A Garden of Earthly Delights (11 page)

“What's this here?” Rosalie said. She held up a small metallic object. Clara ran over and stared at it.

“That's a charm,” said Bert.

One of the men said: “Don't you know nothin? That ain't a charm!”

“What is it, then?”

“A medal,” the man said. He was a little defensive. “A holy medal, you put it somewheres and it helps you.”

“Helps you with what?”

Rosalie and Clara were examining it. Carleton bent to see that it was a cheap religious medal, in the shape of a coin, with the raised figure of some saint or Christ or God Himself. Carleton didn't know much about these things; they made him feel a little embarrassed.

“It's nice, I like it,” Rosalie said. The other things her father had given her were a pencil with a broken point and a broken key chain.

“How does it work?” said Clara.

“You put it in your pocket or somethin, I don't know. It don't always work,” the man said.

“Are you Cathlic or somethin?” Bert said, raising his eyebrows.

“Shit—”

“Isn't that a Cathlic thing?”

“It's just some medal I found laying around.”

Carleton cut through their bickering by saying something that surprised all of them, even him. “You got any more of them?”

“No.”

“What're they for?”

“Jesus, I don't know.… S'post to help a little,” the man said, looking away.

Carleton went back to the shanty, where Nancy was sitting in the doorway. She wore tight faded slacks and a shirt carelessly buttoned, and Carleton always liked the way she smoked cigarettes. That was something Pearl hadn't done. “Y'all moved in?” Carleton said. He rubbed the back of her neck and she smiled, closing her eyes. The sunlight made her hair glint in thousands of places so that it looked as if it were a secret place, a secret forest you might enter and get lost in. Carleton stared at her without really seeing her. He saw the gleaming points of light and her smooth pinkish ear.

Finally he said, “Don't think you made no mistake, huh, comin up here with me? All this ways?”

She laughed to show how wrong he was. “Like hell,” she said.

“You think New Jersey looks good, huh?”

“Better than any place I ever was before.”

“Don't never count on nothing,” Carleton said wisely.

Which turned out to be good advice: that evening the crew leader, a puffy-faced, lumpy man Carleton had always hated, came to the camp to tell them it was all off.

“Come all the way here an' the fuckin bastard changed his mind, says he's gonna let them rot out there,” the man shouted. Flecks of saliva flew from his angry mouth. “Gonna let them rot! Don't want them picked! He says the price ain't high enough an's gonna let them rot an' the hell with us!”

Carleton had heard announcements like this before and just stood back, resting on his heels to absorb the surprise. Around him people were making angry wailing noises.

“What the hell is it?” Nancy said faintly.

“It's his tomatoes, he can let them rot if he wants,” Carleton said, his face stiff as if he wanted to let everyone know he was miles away from this, miles and years away. It did not touch him.

It turned out finally that they got a contract to pick at another farm the next morning, so they had to ride there in the school bus, an hour each way, and could still stay at the campsite—it was the only one around—if they paid that farmer rent (a dollar a day for a cabin); and out at the second farm they had to pay that farmer for a lunch of rice and spaghetti out of the can and beans out of the can and bread (fifty cents for each lunch, thirty cents for kids); and they had to pay the crew leader who was also the recruiter and the bus driver for the ride (ten cents each way, including kids), and then had to pay the recruiter twenty cents on each basket for finding them this other job, because he was their recruiter, and, when that job ended, they had to pitch in to give him fifty cents apiece so that he could ride around the country looking for another farm, which he did locate in a day or two, some fifty miles away, a ride that would cost them fifteen cents each way. At the end of the first day, when they were paid, Carleton won five dollars in a poker game and felt his heart pound with a fierce, certain joy. The rest of these people were like mud on the bottom of a crick, that soft heavy mud where snakes and turtles slept. But he, Carleton, could rise up out of that mud and leave them far behind.

Tom's River
was the name of the town: Clara smiled wondering if there was a boy named Tom, and it was his river.

People talked of the
Pine Barrens
, too. Clara whispered “Pine Barrens.” No idea what it was except cranberry farmers lived there. And sometimes they hauled in day-pickers, and sometimes they did not.

