Hardscrabble Road Read online

  Nat and Lonnie watched their feet while Papa cussed and walloped Chet. Jay mirrored the sharecroppers. His suntanned knuckles turned white as he strangled his hoe. Papa stalked over to him and whipped the belt across Jay’s fingers, shouting, “Turn around, Goddamn you.” Jay was responsible for the three of us; the general always got punished when his troops did, so Papa beat him almost daily. He cried out as the leather snapped against his back and seat. Each of his sobs was interrupted by a screech as the belt bit into him again.

  I trembled so much that I almost dropped my hoe. Dan watched me with a cool brown eye the size of my palm. His head twitched up and he looked toward the crossroads a moment before I heard the Seaboard Railroad engineer blow his whistle.

  Papa drew the belt back again and stopped. The band of worn leather and broken stitches dangled against his arm. His wrist rotated like he was flipping a baseball to a teammate; he flicked the belt around front and pushed it through his trouser loops. Cheeks flushed, he blew out a breath and said, “Y’all get cleaned up for dinner.” His eyes were small and glassy; I wondered how the world looked to him at that moment—I wondered how I looked. With a creak of the saddle, he mounted Dan. The horse stared at me again, first with one huge eye and then the other as Papa turned him around to canter back to the barn, a distance of only thirty yards.

  Nat and Lonnie dashed over to Jay. They patted his arms and rubbed his head and said everything would be all right. Jay’s sniffles and ragged breath finally calmed. He tried to smile at the men. He once told me that he’d gladly trade Papa for either one of them.

  Chet drew himself up. He exchanged a nod with Lonnie. The cords tightened in his neck as he lifted his chin high and walked stiff-legged to the outhouse at the end of one row. As I trotted toward the back porch, I tried not to hear the crying that escaped across the field.

  CHAPTER 3

  Late that afternoon, while we finished hoeing around the cotton, Papa rode Dan out to oversee us again. Sweat had dried on my clothes in ragged white streaks; the dust I’d raised with my hoe stuck to my wet skin and left a noose of dirt around my neck.

  Papa passed Jay and Chet’s rows and called out to me, “Bud, you’re going to West Florida tonight, so wash them granny beads off your neck. Lonnie, you come too.” After he turned Dan around, I felt my brothers’ stares on my neck more than the sunburn. Papa always took one of us because revenue agents wouldn’t ambush his truck with a child aboard. I tried not to get a big head, but…he picked me!

  Lonnie sat on the back porch steps in a washed and pressed shirt and overalls while we ate. His legs jiggled and he couldn’t keep his hands still. I pocketed the last cat-head for his supper; the flared edges of Mama’s hand-shaped biscuit broke off in my pocket and mingled with my knife and six pennies like tiny brown teeth.

  I gave him the bread while we waited side-by-side in our Model B Ford truck. Papa came out in a fresh shirt, always looking his best to do business with the whiskey-makers. His tongue scoured food morsels from his teeth, pushing out his face with a fat bulge that moved counterclockwise around his wide mouth. When he sat behind the wheel, the walnut grip of his revolver touched my arm. It felt as cold and smooth as a bone.

  He drove us down the narrow dirt road, past my Uncle Stan and Aunt Arzula’s rented place and Nat’s two-room shack. Hardscrabble Road, a wider dirt track, took us to the highway. Papa turned south on US 27 near Colquitt, then returned to dirt roads that led us southwest into Seminole County where he’d grown up. The sun dropped out of sight.

  After we made our way into Florida, Papa halted at a crossroad and switched off the engine and headlights. We waited in silence.

  Crickets chirped and skeeters whined near my ears, but I couldn’t hear anything else. I craned my neck to look around. Papa had never stopped on the way to the Ashers’ place the other times he’d taken me along. Lonnie had slid down beside the passenger door. Negroes weren’t allowed in West Florida after dark.

  A car approached from the opposite direction. Papa turned his lights on and off twice and received three flashes in reply. He gouged my ribs with his elbow and said, “Keep that face of yours in the shadows. And you better talk right if you know what’s good for you.” The car rolled across the intersection and stopped beside us. A red dome-light perched on the black-painted roof and a gold six-pointed star gleamed dully on the driver door.

