A BRISK coolness was in the air as a mid-October dawn broke the clear Florida sky. The sun would soon send waves of dry heat across the land as it inched upward in the sky, making the soil a hostile enemy that scorched plants and strained the endurance of a man; but now the ground was covered with millions of glistening moisture jewels that changed color constantly with the growing light.
Jared awoke slowly and gazed upward into the tops of the cabbage palms. The thickness of the trees, combined with the heavy growths of palmetto, filtered the yet weak sunlight and caused the hammock to glow dimly like the coals of a dying fire. For a moment more he lay still, then he bolted upright and jumped to his feet. He calmed himself only when he looked to the left, saw the van, and realized where he was.
He moved quietly so as not to awaken anyone. After gathering sticks and starting a fire, he turned up the dirt trail leading back to the highway. When he reached the edge of the ribbon of black asphalt, he squatted on his haunches and looked out across the fields that melted into the distant horizon. A thin layer of fog lay motionless just above the ground. It was broken into wisps as egrets swooped upward and downward while searching the fields for food.
Jared gazed intensely for several minutes, thinking not of a time here in this strange Florida hammock, but back once again to those acres in West Virginia where the soil was mixed with the blood of his father and his mother and his wife and children. Times there had been hard, and sometimes almost desperate, but he had been his own man in a world of his own making. He had been beholden to no one as he now must be, but the price for this foolish and stubborn pride had been more than he could pay and was now coming up for collection.
He thought of Cloma, lying pregnant on the hard floor of the van, and of the day so long ago when they met at a church social as he bid fifty cents for her box of fried chicken, which he later shared with her. Their meeting had been nothing more than his contribution to the church building fund, or so it seemed at the exact moment; but as they walked to the picnic table by the church to spread the dinner, he accidentally touched her shoulder, and he knew instantly that he would spend his life with her.
He thought again of all those doubts and anxieties that had tormented him during the trip southward from West Virginia, asking himself if he had really done the right thing or if he should have tried for one more year to hold on to the land. But he knew that his situation there had been hopeless and there was no other way except to leave; but the leaving had been an almost unbearable knife thrust through his heart.
It troubled him deeply to take Kristy and Bennie out of school, for the one thing he was determined to do in life was to give them the education which had been denied to him and to Cloma. He had not gone past the tenth grade, and Cloma had dropped out of the eleventh grade when they married. But there would be schools in Florida, and later there would be college, and roads would open for Kristy and Bennie that had been forever closed to him.
He knew that many things he left behind would haunt his memory forever: the woods where he hunted, the streams where he fished, the hillsides where he cut wood to keep them warm in winter, the fields that produced skimpy crops of corn and pumpkins, the barn with its early morning smells, the hickory grove where his father and mother rested; all these things would linger while the hurt and the pain and the hopelessness and the despair would someday fade away. But he was determined to push all of his former life from his mind, and create something new and good for all of them.
His trance was broken when he heard footsteps coming quickly up the dirt trail. He turned as Kristy ran up and said, “Mamma sent me lookin’ for you, Papa. She said the coffee is ready.”
Jared motioned and said, “Sit here beside me a minute, Kristy.”
When she was settled on the damp grass, he said, “I want to thank you again fer what you did fer me in the cafe.”
“It was nothing, Papa,” she said. “I was just glad to help out.”
“We’re all going to be fine,” Jared said, reaching over and touching her arm. “You’ll see. Everything is going to work out o.k.”
For a moment Kristy stared across the misty field in silence, and then she said, “Papa . . . I know everything is going to be fine with us . . . but someday . . . when we’re all settled and Mamma and Bennie are taken care of . . . I want to go back to the mountains. Papa . . . do you understand?”
“I reckon as how I do,” Jared said, again touching her arm gently. “I’d like to go back someday too. Fact is, I didn’t want to leave . . . but there was no choice. I understand, Kristy. Someday you’ll get all you want out of life. And that’s a promise.”
Kristy got up and said, “We better go now, Papa, before Mamma has to come and fetch us. She’ll be worried.”
He pushed himself up slowly and then followed Kristy back into the hammock.
