, that I was facing east, because that was where morning sun started to shine.
Somewhere, over there, was Brother Smith. What should I do now?
Reaching a hand inside my soaking wet shirt, I felt for my letter. It was safe. But gone was my two books; one had been Brother Smith’s Bible that he’d give me, the other’d been a present from Miss Hoe. It was called Tom Sawyer.
I felt pain.
My foot sure was bleeding.
“Boy!”
A voice spoke, behind me.
Turning around, I spotted a couple of men, along with three dogs. Hounds. Short hair and long ears and leaner than dry-spell beans. Rib-counting lean. One of the dogs stared at me and bared his teeth. The dog growled. The taller of the two men wore a pistol that hung from a gunbelt. I couldn’t see the entire gun, only the curve of its handle.
“Hey,” the man said to me, coming my way. “Boy, how come you ain’t with the rest? You aiming to run off?”
The shorter man said, “Yup, that’s the way their kind usual behaves. Nothing fancy enough for them picker people. Except a good kick where it’ll spur ’em toward a day’s labor or along a row of produce.”
I couldn’t talk.
All I recalled of Shack Row, and Papa, sudden come rushing up into my throat, so’s I could barely breathe.
The tall man pointed a finger at my neck.
“Where’s your tag?”
“My what?” I asked him.
“Don’t fake a fooly at me,” the man said. “You know, dang it all, what I just meant.” He spat out a brown squirt of tobacco juice. “What’s your number, boy? The number on your worker tag?”
“Ain’t got one. I’m not …”
“What you fixing to pull, sonny boy? You best not try to make no jackass out of me. That what you’re trying to do?”
“No. No, sir.”
Because I couldn’t seem to force myself to match a stare with either of these here gentlemen, I sort of hung my head, and looked down at their feet. That’s when I took notice of what near to stopped my heart.
Both men were wearing shoes.
It frighted me to see such, because men with shoes had boss power. The short man bended over as though he was preparing to let one of the dogs loose … the one that’d snarled my way.
“Boy,” the shorter guy said, “do you got any idea what just one of these here mutts can perform on you?”
“No… I don’t.”
The tall man wearing the gun grinned at me, a smile with no warm to it, just teeth. He spoke.
“Herman, right here … is my dog man. He got a vial of coon juice in his pocket. All we gotta do, boy, is yank off your wet little bloomers and then hogtie you butter-up to one of them fallen cypress logs.” He chuckled. “Our wolf dogs aint’ tore a coon more’n two week. So, if’n we was to smear a gob of that juice on you, then you’d git yourself a lot lighter.”
I’d heared about what the men were talking to me. Huff Cooter said that it was how the new young men git initiated at the Jailtown Lumberyard. It was called getting dogged.
Putting a hand into his pocket, the short man pulled out a little bottle, then he holded it up for me to study.
“Boy,” said the tall man, “I’m going to ask you one more time.” He paused. “What’s your tag number?”
“I don’t have one. Honest.”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he just turned to the other man. “Herman, you pull the cork out a that fancy bottle.”
Herman pulled.
I heared a little pop.
“Now,” said the tall fellow, “show this lying little whelp what’ll happen, when a worker don’t confess the truth around here. Give that horny bluetick a quick whiff of that there coon perfume.”
Herman didn’t let the hound smell the open bottle. Only the cork. One sniff, and that dog was near to crazy, and I knowed why. The dog’s spine went rigid. He jumped around like a mad dog and then dragged his belly on the ground like he’d took a awful itch, one he didn’t know how to scratch.
It was a spell before the male hound could contain down to control. The other two dogs didn’t appear to be much calmer. Only a bit.
“My name,” said the taller man, “is Mr. Boss.”
“That’s right,” said the dog man, “and Mr. Boss hain’t never cotton to field folks that don’t hustle, and pay a decent respect. Hear?”
“I hear. But I’m not—”
The tall man whipped out his pistol.
“You shush, boy. Shut your uppity little picker mouth when yo betters is learning you to act proper.”
I wanted to turn and splash back into Okeechobee, and maybe git away from these mean people. Or drown. I couldn’t seem to run. All I done was to stand pat, as the man called Mr. Boss come close to me, grabbed my hair, forced me down to my knees, and halfway ripped off my shirt.
“Hey, you got dirt inside your shirt pocket, boy. That be field dirt. You’s a picker.”
“He don’t got a work tag,” the short man said.
“No.”
“Probable tore it loose, to pitch it.”
“Yeah,” said Mr. Boss. “Okay now, boy, what’s your number, the one you got assigned when you arrive here in style, off’n the sweat bus?”
“I’m … Arly Poole … and …” I tried to tell about my father’s grave dirt, inside my shirt pocket.
One of his hands ripped my hair, and the other poked the end of the pistol barrel up under my chin.
“You … ain’t … nobody. Here, no worker’s got a name. Or a soul. You understand?” He jabbed my throat with the gun muzzle. “All you got, young’n, is a number. You’d had one. Yeah, and you’d tore it off from around your neck. So your next number won’t be no tag.”
He paused to suck in a breath.
“You’ll git burnt.”