Tom's River was seven miles from their camp. Always they were being driven through it on their way out, on their way back from where they were day-hauled. Whenever they rode through Tom's River, Clara and her friend gazed hungrily out the grimy window hoping to catch somebody's eye.
Hi! Hello!
they would wave and giggle like little kids being tickled.

Clara believed that towns were special places with their grids of streets, some of them paved and some not; stores built so close together they were in a row; and some of them double-decked on the others so your eye lifted up to the second story, surprised. Clara had never set foot above any first-floor place. She wondered what it was to live so high, like it was nothing special to look out a window and see where you were like in a tree!

“Don't you get lost in Tom's River. Nobody is goin to come fetch you, miss.”

Nancy was moping, it wasn't right for Clara who was her daddy's damn favorite to take an afternoon off. A damn big hungry girl always eating more than her share. But if Nancy voiced such an opinion, Carleton told her shut up. Like that: “Shut up.” In front of the kids disrespecting her.

So Clara had permission to go. It was Rosalie's birthday: that day Rosalie was thirteen. Rosalie's father gave her fifty cents saying it was her special day, and Carleton winked (so Nancy wouldn't see) and gave Clara a dime. A coin so small it grew moist and hot in your hand right away and would be easy to lose, if you weren't careful.

They were going to hitch a ride, walking along the edge of the road toward Tom's River and waiting for a car to come along, or a pickup. It was what all the kids did and nobody got in trouble except if a sheriff 's car came cruising by, then you might. A deputy in
dark glasses staring at you like he'd like to run you off the road. But mostly people were friendly. People tended to feel sorry for you, and were friendly. The girls were excited and uneasy, walking in the road, waiting, and when their eyes met they laughed together breathlessly.

“What's it feel like to be thirteen?”

Rosalie shrugged. A blush rose into her face. “You'll find out.” And right away she changed the subject saying with a snigger, “Guess you showed that bitch back there.”

“The hell with her.” Clara liked how her daddy uttered these words like passing pronouncement from a high throne.

“Thinks she's so special hookin up with you people,” Rosalie said. “I wouldn't let no nasty bitch like that in my house if my ma died.”

Clara didn't like such talk.
Ma died.
Nobody in their family talked like that ever, they'd have got their mouths slapped hard.

“Oh, Nancy is—” Clara paused. She was going to say
Nancy is nice, sometimes.
She wanted to say
Without Nancy we'd be lonely!
But it was a mistake to argue with Rosalie on this special day.

They fell silent not knowing where to look: a car was fast approaching.

“What if it's some guy tries to get smart?” Rosalie muttered.

Clara gritted her teeth as the car came closer. She hoped it would go past.

The car went past. A man's face behind the wheel and in the passenger's seat some prune-faced old woman with eyeglasses.

“Sonsabitches.” Rosalie stooped to pick up a handful of pebbles and tossed them after the car, not hard enough to hit. A cloud of dust rose in the car's wake.

Another car passed, more slowly. And then a pickup, its back loaded with tomatoes in bushel baskets. The front seat was crowded with a driver, a teenaged shirtless boy, a yellow Lab sitting up like a person. “No room, girlies.” The driver grinned at them and wagged his hand out the window.

“Fuck you, mister.” Rosalie mouthed this after the pickup, not loud enough to be heard.

Yet each time a car approached the girls straightened their faces
to looking polite, serious. Like at school. Rosalie had washed her hair in the sink and her ma had brushed it so it didn't look halfway so stringy as usual. Clara had washed her hair too and brushed it herself so it hung down past her shoulders and it was a gleaming ash-blond, like her father's hair. Except Clara's hair was growing in thick and Carleton's was thinning out so sometimes you could see his scalp at the crown of his head like something you hadn't ought to see.

The girls' faces, lost inside their long hair, were furtive and hopeful at the same time. Rosalie had all kinds of faces, Clara admired how her friend could switch from one to another. Like somebody turning the dial on a radio. Sometimes Rosalie could look halfway pretty, and sometimes Rosalie looked like a rat with darting eyes and a nervous mouth. At school Rosalie had one kind of face for when the teacher was looking at her, and another kind of face for when the teacher had turned her back; Rosalie had one kind of face when she and Clara had to walk past the kids who called them white trash, and another kind of face when Rosalie was with her own kind. And still another, kind of sly-comical, when she was with just Clara alone.