  The driver emerged from the car. A badge clung to his shirt, identical to the one on his door. He was in his mid-thirties like Papa, but a lot fatter. Lonnie slid down farther, his head dipping below my shoulder. The lawman hitched his trousers, which were weighted down by a huge holstered gun, and put his hand through Papa’s open window. “Hey, Mance.” He shook with Papa and said in a surprisingly pleasant tenor, “What’s this treat you promised me?”

  “Wanted you to meet the boy I named for you.” Papa dropped his hand over my thigh. His fingers went almost clear around my leg. “Roger, this here’s High Sheriff Timberlake. He’s a Roger too.”

  The High Sheriff squinted through the thick folds of his eyelids and over his rounded cheeks. I pressed my head against the seat, trying to keep the port-wine stain hidden. My jaw moved a few moments before any sound came. Papa squeezed my leg hard enough for me to gasp. The words tumbled out with my breath: “Pleased to know you, sir.”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Six, sir. S-seven in October.”

  “They call you Roger—that right?”

  “An-an-and Bud, sir.”

  Papa’s tightening grip left me numb from the knee on down. A fire blazed where he crushed my thigh and the pain spread upward into my hip. He explained, “Reva calls him ‘Bud’ whenever he’s bad, so he hears it lots of times.”

  Timberlake laughed. “That so? I was a bad little feller myself. You know that me and your daddy been business partners longer’n you been alive?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  He looked past me and said, “Nigger, ain’t no use sliding down like some shadow trying to slip under a door. You’re okay, boy, long as you’re riding with Roger’s daddy. Roger gets big enough to drive, you can ride with him too in my county.”

  Lonnie straightened beside me. Sweat glistened on his face as he murmured, “Yes, sir.”

  Timberlake slapped Papa’s arm and said, “You named a fine-looking boy after me, Mance. I thank you. He’s much too handsome to be yours.” He laughed again and then dropped into his car with a grunt.

  Papa waited until the High Sheriff had driven away before releasing me. He started the engine and drove another hour in silence. Feeling in my leg returned like a swarm of needle pricks. I let the pain ebb on its own; I knew better than to soothe those aches with him beside me.

  Graded dirt roads became wagon trails and then cow paths as a swamp closed around us. Tall grasses scraped beneath the truck. Papa and Lonnie raised their windows as twisted branches whacked both fenders and raked the glass and roof with crooked fingers.

  We braked hard. Lonnie threw his arm across me to keep my head from cracking against the metal dashboard. Papa jerked the truck forward and stopped once more, playing his usual game with the lurking Asher boy called Seth. As we started forward again, a wildcat yowled above us and then the pickup shook. Papa cussed but kept going; Seth had dropped into the truck bed. He grinned at Lonnie and me through the back window and lowered the sawed-off shotgun in his eight-year-old hands. A dozen raccoon tails dangled from a strip of rawhide that circled his bare, scrawny waist. He never wore anything but that.

  Up ahead, a campfire smoldered where the swamp gave way to a large clearing. Orange and yellow light flickered across the Ashers’ low-slung house and lichen-covered barn, piercing the gloom that swallowed the surrounding trees. Half-a-dozen men slouched in chairs around the smudgy fire and cast jagged shadows across the dirt yard. They dressed the same as me and Lonnie, but wore felt hats crushed low over dark eyes. Some had hair shot through with gray that turned rusty in the firelight. Others’ beards wer
e so black that they almost disappeared, like the dark side of the moon. A quart jug of homemade whiskey sat on each man’s lap, alongside a drawn revolver.

  Seth leaped from the truck bed and scampered across the clearing. The oldest man stuck out his leg, but Seth hopped over it and ducked under another’s arm. His shadow sprang ahead of him as he passed the campfire, raccoon tails bouncing off his bare rump. As we climbed from the pickup, Seth ran indoors and pulled Nadine onto the porch. Nadine was my age. I never saw any of the Asher women, only this little girl. She dressed in a dirty shift but someone had braided her copper hair in smart twists and graceful loops that rested on her head like a crown.

  “Lookee here, Nadine,” said her father, Ray, the one who’d tried to trip Seth. “Your sweetheart done come all the way from Georgia to see you.”

