A Garden of Earthly Delights (5 page)

There's a philosophy that says: No point in preparing for trouble because unexpected things will happen instead.

There's a philosophy credited to Charles Lindbergh that says: No point in preparing for disaster (like a crashed plane) because another kind of disaster (your baby kidnapped) will happen instead.

Carleton lifted his cider jug, and drank.

Sometimes, Pearl was extra-vigilant watching the kids at the table, almost hoping (you could see!) for one of them to knock a glass over, or drop their food from their mouths. Other times, and these were maybe worse times, Pearl was dreamy and not-hearing in their midst. The kids could kick one another under the table and Pearl didn't give a damn so it was left to Carleton, and he had a temper.

“Next month, we're going to Jersey by ourselves.” Carleton was picking his teeth. Making his announcement to Sharleen and Clara, now that Mike had run outside and Pearl was staring at something on the floor. (What? A rat? No rat. Nothing.) Carleton spoke carefully, quietly. It was his Daddy voice. It was not a voice you contested. At night when he was done for the day and he was free of them, spending an hour or two in a tavern or with a woman, his voice was normal as anybody's: he liked to joke, and he liked to laugh. It was a hard youngish harsh voice that nonetheless liked
to laugh. But here in the cabin, so hot sweat ran in rivulets down his naked sides, he never spoke in that voice.

“Up there there's no spic bastards. ‘Wetbacks.' ”

Clara was reaching for her milk glass. Carleton caught it just in time.

“Dad-dy? Where is ‘Jer-sey'?” “Up north. Way north. Where there's snow.” “Hell, we ain't gonna see no
snow.
” Sharleen made her lips swell outward in a way Carleton hated, reminded him of a baboon.

Sharleen was a thin, nervous, sallow child with scabs on her arms and legs. Pesticide burns, Carleton thought they were, or fleabites, except they were hard and thick and she was always picking them off making them bleed to form new scars. She had a rat-quick face, narrow little eyes you couldn't judge were mischievous or malicious.

“Hey, there: that ain't nice, contradictin your daddy.”

Carleton spoke pleasantly. But Sharleen took warning.

Clara was trying to feed two-year-old Rodwell. (Where the hell was Pearl's mind? The woman was just sitting there, damp-mouthed and dreamy at her own table.) The little boy, cornsilk hair the color of Carleton's as it had used to be, and pale blue wide-open eyes, snapped anxiously at the spoon and it fell clattering to the floor.

“Piggy-pig-pig,” Sharleen sniggered.

“He can't help it,” Clara protested. “He's just a baby.”

“
You're
a baby. Baby asshole.”

“Both of you, button them mouths.” Carleton lifted the jug to drink in that way he'd perfected: the hefty crockery jug you hook your thumb through the handle, heave it up behind your left shoulder so the mouth of the jug rests on your shoulder, bring your own mouth to it, lean to the right so the liquid runs into your mouth, and drink. And wipe your mouth afterward on the back of your hand.

Sharleen and Clara giggled, watching their daddy do his cider-jug trick.

Sharleen said, “How are we gonna go north? Some damn old bus? There's niggers and trash on them buses. I ain't goin.”

Carleton was pissed, seeing the look in the kid's face. Without so much as snapping his fingers to warn her, he swung his arm around and cracked her sneering face with the back of his hand, sent her backward onto the floor. Rodwell shrieked, but it was a happy-baby shriek. Pearl turned languidly to look at them as if she'd been dozing with her eyes open.

Sharleen began to bawl. Clara pressed her hands against her mouth trying not to giggle. Carleton caught Clara's eye and winked, she was her daddy's ally. Clara was five years younger than Sharleen but you'd never know it. More reliable, sharper-witted than any of them.

The new baby, in his cardboard-box crib, was bawling.

And Rodwell, fretting in his high chair, was sucking in air getting ready to bawl.

“You, you caused this. Get the hell out.”

Carleton poked Sharleen on the floor with the point of his shoe. Sharleen scrambled up sniveling and limped out of the cabin and Pearl looked after her with a vague frown. Carleton was waiting for the woman to start bitching, goddamned useless mother she was getting to be, but Pearl said nothing. Her mouth worked, wordless. On her plate tiny portions of mashed potatoes, boiled pork scraps, green beans lay congealing in a soupy gravy.

