Chapter 7

The Wilson family sat around their dining room table, together, as usual, for a meal. As for the children, their recent adventure, though it had ended badly, still excited them, and their mindset about being around the other young people they knew had changed somewhat. The girls still had a few Nancy Drew books to read, and had learned that they could order new ones from the owner at the General Store. They used their allowance for that purpose, paying in advance even though it wasn’t required, since that made them feel like the books were closer to being there.

Nathan, though, was bored again. He had vague unformed thoughts about what the others were doing. He was sure it was more fun than sitting around the house or watching television. The problem was, he had no way of getting out of the house. Then he remembered Luthor’s fishing pole.

“Daddy?” he said carefully. “How come you don’t take me fishing?”

“Fishing?” said Harvey, his voice rising. “Why on earth would you want to go fishing?”

“Well to catch fish, I guess,” said Nathan, bottling up the anger that was already building in his throat.

Harvey laughed. “Why would you want to go to all that trouble, and be out there with the bugs and all that, when you can just pay some nigger kid a penny per fish?”

“I’m bored out of my mind, Daddy,” Nathan finally confessed. “I can’t find a job, because there ain’t any that you’d approve of. I just want to find something to doi.” he admitted.

“You could come down to the bank and learn that business,” said Harvey, importantly.

“Aww, Daddy, you know I don’t have no head for numbers,” drawled Nathan.

Actually, that was no longer true. Flossie had taught him things that made math seem a lot easier. It didn’t scare him any more, like it had in the past. But being cooped up with his father didn’t appeal to him.

“How much would you pay me?” he asked, knowing the figure would be small, and that this would give him another reason for not doing it.

“I already give you an allowance, you scamp!” scolded his father. “I wouldn’t pay you anything. You’d just be learning a trade.”

“Harvey,” came his wife’s warning voice. “No young man of Nathan’s age wants to be in some stuffy old bank in the summer time. Let the boy go fishing if that’s what he wants to do.”

“He don’t know the first thing about fishing,” snorted Harvey. “Wouldn’t even know how to bait a hook.”

“You could teach me,” said Nathan, knowing what the answer would be. He doubted his father had ever baited a hook himself. He had grown up in Atlanta as a child.

“I’ve got more important things to do than teach you how to kill a worm,” said Harvey.

“There’s a kid at school...” said Nathan, as if he had just thought of it. His sisters stopped eating and watched him intently. “He probably goes fishing all the time.”

“White trash,” snorted Harvey. “That’s all they’ve got in this one horse town,” he added in a disgruntled voice.

“He don’t seem too bad,” said Harvey carefully. “I think his daddy has a pretty big farm,” he said, having no idea whatsoever how big the farm actually was. For that matter, he didn’t even know what Luthor’s father did for a living.

“What’s his name?” asked Harvey.

“Luthor,” answered Nathan.

Harvey frowned. “Luthor what?”

“How am I s’posed to know?” said Nathan truthfully. “I never thought to ask him.”

“That proves he’s trash,” rumbled Harvey. “If’n he was from good stock you’d have known that and asked.”

“Hell, Daddy,” said Nathan impulsively, “he’s just a feller.”

“That will be enough of that kind of talk, young man,” said Marian, scowling. “You can just retire to your room for cursing at the dinner table.”

Nathan went. He knew it would be fruitless to argue. He daydreamed, lying on his bed, about getting away from this house some way. Perhaps an hour later there was a tap on his door, and his mother opened it. He looked at her, but said nothing.

“I talked to your father,” she said. “I figured if you were so upset that you’d use profane language at the table that something needed to be done. You can have this boy teach you how to fish if you want.”

He smiled and she held up a hand.

“But understand me, I am not going to clean any fish around here. You bring them back ready for the pan, you hear me?”

“Yes, Mamma,” he sighed.

She smiled again, and closed the door.

Having permission was one thing. Nathan, though, had no idea how to contact Luthor. He didn’t know where the boy lived, and didn’t want to ask anyone, out of some misplaced pride. Instead, he pedaled around town, which seemed curiously deserted. He ended up down by the truck depot.

Catfish Hollow was much too small to have its own cotton gin. Cotton had to be hauled to a town twenty-two miles away. To do that efficiently, and be able to spend as much time in the fields as possible, the area farmers formed a transportation co-op. Cotton was ricked in the field, which meant it was dumped into a hopper and stomped into long loosely packed rectangular bales. Trucks made the rounds of the farms on a circuit, throughout the day, picking up ricks of cotton that were tagged with the owner’s information, until the truck was full. Then it was driven to the gin. The number of trucks needed varied, so permanent drivers were not hired. Mostly, whoever was free at the moment drove the trucks.

Currently, the weather was good, so no one wanted to abandon the field to drive a truck. That was how Nathan found himself offered a job, at the whopping sum of five dollars a day, if he was willing to drive a truck from first light to pretty much so dark that he had to figure out where the headlight switch was.

He didn’t go home and ask his father’s permission to take this job. He was pretty sure what the answer would be. So, for the first time in his young life, he just made his own decision. Besides. If he didn’t like it, he could always just quit.

It turned out there was a side benefit, beyond the five dollars he kept thinking about all day. Along the way, he found out where everybody lived. Mr. Parsons, who hired him, made pencil marks on a county map and, after the first couple of circuits, Nathan had it down cold.

