All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

34

“I’m Big Bill Brady,” he said. “And now you work for me. I can give you a ride to the fields in my car, unless your limousine is about to show.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Jane said. “You’ll often be wrong. And as for a ride, why would we need a ride to the fields and it about to be dark? There’s no pea picking can be done when it gets dark.”

“ ’Cause I got barracks for my workers,” he said. “This is a big first-class operation. I sell peas to the canning factory over in Lindale.”

“Barracks?” I said. “You mean a place to sleep?”

“Yep. It’s tidy and it’s got a roof on it, and I serve three meals a day. I got sixteen workers, not counting you three.”

A man came walking along the street then, a tall skinny fellow. He tipped his hat at us, said, “Hello, Bill,” and kept walking.

“How far is this place from here?” Jane said.

“It’s a ways,” he said. “You couldn’t walk it. It’s down in the bottoms. Rich land. It’ll grow any seed dropped in it, and grow it big. Thing is, I want at least five days work if you come on. Five days, you’ll have ten dollars a piece, and you won’t be out for a place to stay, or have to sleep under a tree, and you’ll have meals you won’t have to pay for”—he nodded at our cans on the bench—“and it won’t be beans out of a can. My wife cooks pretty good meals. You’ll eat and sleep in the barracks, but you’ll work a good, long full day for your money and your upkeep.”

“End of those five days,” Jane said, “you’ll bring us back?”

“I will. End of that day, after you’ve had a nice supper, I’ll drive you back into town and let you out right here at this bench. Then you can go your own way. But I need the workers, and my guess is even if you do have a fortune waiting for you on the other end, it’s still a good many miles, and you got to depend on a ride to catch, and you’ll still need some money till you get there. Who knows, the inheritance might fall through. Another relative with better connections might come out of the woodwork. A tricky lawyer, a crooked judge or law official. I’ve seen it happen.”

I knew he knew we didn’t have any inheritance coming, and that he was just buttering us up a little, but he was darn good at it, and I began to think I ought to have some concerns for the inheritance we didn’t have coming.

“It’s a deal, then,” Jane said, “providing Jack and Tony agree.”

We agreed.

“All right, then,” Big Bill Brady said. “Get in the car.”

It probably wasn’t smart for us to get in a car with someone we didn’t know, and I’d be the first to admit that that is a true consideration. But there was things he had on his side. An offer of money for work. A fellow passed him on the street and knowed him enough to say hello, and would recognize us if our bodies turned up in the pea patch. And there was another thing: what he said about those barracks and square meals was right appealing. I was hungry and tuckered out.

Still, I put my hand in my pocket and got hold of my pocketknife so I could pull it out and pop it open. I kept it there while I sat in the front seat of the car and Jane and Tony sat in the back. I glanced back at Jane, saw she’d pulled one of those cans of beans out of one of our bags, and she had it held in her hand in such a way that I knew if the man up front got to acting funny, she’d bring it down on his head like a ton of bricks.

She grinned at me.

Turning back in the seat, I started watching where we were going. I wanted to have my bearings, have some idea of where we were going to end up, and some idea of how to come back the way we had gone.

We drove for a good hour, I figured, and finally we turned off onto a narrow road that went down deep into the woods. The road was so bad, Big Bill had to drive slow, and I figured I had to, I could jerk the car door open and leap out. I had leaped off a train going faster, so I knew I could handle this.

But Bill didn’t do anything, or say anything, so I didn’t. He just kept driving, now and again reaching through the open window to adjust his mirror on the side of the car.

The road emptied out into a wide field planted in peas. You could see them in the moonlight, all green and shiny. The trees didn’t start up again until the far side of the field. They was just a dark line on the other side.

We turned onto what was nothing more than a trail and began to ride around the field.

“Them’s just some of the peas,” Big Bill said. “That’s just one of the fields. But they all got to get picked so they don’t ruin. That’s going to be your field.”

The car bumped along a little more, and then we saw a long low-slung building on the far side of the field, near the trees. Bill drove directly for that.

When he got to it, he got out of the car quickly, leaving the door open. He pulled a revolver from somewhere, probably from under his seat, and pointed it inside the car. He said, “I see you with that can of beans in the wing mirror, girl. Why don’t you put it down.”

Jane dropped the can on the floorboard.

Bill wagged the gun at me. “And I know you got your hand in your pocket there, and I’m thinking pocketknife, ’cause whatever’s there ain’t big enough to be a gun.”

“What about me?” Tony said.

“Hell, boy,” Bill said. “You ain’t got nothing.”

“I hope,” Jane said, “that you didn’t bring us all the way out here to steal what’s in our bags, ’cause you are going to be sorely disappointed.”

“Nothing like that,” Bill said. “I brought you here to pick peas, just like I said.”

“But I’m thinking,” Jane said, “not for two dollars a day.”

“You’re smart,” he said.

“Not smart enough,” she said.

“No,” he said, “not smart enough.”

“Will we get a dollar?” Tony asked.

“No,” Bill said. “No dollar.”

“Same as the colored?” Tony asked.

“Even the colored don’t make what I said the colored make,” Big Bill said. “And I ain’t got sixteen workers neither.”

He waved the pistol at me. “Toss that pocketknife on the seat there and get out of the car.”