Everybody said how Clara had her daddy's eyes—that frank, perplexed blue—but a nice-looking blue, like the sky on a clear day—and her cheekbones were high like his, so people said she'd be real good-looking someday, more than just cute. But also like Carleton she could look haughty, and suspicious.

“Kind of make your mouth smile, Clara,” Rosalie said, annoyed. “You got to act like you deserve a ride not just want one.”

So Clara tried. Clara watched how Rosalie made her mouth smile, and tried. It should have helped that both girls were wearing their best dresses, cotton floral prints, with short sleeves and sashes that tied behind, and both dresses were just a little tight for them, uncomfortable under the arms. Rosalie kept shrugging her chest, where the cotton made her itch from being tight.

Finally they got a ride with a man who didn't look like a farmer. “Room for both of you up front,” he said kindly. They slid in. The man drove along slowly as if not wanting to jar them. The girls stared out at the familiar road; it looked different, seen from a car
window instead of from the bus. From time to time the man glanced over at them. He was about forty, with slow eyes. “You girls from the camp back there?” he said. Clara, who was in the middle, nodded without bothering to look at him. She was inhaling carefully the odors of an automobile. It was the first time she had ever been in one; she sat with her scraped legs stuck out, her feet flat on the floor. Rosalie was investigating a dirty ashtray attached to the door, poking around with her fingers.

“Where are you girls from?” the man said.

“Not from nowhere,” Clara said politely. She spoke the way she spoke to schoolteachers, who only asked questions for a few minutes and then moved on to someone else.

“Not from nowhere?” the man laughed. “What about you, Red? Where you from?”

“Texas,” said Rosalie in the same voice Clara had used.

“Texas? You're real far from home then. But ain't you sisters?”

“Yeah, we're sisters,” Clara said quickly. “I'm from Texas too.”

“You people travel all over, huh. Must be lots of fun.”

When the girls did not reply he went on, “You must work hard, huh? Your pa makes you work hard for him, don't he?” He tapped on Clara's leg. “You got yourself some scratches on your nice little legs. That's from out in the fields, huh?”

Clara glanced at her legs in surprise.

“Them cuts don't hurt, do they?” said the man.

“No.”

“Ought to have some bandages or somethin on them. Iodine. You know what that is?”

Clara was staring out at the houses they passed. Small frame farmhouses, set back from the road at the end of long narrow lanes. She squinted to see if there were any cats or dogs around. In a field there were several horses, their heads drooping to the grass and their bodies gaunt and fragile.

“Pa had a horse once,” she said to Rosalie.

“What was that?” said the man.

Clara said nothing. The man said, “Did you say they hurt?”

Clara looked at him. He had skin like skin on a potato pulled out
of the ground. His smile looked as if it had been stretched on his mouth by someone else.

“I mean the scratches on your legs. Do they hurt?”

“No,” said Clara. She paused. “I got a dime, I'm gonna buy somethin in town.”

“Is that so?” said the man. He squirmed with pleasure at being told this. “What are you gonna buy?”

“Some nice things.”

“Can't get much with a dime, little girl.”

Clara frowned.

“Your pa only gave you a dime?”

Clara said nothing. The man leaned over and waved a finger in front of Rosalie. “Your pa ought to be nicer to two nice little girls like you.” They were approaching a gas station. The road had turned from dirt to blacktop, getting ready for town. “Could be there's some soda pop at this garage,” the man said. “Anybody like some?”

Clara and Rosalie both said yes at once.

The man stopped and an old man came out to wait on him, wearing a cowboy hat made of straw. Clara watched every part of the ceremony; she was fascinated by the moving dials on the gas pump. The driver, standing outside with his foot on the running board to show he owned the car, bent down once in a while to smile in at the girls. “Wouldn't mind some pop myself,” he said. They said nothing. His foot disappeared after a moment and he went into the gas station. It was a small wooden building, once painted white. As soon as the screen door flopped closed behind him, Rosalie opened the glove compartment and looked through the things in there— some rags, a flashlight, keys. “Goddamn junk,” Rosalie said. She put the keys in her pocket. “Never can tell what keys might open,” she said vaguely. Clara was looking in the backseat. One brown glove lay on the floor, stiff with dirt. She lunged over and got it, then sat on it because there was nowhere to hide it.