It was after ten o’clock when the yellow Mark IV turned off the highway and entered the hammock. Jared had been pacing back and forth beside the van for hours, desperately worried that perhaps the man at the service station had played a cruel joke on him, that no one would come looking for him. He almost ran to meet the automobile as it stopped beside a cabbage palm.
A huge man got out and leaned against the front of the car. He was almost six and a half feet tall, and weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. His hair was red and short-cropped, and his face was almost as red as his hair. He looked to be around fifty years old. He studied Jared carefully and said, “You the folks who’re looking for work?”
“Yes,” Jared said nervously. “I’m Jared Teeter. Folks call me Jay.”
The man snorted and said, “Your last name should have been Bird. Then folks could call you Jay Bird.” He looked at Jared closely again and asked, “Where you folks from?”
“West Virginny. We just got down here a few days ago. I met the man at the service station yesterday when I tried to get a job there.”
“You got any kin folk around here?”
“No. All our kin is back in West Virginny.”
The man seemed to be in deep thought for a moment, and then he said, “I’m Silas Creedy. You ever picked before?”
Jared scratched his head, remembering that this same question had cost him a job once before. He finally said, “Yes, sir, I’ve done a good bit of it. I owned my own farm, and I’ve picked plenty of corn and vegetables.”
“I mean picking. Worked the fields down here.”
“Well, no, I guess not,” Jared said uneasily, “but I can do anythin’ I’m a mind to do. I’d sure like to try pickin’ or anythin’ else you want me to do.”
Creedy looked toward the van. “Are them younguns healthy?” he asked.
“Yes. They’s fine kids.”
“But you got your old lady’s belly swole up.”
“She’s ’bout seven months along.”
“We don’t usually allow nobody in the camp who can’t work.”
Jared had a sinking feeling that he was not going to get the job. He said quickly, “Her bein’ that way won’t bother my workin’. She’s a good woman, and she can look after herself durin’ the day.”
Creedy remained silent for a moment, then he said, “Well, I guess you folks will do. Maybe your woman can find something to do around the camp during the day.”
“The camp?” Jared asked quizzically.
“Yeah, the camp. You folks will live in my labor camp. It’s called Angel City.”
“You mean we get housin’ too?” Jared asked, surprised.
“Yeah, you get housing,” Creedy said impatiently. “How many times do I have to tell you, fellow? You’ll live in my labor camp.”
“Why, that’s fine, Mr. Creedy,” Jared said, “just fine. I was awful worried ’bout where we would find a place to stay.” He hesitated for a moment, and then he asked, “Mr. Creedy, how much does this work pay?”
“Depends on you,” Creedy answered. “Tomatoes pays twenty-five cents a bucket. Other stuff generally pays by the hamper. If we pick fruit, it’s by the tub. The more you work the more you make. It’s up to you.”
“What about the cost of the camp housin’?”
“Ah, there’s a little charge for that, but it don’t amount to much of nothing. We take it out of your earnings ev’ry Saturday when you get paid. You get supper cooked at the camp, but you have to look out for yourself for breakfast and whatever you eat in the fields at noon.”
“That sounds fair enough,” Jared said. “I’d be mighty proud to work fer you, Mr. Creedy.”
Creedy then said, “Before we go to the camp I want you to follow me back to Florida City and get signed up for food stamps.”
The statement puzzled Jared. He said, “Mr. Creedy, I don’t need no food stamps. I’ve never taken charity in my lifetime. Mountain folk don’t take charity.”
“It’s not charity!” Creedy snapped, annoyed by Jared’s unexpected answer. “It’s coming to you from your taxes. Ev’rybody at Angel City gets food stamps. All you have to do is sign up, and I take care of it from there. It won’t be any bother to you.”
“Well, I guess I’ll do it if you say so. But we don’t take charity from nobody.”
“You just follow me back to Florida City, and then we’ll go to the camp and get you folks set up.”