Fuckin flies in the kitchen, buzzing Carleton's plate!

Christ he couldn't wait to get clear of here. This supper that tasted like sawdust in his mouth, damn wobbly chair made the crack of his asshole ache, his wife he'd used to be proud of she was so sweet-faced and pretty as a doll, getting to be a mental case, and not a fit mother. And the kids driving him bats. Even Clara sometimes, looking at her daddy like she loved him so, she believed he was going to do something special for her, protect her or—what the hell she was expecting, he didn't know, and it drove him bats. “Goddamn zoo in here. Flies in the food, and nobody fuckin cares.” Carleton nudged Pearl, who looked, not at him, but at her pudgy forearm he'd nudged, where the impress of his hard fingers had made a mark. “It's dirty in here. Smells like burnt grease in here. Why's that screen got a rip? Fuckin flies comin in.”

But Pearl wouldn't reply. Clara had ceased giggling. In mute appeal
she pointed to something in her partly drunk glass of milk, something for her daddy to see not her momma, and Carleton saw to his disgust a fly was floating in the milk. The exchange between them was immediate and wordless
Daddy I don't need to drink my milk do I?
and Daddy signaled
No, honey
but Pearl blinked and wakened and intervened which was just like that woman, eyes in the back of her head when you didn't want it. “Clara, drink your milk. That's whole milk. That's expensive milk. You kids,” Pearl said, her voice rising dangerously, “have got to drink your milk you're going to get polio.” So Clara was sniveling, and Carleton said to leave the girl alone, and Pearl said, “They told us and told us, they told us ‘Give your children whole milk, they're going to get polio if you don't, going to be crippled if you don't,'
they told us.
”

Carleton settled it by fishing the fly out of Clara's glass of milk with a spoon. Now, Clara could drink it, though making a sour face bad as Sharleen.

The baby was crying louder. Rodwell was kicking up a storm.

Carleton rose from the table. Crack in his ass like fire, and pinching pains in his back, between his shoulders, every damn joint in his legs. “Goin out for a while. Don't wait up.”

Christ he needed fresh air: anywhere, to get out of here.

His good friend Rafe, Rafe that was like a brother to Carleton Walpole, he'd be waiting for him. The two men deserved a few drinks in town, Rafe had a bitchy wife and kids, too.

At the sink Carleton washed his hands. A lukewarm rust-tinged water emerged from the hand pump, he worked up a meager lather out of the gritty-gray 20 Mule Team bar of soap. Wiped his hands on his thighs, his work pants. Still a little wet, he wiped them on his hair, smoothing it straight back from his forehead, caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror Pearl had taped to the wall: except for his stubbly jaws, and a corkscrew-twist kind of look in the eyes like he was wanting to break somebody's ass, Carleton was surprised he looked so young, still. Women coming up to him in the tavern saying
You ain't from here, are you? You look like some mountain man.

Carleton hugged Clara saying he'd bring her a bag of pretzels from town, be a good girl and clean up the dishes, and Clara hugged her daddy hard around the neck begging him to take her with him,
and now Pearl was scolding, muttering it would be a cold day in Hell he'd bring them anywhere except the fields or the bus to make them work like niggers in a chain gang, and Carleton raised his fist to quiet her, and Pearl laughed at him, and Carleton set Clara aside to deal with Pearl, and Pearl snatched up the bawling baby out of the cardboard crib saying, “Go ahead! Hit us! Hit your flesh and blood, go ahead, coward!” But Carleton would not, and hastily departed the cabin, and Clara was in the doorway calling after him, “Dad-dy! Dad-dy!” like her little heart would break.

