Mungus: Book 1 (9 page)

A gunshot rang out in the air.

We all froze and turned around.  Standing with a smoking musket was a tall, narrow eyed, unsmiling figure.  He was a middle aged Salyer man with red and splotchy weather-beaten skin and a rippled scar that ran from his forehead to where his left eyebrow would be, skipped over his eyeball, and then continued down his cheek.  He cocked the gun, spat, and pointed it at a Beardsley who was holding the lumpy baseball that my mother had made Saul.

“What’s going on?” he demanded of the Beardsley.

“We were just playing catch, sir.”  The Beardsleys broad shoulders seemed to shrink in the presence of this man.

“Throw me the ball.”

The Beardsley did and the man with the musket caught it with the tips of his slender fingers.  He reared back and flung the baseball high up into the air and over the crops.  Then, as the ball was falling, he aimed his musket, shut one eye, pulled the trigger, and the baseball disintegrated into hundreds of pieces and scattered to the ground.

“This is lunch time!  Not leisure-do-whatever-you-want time!  Whose ball was that?”

Saul half-raised his hand.

The man said, “come here, tubby,” pointing to a place in the dirt in front of him.  Saul walked over and stood in front of the man with the musket.  “Where did you get that ball?” the man asked.

“My mom made it for me,” Saul’s voice was shaking with fear.

“What’s your name?”

“Saul.”

The man moved
quickly.  He punched Saul in the face, then the stomach, then stepped on his toes and hit his jaw with the butt of his gun.  Saul fell to the ground, sniffling from his bloody nose.  I wanted to do something, to protect him, to make sure that I kept my promise, but I couldn’t.  It wouldn’t have been wise with a man with a musket standing over him.  Then, the man reared back and kicked Saul in the chest.  A hallow thud came out, he pulled his boot back to kick again and slammed his boot into my brothers stomach.  Then, the man with the musket reared up to step on my brother’s face and my brother grabbed his boot and pushed the man off balance.  Saul’s eyes were angry and blood was spread around his mouth and nose.  The man with the musket pointed his weapon at Saul and Saul began to weep.

“I didn’t mean to,” Saul said.  Tears ran down his face and began to mix with the blood.  He drooled and blubbered.

The man with the musket remained emotionless.  He cocked his gun back and walked over to Saul.  “Open your mouth,” the man said.

Saul looked up at the snakelike hairless man
with pleading eyes.

“Open your mouth,” the man repeated.  He put his finger on the trigger and Saul obeyed.  “Wider.”  Saul opened his mouth wider and the man slid the end of the gun in. 
The barrel in his mouth muffled Saul’s sobs.  I was crying too now, and the other workers stood around absorbed in the horror that they were witnessing.

The man with the musket in his hands smiled and spoke in a slow draw.  “My name is Glen Taylor.  This is my farm.  You are my servant.  Understand?”  Saul nodded and the tears continued to flow.  “Now, if I want to kick you, you let me.  If I want to strip you naked and catch you on fire, you let me.  You didn’t know this, but I’m not a man of mercy, Saul.  I don’t really care.  I’m not a man of mercy at all.  So if you were skinny, I would blow this bullet through the back of your head. 
If you were old, same thing.  But you look strong.  You’re a valuable piece of cattle.  So I’ll save you this time.  But next time,” Glen ripped the gun out of Saul’s mouth and shot a bullet into the dirt in between Saul’s knees.  Dirt spat up from the ground and Saul let out a shriek.  “I’ll kill you.”

Glen saddled the musket on his shoulder and began to walk off.  He gave orders to Di that our lunch break was over and that we needed to get back to work.  Saul stood up
; the bloody, sniffling boy with a body the size of Joe Dimaggio’s.  I hugged him and his blood ran down onto me.  I didn’t let him go until Di made me and all of the workers had to go back to work.

I picked cotton until the sun went down.
My fingers were sore and bleeding; blood stained the bolls and ran into my palms.  “I will get him out of here,” I whispered to myself.  “For him and for my mom.”

