DAWN WAS far off when Jabbo awoke the men the next morning. He again gave them cans of sardines and beans and slices of bread, but there was no coffee to ease the biting chill. During the night, the temperature had dropped into the mid-thirties. Jared had not brought even a light jacket with him, for he had no prior knowledge of the cold fronts that rush through Florida in the winter, dropping the temperature forty degrees overnight.
The meal was finished quickly, and then the workers were ordered into the bus. Just as they turned right on the highway toward Belle Glade, a feeble dawn revealed a steel-gray sky. Two miles down the highway they again turned onto a dirt road flanking a cane field. Cy looked out of the window and moaned, “Ah, crap! We ain’t headin’ to the com fields. They must be too wet. He’s takin’ us to a cane field.”
Jared didn’t know the difference between a vegetable field and a cane field except for the remarks Cy had made about cane cutting, so he made no reply to Cy’s seemingly disturbed remark.
When the bus stopped, Jared noticed that the Mark IV was parked beside a pickup truck. Creedy was talking to a man in the truck. All of the men were then qrdered off the bus, and Jared shivered with cold as the piercing wind bit into his body.
Another truck was parked nearby, and a man at that truck issued each of the workers a machete and assigned him a row of cane. For those like Jared, who had never cut before, he demonstrated that the cane must be cut at ground level and then cut again into four-foot lengths. Jared gripped the handle of the huge blade and swished it through the air. The weight of it caused his arm to drop, and he almost sliced the blade into his leg.
The first hour of cutting was a novelty to Jared, and he swung the blade back and forth vigorously, striking down the hard stalks, cutting them again and throwing the lengths to the ground for the automatic loaders to scoop up. Soot from the burned stalks covered his face and arms and got into his eyes, and the black muck sucked at his shoes; but still the uniqueness of the work made the first of the morning bearable.
By noon his arms and back and legs ached almost beyond endurance, and the machete became heavier and heavier. It took all his strength just to lift the blade after he had swung it downward into the base of a stalk. He stopped almost continuously to rest, and each time he looked up, the row seemed to grow longer and longer. When the work was finished that afternoon, Cy had to push him back into the bus.
That night they again ate the cold food from cans and drank in the drainage canal. Jared managed to wash some of the grime from his face and arms, but his clothes were caked with thick layers of mud and soot. He made a bed of pine needles and then rolled himself into his blanket. He was so tired he didn’t notice the cold or the dampness of the ground or the wailing sound of the wind in the pines, and it was just after dusk when he fell into a deep sleep.
The temperature dropped again to twenty-nine degrees, and even the constant swinging of the heavy machete did not warm Jared’s body. His hands shook as he chopped again and again at the thick stalks, and at noon he huddled against Cy in the bus to gain some warmth. He wished that Jabbo would pass out the bottles of wine at night as he had at Angel City, for this might help bring some relief from the cold and the ache in his bones.
It was late in the afternoon on the fourth day in the cane fields when the pickup followed the bus back to the camp in the Australian pines. The emblem of a sugar company was painted on the doors of the pickup, and a tall radio antenna was mounted on the truck’s cab.
A man got out of the pickup and looked at the ANGEL CITY sign on the side of the old bus, then he walked to Jabbo and said, “Is this the crew run by a man named Creedy?”
“Yassah, this it,” Jabbo replied.
“You people been camping here all week?” the man asked.
“That’s right,” Jabbo said. “This our camp.”
“Creedy stay here too?”
“Nawsuh. He stay at the motel in Belle Glade. He be out here soon with the food.”
The man went back and sat in the truck until the Mark IV drove in and parked by the bus. He watched as Creedy put the box on the ground and Jabbo issued each man the cans of food and slices of bread; then he walked over to Creedy and said, “You Creedy, the contractor with this crew?”
“That’s right,” Creedy answered. “What you want?”
“I’m one of the field supervisors with the sugar company, and you’re camping in my section. How long you had these men here?”
“Since Sunday,” Creedy said warily.
“Are they sleeping on the ground?”
“They can sleep in the bus if they want to.”
“It’s a damned wonder they all don’t, have pneumonia.” The man watched the workers as they sat on the pine needles and ate with their fingers from the cans. He said, “I’ve never seen a crew that looked worse than this. When’s the last time these men had a bath?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about their personal habits,” Creedy said, becoming agitated by the questions. “They can take a bath in the canal anytime they want to. Hell, I ain’t no nursemaid. I’m a contractor.”
“They can’t stay out here any longer,” the man said. “You can move them into a barracks at Camp 9.”
“What’s that going to cost?” Creedy asked.
“We’ll give them the same deal as the offshore workers. The rooms are free, and the meals are seventy-five cents each.”
Creedy thought for a moment, and then he said, “I ain’t going to pay no two and a quarter a day per man just for meals. I can feed ‘em myself for less than a buck.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to pay?” the man questioned. “The meals are deducted from the men’s wages. It has nothing to do with you.”
“I get all the money and I pay the men,” Creedy said firmly.
“What?” The man gave Creedy a penetrating look, then he said, “There’s no way you’re going to do that! We’ll pay you the same as any contractor for putting these men in the field, but every man receives his own wages.”
