ON MONDAY morning, the workers went back into the com fields. The cold front had now passed, and Jared had spent most of Sunday afternoon bathing and washing his clothes in a drainage canal close by the camp. Later, he huddled in a blanket while the clothes dried slowly beside the small fire in the bucket.
Creedy was still in a rage over not finding Hoot, and each time Jared and Cy looked at his red face, they laughed inwardly because of the part they had played in Hoot’s escape. By now he would be safely in Frostproof or Avon Park, and they knew that Hoot would never again come close to Homestead or to Belle Glade.
At mid-week they were shifted into a celery field, where they ripped the white stalks from the soot-black soil and threw them into dump trucks. The stalks were then hauled to the packing house in Belle Glade where they were dumped into vats of water, washed and cooled, packed into crates and shipped to distant supermarkets where they would be purchased, chopped into soups or salads or stuffed with pimiento cheese and served with hors d’oeuvres at cocktail parties.
Jared was thinking more and more of Cloma. Sometimes he worked an entire row without realizing it, and at times he threw the stalks of celery over the top of the truck and had to run back and pick them up. But Creedy made no mention, or showed any inclination of returning the crew to Angel City.
On Saturday afternoon, Creedy gave each of the men five dollars. They were waiting to board the bus for a trip to the country store when the pickup came down the dirt trail and stopped beside the Mark IV. A man got out of the truck and came over to Creedy.
Creedy glanced at the sign on the door of the pickup: Okeechobee Produce Corporation. The man looked around for a moment, studying the workers and the cabins. He then said to Creedy, “I was told somebody had moved into this camp. Are these your men?”
“I’m the contractor,” Creedy replied cautiously.
“How long you been here?” the man asked.
“About a week and a half. How come you want to know?”
The man glanced around again and said, “This camp was condemned over five years ago. Who told you you could move in here?”
“Nobody,” Creedy said, shuffling his feet. “I didn’t think nobody would mind.”
“This is company property, and you could get us in trouble with the health department. You’ll have to move these people out of here.”
“We ain’t hurtin’ nobody,” Creedy said sullenly.
“We’ve got room for these men in a new camp east of Belle Glade. You can move them there right now. I’ll radio ahead that you ’re coming.”
“How much is it going to cost?” Creedy asked.
“The rent is ten dollars a man per week, but it’s a new building with baths, kitchens, heat and air conditioning. How many men you got here?”
Creedy didn’t respond to the question. His face flushed as he said angrily, “I ain’t payin’ no ten dollars a week just for rent! You must think I’m crazy. That would run me around five hundred dollars just for a place for them to sleep.”
“It won’t cost you anything. It’s taken out of each man’s earnings, and they don’t have to pay anything in advance.”
“I ain’t goin’ to do it!” Creedy exploded. “I get the money and I pay the workers! They all owe me money, and I have to take it from their wages!”
The man stepped back and watched Creedy’s face tum redder and redder. He said, “Listen, fellow! I’m not trying to tell you what to do with these men. Thats’ between you and them. I’m just trying to help. But I’ll tell you one thing for certain. You’re going to move out of this camp. If you don’t, I’ll have the law out here.”
Creedy calmed himself when he heard the law mentioned. He said in a more cooperative tone, “I don’t mean to cause trouble. I just didn’t think nobody would mind if we stayed here. We didn’t mean no harm.”
“You ought to know better than to come into an abandoned camp without permission!” the man snapped.
Creedy shuffled his feet again. “Can we stay here just for tonight and move in the morning?”
“I’m not saying that you can or can’t. But at eight tomorrow morning I’m sending a deputy sheriff out here to check this property, and you better be to hell and gone out of here by then. You understand what I mean?”
“I understand,” Creedy said, subdued.
The pickup was not out of sight down the dirt trail when Creedy kicked the rear tire of the bus violently and bellowed, “Goddamit to hell! A man can’t even make a honest livin’ no more!”
He had a lengthy conversation with Jabbo, then he got into the Mark IV and screeched the tires down the dirt path.
The trip to the store was cancelled.
At daylight the next morning the men were loaded into the bus. Creedy did not come back to the camp, and there was no box of canned food for breakfast. Jared shared the last of his corned beef with Cy, but most of the men had nothing.
The bus traveled back to Belle Glade and then to South Bay, but it didn’t tum down Highway 27 toward Homestead. Instead, it continued west to Clewiston and out Highway 80 to LaBelle, where it turned south on Highway 29. Just after mid-morning, the old vehicle rolled into Immokalee.
Jabbo parked beside a service station on the highway leading through the main part of the town. Except for an occasional car or cattle truck ambling along, the streets were deserted. In the distance a church bell was tolling.
Jared gave Cy a questioning look, but Cy just shook his head in bewilderment. Jared had been in high spirits that morning, thinking that they were at last heading back to Angel City; but as they passed the junction of the highway to Homestead, and continued mile after mile into strange country, he became more and more puzzled and concerned.
It was two hours later when the Mark IV pulled in and parked beside the bus. Jabbo got out and went over to the car, and in a few minutes he came back, cranked the bus and followed Creedy through the town and south on Highway 29.
Seven miles past Immokalee the Mark IV turned left off the highway and followed a dirt path leading across a cow pasture. After a half mile they entered an area of dense loblolly pines, and then they came to an open field. Jabbo parked the bus and all of the men got out.
Creedy came over to the workers and said impatiently, “We got three hundred acres of cucumbers here to pick. I’ve contracted for the whole field ‘stead of by the hamper. You men can sit on your butts the rest of the afternoon if you want to, but the sooner you get this field picked, the quicker we ‘II get out of here and head back to Homestead.” He opened the car trunk and removed a box of canned food and a keg of water, then he got into the car and drove swiftly back across the pasture.
Some of the men took their blankets from the bus and started making a camp beneath a thick clump of pines. Others sat on the ground beside the bus.
Along a barbed wire fence separating the pasture from the field there were several stacks of empty hampers. Jared walked to the fence and picked up one of the hampers, then he went into the field alone and started picking.