  As all the Ashers laughed except her, Ray’s oldest son pushed out of his chair and marched toward me. By the careful way Angus set each foot down, I guessed that he was stone drunk. Ray called, “Now, Bud, you owe Nadine a kissing. You plumb chickened out last time and made her feel bad. She took to her bed for days.” Some of the men laughed again as Angus seized my arm and pulled me across the yard.

  Papa and Lonnie hauled five-gallon wood barrels of bootleg whiskey from the barn to the truck bed as Angus dragged me onto the rotting porch. Papa never looked at me, but Lonnie held my panicked gaze every time I glanced his way. Chilly sweat drizzled down my ribs while hot blood pounded behind my face and made my head ache. Angus pushed my shoulders and Seth prodded Nadine closer. Her eyes were clamped shut, and she pressed her arms tight against her sides. She breathed as fast as a trapped animal.

  When my feet refused to budge anymore, Angus leaned me against Nadine’s bony, heaving chest. Her skin smelled of spoiled buttermilk and wood smoke. I pushed out my lips as far as they’d go and made a birdlike peck against her cold, tear-streaked jaw. The Asher men cheered, and Seth gave Nadine a little shake. She dashed inside without looking at me. I felt ashamed, like it’d been my idea. Like she knew I’d often dreamed of rescuing her and hiding her in our barn, and that she always rewarded me with a kiss.

  When Angus released me, I hopped off the porch and ran for the truck. It seemed like a mile away, across fire-lit ground with armed drunks everywhere. I tumbled over the leg that Ray thrust out again, which prompted another cheer from the Ashers.

  I limped to the passenger door, panting and trying not to cry. Lonnie finished loading the moonshine and stood beside me. He patted the middle of my back with a comforting hand.

  Papa presented an inch-thick fold of cash to Angus, but Ray called, “Wait a damn minute.” He raised his revolver and fired once into the air. Lonnie’s hand trembled against me as the swamp pines around us swallowed the gunshot echo. Ray gestured at Papa with his gun barrel as if pointing a long finger. “You been buying my liquor for high near fifteen years, Mance, but I ain’t never seen you take a drink of it.”

  “I ain’t feeling too good, Ray. Got me some epizootic that’s giving me the trots.”

  “Well, this’ll kick it in the ass, blast it right out.”

  With his whiskey jug, Angus knocked aside Papa’s outstretched hand and said, “Unless you’re too good for our ‘shine.” The other Ashers stood, grumbling and cussing. Some of them swayed and had to plant their feet wide for balance. All of them had shifted their revolvers into their shooting hands except for Angus, who pushed the jug against my father’s chest.

  I’d never seen Papa take a drink. Chet once said that if our father had been a drinking man, he would’ve killed us all long ago during one of his rages. Papa’s gaze flicked from Angus to Ray and the other armed men. His free hand rested on his hip beside the snub-nosed Colt.

  Two of the Ashers lurched toward me and Lonnie. Their shadows reached our bare feet and crawled up our bodies as they drew closer. Others, including Seth, began cussing Papa for being so high and mighty.

  “Aw, hell, gimme that.” Papa cupped the underside of the jug with his large hand and lifted it from Angus’ grip. His head tilted back as he took a long swig. The only sound came from the pop of damp kindling in the campfire until Papa handed the jug back to Angus and said, “That’s damn fine whiskey.”

  The Ashers flashed yellow teeth as they grinned and returned to their chairs. They echoed Papa’s comment and spiced it up with more cussing about exactly how powerful-good their liquor was. Angus took Papa’s money and drank after him without wiping the smooth ceramic lip or showing any other sign of disrespect. He offered his jug for Papa to finish on the trip home. Without hesitating, Papa thanked him and took the whiskey, curling his index finger through the small circular handle.

  Papa told Ray he’d be back for more on the next moonless night, and got into the truck. I tucked in between Lonnie and him. My father put the jug on the floorboard at his feet, started the engine, and wheeled around to head back down the path. The truck sagged from the weight of the barrels of whiskey. The wheel wells scraped hard against the rear tires when Seth jumped onto the bumper and held the tailgate with one hand. He clambered over the wood lids and got onto the roof. The nearly naked boy knocked once above our heads with his shotgun and caught the next low branch, disappearing into the trees.