7

Sweat

             
Saul limped all of the next week.  He worked under the sun, picking boll after boll and didn’t get any time off for his injuries.  At night, when we were locked away in our little cabin and the moon shone through the back window, he told me that Di treated him well and had only whipped him a few times for working at a slow pace.  This struck fear in my heart that Saul would lose the morals that he had grown up with.  “No, Saul,” I told him.  “Di isn’t treating you well by rarely whipping you.  He’s treating you awfully by ever whipping you.  They’re bad people and you don’t deserve that.  Ever.”

             
I knew two things; that I had to get us out of there and that there was no way out.  As I picked and my fingers bled, we moved through the cotton; late in the week I saw the Cell for the first time.  It stood eight feet tall, a metal cage of thick bars on a cement block.  It was raised for all to see.  Bradley hadn’t told me about the way the bars were rusted or about the blood stained on the cement, but he had told me that trying to escape was a good way to get me locked up in there.  At night I would lay beside Saul.  He would show me his injuries in the moonlight and would whimper in his sleep, begging for something to stop.  The image of the Cell returned to me; the height of the fence, the barbed wire, and the biting snarling snapping dogs that surrounded were always on my mind.

             
One night while Saul was sleeping and I was lying wide-eyed on my bunk, I heard a night owl hoot low across the farm.  I knew that I needed sleep and that I was going to be tired the next day if I stayed awake, but no matter how long I lay still and shut my eyes, dreams never came.  I thought about the night owl on the farm, an animal free to come and go as he pleased and I envied that freedom.  I stood up with a creak of my cot and pushed on the wooden door.  The metal latch held on the outside and it didn’t budge.  Then I walked past Saul and looked out the window.  The silver light of the moon painted the landscape and a cool breeze licked my face.  The window was only a few inches wide, just big enough to offer ventilation, and my body, small as it was, would not fit through the hole.  I bent down on my hands and knees, against the back wall and felt the dirt floor.  It was soft.  I began to dig my hands into the dirt and place scoops beside me.  Saul continued to snore and I began to pant and sweat.  After a few digs I reached the bottom of the wooden cabin back wall.  I dug for the better part of an hour, poked my head out to make sure that no one was watching, then wriggled my body through the hole that I had dug.

             
I stood up and my heart pounded.  I saw the hole that I had just come through and even though it was barely visible I kicked some dirt into it to make sure that it wouldn’t be discovered while I was gone.  Then, I was off.

             
I ran under the moonlight in between stalk after stalk of tall cotton plant.  My bare feet pounded on the soft dirt and my arms pistoned back and forth in sync with my legs.  There was the sound of hot breath and the rustle of leaves at my shoulder.  I passed row after row and went deeper and deeper into the plants until I came upon a dirt path.  I slowed, looked both ways on the road, found it empty under the night clouds, and bounded over the dirt and into the next rows of stalks.  I felt as though I was flying through an assembly of green towers.  No one could see me.  I drew breath deep into my bare chest and even though my legs began to get tired I told them that they had no option—they had to go faster.  My feet picked up the pace and my lungs were fighting for air.  I came upon another dirt road, but this time I didn’t stop.  I didn’t even slow down.  I picked up speed as I flew over the ground.  I was going so fast that my feet seemed to only be touching the ground out of habit, not necessity.  The next road, like the last, was empty, and I sprinted into the next row of stalks.  For the first time in my life no one knew where I was.  Not Saul.  Not my parents.  Not the Ms.  Not Glen or Di or Hank.  No one.  I kept running and even though my muscles begged me to stop, my heart was in ecstasy and it was all I could do not to shout in exhilaration.