He learned a lot that first day. He had to help load the ricks into the truck, which was hot, hard work, because they were so loosely packed that they’d fall apart easily. That meant three people had to lift them and slide them into the truck, if three people were available. Usually they weren’t. One person could stomp the ricks. Everybody else picked cotton. A rick could weigh anywhere between ninety and a hundred and forty pounds, and it was hard work, at least for a boy like Nathan. His pride kept him from walking away from it.

He also saw how cotton was picked, and he saw his new friends picking it. Even Curtis Lee hired on for harvest, to make a little extra money. Curtis Lee and Nathan were all that was available to load the ricks at the Hawthorn farm, where Jesse was toiling in the field beside his father. As he drove along in relative comfort, he began to realize how hard the life of these new friends was, and that they were not, in any way, shape, or form lazy. He already knew they weren’t stupid. Now he wondered what else they weren’t, that his father, and others like him, had always claimed they were.

Another small crack grew in his habit of assuming things about black people.

He had completely forgotten about the fact that he was gone all day, until after dark. His mother was frantic when he got home, and his father irate for making his mother worry. It was no longer an option to keep his new job a secret. He framed it in terms that he hoped sounded like it involved a lot of responsibility and trust. His news that he had gotten a job after all was met with little approval. Truck driving wasn’t lofty enough to impress his father. It was a pivotal moment in his relationship with the man.

“I don’t care,” he said suddenly, as his father went on and on about how lowly working with farm produce was.

His father stopped, surprised. “What’d you say to me, boy?”

The first thing Nathan though of was how everybody called blacks ‘boy.’ His temper snapped.

“I said I don’t give a damn about what you think!” he said loudly. Marian rushed into the room, but Harvey held up one hand. Two other female faces peeked into the room. “I went out and got this job, and I’m gonna do this job, and if you don’t like it you can go sit in your damn bank and be mad about it,” he raged.

“Boy,” announced his father, unbuckling his belt and pulling at it. “I am going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!” The look on his face was ugly.

“I ain’t no fucking’ Boy!” shouted Nathan, and swung.

He almost broke his father’s jaw. And his hand. His fist landed solidly, almost like a sucker punch would, which was really what it was in principle. His father would never have dreamed that his son would strike him, and therefore was in no way, shape, or form prepared for the blow. He went down against the table, and flopped limply to the floor, his hands coming to his mouth. Nathan stood over him, glaring down.

“And if you ever threaten me with that belt again, I’ll paste you another time!” he said, his voice hot.

Harvey sat up, embarrassed. He looked up at the boy towering over him. When had the boy put on that weight? How did he get that tall? The weasel in Harvey - and it was pure-bred weasel - realized that he could actually lose in a contest of strength.

“You get the fuck out of my house,” he said heavily. “Go on, git!”

“Harvey,” whined his wife.

“You hold your tongue, woman,” he growled. “If this pup wants to act all growed up, then he can act all growed up somewhere else. I’ll not have a boy strike me in my own house and let him get away with it.”

Nathan, still full of anger and adrenaline, stomped to the front door.

“Nathan!” came his mother’s anguished cry.

He closed the door softly, not because he wanted to, but because he didn’t want the slamming of a door to be his mother’s answer.

He slept in the truck that night, stretched out on the dusty seat.

The next morning Nathan, dressed in the same clothes he’d had on the day before, got out of the truck when Mr. Parsons opened the door and woke him up.

“You slept here?” the man asked goggle-eyed.

“I just meant to close my eyes and rest a little. Guess I was more tired than I thought,” mumbled Nathan.

“You want to drive today?” asked the man dubiously.

“Yessir,” replied Nathan.

“Well get started then. You’re already half an hour late. I was about to go myself. Stop at the Thorpe place first, and tell Wilamina I said to feed you.”

Nathan knew where the Thorpe farm was, of course, but he didn’t know Johnnie Sue lived there. He hadn’t had occasion to see her the day before, and didn’t, until today, know her last name. When he walked into the kitchen and saw her, he was surprised.

“Boy, an apron and everything,” he said, grinning. It had been plain, even to him, that she was a tomboy.

“What are you doing here?” she asked crossly.

“Mr. Parsons said that somebody named Wilamina would feed me.” he said.

“That’s my mamma,” said Johnnie Sue, surprised. “Why in the world would he tell you that?”

“I kind of got kicked out of my house last night,” said Nathan sheepishly. “I’m driving ricks of cotton to the gin over in Stapleton.”

“Oh!” She was plainly astonished. “Well ... I have to hear that story sometime. Come on, I’ll get you a plate. It’s cold by now, but it will have to do.”

Nathan would never have believed cold bacon and eggs and grits could taste so good. Johnnie Sue hovered around him wanting to know what happened. He put her off, telling her he had to get back on the road, and went out to load the first two ricks of cotton that were ready to go.

Nathan’s banishment had great impact in many ways. It worried him, at first, but as he drove, he tabulated what he’d make. When this job was over, there would be another. The next time he wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not his father would approve. He hadn’t planned on leaving home so soon - or at all, for that matter - but he was sure he could make a go of it if he could find work. Food would be a problem. He had no idea how to cook, and had never shopped for groceries in his life. He’d run to the store to get something for his mother, but that was it. Having no place to stay bothered him more. He couldn’t rent anything. He had no idea how to go about it, and didn’t have any money anyway. Sleeping in the truck hadn’t been so bad, but he didn’t want to do that every night. Sooner or later he’d have to explain that to Mr. Parsons, and he didn’t want to do that either.