It was almost twilight. So far south, this godforsaken whitetrash-and-spic state, the sun was big and bloody like a spoilt egg yolk leaking down into the flat scrub horizon, seemed like it would never get night. Every day was like every other day like for Christ sake somebody'd torn out his eyelids. Couldn't shut his eyes. Sunlight slanting off the packing sheds and piercing his brain. Pounding sun on his head through the crappy straw hat. Gabble of spics—Mexicans—dark-skinned as Indians, but not like niggers, their hair wasn't nigger-hair and their lips and nose, not. Carleton felt how he and his kind were the freaks here, pale-haired, fair-skinned so they burnt instead of darkened, had to wear long sleeves in the field and long fuckin pants stiff with dirt. Still, this camp at Ocala was a damn lot better than the previous one outside Jacksonville where they'd lived in tents. When it rained the tents bunched up with water, leaked and caved in. Mud everywhere. Mud, flies, fleas and them flying roaches big as bats: palmetto bugs. In the Sunshine State, that was your major crop.

Anyway here they lived in tar-paper shanties, that got hot but not so wet. Heat you get used to. The other day Carleton had been questioned by some Jew-looking man with glasses and a white shirt and tie, a half-dozen of 'em at the camp asking damn-fool questions writing answers on a clipboard, how long had Carleton been working on the season as it's called, how much did he make hourly, how much did his employer deduct for expenses, did his wife work in the field with him and if so did his wife make the same wage as he did, where'd he come from “originally” and how (this in an under-tone, with an embarrassed smile) could he work in such heat—
a nosy son of a bitch, trying to pass himself off as your friend but nobody's taken in. Not long afterward, all of 'em were chased out of the camp by the foreman and his men. Had to laugh, the Jew-looking guy was scared shitless they were going to unleash the German shepherd barking like crazy and growling for blood. But it made Carleton think, he didn't mind the heat anywhere like he'd minded it at first, in fact he hoped for sunny days better than cloudy because if it rained too hard they lost money; if there was a storm, like a hurricane, the growers lost their crops and you could starve. Carleton had mumbled some of this to the man taking notes on his clipboard then he'd added: “See, mister, the major crop is palmettos, here. We catch 'em with hand nets like fish, in the air. Pack 'em and can 'em and they're shipped up north.” Almost he'd wanted to say to Jew York City but had not.

In Breathitt County, Kentucky, there hadn't been any Jews. Carleton was sure he'd never seen a one of them yet somehow he knew what they looked like and how they operated. It was like a Jew to ask questions nobody else would ask. A Jew is smarter than you because a Jew comes from an ancient race. Back in the time of Abraham, Isaac. Back in biblical times when the sun could stand still in the sky and the Red Sea part. This Jew who'd asked Carleton questions was edgy-seeming though, even before the foreman came charging out after him. Carleton was feeling bad he hadn't talked better to that man, more intelligent like he was capable; he'd gone to school to sixth grade, and he was no fool. Might've got written up in some newspaper or
Life
magazine they did articles like that sometimes, and ran photos. Feeling bad his mind got switched on by that bastard and later he couldn't switch it off. He'd told his friend Rafe, the questions that guy asked him made him realize there were people who didn't know the answers to them, people who didn't do what he did. Thousands, millions of people who didn't hire out for crop picking and didn't know if you were paid five cents a bushel or thirty-five cents or a dollar or fuckin ten dollars! People no different and no better than them who didn't kneel in the dirt picking beans, tomatoes, lettuce, fuckin onions breaking off in your hand if you grabbed them too hard. Rafe laughed to see Carleton riled up saying, “Hell, so what?”

Damned if Carleton could think of an answer.

At Rafe's, there was his wife Helen nursing the baby. New baby, little boy like Carleton's own. Cutest damn things at that age, if they're not bawling, or puking, or soaking their diapers. Seeing Carleton in the doorway Helen made a coy gesture to close her shirt over her fat floppy white breast, then just giggled. A blush rose into her face. “You, Carl'ton Walpole! Rafe says I c'n come with you two tonight.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Think a woman can't tomcat, too? Some women, try 'em.”

Carleton laughed. He liked a good-natured woman, somebody you could joke with. Between him and Helen there were some secrets Rafe never needed to know about.

“That you, Walpole? Right there!” Rafe was at the sink slicking back his ripply hair. Same thing Carleton had been doing, and frowning at himself in a dime-store mirror. You had to like Rafe, a heavyset old boy from the mountains like Carleton except east Tennessee. One of those ruddy faces and eyes lighting up with jokes in the right company, like Carleton Walpole. Losing his red-brown hair he was vain of, and younger than Carleton by three-four years.