             
I passed another empty road and then slowed to a stop.  I put my hands on my knees and bent over and panted through my smile.  Sweat was running down my face and even though it was just a little past midnight, the air was still warm.  That night and the farm were both mine.  I traipsed through both without fear.  No guards were out except for a shirtless Salyer at the front gate.  There were no Salyers patrolling.  There didn’t need to be.  They thought that everyone was locked safely away in their cabins.  The dogs worried me though.  If I got too close they would bark and jump at the fence with a wild aggressiveness.  The fence bulged and I was worried that it wouldn’t hold and a stampede of savage black mutts would be on me.  They could either smell me or see me because their glaring eyes pointed in my direction, but they could never get me.  It was my farm.  I noticed something about their cages, too.  The front and back fences of the farm were wrapped in barbed wire, but the fences separating the dogs, the ones that kept them spread out over the farm, were naked at the top.

             
Next, I came upon a big house that I had never seen before.  It was made of brick and was a boring rectangle of a building without any decorations.  Next to the building was a wooden barn with an assortment of horses sleeping inside.  Even though it was late, I heard people shouting from inside of the brick building and in one of the windows I saw a silhouette of Salyer guards playing cards at a table.  I quickly left that place.

             
I lay down in between the stalks and looked up at the moon.  I had never watched a moon from that angle before, and its craters and shadows fascinated me.  It was colossal, and even though I had spent my entire life traveling through the great vastness of space, the reality of such a great satellite in the sky was difficult for me understand.

             
I roused some time later and found that I had fallen asleep.  I stood up, thankful that it was still nighttime, and made my way to my cabin.  I dug my hole again and then replaced the dirt.  Saul was still sleeping by the time that I crawled back into my cot.  I laid on my back and fell asleep almost instantly.

             
Pots and pans smashed together in the morning air.  I sat up and saw dim light coming through the back window.  I then looked at the place in the dirt that I had exited the night before.  The dirt looked as though it had never been disturbed.  The short Salyer with small hands opened up our cabin and banged his pots around until we stood up.  Saul’s eyes looked heavy and he rubbed them with sleepy hands.  I sprung up from my cot and looked over him with a smile.  “How are you not tired?” he asked.

             
“I got a good night’s sleep.”

             
We ate grits for breakfast and by the time the sun made it over the horizon, it was scorching hot.  It was the hottest morning that I had experienced since I had been on Mungus.  I drank nearly twice as much water as normal at breakfast.  Bradley and I walked over to Hank and he gave us our sacks.  He smelled like liquor and his eyes were red and angry.  He didn’t have his cowboy hat on that day and his baldhead was naked as he led us over the dirt roads.  Whenever we made it to the field he shouted, “Git-ter-work!” took his whip out, and clumsily flung it around, nearly toppling over as he did.  No one laughed at him, but it was very evident that he was still feeling the effects of the night before.

             
When he called us in for lunch, he looked much worse.  His face was purple and blotchy and his eyes were sunken in.  He opened his mouth and I could hear that it was sticky dry.  His eyes looked as though there was no thought behind them.  Our lunch was refried beans and tortillas.  While we ate, I told Bradley that Hank didn’t look good, that we should do something before something happens.

             
“Why would I want to do something?  He’s a Salyer.  I hate the man.”

             
While we were walking back out to the fields something did happen.  Hank collapsed.

             
Hank fell flat on his face and his body began to twitch and jerk.  The other workers all stood around, watching him.  A moan escaped from his mouth and he continued to seize.  I ran over to his body and tried to flip him over.  His body was heavy and I was too small.  “Help me!  He’s having a heat stroke!”  I cried.  The workers didn’t move and I continued to pull on his seizing body to try to flip him over on my own.  “He’s a person too, you know?  Just because he’s a Salyer doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help him!”

             
Bradley stepped forward and rolled him over.  Hank had a canteen attached to his hip.  “Take his shirt off!”  Bradley’s huge shoulders flexed and the Salyer’s shirt was ripped off of his body.  I took the canteen and began to drip water over him.  I then took of my shirt and used it as a fan over his body while Bradley continued to tip water over him.  The poor man’s hollow chest moved up and down in sporadic breaths.  I thought that he was going to die.  His eyes were glossed over and his mouth hung ajar.  His stomach began to throb up and down and Bradley turned him over and he threw up into the dirt.  The surrounding men and women Beardsleys covered their mouths at the sight.