The Dodge van followed the Mark IV as it left the highway and moved slowly along a dirt road surrounded on both sides by tomato fields. A small island of Australian pines broke the openness of the field about a mile south of the highway. When they reached the camp, Creedy got out, unlocked the gate and opened it. To the right of the gate there was a sign painted in red and blue that read:
ANGEL CITY
LABOR CAMP
POSITIVELY NO TRESPASSING
—KEEP OUT—
The camp covered about two acres of ground and was surrounded by an eight-foot chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire on top. The main building was a long concrete block structure with rows of doors on both the north and south sides, but no windows. Dingy whitewash hung in flaked strips from the concrete, and the roof overhang was sagging badly from rot. Behind this building there was a small block building containing a toilet and shower, and a house trailer was parked beneath the Australian pines in the south corner of the compound. A red pickup truck sat beside the trailer. The place seemed to be deserted except for an old Negro man sitting on the ground beneath one of the trees. He did not look up as the two vehicles entered and parked.
Creedy got out of the car and said, “You folks will have number ten on the north side. You can spend the rest of the afternoon getting settled. The bus will leave for the fields at six o’clock in the morning.” With that he drove out, locked the gate and created a cloud of white limestone dust as he raced the Mark IV back toward the highway.
Bennie said, “How come he locked the gate, Papa? We can’t get back outside if we want to.”
Jared was also puzzled by this. He said, “I don’t rightly know. Maybe they don’t want folks in here that don’t have no business bein’ here when ev’rybody is in the fields. That might be a good idea.”
They all followed Jared as he walked to the north side of the building and found a door with the number 10 painted above it. He opened the door and entered slowly. A naked light bulb with a string hanging down was in the center of the room. He pulled the string and flooded the eight-foot square cubicle with yellowish light. The heat and the strong smell of stale urine and vomit almost turned his stomach. He jumped back quickly and said, “Phew! We better let some air get in there afore we go in. That place smells like it’s real ripe.”
They waited for about five minutes and then entered again. The room was totally bare except for two sets of bunk beds against the walls. A pile of empty wine bottles was in one corner and was surrounded by dried vomit.
Jared held his nose and said, “We better get back out of here! I purely can’t stand it!”
For several minutes they huddled silently outside the room, and then Jared said dejectedly, “It looks like I done got us in a real mess, don’t it?”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just cleaned up,” Cloma said, trying to ease the guilt in Jared’s voice.
“It ain’t goin’ to be much even when it’s cleaned up,” he said.
“Why don’t you ask that old man under the tree for some soap and a mop? And tomorrow we can get some spray that will take the bad smell out.”
“I’ll go and see to it now,” Jared said.
The old Negro seemed to be asleep as Jared walked up to him. He appeared to be about eighty years old, and his body was nothing more than wrinkled skin and bones. Jared shook his arm and he looked up.
“Where can I get some soap and a mop?” Jared asked. “We want to clean the room.”
The old man said, “I’s de cook. I don’ pick no ’maters no mo, an’ I gits two bottles o’ wine ’stead o’ one. Dey’s a mop in de outhouse but ev’rybody buys dey own soap.”
Jared said, “You got some soap I can borrow ’til we can buy some? Or I could just buy it from you.”
The old man answered, “I’s de cook. I don’ pick no ’maters no mo, an’ I gits two bottles o’ wine ’stead o’ one. You’ll have to go to de sto’.”
“But the gate’s locked and I can’t get out,” Jared said, becoming exasperated.
“I’s de cook. I don’ pick no ’maters no mo, an’ . . . .”
Jared turned quickly and walked back to the room. He said, “That old fool seems to be daffy. We’ll just have to wait ’til somebody gets back to the camp. We might as well go sit under a tree where it’s cooler.”
They all walked to one of the Australian pines and sat on the soft needles that covered the ground. Jared said, “I been doin’ some thinkin’. This place is worse than our old hawg pen, but we don’t have to stay here long. If they pay twenty-five cents fer pickin’ a bucket of tomatoes, and I can pick a hundred in a day, that’s twenty-five dollars. If Kristy and Bennie can pick fifty each, that’s another twenty-five bucks, or fifty dollars fer the day. For six days’ work that’s three hundred dollars — more clear money than I ever made in a month. At that rate it won’t take us no time at all to have our own fruit stand. You think we can stick it out fer a few weeks?”
“I’ll pick more than fifty, Papa,” Bennie said with excitement.
“And I’ll pick as many as Bennie,” Kristy said.
“You won’t neither,” Bennie shot back. “You’re just a girl. Can’t no girl do nothin’ like a man.”