“I ain’t going to do that!” Creedy said defiantly. “I get the money and I pay the men. Some of these people owe me money, and I have to take it out of their wages.”
“You got a court order to do that?”
“A court order? Hell, I don’t need no court order to collect a honest debt.”
“You do up here.” The man stepped closer to Creedy and said, “Fellow, I don’t know what kind of an outfit you’re running wherever you come from, but these men look worse than a bunch of pigs. Are you going to move them into the barracks or not?”
“Before I do, I’ll take ‘em out of the field!”
“You just do that!” the man snapped angrily. “And you get the hell off this property! You’re on company property without permission! You’re trespassing!”
“We got some money coming,” Creedy said quickly.
“I know that. I’m going over to the field office and see exactly how much each of these men have earned. Then I’ll come back and pay them. I’ll be gone about a half-hour.” He walked to the pickup, got in and drove off quickly, spraying mud from beneath the truck’s rear wheels onto the side of the bus.
As soon as the truck was gone, Creedy kicked the cardboard box violently, scattering cans across the small clearing. He shouted loudly, “Bastards! Sons o’ bitches! A man can’t even make a honest livin’ no more on account of them supervisors!”
The men sitting beneath the trees watched curiously as Creedy kicked the box again and again until finally it landed in the drainage canal.
When the supervisor returned, each man was given an envelope with his wages inside. The workers were paid according to the amount of cane each had cut, and Jared’s envelope contained fifty-two dollars. He stuffed the bills into his pocket. Creedy stood to the side and glared angrily as the supervisor finished his task and got back into the pickup. He leaned out the window and said to Creedy, “I want you off this property within thirty minutes! And I don’t want to ever see you back!”
Creedy watched the truck until it disappeared into the growing darkness, then he turned to the men and said, “I’m going to be fair with all of you. I got expenses bringing you up here, and the food. I’ll let you keep half what the man gave you, and I’ll take half. That’s more’n you got comin’. And I’ll let the bus stop at a store when we leave here.”
Each man got up silently and walked to Creedy, handing him half the money he had received. Creedy stuffed the bills into a brown paper sack and then took Jabbo aside. They talked for several minutes, then Creedy got into the Mark IV and drove off. At Jabbo’s signal, the men gathered up their blankets and boarded the bus.
When they reached the highway they turned right and drove to Belle Glade, then they turned north toward Pahokee. A mile out of town the bus stopped at a country store. The men scrambled out and rushed into the building, hurriedly purchasing cartons of beer and bottles of wine and Moon pies and jars of pickled pigs’ feet and boxes of sugar cookies. Jared bought a denim jacket for eight dollars, several cans of corned beef and sardines, a quart of red wine, and two candy bars. He thought immediately of Cloma and Bennie back at Angel City without enough food, but he was too cold and too hungry to resist spending this much of the unexpected money. He still had over fifteen dollars left.
They drove north again for two miles, then the bus turned from the highway and followed a dirt path to an abandoned labor camp. The wooden cabins contained about nine square feet of space each and were propped on stilts four feet off the ground. The windows and doors were missing from all of them, and some of the cabins had gaping holes in their sides and roofs.
Jabbo cut the engine and said, “Mistuh Creedy say we stay here fo’ a while.”
Jared and Cy entered one of the cabins cautiously. They were immediately covered with cobwebs, and the rotten floor sagged with their weight. There was a strong smell of decay. Cy said, “It ain’t much, but it’s better’n the ground. Makes me kinda homesick, too. Let’s look aroun’ an’ see if we can find somethin’ to build a fire in.”
They went outside and searched the area surrounding the cabin. Jared found a rusted bucket half buried in the dirt, and Cy gathered a bundle of twigs. A few minutes later, a small fire inside the bucket illuminated the interior of the cabin. Both men held their hands over the flames to warm them.
Jared and Cy both opened cans of corned beef, then they drank deeply from bottles of wine. Cy said, “It sho’ did me good to see that sugar man give it to Creedy. I thought ole Creedy was goin’ choke to death on his own spit.”
“Where’ll he take us now?” Jared asked between bites.
Cy swallowed a huge chunk of corned beef, washed it down with wine, and then said, “Mos’ anywhere. Probably the corn fields, but he sho’ ain’t goin’ to take us back to the cane fields. Them folks don’t want no more truck with Creedy.”
“Suits me fine,” Jared said. “I don’t never want to cut another stalk noways.” He spread out his blanket and lay down. The wine warmed him, and the new jacket felt good to his arms and shoulders. “How long these cold spells last?” he asked. “I always thought it was hot all the time in Floridy.”
Cy drank again, then he put the bottle down and said, “Sometimes it gets cold enough to freeze the oranges on the trees, an’ they has to fire the groves. But these spells don’t last long. This one last much longer, the vegetables be in real trouble.”
“I wouldn’t care if ev’rything froze solid tonight. Maybe then we would go back to Angel City.”
“You’s worried ‘bout yo” woman, ain’t you?”
“Yes.” Jared had not realized it showed so much on his face and in his voice.
Cy said, “You don’t need to worry so. Bertha a good woman. She’ll see to yo’ wife. Bertha will take good care o’ her.”
“Maybe,” Jared said doubtfully. “But I sure wish I was back there now.”