  *

  We followed the same route back into Georgia, but then Papa took a zigzag path of dirt roads as he stopped at farms and behind shops and houses in the small towns. He sold the whiskey to retailers, who’d empty the large barrels into fruit jars for resale. Those were the folks most likely to be caught in a revenuer raid.

  Lonnie helped Papa unload five, ten, or sometimes twenty gallons of whiskey at each stop. Every bootlegger would taste the latest batch in a cup or slurp from a gourd ladle and offer Papa some along with a fistful of money. He took the cash but nothing more. Each time we returned to the road again, Lonnie would wipe the sweat from his face with a kerchief and say, “Mr. Mance, I sure could use me a drop of that ‘shine at your feet. I’m fixing to fall out from thirst.” Finally, Papa passed the whiskey jug, his hand shaking.

  My father kept rubbing his eyes and yawning. More than once he had to jerk the wheel to keep the truck on the road. He stuck his head out the window into the rush of air and nearly put us in a ditch. I’d never seen him have such trouble before.

  I reckoned that he needed to talk to stay awake, because he slurred, “Round about ’30, I promised Timberlake I’d name my next boy after ’im. Your mama took to calling you Bud soon as you was—” He gave me a cockeyed smile and said, “Soon as I found you in that gopher hole. I go along with her just to keep the peace, but you’re always ‘Roger’ to me, yessir.”

  He clenched his jaw to stifle another yawn, but a moaning sound escaped through the down-turned corners of his mouth. He took a few deep breaths and said, “You know as how y’all visit your mama’s mama every other Sunday? Ever wonder why you never, not once, ever go and visit mine?”

  I hesitated, afraid to make him angry by saying the wrong thing. While I worked on my answer, he muttered, “My daddy was bad to drink, like his brother. They got into a…into a brawl once, both of ’em tight as ticks, and started wrestling over Daddy’s shotgun in the front room. My mama stood in the corner yelling at ’em to quit, and crying up a storm, just a-bawling. I was your age—ran and hid out by the woodpile.” He wiped the sweat from his face and dragged his damp hand over his trouser leg. “The gun went off, both barrels, and like to have broke my daddy and uncle’s arms. They picked theirselves off the floor, deaf as posts, and found Mama. The buckshot had cut her in two.

  “They buried her out back with no trouble from the law or her folks, who had nuthin to do with her anyway after she took up with Daddy. Neither him or my uncle drew another sober breath.” He paused and then his voice came out in a rush: “And all them liquored-up sonsabitches can go to hell with ’em.” He pounded the steering wheel, jerking the truck, and shouted, “Goddammit!”

  Lonnie swiped the last of the whiskey off his mouth and hid t
he jug between his feet. Aiming the truck with care, Papa took us up another dirt track that led to a barn. We waited for the bootlegger to appear as I held my breath. I’d never heard Papa say so much or sound so pitiful. Probably, this was when he’d turn the Colt on me—not in a rage but the one time he was drunk.

  Papa clenched his jaw and moaned again. His eyes looked wet in the moonlight. “Goddamn ’em,” he said. “Goddamn ’em all.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I fell in love twice in one morning on my first day of school. It took a year longer than it should have to start first grade. Mama held me back until 1938, hoping my stuttering would pass, but it had worsened instead. Now I’d be a year older than everyone, seven-going-on-eight, and I had my birthmark to shame me too.

  On the first Monday in September, Papa didn’t wake us with a song about plowing with mules. Instead, he shouted from the hallway, “Get to your chores. If y’all miss the bus, you’re walking.” Goose bumps raced over my skin as I realized that his usual school-term warning finally applied to me as well.

  Jay and Chet unfolded clothes that Mama had pressed—overalls and a long-sleeved shirt, same as our field duds—and began to dress. I stayed in bed, suddenly afraid of schooling, being away from home, and having strangers make fun of everything wrong with me.

  Chet punched my ribs through the sheet. “Come on, Bud, get up. You’ll make us late. You think Papa won’t give us a striping before we have to walk?”

  We finger-combed our hair Mama had cropped the day before, taking turns with her hand mirror as we raked dirty fingernails through the uneven thatches. My yellow cow-licks stuck up worse than usual. I didn’t have a prayer of covering up the birthmark.