“We can make do all right, Jay,” Cloma said assuredly. “The room won’t be so bad once we get it cleaned up and the smell out.”
Jared felt relief. He was afraid they would all hold it against him for bringing them to such a place. He said, “Well, it’s settled then. We’ll stick it out fer awhile, and we’ll fill a bucket full of money afore you know it. We’ll sell fruits and vegetables and pot-holders and aprons and Bennie can carve those little wooden animals he’s so good at. It won’t take us no time at all.”
It was just before six when the two old school buses came into the camp and parked beside the trailer. One was painted a faded red and one blue. Both were covered with dust. On the side of one there was a sign painted in white: ANGEL CITY UNIT 1; on the other, ANGEL CITY UNIT 2.
About sixty people got out of the buses. All were black males except for ten black women, a white man and woman, and a white boy about the same age as Bennie. Some of the people ran and formed a line in front of the shower stall; others disappeared into their rooms; and some just plopped down to the ground and sat.
Jared and his family watched this sudden activity with curiosity, and then they walked back to the building and sat on the ground in front of their room. A black man was sitting in front of the door next to them.
In a few minutes a huge black man carrying a box walked down the side of the building. He handed each person a pint bottle of white wine. When he came to Jared he held the bottle in his outstretched hand and said nothing.
Jared looked up at him and said, “What’s this?”
The man jabbed the bottle at Jared and remained silent.
The black man sitting on the ground by the adjacent room watched for a moment, and then he said, “Mistuh, you’re payin’ a buck-fifty for that bottle of junk whether you take it or not. You better take it.”
“But I don’t want any wine,” Jared said, puzzled by the whole thing.
“You better take it. It’ll help you get through the night.”
Jared took the bottle, and then the huge black man continued on along the line of rooms. Jared turned the bottle over and over in his hands, staring at it, and then he said to the black man sitting next to him, “You want it?”
“You keep it. You’ll need it sooner or later.”
Jared took a closer look at this stranger. He was in his early forties, and the coal-black skin of his face was broken by a long white scar running down his left cheek. His clothes and shoes were covered with white dust.
No black people had ever lived anywhere near Teeter Ridge, and Jared had never really known any. He was curious to know more about this black man, so he extended his hand and said, “My name’s Jared Teeter. Folks call me Jay.”
The black man was surprised by the extended hand. He reached over reluctantly, touched Jared for only a moment and then said, “I’s called Cy.”
For a moment neither of them said anything further, then the black man said, “Where you come from, Mistuh Jay?”
“West Virginny,” Jared answered.
“What part of West Virginny?”
“Well, my place was out from Dink.”
“Dink?” the man questioned. “What’s that near?”
“Well, Dink’s not far from Wallback or Valley Fork or Big Otter. Big Otter is close to Nebo, and Nebo is close to Mudfork, and Mudfork is close to . . . .”
“That be’s all right,” Cy interrupted. “You don’t need to explain it no further.”
Another period of silence prevailed, and then Jared said, “We can’t go in the room, it stinks so bad. I got to have some soap and a mop. When do we go to the store?”
“We stops at the sto’ comin’ in ev’ry afternoon.”
“Can’t I go tonight after supper?”
The black man stared curiously at Jared, and then he said, “Only in the afternoon comin’ in from the fields. But I got some soap powder you can have, an’ they’s a mop out by the shower stalls.”
Just then an old black man with a white beard came out of Cy’s room. He was singing an almost incoherent tune, “I seen Jesus today . . . I seen Jesus in de ’mater patch . . . I seen Jesus today . . . an’ Jesus wuz pick in’ ’mate rs . . . .”
Jared stared curiously at the old man as he walked away, still singing.
Cy turned to him and said, “Don’t pay no never mind to him. He’s tetched, but he don’t bother nobody. Ev’rybody ’round here calls him Rude.”
“Ain’t he kind of old to be workin’ in the fields?” Jared asked.
“That old man’s past eighty, but he’s like a machine. You point him down a tomato row an’ he’ll pick fo’ buckets while anybody else picks one. He’s been here three years now, an’ if he wadden’ so good at pickin’, Creedy would-a kilt him a long time ago. I’ll get yo soap.”
Cy’s last statement about the old man and Creedy baffled Jared and was totally beyond any degree of comprehension, but before Jared could question him further, Cy vanished into the room. He returned shortly and handed a box of soap powder to Jared.
“I sure thank you fer this,” Jared said. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow when I get to the store.”
“Don’t worry ’bout it. I don’t use much soap no more.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go now and find the mop, and see what we can do with that room,” Jared said.
“You best wait ’til after supper. It’s ’bout that time, an’ if’n you don’t et when it’s ready, you won’t git none.”
Cy leaned back against the wall and opened his bottle of wine. Jared watched as he put the bottle to his mouth and drained it in one gulp. He belched loudly, and then he looked at Jared and said, “That cheap junk cost forty-nine cents a pint at the sto’, an’ we pays Creedy a buck-fifty fo’ it here in the camp ev’ry afternoon, whether we wants to buy it or not. Ain’t that some crap?”
A loud clanging noise suddenly erupted from somewhere west of the barracks. Cy jumped up and said, “That’s it. You gotta hav yo own plates an’ foks.” Then he hurried around the side of the barracks.
Jared went to the van and brought back a box containing plates and other utensils, and then they all joined a line leading to an open shed in the west comer of the camp. The stove was an iron grate propped up on concrete blocks. A wood fire smoldered beneath it, and three large blackened pots sat on top of the grate.
The frail old man who had called himself the cook was standing behind the grate, dipping from the pots as each person came past. Onto each plate he dumped a glob of boiled pork backbone, a portion of boiled squash and stewed tomatoes, and two slices of white bread. The old man had no teeth, and his mouth popped constantly as he served the food.
Some of the people took their plates back to their rooms, and others squatted on the ground close by the shed. Jared and his family went to a tree by the side of the van. The sun had now sunk deeply into the western horizon, and two floodlights came on at each end of the building.
For a moment they ate in silence, and then Jared said solemnly, “If that old man’s a cook, then I’m one of them ballet dancers.”
Cloma smiled as Bennie said, “This squash tastes like it’s got sand in it.”
“He didn’t wash it before he cooked it,” Cloma said. “Maybe now you’ll appreciate more the good food I’ve been givin’ you all this time.”
Jared laughed and said, “Well, ev’rybody save a little bit fer Skip. Maybe he can eat it.”
Kristy said, “Papa, Skip can have all of mine if he wants it. I’m just not hungry.”
When they finished what they could eat of the supper, they joined another line leading to the hydrant close by the side of the outhouse where people were washing their dishes. Jared got a bucket from the van, filled it with water, looked for the mop and found it in the shower stall. Then he went back to the room.
He put the mop and bucket against the wall, and then he said to Cloma, “You want me to help with this?”
“No,” she answered. “Bennie and Kristy can do it. I’ll watch and see that it’s done right.”
“You ought not do any work yourself. I’ll help if you say so.” He moved toward her.
“You’d just be in the way. We can’t hardly turn around in this little room as it is. We’ll do it.”
Jared then left the room and walked to the fence on the north side of the camp. Far in the distance he could see the glow of lights hovering above Florida City and Homestead, creating a huge yellow dome in the darkness of the sky. His thoughts began to drift back again to the farm in West Virginia.
He was startled when he realized that Cy was standing beside him. His body jerked as he spun around.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Cy said.
“That’s o.k. I was just thinkin’, and I didn’t hear you come up.”
Cy leaned against the fence, and then he said slowly, “Mistuh, I don’t knows how you come to be in here, but you seems like a good man. You ought to take yo woman an’ them younguns an’ git outen here the fust thing in the morn in’ while you still can.”
“I don’t understand what you’re sayin’,” Jared said, puzzled.
“I mean, git outen here! You ain’t got no business in Angel City!”
“I can’t do that,” Jared said, even more puzzled by the insistence of this black man he didn’t even really know. Then he said emphatically, “I need the work!”
Cy suddenly turned and carefully searched the area next to the barracks. He noticed that the huge black man who had passed out the bottles of wine was standing near the floodlight on the east end of the building. He turned back again and faced Jared as if he had something more to say; but then he wheeled around quickly and walked back toward his room.